Anthologies
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| I Found This Funny | 2010 | Buy |
Non-Fiction
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Sick in the Head | 2015 | Buy |
| Sicker in the Head | 2022 | Buy |
| Comedy Nerd | 2025 | Buy |
Apatow started in comedy long before he became a filmmaker, writing for television and performing stand-up as a teenager. That background shapes his books, which read as conversations between people who share a professional language around what makes things funny. The interviews in Sick in the Head and Sicker in the Head cover comedians across generations, from people who were working when Apatow was starting out to younger performers he has since collaborated with.
His approach as an interviewer is relaxed and genuinely curious rather than confrontational. The conversations tend to run long and cover the practical details of a comedy career: how to write jokes, how to handle a bad set, how the industry has changed. Comedy Nerd, his 2022 collection, follows the same format with a new batch of subjects.
The anthology I Found This Funny sits slightly apart from the interview books, collecting humor writing that Apatow found genuinely funny rather than his own conversations. Together the four books make a reasonable introduction to his thinking about comedy.