He published it under the pen name "John Reid" to avoid the repercussions of being openly gay, though the book was republished in 1998 under his real name, to coincide with a sequel, The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up.

He parlayed his writings and advice into success in the software industry with his Andrew Tobias's Managing Your Money financial application.

Tobias has written books on other topics, which include Fire and Ice: The Charles Revson/Revlon Story, Getting By on $100,000 a Year, a collection of magazine pieces; Auto Insurance Alert, a book proposing radical insurance reform; Kids Say Don't Smoke on the efforts of tobacco companies to sell cigarettes to younger consumers (which was also published in Russian).

After leaving New York Magazine in 1976, he was a contributing editor to Esquire, then Playboy, Time, and Parade.

[citation needed] Tobias was the partner of fashion designer and Democratic political activist Charles Nolan, who died on January 30, 2011.