The author of four books: Deux Sine Machina: Stories of 20 crazy people who made business in Russia from scratch (2011), Code of Durov.

In 2002 Kononov graduated from the Department of Literary and Art Criticism and Publicism of the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University.

In 2003-2004 he worked as a reporter for the newspapers Izvestia and Stolichnaya Vechernaya, was focused on social issues, covering e.g. problems of the refugees in Ingush field camps and local elections in Chechnya.

In 2011 he returned to Forbes and took part in launching the website Forbes.ru,[2] worked on profiles of outstanding entrepreneurs and conducted investigations about oligarchs' tights with Kremlin,[3][4] explosions on coal mines in Kuzbass, future of oil industry in Siberia,[5] etc.

[7][8][9] In 2003 Kononov wrote first short story, "Specificus and Dieffenbach", it was published in Russian literary magazine Vavilon under pseudonyme Grigorii Mikhailov.

[13] In March 2014, The New York Times published a column of Nikolay Kononov, in which he summarized the further history of Pavel Durov and his social network.

[14] In 2013 was published in "Seans" magazine a short story "The Shiver" about Moscow opposition anti-Putin rally.