The Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller is, by any measure, enormously successful. He’s produced (always in collaboration with others) about 10 shows that have, collectively, grossed $4.74 billion, approximately one-third of which was profit for producers, investors and others.

You’ve probably heard of several of those shows. His first big hit was “Rent.” His most recent: “Hamilton.” In between were “Avenue Q” and “In the Heights,” but also plenty of others that didn’t flourish.

For a long time, Seller, now 60 and the winner of four best-musical Tony Awards, had complicated feelings about how he fit in. He was adopted as an infant and grew up in a downwardly mobile and fractious family in a Detroit suburb.

Theater was where he found pleasure, and meaning — a way out, and a way up. Now he’s written a memoir, “Theater Kid,” that is being published on May 6. It is a combination coming-of-age and rags-to-riches story that is unsparing in its description of his colorfully challenged-and-challenging father, unabashed in its description of his sexual awakening, and packed with behind-the-scenes detail, especially about the birth of “Rent.”

In an interview at his office in the theater district, Seller spoke about his life, his career and his book. These are edited excerpts from the interview.

You don’t need the money or the attention. Why write a memoir?

I wrote it to figure out why I’m here. I wrote it to try to figure out how I fit in. And I guess I wrote it as an exercise in squashing all of my shame at being an adopted, gay, Jewish, poor kid, and always feeling like an outsider.

You’ve spent a career developing other people’s stories. Did that help you tell your own?

This was an incredible challenge. Instead of me criticizing or supporting someone else’s writing, I was the writer, the producer, the stage manager, the director of my own book. So I started coaching myself. I would be like, “What’s the beginning and the middle and the end of this scene?” “How are you going to make every scene satisfying, Jeffrey?” And, “Well, this is boring!” “Cut that!” “Can you make this scene funnier?” Now I had to be responsible for creating a dramatic arc.

The book is so candid about money and sex and ambition.

Money, sex, and ambition is my life! There was no other way! Does the world need another memoir about Broadway? Not necessarily. Does the world need another memoir about gay men coming out? Not necessarily. The only “why” I could come up with is to dig deeper and be brutally truthful and treat myself like everybody else — show myself being insecure, show myself being petty, show my ugliness, too. I thought only by being more truthful, and exposing more will I justify the existence of this book.

You also write about people who are still around — former lovers, former collaborators, family members. How did you think about telling those stories?

One: Tell the truth. Two: Capture what happened. Three: Only tell it if it has a dramatic purpose that serves the overarching story. But I know you’re asking, “Well, what about the feelings of the person you’re writing about?” And yes, it was on my mind, but I don’t think I revealed anything about anybody that was cruel or mean.

Do you journal, or just have an amazing memory? Your stories are so specific.

I journaled all through college. I saved all the letters I wrote to other people. I do have an amazing memory. And there’s one more thing: I had three stories that I wrote in my late 20s that were very rough drafts for what I ultimately wrote.

What did you learn about yourself?

I think maybe we adoptees are never sure we’re going to be OK. There is something so deep about what it means to not know where you come from, and to feel that you’ve been rejected by the very people who created you. That has affected every part of my life. And I think that through some process of psychoanalysis, therapy, and this book, I maybe have come to see that I’m OK, and I’m going to be OK.

You grew up in a Detroit suburb, among far more affluent families, in a neighborhood nicknamed Cardboard Village.

I was so ashamed of it that I would experience extreme anxiety if someone asked me where I lived. Everybody else was doing a little bit better every year, including my cousins and my friends. I just remember being so angry, like why can’t we get out of here? And we never did until I produced “Rent.”

You came out as gay amid the AIDS crisis, as it was devastating the gay community and the theater community.

It inhibited me physically. I was so afraid of death. I was so afraid of getting sick. I just remember how frightened I was when I picked up the Village Voice to try to find an apartment share and on the front page was a big headline about how many people had died at St. Vincent’s Hospital that week.

The story of “Rent” is so complicated because it’s this enormous success wrapped up with the enormous tragedy of the death of Jonathan Larson, the show’s composer and author, hours before the first Off Broadway preview.

For many years, I felt guilty. I reap these benefits from “Rent,” and Jonathan never got to see it. But with the passage of time, my feeling has changed, because now I realize that Jonathan changed the American musical theater forever, and all contemporary American musical theater now stands on his shoulders. Jonathan changed Broadway, and Broadway is better for it.

Your other key creative relationship has been with Lin-Manuel Miranda. In the book, you describe wondering if his gift was divine.

I remember two things the first time we ever did a reading of “In the Heights.” The first was the opening number. Every hair on my arm rose because the juxtaposition of this warm rap with this Broadway choral singing was completely new to my ears. And a half-hour later, when this older woman gets up and sings about her experience arriving on the shores from Cuba as a little girl and becoming a housekeeper on the Upper East Side, I thought it was one of the most beautiful arias I’d ever heard in my life. But I also went, “How does this young man understand the lifeblood of a 70-something-year-old Cuban woman?” And that’s when I thought for the first time, “Is he channeling God?” The God I don’t believe in.

You knew from the beginning that “Hamilton” would be amazing?

I knew from the beginning that “Hamilton” was yet another step forward. I did not know from the beginning that it would become a phenomenon. That came with time, and with the audience.

“Hamilton” is turning 10 this year. How is it doing?

There are five companies arrayed around the world today. “Hamilton” is doing great.

One way you’re celebrating is with the return of Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr. How did that come about, and how has it affected sales?

Leslie and I started talking about this idea a few months ago. And I think he has a wonderful opportunity to ask, “How does this feel 10 years later?” I can’t wait to see him do it again. And sales are great.

We talked a lot about your successes. You’ve also had failures. How do you handle that?

Failure at making a new musical is crushing to me, and I spend hours, days, weeks, months, years after, analyzing what went wrong. What could I have done differently? I was developing “The Last Ship” [a musical with a score by Sting] in the same time that I was developing “Hamilton,” and I was a fervent believer in both. And when “The Last Ship” could not find a Broadway audience, it broke my heart. I love all of my shows, and all I can do is my best, and know that I don’t ultimately control their destiny. What I must do as a producer, though, is accept their fate. And that means making the tough decision to close when you know it’s not working.

You write that a producer’s job is to get the first 50,000 people to see a show, and after that it lives or dies on word of mouth. Do you really believe that?

Yeah, I really do. You either won them over, or you didn’t.

You also write that it’s important to read audiences. How do you do that?

It’s getting harder these days because audiences are getting really rowdy, even in previews. I think we read audiences now in two ways. How are they responding that night? And what’s happening at the box office the next day? A standing ovation is not good word of mouth. Selling more tickets at the box office the next day is good word of mouth.

In 2016, you suggested the cast of “Hamilton” issue a challenge to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was in the audience. Why?

I felt that we were not in normal political times, and that it was our right as citizens to express our fears, anxieties and hopes at this special opportunity that we had to be in the room with the new vice president-elect of the United States. And that night wound up being one of the first protests of the new regime, and of that, I’m proud. And of course, sadly, everything we were concerned about came to be.

Now you’ve pulled “Hamilton” from the Kennedy Center.

When we played the Kennedy Center the first time, it was during the first Trump administration. And we had an amazing engagement there. But after Trump politicized the organization, took over as the chairman, installed one of his political lackeys, and then fired every single Democratic member of the board, we will not participate and we will not allow them to use the profits from our show to support their agenda.

How are you feeling about the state of Broadway, artistically and financially?

I’m going to equivocate. On a positive level, this year we are going to do the highest attendance we’ve had since ’18-’19. We have seen the arrival of over 10 new musicals. Both of those facts are cause for celebration. But it’s getting harder and harder to make money, and I am concerned about if and when the [investment] money starts drying up. We haven’t had a megahit since “Hamilton,” and that’s a problem.

What’s your advice for someone who wants to be a theater producer?

Find the next Jonathan Larson. Find the next Lin-Manuel Miranda. Everything else will fall in place if you get the team. Find the artists.