Writing for readers or editors

I am fallible and see no reason to hide my minor flaws if they are part of my personality — no more than I feel the need to wear a wig when I have my picture taken or borrow someone else’s nose when I show my face. Almost all the book editors who read the draft recommended changes at the sentence level, to make my style better, and in the structure of the text, in the organization of chapters. I ignored almost all of them and found out that none of the readers thought them necessary. As a matter of fact, I find that injecting the personality of the author, imperfections included, enlivens the text. Does the book industry suffer from the classical expert problem, with the build-up of rules of thumb that do not have empirical validity? More than 100,000 readers later, I am discovering that books are not written for book editors.

Taleb, Nicholas Nassim. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. Random House, 2001. Audiobook, “Preface: Taking Knowledge Less Seriously”, 24:05

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. Between 2005 and 2007 I completed an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. I worked for five years for the Canadian federal government, including completing the Accelerated Economist Training Program, and then completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Toronto in 2023. View all posts by Milan