It’s plausible that more EAs/longtermists should be writing books on the interesting subjects they are experts in, but they currently do not because of a lack of experience or other types of friction. Crowdsourced resources, networks, and grants may help facilitate this. Books written by EAs would have at least two benefits: (a) dissemination of knowledge, and (b) earning-to-give opportunities (via royalties).
This is an interesting idea; it definitely seems plausible that EAs (who often have a lot of unique knowledge!) might be underrating the benefits of writing books. Could you expand a little on what you are thinking here? (I’d also be interested to hear from anyone else with relevant experience.) How hard is it to publish a book? If you try, do you have a high chance of getting rejected? How do people usually do marketing and get people to read their stuff?
Maybe this is too cynical of me (or too internet-centric), but I doubt the main benefits would come from earning royalties (not likely to be very profitable relative to other things skilled EAs could be doing!) or spreading knowledge (just read the blog posts!). But I think trying to publish more EA books might help greatly with:
Prestige and legibility (just like how academic papers are considered more legit than blog posts by academics and governments). It might be easier for, say, the US Democratic Party to get behind an EA-inspired pandemic-prevention plan, foreign-aid revamp, or predction-markets-y institutional-reform agenda if they could point to a prestigious book rather than just a bunch of Forum posts and pdf reports from places like OpenPhil, Rethink Priorities, etc.
Spreading EA ideas to an older audience of folks who read books more than blog posts. This could help to diversify EA and could accelerate EA’s trajectory by connecting us to more people who are already in influential positions, not just college kids who might one day inherit the earth.
Discoverability—having our stuff in college bookstores and libraries could make EA a more visible and legit-seeming movement compared to being so heavily online.
Say we found a new EA organization, “80,000 Pages”, to help people publish books on impactful themes. What kinds of helpful stuff could this organization do?
Help people get a sense of whether their ideas would be well-suited for a book, whether publishers would be interested, etc, so people could know whether they were wasting their time or not.
Help people understand and craft a target audience with altruistic impact in mind. (for instance, as an aerospace engineer I might be tempted to write a book about space governance that appeals to other aerospace engineers. But probably it would be more impactful to target policymakers. Or maybe I should be trying to inspire college kids who might become engineers and policymakers later?)
Explain to people the basic steps involved in writing and publishing a book. (I for one have no idea what this looks like, besides “write draft” → “editing” → “sell to publisher” → “print books”.)
Helping with marketing and etc; helping estimate how many people might read a book about a given topic.
Put out requests for “someone should write a good book about X” just like how Charity Entrepreneurship requests “we’re looking for someone to found a charity about X”.
I have never published a book, but some EAs have written quite famous and well-written books. In addition to what you suggested, I was thinking “80,000 pages” could organize mentoring relationships for other EAs who are interested in writing a book, writer’s circles, a crowdsourced step-by-step guide, etc. Networking in general is very important for publishing and publicizing books, from what I can gather, so any help on getting one’s foot in the door could be quite helpful.
My brother has written several books and currently coaches people on how to publish it and market it on Amazon. He would be open to being paid for advice in this area (just dm me)
I think the dissemination and prestige are the best arguments so far.
Pipeline for writing books
Effective altruism
It’s plausible that more EAs/longtermists should be writing books on the interesting subjects they are experts in, but they currently do not because of a lack of experience or other types of friction. Crowdsourced resources, networks, and grants may help facilitate this. Books written by EAs would have at least two benefits: (a) dissemination of knowledge, and (b) earning-to-give opportunities (via royalties).
This is an interesting idea; it definitely seems plausible that EAs (who often have a lot of unique knowledge!) might be underrating the benefits of writing books. Could you expand a little on what you are thinking here? (I’d also be interested to hear from anyone else with relevant experience.) How hard is it to publish a book? If you try, do you have a high chance of getting rejected? How do people usually do marketing and get people to read their stuff?
Maybe this is too cynical of me (or too internet-centric), but I doubt the main benefits would come from earning royalties (not likely to be very profitable relative to other things skilled EAs could be doing!) or spreading knowledge (just read the blog posts!). But I think trying to publish more EA books might help greatly with:
Prestige and legibility (just like how academic papers are considered more legit than blog posts by academics and governments). It might be easier for, say, the US Democratic Party to get behind an EA-inspired pandemic-prevention plan, foreign-aid revamp, or predction-markets-y institutional-reform agenda if they could point to a prestigious book rather than just a bunch of Forum posts and pdf reports from places like OpenPhil, Rethink Priorities, etc.
Spreading EA ideas to an older audience of folks who read books more than blog posts. This could help to diversify EA and could accelerate EA’s trajectory by connecting us to more people who are already in influential positions, not just college kids who might one day inherit the earth.
Discoverability—having our stuff in college bookstores and libraries could make EA a more visible and legit-seeming movement compared to being so heavily online.
Say we found a new EA organization, “80,000 Pages”, to help people publish books on impactful themes. What kinds of helpful stuff could this organization do?
Help people get a sense of whether their ideas would be well-suited for a book, whether publishers would be interested, etc, so people could know whether they were wasting their time or not.
Help people understand and craft a target audience with altruistic impact in mind. (for instance, as an aerospace engineer I might be tempted to write a book about space governance that appeals to other aerospace engineers. But probably it would be more impactful to target policymakers. Or maybe I should be trying to inspire college kids who might become engineers and policymakers later?)
Explain to people the basic steps involved in writing and publishing a book. (I for one have no idea what this looks like, besides “write draft” → “editing” → “sell to publisher” → “print books”.)
Potentially help with any finnicky technical aspects of publishing, like formatting the text properly. Maybe take preexisting studies, like the OpenPhil AI timelines report or Rethink Priorities’ nuclear winter investigations, and publish them in physical book form.
Helping with marketing and etc; helping estimate how many people might read a book about a given topic.
Put out requests for “someone should write a good book about X” just like how Charity Entrepreneurship requests “we’re looking for someone to found a charity about X”.
Publishing books directly? (Selling them directly?? Giving them away somehow? See also Ben Pace’s idea that EA could buy and run a famously trend-setting academic bookstore in Oxford.)
Other stuff that I’m missing?
Thanks so much, Jackson!
I have never published a book, but some EAs have written quite famous and well-written books. In addition to what you suggested, I was thinking “80,000 pages” could organize mentoring relationships for other EAs who are interested in writing a book, writer’s circles, a crowdsourced step-by-step guide, etc. Networking in general is very important for publishing and publicizing books, from what I can gather, so any help on getting one’s foot in the door could be quite helpful.
My brother has written several books and currently coaches people on how to publish it and market it on Amazon. He would be open to being paid for advice in this area (just dm me)
I think the dissemination and prestige are the best arguments so far.