What made you change your book’s title from The AI Does Not Hate You to The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy?
What were the positive and negative effects or implications of changing your book’s title after publication? (This is one of the first times I’ve encountered a book’s title being changed after publication, so I’m just curious to hear about it.)
No big story! We changed editors between the hardback and the paperback, and the new editor decided that the book wasn’t really centrally about AI. She felt that it was more about the rationalist community, so she wanted to change the title to reflect that. I know sod-all about the publishing industry and I trust her judgment better than mine, so I said “fine”.
If I’m starkly honest with myself I think it’s probably because the sales weren’t great and she thought this would help, but I don’t know.
The positive impacts I guess will be if it sells more copies, but one negative impact is that a few people thought I’d written a new book. I hope no one accidentally buys a second copy but I imagine it might happen.
(It’s not that unusual, I don’t think. At least two of my journalist friends have books with different paperback titles to the original hardback titles.)
*loads* of people saw the title and thought “oh, this is a book about how AI is Good, Actually”. For anyone who doesn’t know, the full quote is Eliezer’s: “The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.”. I much preferred the old title but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised people didn’t get it!
Out of curiosity:
What made you change your book’s title from The AI Does Not Hate You to The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy?
What were the positive and negative effects or implications of changing your book’s title after publication? (This is one of the first times I’ve encountered a book’s title being changed after publication, so I’m just curious to hear about it.)
No big story! We changed editors between the hardback and the paperback, and the new editor decided that the book wasn’t really centrally about AI. She felt that it was more about the rationalist community, so she wanted to change the title to reflect that. I know sod-all about the publishing industry and I trust her judgment better than mine, so I said “fine”.
If I’m starkly honest with myself I think it’s probably because the sales weren’t great and she thought this would help, but I don’t know.
The positive impacts I guess will be if it sells more copies, but one negative impact is that a few people thought I’d written a new book. I hope no one accidentally buys a second copy but I imagine it might happen.
(It’s not that unusual, I don’t think. At least two of my journalist friends have books with different paperback titles to the original hardback titles.)
*loads* of people saw the title and thought “oh, this is a book about how AI is Good, Actually”. For anyone who doesn’t know, the full quote is Eliezer’s: “The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.”. I much preferred the old title but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised people didn’t get it!