WWOTF: what did the publisher cut? [answer: nothing]
Contextual note: this post is essentially a null result. It seemed inappropriate both as a top-level post and as an abandoned Google Doc, so I’ve decided to put out the key bits (i.e., everything below) as Shortform. Feel free to comment/message me if you think that was the wrong call!
Actual post
On his recent appearance on the 80,000 Hours Podcast, Will MacAskill noted that Doing Good Better was significantly influenced by the book’s publisher:[1]
Rob Wiblin: …But in 2014 you wrote Doing Good Better, and that somewhat soft pedals longtermism when you’re introducing effective altruism. So it seems like it was quite a long time before you got fully bought in.
Will MacAskill: Yeah. I should say for 2014, writing Doing Good Better, in some sense, the most accurate book that was fully representing my and colleagues’ EA thought would’ve been broader than the particular focus. And especially for my first book, there was a lot of equivalent of trade — like agreement with the publishers about what gets included. I also wanted to include a lot more on animal issues, but the publishers really didn’t like that, actually. Their thought was you just don’t want to make it too weird.
Rob Wiblin: I see, OK. They want to sell books and they were like, “Keep it fairly mainstream.”
Will MacAskill: Exactly...
I thought it was important to know whether the same was true with respect to What We Owe the Future, so I reached out to Will’s team and received the following response from one of his colleagues [emphasis mine]:
Hi Aaron, thanks for sending these questions and considering to make this info publicly available.
However, in contrast to what one might perhaps reasonably expect given what Will said about Doing Good Better, I think there is actually very little of interest that can be said on this topic regarding WWOTF. In particular:
I’m not aware of any material that was cut, or any other significant changes to the content of the book that were made significantly because of the publisher’s input. (At least since I joined Forethought in mid-2021; it’s possible there was some of this at earlier stages of the project, though I doubt it.) To be clear: The UK publisher’s editor read multiple drafts of the book and provided helpful comments, but Will generally changed things in response to these comments if and only if he was actually convinced by them.
(There are things other than the book’s content where the publisher exerted more influence – for instance, the publishers asked us for input on the book’s cover but made clear that the cover is ultimately their decision. Similarly, the publisher set the price of the book, and this is not something we were involved in at all.)
As Will talks about in more detail here, the book’s content would have been different in some ways if it had been written for a different audience – e.g., people already engaged in the EA community as opposed to the general public. But this was done by Will’s own choice/design rather than because of publisher intervention. And to be clear, I think this influenced the content in mundane and standard ways that are present in ~all communication efforts – understanding what your audience is, aiming to meet them where they are and delivering your messages in way that is accessible to them (rather than e.g. using overly technical language the audience might not be familiar with).
WWOTF: what did the publisher cut? [answer: nothing]
Contextual note: this post is essentially a null result. It seemed inappropriate both as a top-level post and as an abandoned Google Doc, so I’ve decided to put out the key bits (i.e., everything below) as Shortform. Feel free to comment/message me if you think that was the wrong call!
Actual post
On his recent appearance on the 80,000 Hours Podcast, Will MacAskill noted that Doing Good Better was significantly influenced by the book’s publisher:[1]
I thought it was important to know whether the same was true with respect to What We Owe the Future, so I reached out to Will’s team and received the following response from one of his colleagues [emphasis mine]:
Quote starts at 39:47