A couple of months ago, I noted that I had been approached by a major publisher who asked me to write a book. That one is not going to happen now. I presented two ideas to them, both of which they liked, but in neither case was I willing to deliver a text in the style that Owen Jones, Grace Blakeley, and Nick Shaxson use. They write as journalists who interview people to develop a thesis based on what others might say. As is apparent from the way I write here, for better or worse, I build my own ideas and write about them. The result is a very different type of output.\u00a0 So, these two ideas have been set aside for the time being.<\/p>\n
There are some other things to also note on the book front.<\/p>\n
Wiley<\/strong><\/p>\n One is that some people are still being misled by statements made by Wiley that I have a book coming out this month. This book was in progress when I had Covid for the second time in 2022, which episode took me about eight months to recover from. When I had done so, the book in question no longer felt like the thing that I wanted to write, and it was abandoned with about seven chapters written. I am not currently planning to return to it because my thinking has moved on quite a long way since then, most particularly as a consequence of writing the Taxing Wealth Report. So, please do not try to order that book as it does not exist. That said, Wiley is a publisher who is keen to have a book from me, but this admin failure has not filled me with confidence.<\/p>\n The greatest hits collection<\/strong><\/p>\n There is another dimension to this issue as well. A comment was made on this blog yesterday, suggesting that if I had not got a book in progress, a good one would be a collected work of my best blog posts, plus some of the best comments on those from some of the more regular commentators. I have, occasionally, been told this over time, but I have always had reservations because the style used for blogging is not necessarily that required in a book, precisely because blog writing is part of a continuing narrative, and that is not true with regard to book writing, which is a discrete exercise.<\/p>\n I also do not know which blog posts I consider my best on any subject, or what comments might be included. In practice, I think that an independent editor would have to review my writing to find these. Even then, I think that this would be more like an e-book, rather than a book for sale in a bookshop. I would, anyway, rather keep that space clear for something more substantial that I still have in mind.<\/p>\n That said, is there anyone interested in researching what those blog posts might be for a collection to be produced as background reading for those new to this blog, in particular? I am not suggesting that there\u2019s any funding for this. It would be a labour of love, and at the end of the day, would still require a fair amount of cooperation with me. However, if there is someone interested in pursuing this project and can suggest a viable methodology, including post-selection and comment selection, I am open to discussing it. Please start by commenting below, and we will see what happens from there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"