Thread by @nntaleb

Gratitude to @JeffBezos: my Saga.

1) As an author, I owe Amazon. Before, publishers were subservient to bookstores & their book placement.
So when I wrote FBR *on my own terms* it was a problem: fictional characters, math discussions, philosophy... Was it popularization? No.

2) Was it about finance? No. It's about what? So no publisher.
I found a weird outfit who accepted at ½ price. Bookstores were good at ignoring my work: why should a neighborhood bookstore isn't interested in higher things, just moving books.
Amazon did not have rigid shelves!

3) There is this romantic idea of the neighborhood bookstore out to save literature, social life, & thinking: these people survive on books that have a specific public. So the "monster" that drove them bust allowed me to get an audience I would've never had.

4)The worst were standard book editors whose employment is to make sure no author ever write on her/his own terms. They lectured me about "focus" (Me: "is your business to focus or to sell books"?).

I exist (as an author) bec. of AMZN. Stores did everything to make me extinct.

5) By the time I moved FBR to RH the scenery had changed. I was lucky earlier publ went kaput.

Publishers adapt. Not bookstores.

It remains that the publishers model is to sell a lot of books quickly, then repeat.The notion of Lindy books is rare & hard to account for.