There are definitely newsletters, articles and tweets I think about more often than most of the books I have ever read.
And because of that, I think there is an equal and opposite argument against this take that I went back and read, which Ben Thompson of Stratechery wrote several years ago. It was a response to the hypothetical about why he would choose to not write a book.
[Stratechery] has been an incredible journey, especially intellectually: instead of writing with a final goal in mind — a manuscript that can be printed at scale — Stratechery has become in many respects a journal of my own attempts to understand technology specifically and the way in which it is changing every aspect of society broadly.
And, it turns, out, the business model is even better: instead of taking on the risk of writing a book with the hope of one-time payment from customers at the end, Stratechery subscribers fund that intellectual exploration directly and on an ongoing basis; all they ask is that I send them my journals of said exploration every day in email form.
To put it another way, at least in my experience, the lowly blog has fully disrupted the mighty book: the former was long thought to be an inferior alternative, or at best, a complementary piece for an author looking to drum up an audience; slowly but surely, though, the tools have gotten better.
I love that: A journal of my own attempts to understand … that I send them. That, in so many ways, is what this newsletter is as well.
All of this fascinates me. And while I am obsessed with books, I think the thing I’m actually obsessed with is book-level writing, which is simply a writer’s very best stuff. The “Pedro in the early 2000s when Fenway was swaying” stuff.
I don’t know if that’s what Thompson is able to produce 2-3 times a week at Stratechery. I don’t know if that’s what I’m able to produce twice a week here. But that is certainly a worthy and aspirational goal.
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