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Mass market non-fiction has bad incentives

On publishing as a play for status and legitimacy.

The book’s real content is a one-page essay that has been mechanically expanded to publication length, and filled with irrelevance. Writing a non-fiction book is both a means to increase your social status and a way to become intellectually legitimate: someone who can be cited as an authority, someone whom journalists can quote. Dually, a writer who self-publishes non-fiction on Amazon or Gumroad, and whose reviews come exclusively from normal people, will accrue some social status, but they will not become an intellectual authority.

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