Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Perhaps y0u should seek out a co-author that can help you make the points, yet keep the book to a reasonable length? I am a bit more puzzled about the job search. I thought you needed the money? Wouldn’t that take priority if you need the funds?
There’s “need the money” and there’s “need the money.” There are different ways that those phrases can be employed. I need the money. But I need this book to be written properly more. And of course it is not just me who needs that. The entire country needs that. So I have to be willing to make some personal sacrifices to come through for my country. I am trying my best to balance the conflicting demands that have been placed on my conscience.
Having a co-author would make things worse. I have lived this story for over 18 years. There is no one else who understands the story that is being told in the book at the level of depth that I understand it. That includes Shiller. The problem is not that I am not up to the job. The parts of the book that are written are amazing. I have zero lack of confidence in the project. What I have lost confidence in is the idea that I could somehow tell this story in 85,000 words if I worked it hard enough. I now have concluded that that cannot be done.
I will continue to struggle to keep the length down. But, if the length ends up being more than what I want it to be, I am just going to have to accept that. The story has to be told properly. Someone who wants access to the complete story needs to have a place where he can get that. That place is going to be this book. Those who will not be able to bear the thought of reading a long book on investing will have shorter versions of the story available to them. That article that I send to people from time to time (“Buy-and-Hold Is Dangerous”) is 11,000 words. That’s not short. But it is a lot shorter than the book. The article is complete in the sense that it treats every key point in at least a cursory manner. The purpose of the book is to treat every important point in a complete manner. It turns out that it takes a lot of words to pull that off. That’s the reality that I have reluctantly come to accept after trying hard to do it the other way.
Looking for a co-author would just be seeking to avoid responsibility for something that is my job. I can write the book in the way that it needs to be written for it to do the job that it needs to do. I just need to let go of my preconceptions. I cannot force this book to be a certain length. The reason why the cover-up of the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies has continued for so long is that there are elements of this story that are very, very, very hard for people to believe. If there is something true that it is very, very, very hard for people to believe, then it is going to take some time to explain that thing to people. That’s just the way it is.
I have brought up the story of Galileo on several occasions. Galileo had something important to say (that the earth is not the center of the universe, as was indicated in passages from the Bible) that many people did not want to believe. I don’t think that there is anyone today who is not a crazy person who believes that the earth is the center of the universe. So eventually the truth that Galileo spoke was just too important for people to ignore. But it took a lot of time for that to happen. People who believed that the Bible is the inspired word of God had a really, really, really hard time letting the Galileo truth in to their minds. That’s where we stand today with the Shiller truth that the market is not efficient, that in fact valuations affect long-term returns and the safe withdrawal rate is a number that changes with changes in valuation levels.
I hope that it is not going to take much longer before more of us begin to take that Nobel-prize-winning truth in to our minds. The purpose of the book is to make that happen. I need to address all of the obstacles that as a society we face in our effort to advance in our understanding of how stock investing works. I wish that it were an easier job. I wish that I could just say “valuations matter” or “timing always works” and be done with it. But thinking that that is going to do the job is not being realistic. My job is to figure out what is causing the emotional resistance to letting in the message of the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research in this field and then to overcome those obstacles with my words. However darn many of them it takes to succeed at that job is the darn number of words that I need to include in the book.
I hope that that helps at least a tiny bit.
Galileo Supporter (While Remaining a Person of Faith as Well!) Rob
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