Tyler Cowen: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Don’t try to be me. Don’t try to be anyone because the reason I’m successful is that I didn’t. I didn’t show this weird, kind of funny book about dead people, which sounds like a bad, bad idea, as a book, really. “I’m going to write a kind of funny book about things that are done with dead bodies.” Any sensible person would have said, “That sounds ill advised.” So not only did I not ask anyone going into it, I didn’t show it to anyone until I turned it in to my editor. Had I shown it to people, I think they would’ve said, “Yeah, this whole humor, dead person, I don’t know, I’m uncomfortable with it, I think it’s inappropriate.” I would have gone, “You’re right.” And I would’ve stripped a lot of it out, I would’ve backed off. I would’ve made it more center-of-the-road, and I think that’s a mistake. You want a book that people are going to talk about, and I think the reason that that book succeeded . . . my publisher did a lovely job with the release, but it wasn’t a big . . . it was my first book, it was a surprising book that people talked about. Word of mouth is so important with books, with book sales, and finding something that is both interesting to you and that will be interesting and surprising to readers. Last question before I turn it over to the audience: To write that book and the others, what is it you did or what was done to you to get the sensibleness out of your system? I don’t know how else to put it. [laughs] I don’t . . .…

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