
Dear all,
Let me tell you an author’s secret: (Almost) no one reads books. However, authors find solace in the fact that they’re often invited to talk about what’s in their book—and then people buy it anyway!
So if you have something to share, writing a book is useful for two reasons. First, it forces you to clear up your ideas and turn them into a compelling story. Then the book becomes a passport for you to travel around and talk about what’s inside it.
This is what I’ve been doing following the publishing of my book Hedge in 2018. I’ve been invited to talk about it literally all around the world, from various European countries to Israel to the US to Asia. For that last one, I was in Singapore earlier this year, and I’m about to spend 10 days in China thanks to an invitation from the Institut français for talks in Beijing, Wuhan, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou.
This kind of travelling is exhausting (and I’m going to take a long-awaited pause soon), but it’s highly valuable. What I usually exp…