There’s an old saying among chinese that reading a good book is like learning from a wise man.

Learning most things in my life via books, i couldn’t agree more with the sayings until one day i realized that publishing a book is couldn’t be done by the author alone. before the book is published, the author’s writing probably gone thru a number of checking and editing by the editors, the publishers, as well as the marketers. in fact, the original idea of the book could had changed entirely due to market consideration or just because the publisher didn’t like it, before it’s been published.

In result, we are actually ‘learning’ from the publisher (that wants to make money from you); to the marketer (with only business in mind); or to the editors; but not the book author when we read a book. yes, we just missed the original raw idea of the author for most cases. In certain situation, i even think the author don’t even know what’s his book about, especially those best sellers.

Come’on, do you think robert kiyosaki and donal trump really sit down and discuss every paragraph of their book ‘why we want you to be rich’? don’t be silly, i bet 90% (or more!) of the book is written by their shadow writter - the publisher just utilise their reputation to market the book!

Want to ‘talk’ to the author and get his(or her) raw opinion about something? read his(or her) blog. only in the blog platform, authors are able to write with less consideration on publisher or book marketer’s preferences. and only in such platform, author and readers are able to throw out comments, questions, and discussion to each others.

As said, direct interaction with everyone, is the least we can benefit from the flat world. perhaps someone can help me to reconstruct the old chinese saying about blog (instead of book)?