In my recent conversation with John Kay, we spent some time discussing the merits of self-publishing. The Long and the Short of It
is not the first of his books he has published himself, but it is the
first which is not simply a collection of previous columns. At this
early stage – the book has been out nearly 2 months – he is very
positive about this route. He argues that the main service publishers
can provide is distribution, still critical in the US market and for
certain types of book – textbooks for instance. His book is written
mainly for UK readers, and with a well-known FT column and loyal fan
base, he can do his own marketing and distribute adequately online and
via the biggest high street bookseller. The other bits of the
publishing package are now reasonably easy and relatively cheap to put
together, John says: financing, printing, editing, design and
copy-editing, and sales/PR/marketing. The reader-facing parts of this package, the design and editing, are of high quality – higher than is the case with many 'published' books (the cover design is pictured below). John opted to publish immediately
as a trade paperback, not the tradition in the UK market but now
happening more and more often.

He published the previous essay collections under a creative commons license.
This one has a standard copyright notice but John is clearly basically
relaxed about the copyright issue. As he wisely puts it: “Creative
people need others to use their material.” It's clear he's not profit
maximizing on this title either. The price is £11.99 – £7.89 on Amazon when I
looked – and without the usual price discrimination tactic of a
hardback edition for impatient readers. However, out of a first print
run of 10,000, John told me about 1,500 were left in stock, the bulk
therefore either sold or on the book shop shelves. So it looks like he
is on to something in terms of his real maximand, readership.

I've now started my copy and recommend it to modest investors based in
the UK. It's full of sound common sense, and goodness knows we need
every piece of good advice we can get in present conditions.

An interview with the author of this new polemic against official aid had made me look forward to reading it. I personally incline strongly towards scepticism about proposals for additional aid spending, whether of the Collier or Easterly flavours, rather than the Jeff Sachs side of the debate. Surely there have been so many failed 'silver bullet' approaches to development that we have every reason to doubt the latest one? Ms Moyo is one of a number of African intellectuals who have begun to criticise the aid industry. Another powerful recent example was the BBC Panorama by Sorious Samura. The parts of the development economics literature which seem most interesting are those addressing microeconomic issues, such as the papers on policy experiments by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee (there's a useful survey of the experimental approach on Prof Banerjee's website). Besides, it is always a joy to come across a female economist getting some deserved attention and offering a role model to all the young women students who are on the verge of being discouraged from continuing in economics.

However, Dambisa Moyo's book was a bit disappointing. I guess it's because this is meant to reach the popular market, all those who bought Prof Sach's The End of Poverty. After all, they have the same publisher, Penguin. This target audience means Ms Moyo is long on rants and light on the presentation of evidence. It is all very familiar material. Even agreeing with many of her rants, I think this makes Dead Aid much less rewarding for an economist than Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion, on which she draws quite heavily. Yet it is a mistake to believe that the anti-capitalism crowd which loves Jeff Sachs is sufficiently open minded to buy a book making the opposite argument. After many years writing, it's very clear to me that books (alone) don't change minds. On the contrary, people read books to have their pre-existing views confirmed.

There is one issue Ms Moyo draws attention to which other books making the same arguments have avoided, at least ever since Peter Bauer was bold enough to call attention to it. That is the self-interest of the official aid and NGO community in seeing the flow of money continue. Ms Moyo estimates that at least half a million people have livelihoods depending on the giving and spending of official aid, and as she writes (p54): “The incentives built into the development organizations perpetuate the cycle of lending ot even the most corrupt countries.”

I also like her proposed solution: a phone call to all recipient governments in Africa giving them five years' notice of the aid tap turning off. Given the current economic and fiscal crisis in the western donor economies, perhaps they would be lucky to get any notice at all.