My new book, Altruismo racional, is now on presale. It is my attempt at presenting a compelling case for a particular strand of "classical EA"^[1]: one that emphasizes caring deeply about global health and poverty, a rational approach to giving, the importance of cost-effectiveness, and the 🔸10% Pledge.

In this post, I provide some context on my reasons for writing this book and what I hope to achieve. If “new EA-themed book in Spanish” was all you needed to know, feel free to skip to How you can help or preorder now.

Why write a book

Imagine you wake up one morning and discover the world has changed in a few peculiar ways. There has been no 10th anniversary edition of Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save—it was last edited more than a decade ago and has been out of print for years. Will MacAskill has not written Doing Good Better nor any of his pieces for The Guardian. And that’s not all.

You ask around about EA and get mostly confused looks. Someone mentions a blog called “Codice Stellare Something” that later changed its name. You look it up but it's written in some foreign language that's hard to understand. “Toby who?” He seems to be associated with something called Geben Was Wir Können that you cannot pronounce, let alone remember.

Welcome to Spain—or, I dare say, the Spanish-speaking world—where language friction^[2] curbs the potential of most of the ways people first hear about EA. This is true for many other topics, of course. In Spain, people usually don't hear directly from those doing cutting-edge work in the English-speaking world, but rather from local explainers or commentators. Top non-fiction books like Sapiens or Antifragile are read, overwhelmingly, in translation.

I have been close to some attempts to translate key EA-themed books into Spanish. The problem? Publishers are quite uninterested because only a handful of English-speaking public intellectuals have the global name recognition to guarantee sales. The Scout Mindset and What We Owe The Future are good case studies: the Spanish translations have 9 and 6 reviews on Amazon respectively. Those are global figures.

Nevertheless, books can be very impactful. What to do then? I never thought I would be the one trying to fill the gap, but two things happened. First, my podcast micro-fame in Spain^[3] led to several people telling me “you should write a book”, and a good publisher reaching out.^[4] I eventually came to think that I might have a comparative advantage. Second, following the publisher’s nudging, I started to write a table of contents for the potential manuscript. That is when I realized there were several topics I truly wanted to express my views on.^[5]

On further reflection, I realized the project also fit with how I frame my work: creating the opportunity for impactful things to happen.

What the book is about

The book argues the following—old news for people in EA but radically new for almost everybody else:

• We live in a bubble, completely unaware of the breadth or the depth of extreme poverty, or the suffering and loss of human potential caused by child mortality.
• We don’t realize how rich we are (EN, ES) nor the incredible power we have as a consequence: we can single-handedly help thousands of people and save lives.^[6]
• Those who are somewhat aware of the above often hold unexamined beliefs like “I already pay a lot of taxes” or “NGOs are a business” that lead to not giving. Some do give, but only when they feel they have to and if they get to feel that they’re helping. Others embrace supposed panaceas—like education, microcredit or impact investing. The book discusses those beliefs, attitudes and choices one by one.
• There is a better way. Effective giving transforms intentions into results, and it’s a meaningful and accessible way of having a huge impact regardless of your occupation.

The book mentions or quotes Peter Singer, Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, Elie Hassenfeld, Holden Karnofsky, and many others. It also references EA, GiveWell, Against Malaria Foundation, Malaria Consortium, Helen Keller Intl, New Incentives, GiveDirectly, and more. And, of course, it tells the story of the 🔸10% Pledge and explains why nearly 10,000 people from 116 different countries have already become members.^[7]

Why this particular topic

Why not introduce the whole of EA (principles, careers, cause prioritization...)? Why not discuss near and longtermism and important causes from animal welfare to AI safety?

The truth is I’ve written the book I realized I wanted to write.

Back in 2018, discovering that I could help thousands of people and save lives at little personal cost^[8] was a forceful intellectual and moral shock, as well as a happy turning point in my life. It seems obvious in retrospect, and it’s not something that keeps people busy at the expanding frontiers of EA. However, out in the world, it is a powerful idea that millions of people should hear. If it’s well explained, it can change the minds and behaviors of a certain fraction, resulting in an extraordinary impact.^[9] I see my book as a modest contribution to that project, focused on the currently neglected Spanish-speaking world.

Many books try to do too much. They gain pages and lose strength. I decided to focus on a single idea (“You have the power to save lives”), explain why it is true and meaningful, and remove anything that did not help to make the case.

I could be wrong about the importance of focus. Maybe a reader holding your book open is your one chance to say all you have to say. However, I think that getting people into the spot below could be incredibly impactful—whether it's a gateway into more EA or a destination in itself:

Expected impact > Dream scenario

From a personal perspective, writing the book was a great learning experience—worth it even if the only buyer were to be a very nice lady I call “mum”. But of course, I am aiming for impact.

I do hope the book and launch campaign will have immediate positive outcomes^[10], but as I hinted above, I’m trying to create the opportunity for (ideally) very impactful things to happen. If this “hits-based outreach” approach succeeds, the book will be read by people and in places far beyond my current reach, and some of those people will go on to take significant action.

I want to share some glimpses of my dream scenario because maybe you can help to make parts of it happen:

• The book is a success in Spain—both in terms of sales and PR. As a consequence,  the money moved to effective charities by Ayuda Efectiva multiplies, and so does the number of people who take “el 🔸Compromiso del 10%”.
• Readers purchase the book as a gift for friends and relatives. It is recommended—both publicly and privately—in a wide range of circles. Companies and institutions buy it in bulk for their stakeholders.
• Organizations in the effective giving ecosystem give the book to Spanish-speaking contacts, members, and donors whose engagement increases as a consequence.
• The book becomes widely available in Latin America. It is a useful tool for EA local groups in all Spanish-speaking countries, and an asset for philanthropic advisors and entrepreneurs starting new effective-giving orgs.
• EAGx conferences / summits in Spanish-speaking countries give the book to attendees (to read themselves and to give away to friends and family).
• Thanks to all of the above, the book reaches philanthropists who decide to investigate and embrace effective giving.
• This success encourages others to write new books about EA and effective giving in their own languages and from different perspectives.
• [Feel free to add yours in the comments 🙂].^[11]

How you can help

Buy the book for yourself or others

(Note: I will donate all royalties to/through Ayuda Efectiva.)

If you can read Spanish, buy the book, read it, and write a review. Whether you speak the language or not, give the book as a gift to introduce your Spanish-speaking friends or contacts to an important subset of EA ideas.

Preorder if the current availability works for you

eBook:

• Kindle version (readable on any device with the free app)  available in 🇦🇺 Australia, 🇧🇷 Brazil, 🇨🇦 Canada, 🇫🇷 France, 🇩🇪 Germany, 🇮🇹 Italy, 🇮🇳 India, 🇯🇵 Japan, 🇲🇽 Mexico, 🇳🇱 Netherlands, 🇪🇸 Spain, 🇬🇧 United Kingdom, and 🇺🇸 United States.
• Also available on Apple Books, Google Play Books, and other platforms.

Paperback:

Currently available in:

• Europe:
  🇧🇪 Belgium, 🇫🇷 France, 🇩🇪 Germany, 🇮🇹 Italy,  🇳🇱 Netherlands, 🇵🇱 Poland, 🇪🇸 Spain, 🇸🇪 Sweden, 🇬🇧 United Kingdom.
• Americas:
  🇦🇷 Argentina, 🇧🇷 Brazil, 🇨🇦 Canada, 🇨🇱 Chile, 🇨🇴 Colombia, 🇪🇨 Ecuador, 🇲🇽 Mexico, 🇵🇪 Peru, 🇺🇸 United States.
• Other countries:
  Try Bookdelivery.com or contact me if you need an alternative.

A note on bulk purchases

In groups where people would be happy to buy the book from retailers, that is the highest impact option—it helps with sales rankings and encourages retailers to stock and display the book more prominently. Bulk purchases are better reserved for outreach purposes or cases where—for any reason—people would not individually buy the book. If you organize or participate in a group, club, community, or event where members are unlikely to purchase the book but would benefit from reading it, contact us about discounted bulk purchases.

Help me reach more people

• If you speak Spanish, recommend me as a guest to your favorite Spanish-language podcasts or YouTube channels.
• Tell your Spanish-speaking friends about the book. This is a good link to share.
• Let me know if you have any ideas on how to increase the book's reach (whether broad or targeted) or its impact.

Acknowledgements

I am immensely grateful for all the support I have already received from people across the community. Once again, it has been moving and inspiring to find that I am surrounded by people who are immediately ready to collaborate for impact. I hope the book’s outcomes will give us a reason to celebrate.

Thanks to Alana Horowitz Friedman and Pablo Villalobos for helping to make this post clearer and more enjoyable to read, and to Lucas Moore for his comments and contributions to the dream scenario.

[Post edited a few times to reflect the book's current availability.]

1. ^{^}

    I’m using “classical EA” solely as a useful shorthand. I think of EA as a question, I’m glad that CEA takes a principles-first approach, and I support “EA qua EA”. I also think that even classical EA is still in its infancy: we are nowhere close to “solved it, let’s move on”.

2. ^{^}

    I’m using “friction” rather than “barrier” since most people who would find EA interesting speak some English: they just feel that reading a whole book in English would require too much effort.

3. ^{^}

    Millions have never heard of me, but for a few thousands in a certain bubble I’ve been interviewed “everywhere”.

^{^}

 One of his arguments was that a book written and promoted by a Spanish author with a certain following would sell much better than one by an international figure with little local name recognition.

^{^}

 A note for other non-academics who may be thinking of writing books: The number one piece of advice I got from other Spanish authors was to only write a book if you really want to. Since it’s a lot of work for a very uncertain impact, it may well not be worth it if you don’t enjoy the process. This seems right to me.

^{^}

 Or, if you prefer, avert a whole lot of DALYs.

^{^}

You can find the current figures here (English) or here (Spanish).

^{^}

 And realizing how little I was previously doing to help others.

^{^}

 GiveWell estimates that the donations they have directed to their Top Charities between 2009 and 2023 will avert over 270,000 deaths.

^{^}

 It will be the largest PR push we’ve ever done at Ayuda Efectiva. A sales forecast would not look very promising if the baseline were the (meager) average number of copies sold for new Spanish nonfiction books—in a very fat tailed distribution. However we don’t need the book to reach the top of the bestseller lists to make a difference from our current starting point.

^{^}

 You’ll notice I don't include the book reaching a wider audience via translation. As I explained in Why write a book, translations often aren't a great bet. Could this particular book perhaps work better than others in non-English speaking countries? Could I maybe promote a French translation in France? I don’t know. In any case, step one is trying to make it a success in Spanish.

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