The draft is finished.
At approximately 165,000 words, it’s approximately 2.5x the length of my previous compilation, which itself was not a short book. I can’t guarantee intellectual substance, but there’s lexicographic substance to spare.
The plan remains as follows- host a free PDF version here, and sell (cheaply) a version on kindle.
Feedback on:
Essays that should be cut.
Essays or other writings that I left out, which you think should be added in.
Mistakes, errors, and the like.
Font, layout, etc.
The order of content
Anything else you desire.
Are the reason I’m sharing the draft so do not hesitate! Odds are pretty good your criticisms will shape the final product.
As a layouter, I'd make linebreaks before the numbers in the table on contents like so: https://imgur.com/R1EPC5S Also, if you get two lines in the tables of contents, I'd reduce line spacing too.
Also, I'd do away with page numbering on blank pages and intersections with only one heading. Preface doesn't need page numbering too.
I'd also bold the headings to make them standout more.
Reduce list bullet size and make the list items align to the first word, not the left textbox border.
I'll give it a look over, but I'm unsure of how much you should pay attention to our requests to cut stuff - I like some essays (e.g. Jesus as moral philosopher, which as a Christian I at least try to take seriously) and dislike others (essay on conservatism, which seemed to display an uncharacteristic lack of insight) but ultimately that's going to be the case regardless of the final composition, you're writing for a broad audience. I'd need to have a look over the final section properly to see if I agree that some of those should be cut.
EDIT: I think the only one I'd recommend including is "Conservation of moral status under misfortune" but n=1 here, I'd understand if you cut it.
I would suggest reordering the subsections a little - I'm unsure of why "Social Commentary" is separated from "For the Left" by "Yearning", "Artificial Intelligence" and Fiction but I feel there could be a more logical ordering of these. That said, if you do have a good reason for this (it certainly keeps it varied?), by all means keep it that way - it is your book!