I recently received the first physical copy of my book—an uncorrected proof showing the layout and cover—and finally had the chance to thumb through it. Seeing the book in physical form sent me back to the beginning of the project.
I initially started collecting the stories in this book believing I was writing a whitepaper I would publish at EFF. At the time, I was working on a set of case studies and industry best practices—something I loosely thought of as a code of conduct for payment processors. When I left EFF, I took those notes and early drafts with me and quickly realized I didn’t have a whitepaper on my hands after all. I had a book.
One of the most complicated parts of writing the book came after I turned in the manuscript: deciding whether or not to update it. The book was finished in November 2024. By “finished,” I mean that I completed the manuscript in September, then spent October fact-checking interviews, having the text reviewed by a financial attorney and a First Amendment attorney, receiving detailed feedback from four beta readers, and integrating all of those changes into the version I submitted to my editor. Although there would be additional rounds of editing afterward, the substance of the book was complete by September and fully locked in by November.
That timing matters. When I wrote the book, I didn’t know who the next U.S. president would be. President Trump was elected just days before I submitted the manuscript and would not be inaugurated for months.
There is also a long gap—about a year and a half—between when I submitted the manuscript and when the book will arrive in bookstores. Since turning the book in, I have wrestled with whether I should update it to reflect the changing political situation in the United States.
In the end, I decided to let the book stand as it was, for a few reasons.
First, I didn’t know what President Trump would do on issues of financial censorship. When he took office, it was unclear whether his administration would move toward greater neutrality in financial systems, dismantle regulators like the CFPB, or largely ignore the issue altogether. I didn’t want to make sweeping updates based on policies that were still emerging and might look outdated by the time the book was published.
Second, I don’t trust that we’ll understand the real impact of new policies right away. This is something I’ve learned from working on tech policy more broadly: often it takes years—and sometimes a whistleblower, a court case, or both—before the consequences of a policy change become clear.
Third, I didn’t want to get stuck in an update loop. Delaying the book to make changes, then delaying it again as new developments unfolded, felt like a recipe for never publishing at all. And if I were going to revise the book, I would want to review everything, not just patch one section, which would effectively mean starting another full round of fact-checking and review.
Finally, the book is written to be as evergreen as possible. The personal accounts of people losing access to financial services are meant to illuminate larger issues of financial access, speech, and inclusion in society. The focus is on those enduring questions, not on tracking every policy shift or regulatory update as it happens.
For all of these reasons, I chose not to update the book to reflect policy changes that occurred after the manuscript was submitted. Instead, I’ll use this blog to analyze and reflect on the most important developments in the areas I’m following. A blog has a flexibility that a published book doesn’t—especially given the long lead time between finishing a manuscript and seeing it on shelves.
If you’d like to follow those updates, visit https://financialcensorship.org and join the mailing list.