Alice Schroeder received a $7m advance for The Snowball – the story of Warren Buffett. I just read it and it was great. You should buy it. In 2005, I wrote Trade Like Warren Buffett, about his investment styles over the past 50 years. I’ve never told anyone what my advance for that book was because I was ashamed of it (if there is anybody out there reading this who I did tell I apologise because I probably exaggerated). It was $7,000 – one-thousandth of Ms Schroeder’s. My advance for the Buffett book was a 40 per cent increase over the advance for my first book, Trade Like a Hedge Fund. So at least there was progress.

Why write a book for slave wages? Writing a book is a miserable experience. It takes you away from friends and family for at least six months. When it comes out, pitifully few people read it. More people will read this column than read my book about Buffett. But Buffett is the greatest investor ever and I wanted to do a comprehensive study for myself of all his investment styles from his hedge fund days in the 1950s and 1960s. Almost all of the other books on Buffett focus on his Berkshire days but by then he was so big it’s hard for any of us to replicate his approach. I prefer to read the novels of authors in order to view them when they were hungry and climbing the ladder rather than when they are resting on the roof. Since I was doing the study anyway, why not do it as a book?