Comment by crystal_revenge

I've also authored multiple technical books and had the exact same reaction.

While writing I have had similar feeling as the author to publisher/editor comments, especially related to:

> The unhelpful feedback was a consistent push to dumb down the book (which I don't think is particularly complex but I do like to leave things for the reader to try) to appease a broader audience and to mellow out my personal voice.

I also remember being very frustrated at times with the editor needing things "dumbed down". I used to get very annoyed and think "didn't you pay attention! We covered that!" But then I realized: If I can make this easy to understand by a fairly non-technical editor at a first pass, it absolutely will make this book better for the reader.

Publishers have a lot of experience publishing books, so I've learned that their advice is often not bad.

There was also plenty of advice from the editors I vehemently didn't agree with, so I pushed back and quickly realized: publishers need you more than you need them, so very often you do get final say.

But you still have to actually write the book. Book writing is hard, and a much more complex process than writing blog posts. Personally I feel all the editorial feedback I've gotten over the years has made not only my books better, but also has really pushed my writing to be higher quality.