In many ways, the timing for the first authorized yet independent biography of legendary investor Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, couldn't be better: in the midst of the Wall Street meltdown, Buffett is in the news again. Last week he bought a $5 billion chunk of former investment bank Goldman Sachs and took over Constellation Energy, which owns four nuclear power plants, for $4.7 billion. Most important, he's one of the few titans of industry and investing who remains untarnished--in large part because of his level-headed, traditional business philosophy.
Schroeder, an MBA, CPA and former Wall Street analyst, spent five years researching and writing The Snowball. She conducted several hundred hours of interviews with Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and spent thousands more hours "hanging around in his office, watching him work, traveling with him and going through his files." The book's title refers to Buffett's concept that life and investing for him is like rolling a snowball down a hill in wet snow, accumulating more and more.
Buffett gave Schroeder free rein for creating her biographical snowball. "In effect, Warren made me CEO of the book," Schroeder continued. "It's the way he runs his businesses." Buffett promised not to ask for changes and encouraged Schroeder to speak with others and use their version of events if they contradicted his. "He didn't know whom I was interviewing or where I was heading," she said. "There were times obviously that it made him very vulnerable. Few people would put themselves in such a situation. It was courageous of him."
This approach was particularly delicate in the book's open discussion of Buffett's complicated personal life--one might say that compound interest and credit swap took on different meaning in that arena. Still, when Buffett read the book just before it was printed, he did not ask for any changes, Schroeder said. As for his take on The Snowball, she said, "I'll leave it for him to comment." So far, he has not spoken about the book publicly, which Schroeder said was typical of his modest style.
Schroeder wrote the book, she said, with a reader in mind: "a friend of mine in Houston who is the mother of two and a housewife. The Snowball takes the reader through the history of Warren's business life in a way that helps to demystify people about business. Sometimes business is viewed as a priesthood, and fairly simple concepts are dressed up in difficult language. I wanted to make it understandable."
The book is designed, too, to help readers see that many of them are "more financially sophisticated than they realize they are or can be," she said. For all the their brash self-confidence, the "supposed rocket scientists" on Wall Street didn't understand basic business principles, she continued. "If you borrow 100 times what you have and something goes wrong, obviously there will be problems. It's like taking a $1 million mortgage on a house that's worth $10,000. Ordinary people don't run their affairs that way, and Warren doesn't either."
Schroeder's book tour begins appropriately in Omaha, Neb., where Buffet lives, at the Bookworm, which has acted as the official bookseller during Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings (Shelf Awareness, May 10, 2006). Then she travels to a variety of cities and will be a featured speaker at the Texas Book Festival, held in Austin November 1-2.
The author is also touring online, so to speak: The Snowball is the subject of a digimentary, an Internet documentary, that airs in weekly episodes on YouTube, beginning today. "It's a visual tour of the book," Schroeder explained. "I narrate some of the material in the book and talk about research and stories." Scenes were filmed in Omaha, Washington, D.C., and New York City. "Our feeling is that readers would appreciate a multimedia experience and would like to see Warren's childhood home, his junior high school" and other places that were important in his life.
For Schroeder, the publishing experience was a shock, particularly when she was asked to make revisions on galley. "I was used to things being automated to the maximum for efficiency," she said. "I couldn't believe people were sitting around with pens and pencils writing on galleys." (She made a pdf of the galleys and indicated changes on that.) "I imagine I was a pain as an author because I insisted on making changes down to the last minute."
An avid reader since age two, Schroeder said that her Wall Street writing experience--research reports and a weekly newsletter--"was better than having no writing background at all. I knew the difference between 'which' and 'that,' but I didn't know grammar to the degree I should. I learned about dangling participles late in the process."
She needed help, she said, with "narrative, transitions and character." She praised her agent David Black--"he walks on water"--who "felt I had an ear and a voice and basic writing skills." He assumed that if there were structural problems, he could bring in a book doctor--although he didn't tell Schroeder this until after she mastered the task. Every time Schroeder handed something in, "he would say it wasn't right and needed work," she remembered. "It was hard to hear that over and over, but when I finally heard that it was good, that meant the world to me."
Schroeder did not look at other business biographies for models. Instead she found inspiration in:
- The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand, which she called "a biography of ideas with many characters. Menand conveys a lot of really complex abstract conceptual information in a biographical manner. It is a wonderful read."
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, which was "fantastic" for "relating reams of technical information in an entertaining way."
- Buddha by Karen Armstrong, part of the Penguin Lives series, which is "a very simple explanation of Buddhism in laymen's terms and a biography about a man about whom little is known."
As for possible future books and projects, Schroeder, who was married in April, said, "My first goal is to on a honeymoon."--John Mutter