I was on the phone with my dad, following up on reading the book he wrote as he awaited my feedback.

It could be considered a memoir, partly inspired by his life, but using different characters as narrators, following a George R.R. Martin novel framework.

He originally did it as a style exercise, but eventually, it became a project he hoped to publish.

In his effort, he is currently approaching publishers for his first 500-page opus. As part of the process, he had to write an author presentation and a quick manuscript summary.

Although I understood and respected the angle and risk-taking in the style he wrote the book and its quick summary, I told him this:

"I appreciate that you want to stay true to yourself, and when it comes to writing, your personal touch is your brand; however, in the author's presentation, I would be more concise and less mysterious. The person reading your presentation will most likely be put off, as the people won't get your references, and you assume what you know they will understand. Either it will come across as completely missing the mark or, at worst, conceited. It is unnecessary; why don't you make it simple, in a bullet point style, about your background, what makes you legitimate to write on the subject, and how you are relevant? First, you are dealing with a profit-seeking enterprise rather than the London Review of Books. Second, it will give the reader enough bait to read what you wrote, instead of losing themselves in unnecessary prose to present yourself whilst leaving them with some gaps to fill, enticing them to invite you.

"I understand where you are coming from, and I agree with some of what you said, especially on the length. However, I am not going to play the whore to get myself published."

"It really is a matter of what is more important, being published or remaining true to yourself, not only in the book itself but in how you present yourself".

He told me how the Leopard from Tomasi Di Lampedusa, now one of the Italian classics, was denied by all the publishers during the author's life. It eventually became a commercial success, much later after the author's death, and he followed up:

"I would rather sell 10,000 units true to myself than 200,000 dropping my pants, and if I don't get published, so be it".

We discussed other aspects of the book, but I thought this perfectly illustrated what one faces when entering a marketplace.

The dilemma is between keeping oneself authentic and addressing the market reality. Where you will have to make adjustments is the core you don’t want to calibrate for, and the minor details that do not make much of a difference to you, but will have a relative outsized return to what you feel you give away.

Selling authenticity is as good as your true self being attractive enough to prospective buyers. What high-IQ people like my dad have to face is dealing with people who will take the too obviously communicated intelligence gap personally. This requires a tactical dumbing down of oneself. I told him to bear this in consideration, to which he replied:

"Portraying someone you are not will eventually blow up in your face."

I could not disagree with him if we discuss the long term.

In the case of the best-selling author with 100,000+ units sold, he likely had to cater to a wide enough market segment or appeal to the lowest common denominator.

In rare cases, you can be authentic, high-quality, and have commercial success. If that is the case, you become what is called a visionary or a trendsetter. They are the exception rather than the rule. Aiming for this place is to be the writer equivalent of Taylor Swift. The fact that she is some type of bellwether of the music industry is all there is to know about modern times. She originally came from a "country" background and turned this into a very popular genre in the US and into a much bigger trend worldwide than it originally was.

But when it comes to you. What does it mean to be authentic? It means living truly according to your ideals and values, which you also embody. How far you reach depends on how much your true self is compatible.

In the dating sphere, how much can you attend to the buyers' market wants & needs when you are in a position of lower leverage than women? Or how much can she attend to the buyers' wants & needs when you are in a position of higher leverage?

You will have to dilute your authenticity by adopting the codes of the many whenever you want to cater to the mass market. This is great if you are looking for short-term buying. Being the Primark one season a year, wearing outfits is cheap and cheerful.

But when you want long-term buyers with high brand loyalty, matching your authenticity with theirs will help you find your best long-term commercial partnerships.

How many market segments your authenticity will cater to will be personal. The archetype you will represent (think, for example, of the music genre discussed above) will have a different scope than others. In other words, if you have a very disagreeable and uncompromising personality, you will narrow your window of opportunities, holding everything else equal. Archetype does not mean being phoney; it is a quick heuristic you display to others, where they can put you in a box. People don't have time to learn about each and every person they interact with.

Now you understand why women say, "Just be yourself" (although they are not aware of the repercussions of such a saying); they are just telling you that, in doing so, they will be able to better disqualify you. It is not bad when you are looking for something long-term and you have little leverage. You are not wasting anybody's time, especially yours.

It is not bad when you have high leverage and are looking for something long-term because, in many cases, she will lie to herself about who you truly are because what you display on the surface meets her agenda.

It is rubbish when you have no leverage, and in some cases, even high leverage, and want to collect as many notches as possible. Not being yourself, by congruently giving the impression that you are a guy she can be attracted to fuck in the short run, fools her into doing something she would not normally do if you were just yourself.

You can also be authentic once you eliminate bad habits. This will sub-communicate generally accepted bad character traits in a man and appeal to a wider audience because you addressed previous weaknesses that translated into a poor state of mind. When you are in a position of high leverage, you may overlook these potential bad traits because you have other positive attributes which offset them. Eliminating them may or may not be required, depending on what you seek.

This is where dialling down on what you think is authenticity to get to a certain outcome is smart, as we can improve without negating ourselves. The parts we choose to address, in this instance, will generally be peripheral when it comes to how much they are relevant to who you think you truly are.

Although what we may initially think is potentially placating to others can yield the outcomes you seek. Considering your leverage level, it really boils down to how much these outcomes matter to you in contrast to how much you want things a certain way. In communication, the same way, to get a positive outcome through calibration is more astute than being completely blunt. This does not make you fake; you are just aware of the average social repercussion of being unfiltered. You can get different outcomes when communicating by saying the same thing differently. Sometimes style is more important than substance, and sometimes substance is more important than style.

The question for you is, where do you draw the line?