I get asked a lot what my editor made me change, what the “original” versions of my novels looked like, etc. The truth is that novels are not written by one person. Novels are a collaboration—for almost a decade now, my closest collaborator has been Julie Strauss-Gabel, my editor at Dutton. But I also collaborate with copyeditors and proofreaders and with every single person who reads the book, because the reader chooses how to read a novel (which paragraphs to skim, which to reread, how to fill in a novel’s many blanks).So please believe me when I say that you ARE reading the original version of The Fault in Our Stars or Looking for Alaska or whatever. And you are reading the only original version that will ever exist, because the book you read will not be quite the same as the book that anyone else reads. John Green.