No one will read your book (2021)
elysian.press
elysian.press
Sean Fagan (@kithrup@wandering.shop) on Mastodon, periodically buys and then gives away Kindle books. I grabbed "Eric Carter: Dead Things" when he did than and ended up buying the whole 9 book series by Stephen Blackmoore! I can also recommend the whole "go to the library and check out a book that has arrived" to see if you like the author or not. But that does take more work.
Most book sites are recommendation bubbles where once you get stuck in one you only get recommended things that you've already read or that you are not really interested in reading. Breaking out of these bubbles is super hard. So, I can see how it is hard for new authors to break into these bubbles.
And then of course there is the notion that a lot of authors are not attractive to a broad audience; which means reaching such an audience is quite hard. Some of the stuff I read is pretty niche. Most of that is in English instead of Dutch (my native language) because a lot of that stuff just is a hard sell in the tiny Dutch market. Entire genres are excluded from being translated for this reason. E.g. most of Neal Stephenson's work has not been translated (except for some of his earlier novels). Including several of his best sellers. Forget about anything similar from smaller authors. I'm not aware of any Dutch science fiction authors. I'm sure there are a few. And of course this works both ways of course. It's very rare for Dutch authors to get translated to English. The ones that do have to be successful in the Dutch market first. Which means they need to appeal to a broad audience.
If I were to become a novelist and would try to write some science fiction and do it in Dutch, I'd stand no chance getting any audience. And while I'm comfortable writing in English, I'm not a native speaker and it probably shows. Getting from alright to good is a lot of work and the bar is extremely high.
I have a hunch that AI assisted translations are going to revolutionize the literary world in the next few years. There's a huge opportunity for publishers to broaden their markets for already proven authors to essentially the entire planet. Of course that won't make things any easier for new authors.
(I am a former subscriber of all three and thought the LTLS was the best and least biased.)
There's some intersection between the two camps, but it's largely due to intervention by influential personalities: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah's_Book_Club
I cannot relate to this at all. The more I read, the more topics I get interested in, and the more I'm part of various communities of book readers (mostly watching BookTube or listening to podcasts), the bigger the list of books I want to read grows. My "want to read" list, of books that I actually wrote down in a file somewhere, is 1,000 books long, and that doesn't include many other books that I never wrote down.
And I read a lot, compared to most people.
I read a lot too, in bursts, and I find that while I do have some strong preferences where it's hard to find stuff I really like, I'm flexible enough that I certainly can find a neverending stream of books that are "good enough".
But a lot of people have really high thresholds for how interesting a book need to sound to them for them to even consider it.
They're already good enough for a tiny language like Norwegian, that I've considered using it for my own books (I'm Norwegian, but write in English, to my editor's chagrin - my English is good but I still make many stupid mistakes especially when tired). They're not good enough not to have a native reader read through the result and edit, hence why I'd only consider using it for my native Norwegian so far. I wouldn't dare try to use it for French or German, even though I read both, as my command of those languages isn't good enough that I'd trust myself to catch more subtle problems.
But I agree with you - it won't take much before they'll at least drastically cut the cost of translations even if you need a translator to clean up the result.
There's no way translating my novels to a smaller language would pay off at current prices - I'd need English sales several times higher before I'd consider it realistic for it to break even in most other languages. I don't much care about making money from them, but I'm not going to do it if I can only expect to lose money. If I can get translations at, say 1/10th of current costs, I might well end up having them translated to 10-20 languages or more.
For what it's worth, at least from this comment, I don't think I'd have any way to distinguish your writing from that of a native speaker (as a native speaker). I'm also not sure that mastery of English is the most important skill of a novelist. Obviously I'm just a random commenter on the Internet, but I don't think you should let English being a second language dissuade you. Might even be an advantage if it discourages you from using flowery prose.
I've always said that "flowery prose" is something that needs to make a comeback. I really miss that style of writing. What fun to read! The 'modern' impulse for 'efficient' writing is at least a contributing factor to the decline in reading I daresay.
Anyway, I don't think it's in any danger of disappearing – it's pervasive and popular – but I've never been able to complete a book with too much of it.
I have 70+ plus books on hold at my local library (though the holds have been 'paused' so that they will arrive in a staggered fashion). The library has a limit of 100 books being on hold at a time, but it does have a "bookmark" feature so you can save them for later: I have over 2000 books earmarked for future putting-on-hold.
There's plenty to read.
(I read a bunch of non-fiction on academic-leaning topics (history, economics, science), and often get new things to read from the references of the book I'm currently going through. There's a bunch of fiction too: put a hold on Shogun because of the mini-series.)
Why hard to find interesting things, because too much choice and/or market saturation of low quality?
>I'm a picky reader.
Is this part of the reason you find it hard to find interesting things? I've read the rest of your worthwhile reply but I'm finding it hard to reconcile the opening sentences.
>I have a kindle and I use it a lot, typically late at night and on the weekend. I do most my reading in bed. Every day.
Are paper books out for you? Thank you.
I've marketed and sold 400+ copies of it at $19 so far and about to raise the price to $39, near 100% margin minus stripe fees.
What stops authors doing what I did? Plenty of people want to read, to blame lack of readership is just completely wrong.
Imo marketing is the biggest road block.
I basically gave bits and pieces of each chapter away as content - then funneled interested readers into DMs and profile visits with link to my ebook.
Rarely makes good products.
Is it just an ebook?
Do you sell paper bound? If so what service are you using? Would you recommend it or choose differently next time?
No paper.
I write in notion, export to markdown, then compile to pdf / Epub with pandoc
It's super easy, highly recommend
No offense to you, I want to like what you're offering, but I can't excuse it. Do you have a PDF of the first chapter or the intro at least? I want to see a bit before I send you 20 bucks.
Send me an email, I'll share you the first chapter
Stat seems like only 15(?) authors on substack makes $1,000/m or more. Which is wild.
Congratulations, you're a massive success as an author, having sold more than most authors will. That's amazing.
But consider that most authors have no interests in writing business / self help books, and most who do still fail spectacularly because having success with those kinds of books tends to happen primarily if you already have an audience and a track record in the field you're writing about. E.g. the perceived value of your book is 99% your story about your track record, and most would-be authors don't have that track record.
Thank you.
So just to clarify I didn't have an audience when I wrote the book. I took the time and told people my story over the past 6 months, and while I did that - sold books.
I think good storytellers should be able to build an audience regardless of the format - highly recommend any aspiring author to try it.
Getting people to take unknown fiction even for free is an uphill battle.
Because for three months of writing and it sounds like numerous hours of marketing you’ve made almost $8000. While I imagine that puts you ahead of the curve for the average self published author, The hourly return on investment sounds pretty low, especially for a job that sounds marketing heavy, which is not everyone’s cup of tea
But through this process I've
- gained an engaging audience on X - multiple inbound leads that turned into long term collabs - a discord community of my best readers where we meet once a week
Worth the investment
As someone who works at an art school, the thing that differenciates a beginner from a successful graduate isn't that they can physically do a thing — it is that they go one of two ways:
1. They have a good and current knowledge of what people would find interesting and do things among those lines
2. They have a precise idea of what they themselves find interesting and by their arts manage to make others interested
Both can work pretty well, I like the latter more, because it often leads to more interesting and unique takes. But that means when you do a book, music, video, presentation, etc. it should be a thing that you yourself would find useful, interesting and good even if it was made by your worst enemy.
The problem with the art of many amateuer artists is that they think their stuff is already good or interesting because they made it or because they had a great time/extremely deep thoughts doing it. But those are all things someone from the outside won't see.
You won't be able to make a good presentation if you have never given it a thought what you think a great presentation is and you never asked yourself where your presentation would land on that scale. And now do that times a hundred and you might get good.
This is so sad. Depending on length and style, I might read 2 books in a month. Or maybe not really sad, because not everyone might get the enjoyment out of books that I do, but I’ve loved reading my whole life, being known to walk to school/the store/within school/etc. while reading (I very rarely do that, nowadays, it’s a bit weird for an almost 40-year-old man. Though the last time was not much more than a year ago, the bus ride was over, but the book was too gripping, so I continued reading while walking from the bus stop)
A friend of mine reads two books per week.
Maybe most are between. Or maybe not.
In 2016, Pew Research found 28% of Americans had read zero books the previous year[1]. The median number of books read by Americans was 4.
The mean was 12, heavily pulled up by people like your friend.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/09/01/book-reading...
This makes me think of the bit from Bill Hicks about “what you reading for?”
> Or maybe not really sad, …
but they are.
I read a lot when I was young, and now I have few (physical) books.
But I read lots more books books than I ever did when I was young.
I also listen to audiobooks. When I was young they were at first unavailable. Then they were expensive and cumbersome to change tapes.
Then it was change a stack of CDs, then they were large downloads, and now it is relatively frictionless. You can even get through a book by ping-ponging between the book and the audiobook if you want.
This is so sad. Depending on length and style, I might run 2 marathons in a month.
Alas, that’s all it is. A dream.
No one will use your startup's products or services.
“One of the biggest ironies about this business is that there are lots of people who want to start companies, but that doesn’t necessarily equate with the number of people who are voracious users of new products or services,” says Ben Dover, news director at Startups Weekly.
The only thing a founder can do
Chris P Bacon first launched Sofa So Good as a side hustle using his own blog, then as a bootstrapped business seeling on Amazon, then as a traditionally VC backed company.
There is no algorithm that suggests that sofas with built in motivational coaches cheering on you will be successful. Even Big Tech are unable to predict which products users will love and which they won’t.
In his final advice to me, Bacon offers this: “I would say to try the traditional route first. If you can’t get traction with angels or VCs, then consider doing it small scale self funded. If your startup does well from word of mouth, you can go back to angels or VCs and say ‘look, it’s a proven seller.’”
Guess I’ll get to work.
And people liked it enough after pirating to come back, hit the buy button, and tell me there’s pirated versions out there. <3
For some it will mean they won't write. For others it will mean that they adapt to try to bring down the investment and increase the chance of success. E.g. submitting shorter works to magazines or taking editing or smaller writing jobs are both far more likely to pay off, and far lower investment.
But if you're working on a novel because you want to write, then you should ignore the numbers in the article and write anyway, and see it as a sobering view of how little it takes to be a relative success as a writer. E.g. you're already doing better than most once you're selling in the low thousands, even if that isn't paying the bills.
I love listening to Borges audiobooks while on heavy doses of mushrooms, so I have a pretty vivid visualization of all of them already, but it would be great to see them so I could point at the screen and be like "whoa, yup, that's it!"
As an intermediate step I can imagine a future VR headset that coupled to an AI accelerator that can output 8K per eye in real time based on the context of an entire novel, TV series, or collected extended universe works of fiction.
That's an incredible vision... and not too far away.
I expect the pace of AI research to be vaguely similar. In three decades, we'll have interactive generative VR for sure. In the meantime, we'll hit a lot of fun milestones too. I suspect the first games that are real-time AI generated are not that far off. It's surprisingly easy to train AIs when there's simulation available as the ground truth, especially when that simulation can be modified to output per-pixel embeddings, not just noisy RGB sensor measurements like with video input training data.
The main character, 3d printer, maker, programmer, discovers an electric engine that brings him to space, but then as he gets stranded in orbit due to various breakdowns. Aliens save him and this unlocks space for humans, but this occurs at basically the same time as a major space war begins. The main character tries to inform Earth, but being a nobody, he's taken as a crackpot. Basically a long adventure and lots of bad decisions.
Second book, independently and mostly unaware of the main character. The US government went ham trying to get us a ship and such into orbit of jupiter to investigate the aliens. But unknown to the US gov, the intention of the ship was to never return, to become a self-sustaining space station in jupiter orbit. Then all the drama around doing that. Including an invasion by 2 of the hostile alien birds.
Third book, Earth's first space war. This independent station in jupiter orbit is no longer the only interests. There's mars, venus, and other colonies. A major world war is occurring on earth but for the most part the space fleet were staying out of it. The losing side on earth orders their space fleet 'to do something' but they just end up sparking the space war. The main characters get drawn into the battle unintentionally because they arent as stealthy as they think.
Video killed the print star.
"First one's free" works very well for good series
I self-published my first book in 2018. Eight others followed, 35 thousand books sold so far, in a language community of 10 million.
Didn't make me a millionaire, but it is possible to become a fairly known author even today and even without connections in the publishing industry. My tenth book is due to arrive from the printing shop on May 31st and there are about 700 pre-orders waiting.
Then there's the various [major city] Review of [each other's] Books. Bless them but publishing and literati circles have bifurcated further way from other circles, along with many others by the narrow interest Cambrian Explosion the internet brought.
* Modellable as differential equations
But I get good reviews: https://a.co/d/etdEGSZ
A year later I was one of the top ten best-selling indie writers on Amazon, I had my first movie deal and representation from an amazing agent who stuck by me through the rough parts.
Luck and timing were big factors. I also locked myself in my house for 12 months straight and did nothing but focus on being a better writer and create as much output as I could to get traction. I spent a tremendous amount of psychotic energy at building my writing business. Most people give up. I was 37 and desperate to make it work.
When I went with a traditional publisher it was frustrating at first. I was getting critical nods (I was a finalist for the Edgar and the Thriller Award) but the sales numbers weren't the same as when I was independent.
Eventually I found a great publisher (an imprint with Amazon Publishing) and it was a perfect match. My first novel with them (The Naturalist) spent six weeks in the number one spot (even outselling Harry Potter.) I now do two books a year with them.
I don't have the quite the sales or name recognition of a James Patterson or Stephen King, but I became a millionaire from publishing and investing on those earnings before I started working in AI.
I can't speak to the part of the article about advances. They're based very heavily on your sales history. I had to work my way up to six-figure advances. If you have John Scalzi sales numbers you can pick your terms. David Baldacci doesn't ask for an advance. He just splits the profits with the publisher. People like him are in a whole different league.
tldr: Luck and timing matter, but so does being an absolutely focused psychopath who gives up a social life, television, games and everything else to get what you want.
My friends who produced excuses became really good at that. My friends who produced real works and continued to improve became good at that instead.
As they often say in the online writer's forums: You write because you want to, because you feel compelled to, because you enjoy it.
Chinese Web novels have an interesting model, paid for word counts, release frequency and per chapter.
Honestly, I think such formats might be best for new authors, quickly gain money without needing to spend months without knowing if It'd even work. Although, it does have consequences on writing quality.
My son reads lots of them, and he complains if an author doesn't push a new chapter at least once a day, and it's clear a lot of these authors have no buffer because while it may not sound like a lot - a chapter can be anything from 500 to ~3k words or so and my "record" was 11k in a day - most people struggle to maintain an output anywhere near that high on average, and my own average is also too low in large part because I need to be in the mood to write. I've self-published two novels, and wrote the last in three weeks, but I've now been at the half-way point for my third novel for many months.
I could probably force it, but then I wouldn't enjoy it, and to do something I wouldn't enjoy and still likely end up earning far less than in my day job would not be worth it to me.
It might be something more would-be authors might want to try to see if they can do it, if they'll enjoy it or at least find it tolerable, and if they'll do well, but that market is also heavily skewed towards very specific niches that you may or may not find you can stand writing in.
No one buys books (from the same author as OP)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119958
Yes, People Still Buy Books: How a viral post got some key statistics wrong
> ... and our dreams of being an author will be realized. Alas, that’s all it is. A dream.
You wrote a book, you published it (?), you're an author. If you mean a famous and/or well-off author, then say that instead. I write because I love writing.
Not really. An advanced is a loan you don’t have to pay back. If you get a $5000 advance, you won’t get paid for any of the books sold until they surpass a $5000 net of royalties.