zneiposh

That's a good idea, but how do I get on these podcasts?

Right. I'm well-aware that review bombing is against OpenAI's policies. The main issue that the adversaries have connections through Y Combinator, and I don't. None of this should be taken to cast aspersion on OpenAI itself--very loose and often indirect business or social ties to an evildoer to not make oneself an evildoer, of course--but it wouldn't shock me if certain policies were under-enforced. Even if OpenAI does revoke access, they probably won't assist me in exposing people, should they decide to do this.

The problem is that I can't afford a PR specialist, any more than poor people can just go buy more money, and the adversaries can.

The only unknown is how seriously they are going to attack me. They don't really gain anything, so it could be no more than a couple sock puppets on Twitter. Or it could be a full force affair.

It's a good idea, but it's too late for that. I've said too much about the book under my real name.

At the time, I hadn't decided whether I wanted to use a traditional publisher, and traditional publishers hate pen names. You pretty much have to prostitute yourself on social media for traditional publishing to be an option these days.

I realized that self-publishing was the only way to retain the creative control this particular project works, but that was after I had talked about the project under my real name. I do agree that pen names are great for self-publishers, especially if they're trying to differentiate product lines or involve themselves in some of the most lucrative subgenres.

Thank you for your response.

Alas, I think they're going to be able to find ways to make the "free publicity" harmful. These people are petty, but they're not stupid. I'm expecting GPT-written negative reviews (which will drown out the positive ones) and various chatter on social media that redirects any discussion of the work to discussion of the author and what he may or may not have done (nothing illegal, but stupid shit that's really embarrassing) 20 years ago. I know they're going to try to raise a cancel mob. They did it in 2015 over my (ill-considered) use of one word. I was using it as a regular trash insult, but a bunch of people got paid $75 a post to misrepresent my intentions on social media, and it ended up costing me job opportunities.

I used to believe that "there's no such thing as bad publicity", but that isn't true. If you get a negative review in good faith by, say, the New York Times, that's not going to hurt you financially at all. (Emotionally, it might.) Critical or even negative publicity that comes in good faith does tend to help you in the long run. On the other hand, if you get 100 low-effort negative reviews on Goodreads by people who've never read the book, your average drops into 1.x or 2.x territory and you're done. To the rest of the world, it just looks like you wrote a bad book. And if someone drums up a cancel mob, it can get really bad really quick.

The book isn't about the people are going to attack it. It's an unrelated novel. They're going to attack it because they're vindictive, not because there's anything in there for them to fear. They might be afraid that if the book succeeds and I become famous, I use my "platform" to go after them in the future. (It isn't really my plan, but I understand their paranoia, as I must sound a bit paranoid myself.) The book itself isn't going to "shed light on" them, though, as that's not its purpose. I'd rather forget entirely that they exist.

I'm playing defense here because offense isn't really a possibility. Some of these people, I know exactly who they are. Most of them are people who work for those people (or who did) whose names I don't even know. One of the guys who was stupid enough to attack me under his real name is some dork in Seattle (I'm on the east coast) who claims to have worked with me even though we've never met.