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Why are debut novels failing to launch?

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Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#31

Post by spondylosaurus »

japhib wrote: post #7

Seems like almost every creative industry (music, video games, art, writing) is having the same issue: Creation & publication tools are getting cheaper & easier to use, which means a lot more people can publish their creative ideas. With such a huge number of choices, discovery is now the issue. IMO discovery of what is truly high quality is still an unsolved problem. Seems like recommendation systems generally just…

Trusted (human) reviewers and critics are more important than ever to me. Like you said, lists of whatever's popular or trending are just... things that are trending. For good reasons or otherwise.

Meanwhile if I read a Richard Brody review I get a sense of whether a movie might be worth watching—even though we don't have identical taste, I've learned a lot about his, and now I know how his taste translates into reviews. Curation is totally the name of the game now.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#32

Post by photonthug »

japhib wrote: post #7

Seems like almost every creative industry (music, video games, art, writing) is having the same issue: Creation & publication tools are getting cheaper & easier to use, which means a lot more people can publish their creative ideas. With such a huge number of choices, discovery is now the issue. IMO discovery of what is truly high quality is still an unsolved problem. Seems like recommendation systems generally just…

> With such a huge number of choices, discovery is now the issue.

It's frustrating if people don't see that this is almost always a manufactured problem, not some an inevitable outcome of simply having more choices. Platforms want to disable the ability for users to differentiate between organic, self-directed discovery vs advertised or promoted content.

Discovery needs to be just good enough so that users won't leave, and if there's no alternatives in a space, even that doesn't matter. Having poor discoverability directly increases engagement and nevermind that engagement is high because doing simple things is painful, the take-away for your stock-price here will just be that you're explicitly user hostile and no one leaves, so you must have a captive audience.

Every notice how when you're looking for something obscure, you can only find something popular, and when you're looking for something popular, you can only find something obscure? It's not random, it's just the platform working out what profits the company the most.

In the case of streaming content for platforms like spotify/amazon prime, some content is cheaper for them to offer. The perfect user is someone who wants low-royalty or completely unencumbered content, because it's cheaper for the platform to license, but the end-user sees the same number of ads for the same length of time. The average user is also someone who can be tricked into being a perfect customer. Suppose the user is searching for RoboCop, and it is missing from the catalog. Terminator might be a better recc, but why not just offer the user some shitty CyborgCopIII instead, just to cut your costs and bump your profits, just in case the user is a sucker? If the user is not a sucker.. great, they'll type more searches, engagement is up, and platforms win either way.

Think about how much more data FAANG has than say, GoodReads. GoodReads is small enough that people just rank stuff and it works fine, and people curate lists, and you find what you like that way. It's not working because GoodReads has AI super-powers, it's working because they don't sabotage it away from working.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#33

Post by StrangeDoctor »

photonthug wrote: post #32
japhib wrote: post #7

Seems like almost every creative industry (music, video games, art, writing) is having the same issue: Creation & publication tools are getting cheaper & easier to use, which means a lot more people can publish their creative ideas. With such a huge number of choices, discovery is now the issue. IMO discovery of what is truly high quality is still an unsolved problem. Seems like recommendation systems generally just…

> With such a huge number of choices, discovery is now the issue. It's frustrating if people don't see that this is almost always a manufactured problem, not some an inevitable outcome of simply having more choices. Platforms want to disable the ability for users to differentiate between organic, self-directed discovery vs advertised or promoted content. Discovery needs to be just good enough so that users won't leav…

Goodreads is faang?

The problem isn’t manufactured or conspiratorial, it’s just baked into sorting so much content on so few metrics. And needing to account for what the user is currently in the mood for something specific, something generic.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#34

Post by coliveira »

johnea wrote: post #25

Even though I still retain an entire bookcase of novels (mostly sci fi) from my youth, I now find fiction to be, well... boring. Personally I'd rather read about something that actually exists...

The thing about modern publishing is that it is too much driven by genre, so if you read a few dozen novels of a particular genre there are no surprises left. I am similarly unimpressed by new books, so I either read old ones or just don't.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#35

Post by pfdietz »

_yb2s wrote: post #30
surfingdino wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Everyone has a book inside them, which is exactly where it should, I think, in most cases, remain." -- Christopher Hitchens

I find that to be an awful attitude... self-absorbed people with nothing interesting to write about will assume it doesn't apply to them because they are so interesting, and people not so sure of themselves but having an actual unusual idea or story they are passionate about, could easily be discouraged from sharing something valuable. I say, if you have something to say that fits well in a book, write it. Let other…

I encourage you to read some random self-published e-books on Amazon.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#36

Post by Ruthalas »

StrangeDoctor wrote: post #33
photonthug wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With such a huge number of choices, discovery is now the issue. It's frustrating if people don't see that this is almost always a manufactured problem, not some an inevitable outcome of simply having more choices. Platforms want to disable the ability for users to differentiate between organic, self-directed discovery vs advertised or promoted content. Discovery needs to be just good enough so that users won't leav…

Goodreads is faang? The problem isn’t manufactured or conspiratorial, it’s just baked into sorting so much content on so few metrics. And needing to account for what the user is currently in the mood for something specific, something generic.

Goodreads is a subsidiary of Amazon.

Edit: I realize I misread your comment. Disregard!

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#37

Post by vundercind »

medion wrote: post #26

Publishers only want to publish authors with large social followings. The first question they ask is a list of your socials.

… and lots of those are kinda bad.

But it sells almost as well as a decent book, and you don’t have to spend as much promoting it, so it’s still what they want.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#38

Post by CuriouslyC »

pfdietz wrote: post #35
_yb2s wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that to be an awful attitude... self-absorbed people with nothing interesting to write about will assume it doesn't apply to them because they are so interesting, and people not so sure of themselves but having an actual unusual idea or story they are passionate about, could easily be discouraged from sharing something valuable. I say, if you have something to say that fits well in a book, write it. Let other…

I encourage you to read some random self-published e-books on Amazon.

I encourage you to read some random publisher published books, that have been on the top of best seller lists. 50 shades of hot garbage comes to mind.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#39

Post by kayodelycaon »

pfdietz wrote: post #35
_yb2s wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that to be an awful attitude... self-absorbed people with nothing interesting to write about will assume it doesn't apply to them because they are so interesting, and people not so sure of themselves but having an actual unusual idea or story they are passionate about, could easily be discouraged from sharing something valuable. I say, if you have something to say that fits well in a book, write it. Let other…

I encourage you to read some random self-published e-books on Amazon.

The problem is those people aren’t going to read that advice and follow it. Most of the people it’s going to discourage are those who “should” write.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#40

Post by murphyslab »

davisp wrote: post #14
rudyfink wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you said reminded me of this Royal Road ( https://www.royalroad.com/home ) website I came across. It is not physical publishing (at least I don't think so), but it is a large collection of different authors who release books / work incrementally. The work mainly seems to be fiction of different varieties.

Royal Road is a place for a lot of folks to get audiences seeded before they inevitably move on to some combination of Patreon, Amazon Kindle Unlimited, and Audible. One very notable example of this is Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. He's even just announced that he managed to sell publishing only rights to Ace for large scale distribution which to my knowledge is a first (from authors that started on Royal Ro…

The Dungeon Crawler Carl series' first 4 or 5 books (it's been a little while) were excellent. Carl's tone reminds me of a detective novel, while the setting is more reminiscent of Ready Player One and The Matrix. The genre is a LitRPG novel (admittedly a genre I'd never known existed until reading DCC), heavily doused with comedic elements. Lots of mature themes and references to sex, drugs, politics, and violence, but with some of the allegorical or illustrative critique (to the point of absurdity) you'd find with Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett when discussing serious topics with parallels to real life, in an imagined scifi/fantasy setting. I'd recommend the series if for those who haven't picked up a book in a while and who would appreciate those elements.
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