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Why to Not Write a Book

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Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#111

Post by ants_everywhere »

cpach wrote: post #97
asddubs wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just clickbait titles, because it works. Wouldn't surprise me if we see more of that on books as well in the future rather than short and vague titles

This fashion was not uncommon before the 20th century or so. For example, Daniel Defoe’s seminal work from 1719: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. W…

And well-known enough for Monty Python to make a joke of it

> Yes...I wonder if you might have 'The Amazing Adventures of Captain Gladys Stoutpamphlet and her Intrepid Spaniel Stig Amongst the Giant Pygmies of Beckles'...volume eight.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#112

Post by DanielBMarkham »

I completely agree with the author and yet I have taken up the profession of writing books.

There are, as we know, two different kinds of books: fiction and non-fiction. There's actually only two flavors of books as well: polemic and exploratory. With a polemic, you're expected to have your own internal theme song and the produced work will conform to it. With exploratory books, you're on an adventure with the reader and the only bullshitting you add is the minimum amount necessary to make the exploration fun for both of you.

Polemics have become quite popular lately, and I suspect anybody taking a set of blogs or essays and "sticking them together into a book" would only have this avenue available. I took a lot of essays and material I'd collected over the years and wrote some non-fiction books on programming. They were exploratory: the theme emerged as I condensed the work together. (My guess is that exploratory fiction and non-fiction is very tough to do and sell; people like a book that they already know the gist of and are familiar with the author much more than they feel like spending many hours on a lark)

After I finished a few non-fiction books on coding and performative teams, I was done. It was fun, I learned stuff, I think it's critically important stuff, nobody cares, and I'm okay with that. Because it wasn't a polemic, I felt no need to rant or self-promote. There was no movement I wanted to lead. Time to move on to something else.

Books suck. Books change the way you think. All writing does that. Books especially change you because they draw you into some sort of self-created cosmology that you've now adopted.

I write because I'm a writer. I've always been a writer. I simply got honest about it as I grew older. I don't think you choose whether to write or not. I think you choose the fashion in which your writing interacts with your subconscious. A book is just a deployment bundle. It's not the point.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#113

Post by sandworm101 »

mewse wrote: post #55

I can't stop thinking about this throwaway parenthetical at the start of the blog post: > [...] for many writers, writing a book is about the last thing they should do (unless they feel a book bursting out of them, much like a facehugger). Now, as we all know, the aliens that burst out of people in the Aliens franchise are called 'chestbursters'. "Facehuggers", by comparison, are hatched from alien eggs. So in this m…

And they are most fun when their author actually understands the subject. Don't make a trek reference unless you know your Kirks from your Spocks.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#114

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

_tom_ wrote: post #98
beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's partly a transition in the industry towards less risk taking. You see it in the movie industry as well. Certain authors are the equivalent of blockbuster movie releases. Publishers pay them huge amounts and market the ever living daylights out of them. Sally Rooney is a recent example, or authors like Salman Rushdie or Zadie Smith, where their books releases are "events". Many publishers are moving away from the…

The midlist has moved into self publishing. Many more books are published on amazon than by trad publishers. Many of them don't sell, but the numbers (guess) aren't probably that different from fad publishing in terms of success. Many authors that succeed at self publishing move to traditional publishers. (Hugh Howe, E L James) Others (Tamara Taylor) like to control and much higher royalties and stay self published.

Social media is full of trad-pubbed authors (some with NYT best-sellers) complaining they have to keep their day jobs.

Self-pubbed author groups have far more authors earning far more money. There's a good number of six figure authors and not a few seven figure authors. They're almost all writing to market - tight-niche, mid-quality writing that gives readers a predictable genre experience they want to repeat.

Successful self-pub is equivalent to a bootstrapped micro start-up, and many of the same ideas apply. It's not trivially easy, especially the marketing. But it's certainly easier than trying to pitch from a cold start to the agent/publisher circus.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#115

Post by ruthmarx »

I have several books I want to write - I'm definitely bursting with idea, intent and motivation, and not just idea as a concept, but rather fully fleshed out. The hardest part is fighting ADHD or whatever and actually doing the work.

These days if I were to publish I'd probably setup an LLC as a publishing company, do a little work to make the company look a lot bigger than it is and try to find some bookstores to sell to directly - in addition to selling online of course.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#117

Post by DanielBMarkham »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #108
hengheng wrote: post #52

I've once talked to a semi-successful author. His day job was Mechanical Engineering at the local university. He eventually quit once he had his formula worked out. He writes crime novels. Doesn't even like them, but if you want to sell, you either write smut (big gamble) or crime novels (less crowded). Anything you actually want to write about, you have to shoehorn into the crime novel. You also have to keep your pr…

This is called write-to-market, and it's a well-known thing in self publishing - even though many wannabe fiction writers choose to ignore it, because they'd rather believe their book will have publishers swooning and readers gushing. (Spoilers: odds of that are very, very close to zero.) In fact all publishing is write-to-market now. Most traditionally published books are picked to chase trends. There's also a huge…

"Most drama today sucks" --- "This is called write-to-market"

Yes. I doubt you disagree, but I needed to point that out. These two, along with writing-by-formula, are intricately related. There's nothing wrong with writing being a racket.

If you want to feel depressed and lack a sense of optimism in humanity, spend some time learning about the publishing industry. Woof. It's nothing but formulaic conservative market-driven darkness all the way down. AND all the players are well-established, they've driven out inefficiencies, and they've got plenty of tricks to keep the riff-raff out. They've been doing that for centuries.

I don't like joking on HN, but this is a personal joke I've used for some time and seems appropriate: Want to start a new streaming series? Throw together a bunch of marketing-driven adjectives and end with "and they solve crimes."

"She's a gay little person goth time-traveling alien, he's an autistic left-handed incel Quaker. They live in Portland, and together they solve crimes."

My opinion is that people are going to eventually get sick of this stuff, much the same as they got tired of the B Monster Movies in the 50s, but who knows. Detective and True-Crime novels are perennials. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Working like this sounds to me like having a job I hate.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#118

Post by shahzaibmushtaq »

hk__2 wrote: post #58
shahzaibmushtaq wrote: post #51

I never wrote a book. But we all live in the age of e-books and self-published books, so the money involved may be limited to 2-3 digits at most all you need is a strong online presence to be successful. Moreover, finding an audience is also not as difficult as it used to be in the past if you have a large active following base such as https://x.com/levelsio has self-published his book ( https://readmake.com ) and he…

> Moreover, finding an audience is also not as difficult as it used to be in the past if you have a large active following base Well, "if you have a large active following base" is the key here. If you don’t, it’s almost impossible to find an audience.

> it’s almost impossible to find an audience

Follow the path of those who have written many successful books, and you'll find that it's not almost impossible to find an audience e.g., William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde et al.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#119

Post by bryanrasmussen »

gizajob wrote: post #82
hug wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have nothing to add to the conversation but love the continual degrading of coherency with the acronym used. Next comment someone please call it HGGHT.

Using Vogon poetry

HGGHT

Is bureaucratically

Not Exact enough you see

----------------------

We will be denying

your acronym

and you will be dying

Just like him

did.

on edit: HN formatting is in violation of several rules and will be punished.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#120

Post by bryanrasmussen »

082349872349872 wrote: post #94
asicsp wrote: post #24

On the flip side, converting my tutorials to ebooks saved me from having to look for a job again. Been selling them for 6 years (with the last two years spent just to update them to newer software versions, improve examples, new cover images, etc). Of course, I have the advantage of living in a developing country but selling to an international audience (just $200/month to pay my bills).

Living in a high income country, where $200 is well within monthly fluctuation, this situation makes me wonder if a little more telepresence might lead to us bifurcating into a world where the Eloi will know a tiny amount about how all of it works, and the Morlocks will know all about how a tiny amount of it works?

isn't this how it already works?
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