Why to Not Write a Book • Hacker News Board

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#171

Post by ghaff » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 3:18 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #167

ghaff wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishers in general want books that are 250+ pages. And that's probably too much for a lot of topics. The one time I went through a publisher I definitely felt I was padding things. The second edition was better. I took out some of the padding and I fleshed out other topics that deserved it. It still barely made it to the 250-ish page point though.

Do you know what the 250 page target is based on? Knowing the underlying assumptions, metrics, KPIs, or whatever, could be helpful.

I don't. I assume it's economics in the sense that consumers are probably inclined to pay less for shorter books, there are a lot of largely fixed costs associated with publishing a book, may even be some pedestrian things like reading a title on the spine in a bookstore. Basically you need some starting hardcover or trade paperback price and work back from there. Amazon has doubtless changed some of the economics especially for ebooks. But, historically, you needed a hardcover you could sell for $25.

I've published a couple of fairly short books I didn't really care about charging for and they just wouldn't have been worth it for any publisher to feed into their funnel.

Only somewhat on point but here's something from the late 90s. https://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#172

Post by dsr_ » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 3:38 PM UTC

rusticpenn wrote: post #80

beacon294 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? All I read was foundation, some non fiction, and robot short story collections.

Are you being sarcastic? The Robot novels are basically crime novels with robots...

It's not sarcasm: the conventional wisdom was that an SF novel could not also be a satisfying mystery/detective novel, because the readers could not guess that Aldebaranians can see in ultraviolet, or any other authorial invention.

Asimov's insight was that it was up to the author to play rigorously fairly: every fact of consequence needed to be revealed naturally.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#173

Post by hk__2 » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 3:52 PM UTC

shahzaibmushtaq wrote: post #118

hk__2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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.

You’re contradicting yourself: if it were so easy, you wouldn’t cite only five names that span five centuries. It’s like saying music is easy, just do like Mozart or Beethoven.

There are 3 million books published each year in the US. That’s more than 8k per day. See: https://ideas.bkconnection.com/10-awful-truths-about-publish...

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#174

Post by throw16180339 » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 3:54 PM UTC

norman784 wrote: post #137

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

In manga aren't click bait titles, but because there are so many published, you pick basically a title that explains the premise, otherwise it's harder to get users to read your manga. I suppose that also could work with novels, I'm not a book person, but I suppose you read a review or watched some video that recommended you a book, and if the title is self descriptive, then would easier to go to the book store and b…

It's common for romance novel titles to include the major tropes, e.g. The Scandal of the Duke’s Secret Baby. Here are some example titles from the Amazon Top 100(https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-Romance/zgb...).

• Truly Madly Deeply: A Grumpy x Sunshine Romance

• Temptation Trails: A Small-Town Romance

• Phantasma: a Dark Fantasy Romance

• Madness: a Dark Revenge Romance

• Meant For Gabriel: A small town, single dad, surprise baby romance

• Little Stranger: a Dark Taboo Romance

• Sexting the Silverfox: An Age Gap, Single Dad Romance

• Brutal Savage: A Single Dad Forced Marriage Irish Mafia Romance

• Twisted Love: A Grumpy Sunshine Romance

• Beautiful Beast: An Age Gap Forced Proximity Mafia Romance

• Obsession Falls: A Small-Town Romance

• Flawless: A Small Town Enemies to Lovers Romance

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#175

Post by ghaff » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 3:57 PM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #168

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…

Prolific professors who publish dozens of papers at scientific conferences year after year also have similar methods. There's a pattern, there's a method. There's always some novelty of course but it's a production line nevertheless. (I'm talking about real successful academics with real status in the community, not fakes). It also reminds me of the MrBeast document from the other day. Once you hit the formula, you k…

As someone who gave hundreds of talks and wrote at least hundreds of articles etc. over the years, I basically agree. Some I look back on as being particular insightful or clever. But you pretty much have to mostly crank at least to a minimum standard. And, yes, there's a lot of reuse in various ways.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#176

Post by ghaff » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 4:10 PM UTC

khafra wrote: post #54

I'm mid-career in security, and having written a book is probably worth 3-6 decent certifications at this point. I should probably coauthor one with ChatGPT before common knowledge of how easy that is gets any more widespread.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic but, in my experience, ChatGPT is mostly useful for producing editable filler. Mind you, that's often useful. The intros and definitions are needed. But it's not producing anything that is especially interesting on its own.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#177

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 4:55 PM UTC

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…

What I think happened is that he said "facehugger" when he meant "chestbuster," likely because 1) the word "chestbuster" almost repeats the word "bursting," and 2) everyone knows that a chestbuster is the only notable symptom (aside from hunger and sudden indigestion) of having been attacked by a facehugger.

You've introduced eggmorphing (the transformation of people and other animals into eggs), which is not canon because the scene was cut.

https://collider.com/alien-eggmorph-deleted-scene-explained/

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#178

Post by bonoboTP » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #175

bonoboTP wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prolific professors who publish dozens of papers at scientific conferences year after year also have similar methods. There's a pattern, there's a method. There's always some novelty of course but it's a production line nevertheless. (I'm talking about real successful academics with real status in the community, not fakes). It also reminds me of the MrBeast document from the other day. Once you hit the formula, you k…

As someone who gave hundreds of talks and wrote at least hundreds of articles etc. over the years, I basically agree. Some I look back on as being particular insightful or clever. But you pretty much have to mostly crank at least to a minimum standard. And, yes, there's a lot of reuse in various ways.

Yes, I'm not trying to disparage it too much, it's just the reality of the job. But I found that even junior PhD students can have a romantic illusion that real scientists just spend their time musing and thinking and sometimes they have a flash of insight which they then enthusiastically share with the others. But the more mundane reality is that papers are projects with their own life cycle. You have to be on time, you have to cater to where "the discourse" is right now, the metagame. But to be fast, you need a process, a formula. It's sales. Everything can be approached from a sales and marketing mentality and it tends to bring success to a scary degree. Some apply similar tools in their romantic lives too, where optimizing your dating profile is just the start. I tend to think this is not the real path to something fulfilling, but pursuing this question veers into religious territory.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#179

Post by slowmovintarget » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 5:22 PM UTC

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…

But if you open up in preparation for launching that facehugger, you may trigger Ripley's response with a flamethrower, then no eggs are happy.

Re: Why to Not Write a Book

#180

Post by bonoboTP » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

sph wrote: post #122

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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-…

> "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." I'm pretty sure a Netflix executive would have signed on this concept based on this sentence alone half a decade ago. Now it seems the entire world is waking up to these formulaic data-driven products that have been pushed by media conglomerates for a decade. This…

> It's so easy to blame this phenomenon on rose-tinted glasses and older people like us thinking all old things are better than modern, but when the world wasn't decided by "data scientists" and corporate committees, there was more variety, more volatility. Lower lows but higher highs as well.

There's a trend of thinking that our age is the most accepting and inclusive and the past was rigid and conformist but in many regards it's the opposite. Through all the metrics and quantification and SEO-like data analysis-based incentives and judgments we are being "snapped to grid". The risk averseness is growing. There's only a narrow path and people must tick many boxes or get disqualified. Just as movie producers make the nth superhero movie and everything is a sequel of old IP, science is similarly turned into a formulaic churn.

Just think about how Peter Higgs said he couldn't fit the mold of today's academia and the pressure of producing a stream of consistent (and hence typically consistently mediocre - like the consistent taste of a BigMac) output.

The other day I watched this interview with a pioneer of artifical neural networks Warren McCulloch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wawMjJUCMVw). I wonder if today we're letting such personalities thrive in academia. He was originally headed to the Christian ministry and learned a lot of theology then got drawn rather to math, and his pondering of abstractions, understanding, humans and theology moved him to study neurology and to use math to model logic expressed as neural networks. Nowadays, you must specialize early and grind for tests, no "forgiveness" if you go off-track, you must be single-mindedly focus on optimizing your path towards tenure for it to be realistic. Can't even get a PhD position without having published several of your original research papers beforehand. While hiring committees say they reward well-roundedness and try to avoid a monoculture, what that becomes in practice is checking if your parents sent you to one of these trendy types of extracurriculars or foreign "volunteer" programs, and whether you later were engaged with some shortlist of trendy buzzword issues.

This breeds conformity, uniformity and bland predictability.