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Why are debut novels failing to launch?

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Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#101

Post by bryanrasmussen »

modeless wrote: post #20
devbent wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN and reddit will also immediately block self-promotion even if relevant to the audience ( HN doesn't block self promotion if it comes up as part of a conversation, e.g. "I'm having this technical problem." Re: "I wrote a book about how to solve that!" Also you can at least put a link in your profile! Reddit has tons of self promos all the time, it just depends on the subreddit. Also it helps if you're a long time…

HN doesn't block self promotion in stories either. There's a whole section for it, "Show HN".

the Show HN guidelines as I understand it says it is not for stories or articles, but for projects you are working on or have made? Am I misunderstanding that.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#102

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #67

Discoverability sucks, for almost everyone, but especially for new authors. And that was before ai started flooding out “content.” Even if you get a publisher, great authors sometimes sell only a handful of copies. You find amazing books on goodreads by award winning authors with only 5 reviews. And that’s people who can get their novels manuscript even looked at by an editor. Lots of self published authors end up wi…

The problem is that book publishing hasn't really been disrupted for a very long time. Amazon just switched it to selling online, but think about how much more you can engage with a book that you just read. Somehow no apps or ereaders allow for anything beyond reading the book text.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#103

Post by bryanrasmussen »

boznz wrote: post #57
modeless wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN doesn't block self promotion in stories either. There's a whole section for it, "Show HN".

My comment was because my last three submissions were blocked. I emailed the moderator the first time it happened, and he said the algorithm probably thought it was self-promotion as I cross posted it to medium.com which I now know everybody hates. By blocked, I mean the articles showed as normal on my browser but was hidden to anybody else. I did not use the "Show HN" option because I have had articles submitted in…

Right, I seem to get the same result on things I post from my medium publication - which started after I posted some links to some time travel stories I wrote in a post about time travel which seemed to me to relate and which got a few upvotes.

After that if I posted a link to an article I wrote it got shadow blocked (at least for a bit) the thing is I only post things here that I think fit the site, which is about 10% of what I write, and I am a relatively prolific poster.

Looking at my current submissions - in the last 30 submissions one was to an article I wrote. Why? Because I thought it fit HN, just like all the other things I post I think fit HN.

Personally I think that's being a relatively well-behaved user of the site, but evidently not.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#104

Post by bryanrasmussen »

malux85 wrote: post #86
xhevahir wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess the only ones destined to read it are the AI training algorithms. I'm imagining a lone genius toiling away at a novel and dying in obscurity, with his work gaining recognition only after his death, à la Herman Melville, except in this future the writing eventually enters the canon by deeply impressing not human but machine readers.

I wonder if the machines will be more impressed by elegant, efficient, bug-free code

given what I see they put out when prompted - I suppose not.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#105

Post by bryanrasmussen »

laurex wrote: post #18
boznz wrote: post #4

Spent several years writing and editing my first book before thinking the job was finished when I hit the publish now button. But it is literally only half the job done. The hell now is unless you get friends and family or an agency involved to push it and market it it will languish on the 500th page of any Amazon search forever. Oh and did I say that there are thousands of books a day released and there is nowhere y…

Isn’t “Show HN” a thing that exists for self-promotion? It doesn’t guarantee anyone will upvote it, but seems like it’s fine?

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread.

Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead.

but if you make a blog post and you make a regular submission and those blog posts of yours get automatically pulled out...then what?

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#106

Post by namaria »

rixed wrote: post #46
namaria wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time is a great filter. That's why it's commonplace to complain about 'art these days' and to be nostalgic about past books and music. Some of the greatest, most interesting books I've ever read are thousands of years old.

You can't know wether time is a good filter without assessing the value of what's been lost forever, can you?

I can't know precisely how good of a filter it is but I'm not interested in finding out a definite figure.

I have read enough great stuff from picking up a book from 300 BCE or so and I've seen enough BS ghost written flavor of the month non-fiction to know it's good enough heuristics to suggest it in this forum.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#108

Post by RivieraKid »

The total supply of good books and good content in general increases every year but the amount of time people spend consuming content is roughly constant.

New books are not just competing with all of the books that were written in the past, e.g. East of Eden, but also YouTube, podcasts, movies, computer and mobile game - and the total supply of those increases every year.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#109

Post by nottorp »

corimaith wrote: post #78
TillE wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from Andy Weir (who got picked up by a publisher and properly edited), the self-published books I've read have been remarkably awful, including some stuff that was widely recommended. The fundamental truth of creative work is that if you make something genuinely great, you'll probably have a smooth path to success. I see a lot of anxiety among indie game developers about the sheer quantity of games being releas…

Indie games are interesting because you'd think given the nature of their development they'd do more interesting things, but stunningly they've mostly stayed within a few codified genres (roguelike/ deckbuilder/platformer galore). There aren't many successors to the giants of the old like Terrarria or Dwarf Fortress. I'd have to chalk it up to a lack of vision (I don't genuinely believe someone grows up wanting to ma…

Indie means low budget (although even that is getting perverted), not hobby like development done as a labour of love.

The latter are few and far between, but they have always been.

Can a game historian count the Doom clones that showed up after Doom? Does anyone remember any of them with the exception of Hexen and Rise of the Triad?

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#110

Post by nottorp »

metabagel wrote: post #96

I hope that AI improves discoverability. It would be great if an AI agent can give me a list of books which I am likely to enjoy, based on the books I have enjoyed in the past. Even better if some of those picks are obscure.

On one hand, that's a good idea.

On the other hand, do you really want to get stuck in a bubble and only read the same thing that you've read before and nothing new?

If it's bad when Facebook does it, it's bad with book recommendations too if you ask me.

And on the gripping hand...

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