Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them • Hacker News Board

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#131

Post by byteface » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 7:41 PM UTC

throwaway7827 wrote: post #105

byteface wrote: post #89

A negative article. I spent 2 years writing a sci-fi about a guy who builds a blackhole powered computer to simulate another universe. It got less than 150 downloads in 18months. I did it because I was doing nothing else with my life. Ultimately it failed to be succesful. But I gained a lot. It really helped me get a lot of crap off my mind. I learned a lot. I also read 400 books and graphic novels over 4 years. It w…

Its a negative, click-baity headline. A more accurate headline that matches the article would be "Its harder to write a bestseller than most people think." Ultimately the article agrees with your perspective. The last paragraph: "If you want to write a book, do it. It’s wonderful and horrible and fulfilling and soul-crushing all at the same time. But do it because you want to, not because someone suggested it one tim…

Ye I got that. But in my experience EVERYONE should write a book. If deluding yourself that it will be a best seller helps, then do it. I imagined many scenes in my book as movie scenes. People are allowed to dream. For all those failures like me out there, that's all we get.

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#132

Post by pnathan » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 8:49 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #109

pnathan wrote: post #63

Has anyone just farted around self published books or fanfic a bit? Let me tell you: there's a lot of writing that is nearly unreadable. Sure, you can do it. It's probably best written down and then gently carried over to the archives, only taken out for a good laugh down the road. Writing well is like programming. You have to spend some time doing it before its really ready for public consumption. Then you get to be…

> Has anyone just farted around self published books or fanfic a bit? I just published my first print book [1] with Amazon CreateSpace. I learned a heck of a lot technically - I wrote it in LaTeX for ultimate formatting control, then ran it through PanDoc and a bunch of my own scripts to massage the epub how I wanted. CreateSpace make it extremely simple, in all honesty anyone that has used facebook has enough comput…

I was unclear - I meant as a reader. As a reader, self-published work is, to some episilon (where the writers that fall under that epsilon usually wind up well known exceptions), it's all lousy.

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#133

Post by pnathan » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 8:57 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #69

pnathan wrote: post #63

Has anyone just farted around self published books or fanfic a bit? Let me tell you: there's a lot of writing that is nearly unreadable. Sure, you can do it. It's probably best written down and then gently carried over to the archives, only taken out for a good laugh down the road. Writing well is like programming. You have to spend some time doing it before its really ready for public consumption. Then you get to be…

> Writers have workshops and critiquing circles. They have editors. Review, review, review. Draft, draft, draft. Sure, that is probably how "professional" writers get good. But we've had good writers before there were all these tools , didn't we? I find it hard to imagine e.g. Bukowski attending a writing workshop. Some people just have the talent. Others are mediocre and get better with effort.

Not to my knowledge. The University Workshop as a reified formal system, yes. But the review and drafting system where you rewrite it yourself and show your friends the work, then rewrite; it has been present for a quite long time. My dim recollection is that it extends into the 1700s in English literature as a thing. I seem to recollect anecdotes of Johnson doing so; Puritan theologian-pastors previewed their ideas in sermons before publishing them.

A more learned historian of literature or theology would be able to provide hard accounts here.

As a general remark, the outsider as genius in full flower springing out of Zeus' forehead is astonishingly rare, and should never be taken to be normative or as an ideal to aspire to. This an ancient principle: there is no royal road to geometry.

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#134

Post by ben_w » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 3:04 AM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #126

sago wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple to try this yourself. Print 1000 copies of your book, record the price. Then hire a professional copyeditor to do line edits, an illustrator/designer for the cover, and a professional typesetter for the content, a professional indexer if it is non-fiction. Pay for targeted ads to reach 1000 click-throughs of consumers with an interest in your book. What proportion of the cost was printing? It is true that a lo…

Now print 100,000 copies and see how the numbers align. Sure, almost no books do that, but it's still how the deal works. > via vanity press. You realize the general procedure recommended in the self publishing industry is to hire a reputable editor, pay them several thousand dollars, and get results that are comparable to assorted well respected publishing companies. Yes, the author is taking all the risks. On the o…

I will be over the moon if my novel sells 100k. From what Stross has blogged, I’ve been limiting my fantasies to no more than 10k, and suspect that 1k is much more likely.