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Why are debut novels failing to launch?

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Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#131

Post by mr_world »

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...

I almost exclusively read fiction, in particular science fiction. Why? Because the authors often spend a great deal of time thinking about new, interesting technology and ideas. It is all based on reality, the ideas are new combinations of existing concepts, and could be applied in the real world to inspire innovation.

I get enough of the real world in the real world, when I read, I want see something new

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#132

Post by Ekaros »

vundercind wrote: post #37
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.

I would argue that those works are at least decent or at least on some level competent. They might not have too much some vague artistic merit. But they are unlikely be completely unacceptable. Like no major consistent spelling or typographical issues, mostly coherent and consistent plot and so on.

We rarely see or interact with truly below mediocre medium. Or filter it very quickly. Looking for example at Steam and your nth asset flip with poor 3d graphics and so on.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#133

Post by mensetmanusman »

xhevahir wrote: post #12
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…

> 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.

The machine wept.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#134

Post by downWidOutaFite »

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…

Amazon bought goodreads and crippled its discoverability features.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#135

Post by frutiger »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #54
pavlov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years ago I wrote a science fiction novel in Finnish, printed 300 hardcover copies at my own expense, and gave them away to people over the years. I would guess less than 10% of those copies have actually been read. (A few people claim they liked it, but of course that doesn't necessarily mean they read it.) So, a waste of time and money? That's not how I feel about it at all. The creative process was illuminatin…

Exactly. Don't expect anyone to read what you wrote, much less commercial success, unless you were a Harvard undergrad English prodigy who joined Penguin publishing, or somehow wiggled into the circle of [City] Review of [Each Others'] Books. It's a one-way, time-traveling message in a bottle comprised of dead trees. Doing it for art is a wolf's howl that it lived and that it could. Although, it's gradually shifted i…

> It's a one-way, time-traveling message in a bottle

So too is DNA in children. You don’t get to choose the entirety of the message but you do get to choose the half of the lottery that they must receive.

And that message is likely to far outlive any message in any dead tree or electronic book.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#137

Post by afpx »

bane wrote: post #55

Many many years ago a friend did a stint at a major publishing house. Whenever she'd show up to parties she would bring in a small stack of unpublished manuscripts, we'd all get into the wine or beer or whatever and start reading particularly terrible passages to each other. Had she sought out especially bad manuscripts? No! She just grabbed whatever was on the "will read, maybe, someday" shelf in the editor's work a…

My local bookstore dedicates a large part of their fiction section to "local authors". Maybe 30 or more authors there, some with several published books. Once, I went through all of them, randomly choosing a couple chapters and reading a few pages, hoping to find a hidden gem. Eating a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup would have been more satisfying.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#138

Post by mattgreenrocks »

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…

Same experience for me in another domain (indie apps).

I’m okay with getting better at marketing, and allowing for the possibility of lack of product market fit.

I’m less okay with believing I have to become Extremely Online to “build my personal brand,” just to have a chance at launching things successfully.

That’s some bullshit that they peddle to justify their own addiction. It’s learned helplessness to platforms.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#139

Post by defrost »

bowsamic wrote: post #129
defrost wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social Realism and Lolicon aren't genres ?

1. No, they aren't forms of genre fiction 2. Middlemarch isn't social realism. If you had to put a label on it, it would be psychological fiction a la Stephen King 3. Lolita is DEFINITELY not lolicon (if anything it's the opposite) and it's quite offensive to suggest it is The point is, OP is complaining about not liking reading, but if he's only read sci-fi, he hasn't read the classics

Oddly enough Middlemarch is often cited in literary courses as being the template for social realism ... eg:

    This avowedly humanist world-building would come to be called realism. Middlemarch is often cited as a template of that now familiar mode.
~ https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/06/George-Eliots-...

but I'm more than happy to leave the bunfight of opinions to those more invested.

> Lolita is DEFINITELY not lolicon

Well I wouldn't take that suggestion too seriously although it seems that you have.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#140

Post by bluGill »

stubish wrote: post #73
motohagiography wrote: post #63

Write something someone wants. Literary fiction was art that discovered and expressed the essential, where cultural production today explicitly militates against anything that could be percived as essential(-ist). New novels are failing because the culture has no eros. Readers have become too socially poor to risk investing in ideas that could compromise their cultivated homogeny, and it's just too hard to care with…

I'd wager most books are content someone wants. A lot are even content a lot of people want. This is not good enough. Reaching the audience is the problem. Also, writing a book can take years. Writing for what people want today is how you fail, as people will have moved on in the five years it took to write, edit, sell and produce the work. If you can reliably predict market desires in 5 years time, you have a lot mo…

There are more good books than time to read. That is why reaching an audience is hard, you are not better than the other choices.
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