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Why are debut novels failing to launch?

esquire.com

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Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#171

Post by pvg »

bowsamic wrote: post #90
modeless wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News doesn't block self promotion. You are free to post your own stories linking to your own work, I've done it, people do it all the time. There's a whole section for it, 'Show HN' (although it's not required to post there). And you're free to post links to your work in comments when relevant. Of course spam is unwelcome everywhere. Don't overdo it and don't be deceptive about it, and you'll be fine.

Hacker News does block self promotion as stated by a mod elsewhere in this thread

I can't find such a comment in this thread, can you link it?

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#172

Post by api »

o11c wrote: post #84
rudyfink wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you said reminded me of this Royal Road ( https://www.royalroad.com/home ) website I came across. It is not physical publishing (at least I don't think so), but it is a large collection of different authors who release books / work incrementally. The work mainly seems to be fiction of different varieties.

RoyalRoad has at least 3 major problems: * there's a significant conflict between "this is a place to read stories" and "this is just a place to advertise for Amazon" * the effective site rules are unwritten and quite arbitrary (one unwritten rule: you are not allowed to say anything positive about real-ish religions, only negative things) * way too much pedophilia, including in site-promoted stories. Unlike religion…

Eww that’s not just a problem. The last two tell me something about the community. Hard pass.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#173

Post by gonzo41 »

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…

Consider reading your book as chapters into a limited series podcast.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#174

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#175

Post by greenie_beans »

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…

sounds like you might like to read books from independent presses. this distributor is a good place to find stuff: https://asterismbooks.com/

> Write something someone wants.

i don't think we should apply a VC-isms to art. so many great pieces of art were overlooked because the market didn't want them at the time, only to be discovered and appreciated later.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#176

Post by nottorp »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #152
nottorp wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sad, because once an author achieves some notoriety, they are basically stuck into writing the same thing for the rest of their career, for fear that they will lose their existing audience.

Not at all. Like I said, the determinant of whether you will like the book is the author. If they write something radically different from their previous work, and you liked their previous work, the odds are very high that you'll like the new book too.

As a reader, but how about as a publisher, will you take the risk? :)

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#178

Post by dageshi »

Narishma wrote: post #162
o11c wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RoyalRoad has at least 3 major problems: * there's a significant conflict between "this is a place to read stories" and "this is just a place to advertise for Amazon" * the effective site rules are unwritten and quite arbitrary (one unwritten rule: you are not allowed to say anything positive about real-ish religions, only negative things) * way too much pedophilia, including in site-promoted stories. Unlike religion…

Another problem is the ratings. Everything there seems way overrated. You'll see a ton of 5-star or 4-star ratings for things that are barely readable.

When you've spent many a year reading machine translated chinese xianxia then indeed many stories on RR are 4/5 star worthy in comparison.

Royalroad is not a place you go to find objectively good stories, it's the place you go to enjoy your particular blend of delicious trash because in the end you'd rather read chapter 1600 of the long running braindead litrpg than you would whatever just won the hugo's.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#179

Post by ZeroGravitas »

I assume I read far more than the average person (though possibly just average for HN) but I see clickbait headlines like "10 Best New Hard Sci-Fi Novels Released This Month" that just make me feel anxious as a reader that there's more content out there than I can possibly comprehend. Must feel even worse as a writer.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#180

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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