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Why are debut novels failing to launch?

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Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#181

Post by tomnipotent »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #125
latentsea wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we need to invent ads, so that we don't all have to become influencers?

> I guess we need to invent ads, so that we don't all have to become influencers? It's almost as if you've never bootstrapped a business, self-published a book, or similar. If you have, and had the resources to use paid ads to reach your desired scale, then congratulations. I think that does indeed entitle you to be smug and dismissive with everyone else.

So we're expected to feel sympathy for the broke bootstrapper?

What I'm reading is someone wants all the upsides with none of the downsides. No one is entitled to an audience, especially that of another, just because they've produced some good or service. Participating in capitalism requires either time or money, usually both, and even then you're not guaranteed success.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#182

Post by dageshi »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #102
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.

It is being quietly disrupted, just probably not in the way people want.

Webnovels on sites like royalroad.com monetised via patreon and then published on Kindle Unlimited & Audible offer a different publishing model to that of traditional books and one that works really well for the right genres.

The audience that reads them is reading purely for entertainment, has vastly lower standards and is willing to directly support their favourite authors to the point where the most successful authors who started 5 years or so ago are now millionaires.

But this is mostly an anathema to the traditional publishing industry and for the most part they're pretending it doesn't exist because they literally cannot compete with it in the niches it now dominates.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#183

Post by AlbertCory »

TillE wrote: post #64
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…

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…

> if you make something genuinely great

Hindsight Bias is blinding here. Judge whether something is "genuinely great" before you know its success or failure, and then we'll see if that's a true statement.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#184

Post by samatman »

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?

A filter can be good in a couple of ways: it can filter out ~all of what you don't want, and/or ~none of what you do want.

Time is a good filter in the first way, which makes it a good filter. Because a filter which doesn't substantially do the first of these things isn't actually filtering: the null filter filters none of what you do want, by failing to reduce the data stream in any way.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#185

Post by ravenstine »

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…

Why not sell physical copies of your book from out of the trunk of your car?

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#186

Post by iteria »

dageshi wrote: post #182
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is being quietly disrupted, just probably not in the way people want. Webnovels on sites like royalroad.com monetised via patreon and then published on Kindle Unlimited & Audible offer a different publishing model to that of traditional books and one that works really well for the right genres. The audience that reads them is reading purely for entertainment, has vastly lower standards and is willing to directly s…

This is correct. I give $3/month on patreon for 2 chapters a week to this one author. $36/year isn't a lot, but it takes these authors' years to finish these books at this rate, and any author would kill for the amount of amount I sunk into 1 book. Multiply it out, and it becomes a livable wage if you can get enough people to support your patreon. I have a friend I personally know who did this. He's not even a good writer. He just found an underserved niche and made a livable wage $1from somebody at a time. His writing improved and I'd say it's passable, but no one would pay $10 at all once for any book he wrote. Apparently over a year is fine though.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#187

Post by troutwine »

bowsamic wrote: post #88
troutwine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Melville was a prominent author, an early sex symbol even, owing to the success and popularity of his novels before Moby Dick. That novel was hugely controversial in its day -- perceived as blasphemous, overwrought -- and it ruined his reputation as an author. Also, he'd spent money he didn't really have during the writing of Moby Dick so that when it flopped he couldn't survive on the famine part of the feast/famine…

This doesn’t line up with what is written on his Wikipedia page at all, which claims it was his next novel that was more controversial, and he clearly wasn’t that poor because he did a grand tour of Europe and the Mediterranean a few years after

I can’t speak to the Wikipedia page as I have not read it but the biographical material in my Norton Critical Moby Dick and Delbanco’s Melville line up: Moby Dick was a flop and ruined his reputation in society, Pierre not selling further precipitated the crisis built from choices made while riding a high into The Whale.

Melville bought many things with debt: his farm, his rare books, clothes. I don’t find it unimaginable that he paid for the grand tour with debt spending either.

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#188

Post by dageshi »

iteria wrote: post #186
dageshi wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is being quietly disrupted, just probably not in the way people want. Webnovels on sites like royalroad.com monetised via patreon and then published on Kindle Unlimited & Audible offer a different publishing model to that of traditional books and one that works really well for the right genres. The audience that reads them is reading purely for entertainment, has vastly lower standards and is willing to directly s…

This is correct. I give $3/month on patreon for 2 chapters a week to this one author. $36/year isn't a lot, but it takes these authors' years to finish these books at this rate, and any author would kill for the amount of amount I sunk into 1 book. Multiply it out, and it becomes a livable wage if you can get enough people to support your patreon. I have a friend I personally know who did this. He's not even a good w…

This is the interesting thing about this entire thread. There are a lot of opportunities for authors to make a living, even potentially become wealthy writing but they actually have to write in niches people want to read.

Instead I get the sense that the people writing these "debut novels" are really looking for fame/acceptance within the kind of social circles that value "great intellectual novels".

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#189

Post by mikemitchelldev »

naveen99 wrote: post #170
mikemitchelldev wrote: post #157

A debut novel that's not published is not necessarily a wasted effort. It can be adapted into a screenplay, which can be submitted to a variety of outlets, and the novel might be published later if successful.

Looks like I found a debut hn comment.

[flagged]

Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?

#190

Post by intuitionist »

One thing that saddens me about the perceived necessity of new authors going on Twitter, BookTok, etc. to “build an audience” is that it seems to prevent anyone who wants to separate their literary life from their private life from ever again being supported by a publisher. Many authors over the years have felt the need to do this, for personal or professional reasons: J.D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, James Tiptree Jr., John le Carré, Joe Klein, Isabel Fall. I doubt that all those authors will be considered part of the canon in 100 years, and very possibly none of them will be, but I think the world would be poorer if they’d all been unable to become successful writers.
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