251–260 of 260 posts
Publishers only want to publish authors with large social followings. The first question they ask is a list of your socials.
False: never had any publisher ask my agent about this, although no doubt it can be a factor if you have a huge following
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After 10 generations your message is diluted to 0.1%. We still read Shakespeare and listen to Mozart.
How many thousands of Shakespeare’s contemporaneous authors are lost to time? And Seneca’s?
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> But, I feel no obligation to teach you how to talk to people That's just as well since it seems you don't actually know how to. Must be tough to be an influencer with a mouth like that.
Is this the best version of you? Seriously. You know well that you commented in bad faith on my original reply TO SOMEONE ELSE in agreement with him/her. I was interested in a discussion around the real challenges involved in self-publishing, starting a business and similar. These are challenges expressed by the OP, and which virtually everyone faces. Then, you jumped in and, instead of engaging with the substance of…
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Financially successful writers embrace the sales and marketing game. Like you said, writing the book is only half (or less!) of the work required to get someone to read it. That means constantly engaging their target audience, setting up booths at conventions, posting interesting content on social media, etc. Writing for yourself is a wonderful thing. But if you do want more people to read your work, I would recommen…
I am lucky enough to have a good programming gig which pays the bills so writing is and will always be a side gig. None of my friends or family are aware I am an author (though I occasionally drop a hint) and I have no interest in the marketing or social media side of making it a business so there is no disappointment and great satisfaction in the achievement. I hope I did not make it sound like I was disappointed; I…
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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…
it seems that a lot of my submissions over the past 7 months to my own stuff were with Medium's link shortener and that gets banned, mainly because if you follow a link from Medium's stats the url is the shortened form.
I noticed you mentioned Medium, perhaps your problems also stem from the same source?
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I like the sound of that, can you share where to find your novels?
Since you asked: Here's my first novel: "The Undeserving Future" https://a.co/d/aQ1Nn4G which is basically 1984 and Brave New World but for a future dystopia based on eco-totalitarianism instead of Stalinism. It's also got a lot more jokes than those dour books. It has a completely novel economic system that might even work to implement permanent ecological sustainability in a less awful way than central planning eve…
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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.
You can’t say that until people could reach you, read you and move on.
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.
Almost never happens; legal issues keep unsolicited screenplay submissions to zero
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Great book! Sadly, I don't think the sequel (about the H-Bomb) is quite as good.
Read: The Curve of Binding Energy (McFee)- will blow your mind for sure, NPI
Anyone remember John Phillips?
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John Aristotle Phillips, founder of political data-analytics firm Aristotle, graduated from Princeton University with a degree in aerospace engineering in the class of 1978. Known as the “A-bomb kid,” Phillips is known for a project he did in a physics seminar in 1976: designing a cost-effective and relatively small A-bomb. While the cost of creating an atomic bomb can vary greatly, most estimates place the cost at well over $1 million; Phillip’s project posited that it was possible to do so for roughly $2,000 and the actual bomb would fit in the size of a U-haul trailer.
A project with frightening connotations, Phillip’s work was confiscated by the FBI, despite the fact that Phillips was able to design his bomb using only his nuclear engineering textbook and two unclassified government documents.
Phillip’s professor has said that the design would likely work, but his design was not actually built. Moreover, in comparison to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, this bomb design has been said to be more sophisticated and complex, implying how easy it would be for political terrorists to make such a devastating weapon. Nevertheless, though Phillips has said, “any other physics major could do this better,” his project was the only one in that seminar to get an A.
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My grandfather self published a memoir some 30 (ish) years ago. Unsurprisingly he never really managed to shift many of the thousand or so hardbacks I believe he paid to have printed. I think a lot of it was catharsis? I also know that the published versions leave out a lot of stuff that he thought was too sensitive or reflected badly on the Air Force etc. He's long since passed, and I have a stack of 20 or so left (…
donate them to libraries