what's his moniker?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48515658)

expound on how it went

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48515655)

expound on how it went

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48515656)

it went fine, it was a relief to exorcise it from my being - it was haunting me - and it served as the springboard to weekly work

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48515672)

what do you mean "weekly work"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48515715)

just by writing consistently, posting on notes, restacking others and being friendly

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48515752)

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books/zgbs/books

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48516285)

I guess maybe I can send a sup on linkedin. That would be me at the very top of my networking game.

also, tyty, this is actually helpful

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48515792)

in this era, imo, if you're doing to do something interesting -- which is inherently going to be anti-establishment and edgy -- you're probably going to have to self-publish

arx-han wrote an awesome book called incel and had to self-publish it (https://www.amazon.com/INCEL-Novel-ARX-Han/dp/B0CJLCZVCG )

it's basically as good as american psycho, or close to it imo

he has been building his audience via word-of-mouth with regular substack posts and it's working out for him: https://www.decentralizedfiction.com/

the thing is marketing a book is a totally different skillset than writing one, and both are equally important. there's no easy way to success, it's a grind that takes a lot of work

anyway i highly recommend incel if you decide to read it

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48515803)

Two are rich lib yoga white women with nose piercings. One wrote a sob story about an immigrant family. The other wrote a chick-friendly book inspired by the death of her father. One of them got some critical praise, but neither seems to have been a "hit." These kind of people get more book deals because the book audience looks like them these days.

One is a black guy who writes in a genre that is traditionally very nerdy. He has a legit following but being "diverse" was his hook even though he went to top schools his whole life.

Two are white males. One is a former military guy who wrote a book that sold decently well and was optioned for a movie. But it was a personal story and a one hit wonder. The other only got his book deal because he's a close relative of a major literary darling.

I also know two rich white chicks who have kids and self-published books while being SAHMs for a period. They are probably the best-written books out of this list and I wouldn't be surprised if they ultimately made the same amount of money as the traditionally published books.

To have any real success today, you need to have something that's going to get snatched up for some netflix bullshit starring Nicole Kidman or Reese Witherspoon.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48516271)

Aren't those mostly copy pasta? I'm more intrigued with how they actually design the paper so it folds up properly once printed. I tried to lay out notecards so they would print 6 per piece of 8.5 x 11 paper (with different fronts/backs) and it took nearly all of my considerable mental faculties.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48516292)

to be honest the whole process has totally blown out my holds. I'm so cynical and jaded and depressed re: the industry now that it makes me refrain from buying any book that's less than like 50 years old. I would never recommend any white male write a book or engage at all the publishing industry, it's a huge waste of time and you're basically just kissing the asses of people who resent you

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48516495)

hell, just look at the books that the US government/red cross/etc would send overseas in cheap paperback editions during WWII--those guys read all sorts of high quality fiction

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48517326)

Yes. 90K words of fanfiction, got thousands of readers. It was fun. I learned a lot about plotting and pacing without having to worry about world-building or inventing characters.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48516569)

In my observations, the publishing industry is more or less controlled by coastal liberals. The kind of people who regard it as their life missive to 'boost' the stories of the 'historically marginalized.' It's a very bad era to be a straight white man that is just trying to publish a good story. It's just not what they are looking for. For example, I sincerely doubt that 'The Count of Monte Cristo' would be picked up today.

If you look at the publishing houses that will accept submissions direct from writers, or agents who are accepting submissions, they almost always tend toward marginalized topics/writers. Look at this, as one example:

https://writingcooperative.com/10-agents-looking-for-science-fiction-now-f7b634936c53

9 of 10 are women, and most are looking for middle-grade or young adult stories. There are several references to wanting diverse or female protagonists and wanting settings/themes outside of the medieval or European fantasy standards. So even if you took this all to heart and wrote a compelling story about an gay teenaged woman discovering herself in a fantasy setting inspired by Indian / Chinese / Korean / Japanese mythology, you'd still have no chance because you'd just be an interloper. You don't have the bona-fides. It's an industry where victim hierarchies and intersectionalities actually matter.

Some would say that it's just a response to the market. And while it's true that historically the MG/YA genres sell better, and adult women read much more than men, these measures have skewed very hard in the past 20 years because of the content published.

I realize that this will sound bitter/jaded/jealous, but I've read some of the current popular fantasy/science fiction out there and it's all just terrible. I just hate it. So many plot holes and contrivances. Just ridiculous, ridiculous shit where the reader should be like, 'there's no fucking way this would happen' etc. A lot of open focus on female sexuality too. And yet, this is the stuff that flies off the shelves at Target and goes high on the Amazon lists.

Anyway. That'll be it for now.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48517114)

All three novels I wrote while I was in some way or another working full time, but not biglol levels of demanding jobs. You just need to clear about a solid hour a day and be serious about that time - having it consistently cleared and not wasting the time when you have it.

If I had infinite time to write I’d still probably do a book in a year, but it would be higher quality

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48517301)

The best authors also had limited media to work with. Ancient Chinese texts are a lot easier to understand and aren't full of the customary bullshit we encounter in western texts, because the only long term storage media they had were small bamboo slats that could be assembled into "books" of only 30 slats.

The Mayans let their script do a lot of the talking. The way you wrote the script reflected your views as much as anything you were saying phonetically. You couldn't be a great writer unless you were also a great artist, with a distinctive style of writing anyone could identify.

But writing itself it TTT as a form of knowledge preservation. It was only developed as a technology for administrative purposes. For the first 500 years we had writing, no one even recorded the genealogy of kings, let alone any sort of religious or "popular" text.

Instead knowledge was preserved - and preserved better - through oral traditions, using song, meter and rhyme. You can teach a kid to sing a song a hell of a lot easier than you can teach him to read and write, and he's gonna remember those lyrics better than anything he reads in a textbook or the Bible.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5658754&forum_id=2...id.#48519412)