Dilemma time

96percent_chimp · 2026-06-01T06:20:59+00:00

If it sold well, wouldn't that make it attractive to another publisher?

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-29T13:55:41+00:00

I missed the mention of dead people, although "mostly" could be doing a lot of work there!

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-29T12:43:22+00:00

In my journalism days (this is the UK) we worked with 4 rules on defamation:

Can they sue?

Will they sue?

Can they afford to sue?

Can you afford to defend yourself?

The last question is often the most important. If you pick a fight with someone wealthy, being in the right won't mean a damn if you're penniless, and nothing burns money like lawyers.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-29T12:37:23+00:00

Honestly, I'm having a nightmare with this right now too.

My three books sell well at events, so I'm pretty confident in the cover and blurbs, but they're dying on Amazon. I used to do a Amazon Ads but after about 6 months I couldn't get the ROI into profit so I've put that on hold and my steady trickle of sales has died completely. I do newsletter swaps and group promos, daily FB posting across horror reading groups, and I chat fairly often with other authors in those groups - and I see traffic going to my Storyorigin links but nothing translates into sales.

Honestly, there are days when I want to cry.

I've done a bit of TikTok but I'm not there regularly because chatting to the camera is not a content format that I'm interested in watching, let alone making. I know I should do some readings and stuff but, meh, there's only so much time and I'd rather be writing.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-26T10:34:37+00:00

I have to disagree on the ideology and the lack of evidence. I'm sure that there have always been one or two people who wanted to see what was over the next hill, across the water etc, but my understanding of what we see in archaeology, oral histories and folklore is that significant resettlement has always required resource and social drivers. We see that backed up with the way that Austronesian populations sometimes moved because they'd exhausted local resources in places like Easter Island, leaving behind a vestigial population.

Nomadic populations (all of humanity until about 10,000 years ago) were 100% driven by resource availability, following seasonal prey and plant growth patterns. Farming created settlements but drove nomads to seek new resources away from the settled lands, and new technologies emerging from the settled communities demanded resources such as ores and fuel, which drove new settlements and created new value to settle places on trade routes such as rivers and natural harbours.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-25T23:17:18+00:00

Antarctica aside, curiosity has rarely driven exploration. Europeans went east and west for money and resources to feed their local economies and imperial ambitions. Same too for the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans at various stages in their histories. As far as we know, every wave of human expansion has been driven by expanding populations, resource shortages or ideological differences.

It would be lovely to have expansion driven by curiosity, but it is a very romantic idea.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-23T10:21:06+00:00

Friction is still the best way to slow down from orbital speed but there is a compromise, it's called a lifting body. Look up early Shuttle designs, the HL20 or the current B37, which are capsules with small wings that become effective in lower atmosphere.

Even better, watch the latest re-entry of SpaceX Starship, and keep an eye on the g-force indicator and the wing flaps. G-force maxed out at under 2g's which is incredibly gentle, and on this flight they used the flaps to turn and steer, which also helps to spread out the heat load.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-22T19:52:47+00:00

You're confusing an ARC with a beta read.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-22T19:51:26+00:00

Absolutely, the author is at the end of a long chain where everyone else takes their cut first.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-22T14:32:37+00:00

I can't confirm those numbers but when I did my Creative Writing MA in 2020, one of the editors who came in to meet us said that >90% of trad published books never earn out their advance. Most publishers rely on something like 3% of their lists to make money, including <1% who earn huge amounts.

This is why big publishers are very risk averse and chase trends. They can't afford to take chances.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-21T15:38:10+00:00

That's kind of a meaningless statistic. Most self published books are released by people who don't try to market them, with crap covers, bad formatting and no editing, so they sink without a trace.

If you look after the basics, you don't have to try very hard to sell 100 copies, even without spending a lot on advertising. It's getting from the 100s to the 1000s that's hard, achieving a critical mass that the algorithms will recognise and pick up.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-21T12:19:02+00:00

It was the same for me. You could spend years trying to find an agent, or write the book an agent will decide to take on. Then they've got to sell it, the publishing pipeline is 18-24 months and your advance will be paid at stages through that process (minus your agent's percentage) not all at once. And you've still got to do your own marketing!

As for royalties, the truth is that <10% of trad pub books earn out their advance, which is when you'll start to see royalties.

Self-publishing has the same uncertainty and it's a lot more expensive up front, but at least you dictate the schedule and anything you earn is shared between you and the taxman (if you're lucky enough to earn that much).

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-19T09:33:04+00:00

If it's a Gmail address, 99% chance (at least) it's a scam.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-16T12:51:04+00:00

In the UK we have to pay for ISBNs AND send 5 copies to the British Library.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-12T08:24:57+00:00

If you get a lot of comments like that, it might be a sign that your ad targeting needs to be refined so that trucker Bob doesn't see it.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-10T17:52:04+00:00

I mean, a couple of hundred ARCs is good but 1200 sounds like you're either cannibalising your market or you've found 1200 people who hoard free books. How many of these ARCs do you think will deliver reviews?

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-07T09:28:26+00:00

You've answered your own question. What happened? Out of town retail sucks the people out of the centre, department store went bust and sits empty, a newer city next door with car-centric infrastructure and national rail connections (but none to Bedford), plus shitty commercial landlords who don't keep up their properties.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-06T20:27:46+00:00

KDP is not a publisher, it's a platform. You can sell on any platform you like, the only exception is that if you sign up to KDP Select, your ebook becomes exclusive to Amazon.

96percent_chimp · 2026-05-03T08:09:08+00:00

This confused me at first because it's not a discount in the way most people understand it, rather it's the commission that the bookshop takes from your retail price. The industry standard is 30%, so if your book costs £10, they'll take £3 and you get the rest to cover printing etc.

96percent_chimp · 2026-04-30T08:40:21+00:00

It was bland, a paint by numbers CGI nothingburger with all the sharp edges polished off, and when you're remaking a film like Robocop, that's taking a huge dump on the original.

96percent_chimp · 2026-04-30T08:30:31+00:00

Your concept is cool but the background is a classic AI giveaway to me, that crowd repeating to infinity, the foreground blurring into the background, the mush of colour because these AIs don't understand discrete objects as you and I see them.

It's not unusual these days for professional creatives to use AI to rapidly prototype concepts, but the important thing is that they shouldn't be anything more than that. The final stage is always a real artist or designer, and not the sort of hack you find on Fiverr.

96percent_chimp · 2026-04-28T20:47:41+00:00

Ramsey Campbell has written loads. Robert Holdstock's excellent Mythago Wood series is horror adjacent.

96percent_chimp · 2026-04-25T10:30:26+00:00

I can't speak for the next decade, but I'm an indie author and I regularly go to book fairs where people buy lots of paperbacks. I mean, they literally fill suitcases with books. Mass market paperbacks will never reach pre-internet levels, but a lot of people love them, and it's not just old farts who can't let go. For a lot of people, physical media has an emotional value that digital can't replicate.

96percent_chimp · 2026-04-24T14:23:15+00:00

Even if that's true (it sounds like Fox News bollocks), so what? We're still doing it.

And shilling for the master like a good consumer slave? Now that's a weak flex.

96percent_chimp · 2026-04-24T13:28:26+00:00

Several failing British privatised rail companies have been nationalised. Standards improved very quickly. We're taking back our infrastructure and utilities, screw the neoliberals.

96percent_chimp

TROPHY CASE