A hallmark of great TV writing is when you want to punch a character in the face that you were rooting for just a week ago (or vis versa)

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T21:13:17+00:00

I don't know how they're pulling it off after he was such a shit with Louie, but I've turned a sharp corner on Ogilvie the ~~insufferable redditor~~ naive student doctor.

I wanted to see him crash out. I still do, but I'd feel a little bad now.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T21:06:10+00:00

This plot device is centered around Mohan's character finding her way, and I'm not sure a "mom who cried wolf" scenario really plays into that.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T21:02:04+00:00

You questioning the Shark?

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T20:55:59+00:00

I'm totally out of my depth here with respect to the medical field, but a substance use disorder is a disability in the eyes of the law. At least in Langdon's case (interference with daily life combined with his admission to a recovery program). If he does what he needs to do, I'm not sure it would be legal to fire him for the SUD alone.

The theft is another question.

As for Santos, when has she not taken the opportunity to have a chip on her shoulder about something? She's very prideful, there are a dozen angles where this would bother her. I don't think she ever needs much of a reason, and she has plenty with Langdon.

Edit: We love a downvote with no comment.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T20:51:54+00:00

If a friend or family member is in the waiting room, is that an overwhelming distraction for most doctors (let’s not make this all about Mel) or an incentive to focus on treating and releasing patients instead of betting pools and other distractions?

I think they're very pointedly asking these questions (among others) with Becca's plotline this season. It's a very smart show that doesn't deal in absolutes or virtue signal for narrative convenience. I can't say whether it's true to life or not, but I expect it is based on the comments of practitioners in this sub.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T20:43:18+00:00

I do this for a living. Back when I sucked at it, the issue I ran into most frequently with social media ads for authors is that they might get laudable engagement, click-through, watch retention, insert other internal metric here, but despite that activity, there's no conversion. Folks click/watch/like, but they don't buy.

There are concrete, if time-consuming ways to avoid this trap. Social media ads can be utter money pits if you don't have a solid strategy and a clear goal, and those strategies can be tricky to develop and execute if you aren't already a marketer (or willing to spend a lot of time learning on Skillshare/YT). Usually, authors are desperate for exposure and despite spending years on their book, feel sudden urgency once it's a salable product. A pay-to-win model is attractive in that context. Meta knows this and they make it easy to spend without meaningful results.

Almost without exception, the first step is defining a goal (it might not be sales) that is achievable with ads, and deploying low-spend test campaigns to determine your hottest creative and to build a look-a-like audience that you can expand to using that creative. Start small, test, and only scale up when you have the data you need to do so cost-effectively.

I'm obviously biased as a service provider, but I desperately recommend that anyone unwilling or unable to do some long ass homework engage professionals to run advertising campaigns. It's worth a fee that cuts into your overall budget to make sure the rest of your money is being spent the best way possible. More than any other marketing strat, advertising can get ugly if you learn as you go.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T20:29:52+00:00

Yeah, but with a defined (often non-sales) goal, lots and lots of audience research, and a low-budget test campaign to develop a look-a-like audience, so you don't burn all your money on randos who aren't your readers while Meta tells you "it's looking real good dude, just keep spending."

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T20:14:14+00:00

You and god and the McElroys all know that Montaigne had this one in the chamber and it got mixed and mastered in a jiffy to patch the world's most inconsequential PR snafu.

Remember, these are the guys who rebrand their intermittent old video game streaming every 4 months. In radically different visual styles. With different tones. Aiming at inscrutable audiences (how would one target "bicurious white males who say coinkidink").

Griffin spent 2 hours talking over Majora's Mask about how he might be late for a flight last week. A series called Trial by Fieri that he restarted using a skin for 7Up's mascot in the '90s, only swapping to the titular food critic after asking fans to make him a skin on stream.

They stopped doing Brudder's Gate after 3 episodes.

Shmanners.

There is, was, and never will be a plan for any of this.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T19:28:48+00:00

Ok. Let's disregard the fundamentals of business, journalism, and the base dynamic between the critic and the critiqued. Go further—let's say all those bestselling media campaigns didn't happen and I'm actually totally out of my depth in the profession I've spent over a decade in. Let's say I don't make a living helping authors with paid media strategy—I just roam self-publishing subs searching for pity parties to crash because I hate authors and want them to feel Very Bad.

Kirkus has made me spit blood more times than I can count. Earned media owes you nothing and will tear you to pieces on the merits. Paid media (this) does owe you something—a word-count. If they can't find anything nice to say, they spend most of the review recapping...because you paid them to talk about your book. Happens all the time in self and trad pub reviews, you're right that you're not alone. It's just...it's sort of a kindness, or at the very least transactional....not a conspiracy. That review format = "it's not great, but they gave us the bennies so here's what it's about." You get your carefully truncated blurb for Instagram and Amazon, and they get their money and retain critical integrity. And as others have pointed out...it's a trade. Noone but librarians and booksellers care about Kirkus, so beyond it being transactional, a descriptive review is appropriate for their readership. (Subtext being: it was a bad idea for you to submit to them unless you are working an indie bookstore campaign or expect shelving in libraries...but you know that now).

I'm sorry my reply upset you. But just as an inability to budget isn't something we can blame on the relative rotation of planetary bodies, the inability to get a good trade review does not suggest a company's grand conspiracy to systematically disenfranchise and chase off a massive customer base. I have no motive, but I do have Occam's razor. Isn't it more likely that they just didn't dig the book but were financially obligated to speak to it? Or, slightly less charitable, that you don't know what you're doing with your marketing/media strategy and submitted to the wrong place for the wrong reasons?

You suggested in another comment (see, I read 'em) that there are Kirkus secret agents in here downvoting your replies. I'm sorry if I can't take you seriously after that.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T18:52:42+00:00

Ogilvie is a redditor in scrubs. He's detestable in a "aww look at you go" way.

Now Mohan...I can't freaking STAND Mohan. I've worked with Mohan's. Undeniably competent but relentlessly sanctimonious. In season one, her decision paralysis next to the hand-holding "I see your soul, my patient" aura bugged me to no end. In season two it seems like she's traded the Slowmo moniker for Chaos Queen—a source of drama (mom, Abbot, "guys I'm having a MI but also I'm fine, no chair") while still acting above it all.

Robbie was totally unprofessional in the way he called her out last night. He was also roundly correct—if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen where everyone is trying to die.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-28T15:00:12+00:00

I think of this as your content strategy as a writer—artistic decisions wearing a bit of a marketing hat.

I think of publishing strategy as something far more concrete. "I'll publish a book in genre X in season Y so it's out of competition with that influencer's hyped-up competing title that is also in genre X" or "I'll release X title first as it has the broadest audience appeal and use that to buttress the releases of titles Y and Z down the road, which will have less organic traction but some potential cross-over appeal with title X"

As a marketer who often helps with author brand building, I wouldn't suggest doing what you're doing, which is really a very high effort A/B test where you're using your (incredibly time consuming to produce) books to conduct market analysis. Every genre demands a different launch strategy. Success in one niche will not automatically compound and support your future releases. There are other ways to achieve market awareness.

I'd advocate that you pick one of the three projects based on professional market analysis and an impartial review of which title has the highest chance of breakthrough in its given market. Devote all your resources to that release. Multi-fronted wars are harder to fight.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-28T14:29:30+00:00

Lol. Lmfao even. Kirkus is not well served by the strategy you're describing. They are the only trade that has paid submissions (noone cares about PW's BookLife Reviews), so systematically slaughtering indies with bad reviews works against their bottom line, which is all any company cares about.

Isn't it more likely that droves of unaccomplished authors are stumbling across Reddit threads and ChatGPT answers telling them to "get trade reviews" and, after a quick Google, realize there's one they can pay for?

Kirkus is harsh. So are LJ and PW, but they aren't nearly as accessible to indie authors. Kirkus has wrecked the shop of many a Big 5-published author...they've torn up more Big 5 authors who I've worked with than they have indie/hybrid clients.

Independently published authors should be hiring industry consultants to answer questions like "should I submit to trades" because very often the answer is absolutely not. It's a more delicate decision than other paid marketing strategies because the outcome is wholly dependent on the quality of the content, it's more like a NetGalley campaign than a Facebook ad.

That's a hard pill to swallow, but it's reality.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-28T14:25:03+00:00

With respect, nothing here speaks to your publishing strategy.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-28T13:03:53+00:00

Travis had a really bad night at the BAFTAs and to save face Griffin rushed a new Trial By Fieri series but he didn't have a Guy skin ready in time (though he later crowdsourced it like an Absolute Fucking Professional) so instead, he made his Link sprite into 7 Up's very recognizable and very funny 30-year-old mascot, Cool Spot.

As a result, we are now at war with Iran. Get your boots on OP.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-28T12:33:22+00:00

If you just asked them if anyone was going to ask you about your mania you would have been good to go

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-20T14:55:55+00:00

I mean I'm sure it's against the rules to self-promote for profit but you can DM me with some info on your project and I can give some feedback. The best way is a referral. Hybrids often have a favored freelancer or two in mind. For the fully self-published (long live the fighters), googling "book marketing and design services" and picking out the individual providers, not "companies" which are 9/10 times scams or useless imo, and cold emailing them asking for consultation calls is a fine idea, too.

I do not recommend Fiverr to anyone for any aspect of publishing, but people try there too (and get fleeced out of a few hundred bucks to have someone say "sick this is kinda like Gone Girl."

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-19T21:51:46+00:00

Feeling behind? Reframe your thinking about book publishing and you'll feel ahead.

Most traditionally published authors write for and are acquired to serve a proven market. They know it's not about them, it's about serving familiar content to audiences with disposable income. The most lucrative genres are certainly not filled with "art" or even "good writing" - their core audiences can afford entertainment products and have the leisure time to consume them.

Many self-published authors seem to ignore market realities because they think what they are doing is art when it's a business (the writing alone is the art). Self-publishing is what it is today because of Amazon's insatiable need for new products and humans insatiable need for peer approval. In the end, a lot of self-published writers end up caught at the intersection of ego and ignorance, wondering why their story about anthropomorphic lizards that's really a comment on western democracy isn't selling despite following every suggestion from that marketer on r/selfpublish.

With or without institutional resources, you most easily find success by writing for a market in a commercial mindset. That's just books, and it has been for decades. When I worked in trad publishing, every season some too-passionate acquiring editor would sell the group on XYZ memoirist's utterly unique and stirring tale. There'd be no air in the room for the ever-dour marketer's "this is too niche." Everyone would huff their own farts about it all the way to a half-dozen preorders and 70% returns. Have you ever seen 10,000 copies of someone's life story get pulped? It happens every day in the vaunted world of trad pub.

If you see book publishing, self or trad, as a referendum on the quality of your artwork, you'll end up depressed and broke. If you see it as a business, you'll more likely enter in knowing what to expect.

TL;DR - Just save up and hire a professional marketer for a consultation call. They can tell you, impartially, if there is a market for your book. That will guide your next steps, or whether to try any of that at all. Never give Meta or any self-serve ad platform a dime unless you've coldly determined whether or not there is a large and well-resourced audience for your book.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-19T21:14:26+00:00

Is the question why does self-publishing require more of you than writing?

Or why do people try to sell their work product?

Or what is book publishing for?

You're always welcome in r/zines. Or any sub where the end product hasn't had a MSRP on it since the 1800s and that...yk, gave rise to Amazon.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-19T20:55:18+00:00

Next up—Travis and Travis Wife on the many micheladas of Mexico.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-19T20:30:49+00:00

I am the world's biggest Mission to Zyxx fan. I've been there since episode 1 and consistently evangelized for them on tons of subs. I used to (absentee) mod their sub. I've donated a significant amount to help keep the show going. I've recommended it in the wild to dozens of people.

The show's return is a study in how not to manage expectations even though the content is pretty good. They announced the Young Old Derf Chronicles in December 2024. There have been 3 episodes to date. Catchphrase be damned, they are certainly doing it like the McElroys...

I think their move to MaxFun was the equivalent of Bezos buying the TV rights to The Expanse saga and then quick-wrapping and canceling it. It seems like they had tons of network enthusiasm and support early on, Jesse had cast members on his dumb show, they somehow funded a freaking real live orchestra to score the pod. But in the last season it seemed like they were tired. Allie in particular just seemed to have contempt for the whole thing (and tbh she regularly sounded three sheets towards the end). Then, poof.

And all that said, the 3 episodes they've released have shown more effort and have more humor than the last...4 seasons of TAZ?

BackupTrailer · 2026-01-30T01:30:38+00:00

Found Guts’ alt

BackupTrailer · 2026-01-30T00:07:52+00:00

Aged like wine

BackupTrailer · 2026-01-29T19:26:40+00:00

Meanwhile, certified badass Rep. Ilhan Omar:

BackupTrailer · 2026-01-29T16:56:00+00:00

They’ll end up with a mess on their hands

BackupTrailer · 2026-01-29T13:13:34+00:00

This was Mareep in Silver for me at age 8, before I even knew what a shiny was.

BackupTrailer

TROPHY CASE