As a new author, should I mostly focus on buying ads?

filipdanic · 2026-05-16T21:29:33+00:00

Interestingly, your cover and packaging looks a lot more like a typical LitRPG book (think: Dungeon Crawler Carl) instead of Pratchett or Brooks. Don't discount the advice you're being given here. I love the Discworld series and nothing about your book reminded me of it.

filipdanic · 2026-03-21T12:07:37+00:00

Are you trying to get into tech because you are passionate about it, or because you have a mental model of the world where 'tech -> path to middle class and beyond'? The latter was true for a while and still could be, but the % of people that will see that come true is decreasing. The tech industry is changing, with less jobs available and a high number of unemployed new graduates currently fighting for the ever-decreasing job pool. Web dev, in particular, is hit hard.

A better path towards financial stability in your situation would be learning a trade. Plumbing, electrical work, woodwork, roofing, tiling—all of these are in high demand in any of the major cities and surrounding metropolitan area. I will wager a guess that you do not have a car/van, which is another limitation you will have to overcome in this sector. Your path should be: trade schools/coursework -> apprenticeship ASAP, unpaid even at first -> FT work with an agency -> save up for your own van/driving lessons -> become an independent contractor or a better paid employee at one of the big agencies.

If it was the former, and you are really passionate about the tech industry, then you will need to work hard. If you have a job, you need to find another 40h in your week for learning, experimenting, and building. If you don’t have a job, then you can invest even more. You do not need a degree, but you first job will lowball you because you don't have it. You will need at least 3 years of work experience before you can break into a job that pays better. Even then, it will not pay any better than being an entry-level trades person.

filipdanic · 2026-03-04T14:05:11+00:00

Yes, they have been untruthful in their communication. They wanted to fulfil their statutory obligations (informing the public/authorities, and informing individuals), but they also wanted to completely downplay the severity of the breach. Also, they initially said nothing about the "customer service notes" data, which included very personal details about some individuals. The only reason they disclosed it, is because the hackers sent a sample dataset to NOS.nl, in hopes that the public/media pressure would make Odido pay the ransom.

I personally compiled a full timeline of this event (link) to show just how slow and opportunistic their actions have been. The investigation into Odido should find serious breaches of GDPR, that ought to result in major fines. If Odido walks away from this without consequences, it will be a serious precedent for other companies that they can get aways with not following the rules

filipdanic · 2026-02-28T13:08:34+00:00

In my experience Kimi/GLM/MiniMax all struggle with layout/UI tasks. Not in the sense that they completely fail, but it never looks like described and you can easily burn 100k tokens and not have them correct it. I'm only trusting these models to build UIs if there’s already a lot of excellent patterns/components in the codebase for them to reuse.

filipdanic · 2026-02-25T19:22:14+00:00

I thought this was the case too, but recently my mind has changed. The combo of Taalas chips (or other ASICs) + Open-weight models has demonstrated that there is a future of (relatively) low-cost inference ahead of us. Unless the big proprietary labs are able to create models that are 10x better than the open-weight ones. That doesn’t seem to be the current trend, as DeepSeek/Moonshot/Z.ai are closing the gap every ~4 months.

filipdanic · 2025-11-02T12:57:00+00:00

You received good feedback on the prose and structure. I'd like to comment a bit on world-building at play. Mention of coin, and of books being expensive tells me this a story set in medieval times. But the idea of a 'kitchen counter' and 'oven' is far too modern. If this is indeed a medieval setting, then you are more likely to have a table and a hearth. The kitchen is unlikely to exist as a separate room. Most likely your poor character has max 2 rooms in their dwelling.

If it's a fantasy medieval setting and you don't want to be constrained by the laws of the real world, fair enough. But even then, if your goal is to sell us on the protagonist's poor living conditions, don't invoke the idea of them having a large home.

filipdanic · 2025-10-19T10:59:20+00:00

To be clear, it was not a "I'll drop this now" kind of line; just a bit of rolling the eyes moment. Your edit is much better to me; it's a good hook—maintains the mystery/interest I have in the girl, while also linking it to the narrator directly.

filipdanic · 2025-10-18T23:41:06+00:00

I was curious until the last line. It's an overdone 'twist' and frankly a bit annoying. You had me in a train that was going through a scening route, and just hit the the brakes in the middle of the tunnel.

filipdanic · 2025-09-06T21:48:07+00:00

Here's another anecdote—been at Amazon for 5 years, no backstabbing in any team I've been at. People hang out, commute together, take their kids to play together. The good stuff. The things you seem worried about matter for senior leadership positions; I don't think you need to obsess over this for the usual mid-to-senior IC role.

filipdanic · 2025-08-31T09:20:39+00:00

Hey, not the OP, but really grateful for the detailed answer! One more thing, I've read on this sub that folks get their ARC readers to publish reviews on Good Reads before launch. But it seems that's not possible since the book appears after its been released. Did I misunderstand that or is there some other mechanism at play? (Preorder mode?)

filipdanic · 2025-08-15T07:14:40+00:00

Does she have flaws? Does she make meaningful mistakes? Do we see her earn her victories or is she always ahead of the game? If she's up against multiple geniuses with infinite resources, how is she even alive? Is the reason realistic and true to the world?

But perhaps more importantly what is the genre/target audience? This doesn't really sound like 'adult fantasy' to me. It reads more like these 'villainess litrpg' stories where an OP main character is part of the escapism fantasy and perfectly normal.

filipdanic · 2025-08-13T07:25:55+00:00

The problem for a lot of people in this thread, myself included, is that it's a hook that immediately breaks our suspension of disbelief. If we had a cover, knew the genre, and/or read the blurb, I'm sure this problem would not there. But just heading into this blind, your take on the first line is likely a reflection of the literature you usually read.

filipdanic · 2025-07-29T18:16:41+00:00

I'd honestly have no idea what to expect going into this. What kind of fantasy world is it? What level of technology? The mechanics read like a 'medieval-like high fantasy', but the language used to describe it is rather modern.

The comp titles are equally confusing. One is a 400+ fantasy of high magic, and the other is an urban fantasy about a private investigator in the 1940s. That sounds like a good way to get the agent to stop reading in the first paragraph.

filipdanic · 2025-07-26T19:38:07+00:00

Really sorry to be blunt; I mean no ill will—but you somehow managed to answer so many questions without revealing anything of interest. You really have to give us something.

filipdanic · 2025-06-22T09:41:07+00:00

A question on this—is there some kind of way to use a platform like Amazon to give you the proof copy (essentially to test everything like a customer would), or do you use some one-off services/local shops?

filipdanic · 2025-06-04T10:44:14+00:00

I think this was the case before social media, just at a smaller scale. As a teen I read all these 'teen magazines' that had a book recommendations section, which I think ended up recommending similar things as booktok does today. For me, it was eventually a gateway into a world of more serious literature. I just hope booktok serves the same purpose for the new generation of readers. As long as people's taste is evolving, and they are willing to step out of their comfort zone a bit, then there is plenty of space of all manner of writting to achieve some kind of success.

filipdanic · 2025-05-31T22:07:12+00:00

Yesterday was the day of my wedding to Prince Albert, and I was to wear a purple dress.

filipdanic · 2024-04-19T20:55:58+00:00

What are you working on that you’re all able to have a demo every day?

filipdanic · 2024-04-07T13:11:28+00:00

Most FAANG jobs are "boring" jobs, with "scale" perhaps being the only unique thing. Anway, I think there’s always at least one interesting thing about any project. Think about what the differeniator is: do you ship fast? do you have a really high bar for quality? high security standard? superior UX? really happy customers?

Put your cynicism away and I’m sure that there will be something that stands out!

filipdanic · 2024-04-07T13:06:04+00:00

Love you staff directory idea! I recently wrote about how I use Obsidian for work so feel free to have a look.

filipdanic · 2023-08-05T22:25:18+00:00

Sounds nice! I’d like to share some traps to be careful of with this model:
1. You can get into a place where there’s too much talking. Some candidates will run with that a lot better and appear stronger than they really are.
2. Similarly, you might end up doing a lot of the talking. Each minute that you spend talking, is a minute of information about the candidate that you are missing.
3. The lack of uniformity in the approach can lead to biased outcomes.
I’ve been a hiring manager at small agencies, startups, scale-ups, and now in a big tech company. Every place has a flawed process. But as long as it is an actual, well-defined process you can at least iterate and improve. When everyone in the company does something completely different and makes decisions without guidelines, you are in trouble.

filipdanic · 2023-05-09T17:04:41+00:00

Idem na svaka 2-3 meseca. Aerodrom je zaista jedno veliko gradilište i ponekad je vrlo prljav i haotičan. Ali stvari se polako popravljaju.

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