So I Self Published a Book Today

[Yesterday]

I applaud you @Starjot for the cool book ... cover.

Yeah, I've made zero eye contact with the Amazon page yet - lazy.

No but I'm stuck on the artful looking lil beetle guy jewel holding a globe, also your blurb about the Ukrainian designer is neat and supportive.

There's no intrinsic meaning and subtlety is lost when someone's idea of creativity correlates to spending a fiver on Fiverr for subpar art!

Does anyone here speak art as a mother tongue?

Spoiler alert - nobody's gonna decode Starjot's book cover anyway.

This seems like a reason enough to read it.

Btw, I've purchased 2 books produced by other forum members in the past 10 years but they were non-fiction zzzz.

Let's discuss your writing process (humor me).

How does your personal background, paranoia, and/or interests in science or technology influence your approach to hard science fiction writing and world-building?

Are you the type who procrastinates then writes under inebriated duress; like you have to gobble a glass of something stiff in the likes of Stephen King or whoever else writes crazy stuff to trigger useful dendritic dispersions?

How many versions of this book have you drafted; is this finished version of your book actually some re-solved plot holes iteration after an accidental forgetting or deleting or crumbling up of the previous version/s? Tell me about it.

Anything goes in writing as long as work gets done I say.

When I write JavaScript on ADHD meds it's still a joy or a slog depending on the constraints of time, motivation, or whether there's the promise of my code ending up a game I can add graphics to later on or whatever.

Did I mention there's no link to the ...

[starjots]

I applaud you @Starjot for the cool book ... cover.

Yeah, I've made zero eye contact with the Amazon page yet - lazy.

No but I'm stuck on the artful looking lil beetle guy jewel holding a globe, also your blurb about the Ukrainian designer is neat and supportive.

There's no intrinsic meaning and subtlety is lost when someone's idea of creativity correlates to spending a fiver on Fiverr for subpar art!

Does anyone here speak art as a mother tongue?

Spoiler alert - nobody's gonna decode Starjot's book cover anyway.

This seems like a reason enough to read it.

Cover design, like everything else with books, has its own norms. Since this is Sci-Fi, the cover is probably outside of that, more in line with a thriller. My wife vetoed putting any blood on the cover which would have been a clear 'this is a thriller' signal.

Anyway, what is on the cover is actually a central plot element to the book - so you are exactly right. For those that read it, the cover will be obvious, sort of an easter egg in your face.

Let's discuss your writing process (humor me).

How does your personal background, paranoia, and/or interests in science or technology influence your approach to hard science fiction writing and world-building?

I welcome the questions, as I'm trying to psych myself up to write another book. If nothing else, it's a good hobby.

My personal background is I'm an engineer by education and was gainfully employed as such my entire life. So I like the world and its elements to be at least marginally plausible in a technical sense. The book is set 40-50 years in the future, so it's not hard to extrapolate various trends, albeit, in some cases, optimistically. This is fairly normal in Sci-Fi -- the author is overly optimistic on dates, but it really shouldn't matter if the story is decent.

I'm also interested in how technology effects what it means to be human as well as what it means to be alive, intelligent, sentient, and all that stuff. I think the central problem of our species is how quickly we can adapt to the worlds and societies we create. This isn't a revolutionary idea to be sure, but I don't see it explored much. Often sci-fi deals with worst case/dystopian futures or best case/utopias where mankind has solved their problems and encounter outside (alien) forces or just dwells on small scale personal shit. I'm interested in the middle ground.

Are you the type who procrastinates then writes under inebriated duress; like you have to gobble a glass of something stiff in the likes of Stephen King or whoever else writes crazy stuff to trigger useful dendritic dispersions?

How many versions of this book have you drafted; is this finished version of your book actually some re-solved plot holes iteration after an accidental forgetting or deleting or crumbling up of the previous version/s? Tell me about it.

My first draft was on a manual typewriter. I just wrote and pushed it out, a thousand or two thousand words a day for maybe three months. I just wrote whatever the hell came into my head. Halfway through that I knew it was total shit, but I also knew I need to finish it before starting over.

Most of the characters and major themes came from this first draft. They emerged. But of the story itself, only a few bits survived to the final. This first draft was at least ten years ago. Yeah. I probably rewrote it three times in between, letting it lie fallow in between. My wife read most of these in between versions. I knew they were getting better, but not good enough.

The writing process, when I was doing it, was to write three or four pages until I had no idea what happened next. Then I'd sleep on it, think about what might happen, come up with ideas. I really enjoyed this part. Imagining stuff, then seeing what I came up with while I slept. The next time I wrote, I'd start with those ideas. The weird thing about writing for me is -- things are revealed more than deliberately put down. It's like you have a fictional multiverse with a thousand different stories, somewhat similar, and you are threading your way among these multiverses, pulling together a good story line.

After my last draft, I sent it to four beta readers, got feedback. By this time I had written at least a half million words of which 80,000 survived. There were nagging little plot holes or things I couldn't explain and the ending was weak. So I thought about the feedback and conceived an entirely new final third/ending and rewrote it in a couple of months.

And then I knew it was finished, story-wise. The book is like an exposed geological formation, with exposed and buried features from various drafts of the book poking out as different strata. I believe they are woven together and coherent, but a professional editor or reader might think otherwise.

My oldest son has read it and declared it 'dense.' I agree, it is compacted and dense, not airy, not a lot of wasted words. You ever read a book where you can skip paragraphs and pages and it makes no difference? That's a one draft book right there.

I tried to do an audiobook version, which wasted a year, but then spent several months with editing and so forth as mentioned previously and pushed it out the door.

One downside is, having spent ten years writing it, what was 'cutting edge' in the beginning (to me) seemed a bit passee by the time I finished it. But it's sci-fi, so all the tropes have been established long ago anyway.

Anything goes in writing as long as work gets done I say.

Yea - step one is to do something. I started book two at least two years ago, knocked out a hundred pages on a typewriter. Didn't finish it. I have some new characters, a new challenge and so forth. But I'm having a bit of struggle restarting. If I have to write five or six words for every one that makes it to final, best thing to do is just to do.

--

As a final thought - I'm not sure if this book works for most readers. Maybe ten people have told me they've started it, but only a couple have said they've finished it. This is valuable indirect feedback. My guess is, I need to add some yeast back in for the next recipe, let it rise, and leave some of the air in. Make it less dense. Use simpler words when I can. Wander around a bit. So many popular books I've read seem to wander around an awful lot and spend 500 pages saying what I think is worth a hundred pages. But they're popular.

Or maybe I just need to keep learning to write better

[Yesterday]

I applaud you @Starjot for the cool book ... cover.

Yeah, I've made zero eye contact with the Amazon page yet - lazy.

No but I'm stuck on the artful looking lil beetle guy jewel holding a globe, also your blurb about the Ukrainian designer is neat and supportive.

There's no intrinsic meaning and subtlety is lost when someone's idea of creativity correlates to spending a fiver on Fiverr for subpar art!

Does anyone here speak art as a mother tongue?

Spoiler alert - nobody's gonna decode Starjot's book cover anyway.

This seems like a reason enough to read it.

Cover design, like everything else with books, has its own norms. Since this is Sci-Fi, the cover is probably outside of that, more in line with a thriller. My wife vetoed putting any blood on the cover which would have been a clear 'this is a thriller' signal.

Anyway, what is on the cover is actually a central plot element to the book - so you are exactly right. For those that read it, the cover will be obvious, sort of an easter egg in your face.

Let's discuss your writing process (humor me).

How does your personal background, paranoia, and/or interests in science or technology influence your approach to hard science fiction writing and world-building?

I welcome the questions, as I'm trying to psych myself up to write another book. If nothing else, it's a good hobby.

My personal background is I'm an engineer by education and was gainfully employed as such my entire life. So I like the world and its elements to be at least marginally plausible in a technical sense. The book is set 40-50 years in the future, so it's not hard to extrapolate various trends, albeit, in some cases, optimistically. This is fairly normal in Sci-Fi -- the author is overly optimistic on dates, but it really shouldn't matter if the story is decent.

I'm also interested in how technology effects what it means to be human as well as what it means to be alive, intelligent, sentient, and all that stuff. I think the central problem of our species is how quickly we can adapt to the worlds and societies we create. This isn't a revolutionary idea to be sure, but I don't see it explored much. Often sci-fi deals with worst case/dystopian futures or best case/utopias where mankind has solved their problems and encounter outside (alien) forces or just dwells on small scale personal shit. I'm interested in the middle ground.

Are you the type who procrastinates then writes under inebriated duress; like you have to gobble a glass of something stiff in the likes of Stephen King or whoever else writes crazy stuff to trigger useful dendritic dispersions?

How many versions of this book have you drafted; is this finished version of your book actually some re-solved plot holes iteration after an accidental forgetting or deleting or crumbling up of the previous version/s? Tell me about it.

My first draft was on a manual typewriter. I just wrote and pushed it out, a thousand or two thousand words a day for maybe three months. I just wrote whatever the hell came into my head. Halfway through that I knew it was total shit, but I also knew I need to finish it before starting over.

Most of the characters and major themes came from this first draft. They emerged. But of the story itself, only a few bits survived to the final. This first draft was at least ten years ago. Yeah. I probably rewrote it three times in between, letting it lie fallow in between. My wife read most of these in between versions. I knew they were getting better, but not good enough.

The writing process, when I was doing it, was to write three or four pages until I had no idea what happened next. Then I'd sleep on it, think about what might happen, come up with ideas. I really enjoyed this part. Imagining stuff, then seeing what I came up with while I slept. The next time I wrote, I'd start with those ideas. The weird thing about writing for me is -- things are revealed more than deliberately put down. It's like you have a fictional multiverse with a thousand different stories, somewhat similar, and you are threading your way among these multiverses, pulling together a good story line.

After my last draft, I sent it to four beta readers, got feedback. By this time I had written at least a half million words of which 80,000 survived. There were nagging little plot holes or things I couldn't explain and the ending was weak. So I thought about the feedback and conceived an entirely new final third/ending and rewrote it in a couple of months.

And then I knew it was finished, story-wise. The book is like an exposed geological formation, with exposed and buried features from various drafts of the book poking out as different strata. I believe they are woven together and coherent, but a professional editor or reader might think otherwise.

My oldest son has read it and declared it 'dense.' I agree, it is compacted and dense, not airy, not a lot of wasted words. You ever read a book where you can skip paragraphs and pages and it makes no difference? That's a one draft book right there.

I tried to do an audiobook version, which wasted a year, but then spent several months with editing and so forth as mentioned previously and pushed it out the door.

One downside is, having spent ten years writing it, what was 'cutting edge' in the beginning (to me) seemed a bit passee by the time I finished it. But it's sci-fi, so all the tropes have been established long ago anyway.

Anything goes in writing as long as work gets done I say.

Yea - step one is to do something. I started book two at least two years ago, knocked out a hundred pages on a typewriter. Didn't finish it. I have some new characters, a new challenge and so forth. But I'm having a bit of struggle restarting. If I have to write five or six words for every one that makes it to final, best thing to do is just to do.

--

As a final thought - I'm not sure if this book works for most readers. Maybe ten people have told me they've started it, but only a couple have said they've finished it. This is valuable indirect feedback. My guess is, I need to add some yeast back in for the next recipe, let it rise, and leave some of the air in. Make it less dense. Use simpler words when I can. Wander around a bit. So many popular books I've read seem to wander around an awful lot and spend 500 pages saying what I think is worth a hundred pages. But they're popular.

Or maybe I just need to keep learning to write better

You sure do like to talk.

[Madrigal]

As a final thought - I'm not sure if this book works for most readers. Maybe ten people have told me they've started it, but only a couple have said they've finished it.

Hey! Regrettably I have to add myself to that list, but it's not because of the book - I had to put down the other book I was reading as well when the new semester began and I started having obligatory reading to do for two different schools. But I will definitely pick it back up the first chance I get. I have some free time soon as I'll be traveling and taking time off work. I liked the plot immediately, although as someone with little experience reading Sci-Fi, some parts required more concentration than I'm accustomed to when reading novels, mostly due to terminology. I will be able to pick up where I left off though, because I remember the story well up until the point I had to set it aside.

[Catoptric]

I went ahead and bought the book and have just read up to the beginning of the second chapter (and may come back to update or add additional thoughts.

I won't be able to leave an Amazon review (I was leaving too many reviews on Amazon that were apparently not verified, so I was flagged as violating something on the platform, and now can't leave any, even for things bought on Amazon; apparently this is not that uncommon, as even people that were legitimate and not committing any known offenses, might also have their review or Kindle account completely inaccessible due to some robo-tagged taboo that can never be determined since no record of it exists.)

The book seems good, though admittedly people might start out not understanding the plot or what is taking place because it's a very wholistic approach to storytelling, and involves a lot of inductive approaches, where certain aspects of descriptive dialogue might be important to establish how the reader should be lead into the story narrative.

Alternatively, I tend to think the way I write would likewise alienate the reader because I assume descriptive dialogue is what people would want when often minimalism works best for the reader (the argument being, would people like Hemingway or Steinbeck have been as receptive to how the industry functions today, and I think I pissed off a few Authors on writing groups who would rather stamper off with a, "good day to you sir!" because I realize they were just selling an escapism element for the buyer to latch onto, whereas stories that challenge people to understand abstract concepts like technology and a singularity component, might go over their heads (so sometimes something like this would assume the reader understands more than they actually would lead on, which is where dialogue that tried to incorporate some elements of where it's getting at might end up reading more like a textbook establishing some connection to what they can perceive as relatable, such as make a John von Neumann reference to the term 'singularity,' or establish an immediate overt descripter as to what the ancient artifact and sentient android technology is referring to while perhaps establishing how it is known by the observer in the book that this is the plot device without revealing more than necessary,) which of course assumes I will be needing to continue reading of course, which I plan to do (but this is where it gets into the "elevator pitch" context of what a lot of readers will gravitate towards in the immediate chapter.)

This is one reason I don't write because I would tear my writing apart with revisions and added stuff, without actually removing any additional content that might confuse the narrative that was already established from the initial part (such as a prologue that I intended to introduce the reader to a part of the story that would seem alien to the present "current" reality that the chapter 1 would start off as,) whereas the plot device revolves around part of a mystery of being conscious in the future, with a technology that has not fully been revealed as to whether the character is in fact alive or dead (and it hints at the "Deckard is a Replicant" kind of mystery to something like Blade Runner, that got somewhat lost in translation with the newer releases of the movies,) while the assumption the character had was somehow he was alive, and people only feared those who they assumed were somehow not part of the "bubble" of the future "civilized society," only to instead fear mortality, and what it means to be human (that we are basically no different from machines, but that likewise a machine can likewise be similar to humanity if it is devoid of what it means to be "human,") and hence it's a potentially offputting story I was planning to branch out more but was still deciding on how to best establish my own dialogue without sounding predictable, since I mostly started it when still in HS and only incorporated different components that still seem very out of place because it almost sounds like Holden Cauffield.

I would be a contrarian to traditional writing methods and don't see it as something that people would actually gravitate towards, much as a photographer can approach the topic of photography in complete contrast with what the market wants (ergo, they want a bunch of overly bright and saturated imagery that neutralizes any contrast by generating an almost muted brownish tinge, while also posing people in a very staged Olan Mills presentation,) or if judging the current marketing approach done with streaming platforms, too often it's focused purely on the characters who tend to have a deadpan look with hints of vocal fry in the previews.)

The main problem I see isn't how it was written but the fact that if you search for your name or the name of the book it doesn't directly recognize it in connection to Amazon from Google search (it needs to be specifically searched within Amazon with that title,) but similarly I found a very well known author named Mercedes Lackey will show up with an average of 40,000 reviews per book on Goodreads, but unless you went directly to Amazon to search for her, you wouldn't find the books pop up, where at most only 2,000 reviews of any one book seems to show up (possibly because so many used books are floating around where readers get ahold of it, which Amazon tends to filter and remove because it isn't generating the sales they want from "and on" additions to the checkout page.

So basically, it might be necessary to generate attention to SEO results through social media or writing discussion pages in order to redirect to Amazon, by posting info so that Google can have the web crawlers generate attention to the book. How easily this works, I don't know, but usually at some point Amazon will be one of the first results when searching info which might require some tweaks to what it prompts for, and perhaps also generating interest from within interest groups like alternative history and ancient aliens pages (because people will gravitate towards subjects involving occultism and advanced technology that might be hinting at an ancient "lost civilization.")

Also, I posted a bit (mostly reposted from elsewhere) involving the topic of what makes self-published books noticed on Amazon, and quite a bit of it seemed to be based on generating more and more attention through subsequent releases, as otherwise it will tend to just gloss over any books that are published (even still, that might only amount to $100 a month with 12 published books, even if those self-published books supposedly make more than mainstream publishing houses.)

I don't really know, but the book does look good from the subject, which for many is probably a "breath of fresh air" when other people are usually writing fairly predictable topics.

[starjots]

I'm interested in any feedback you have, particularly if you manage to get to the end. My impression is it might be a bit dense, but who knows? Not me. Too close to it.

As far as marketing - I was initially excited, but am now not sure if it's worth it in it's present form.

Thanks for checking it out.

[Catoptric]

I'm interested in any feedback you have, particularly if you manage to get to the end. My impression is it might be a bit dense, but who knows? Not me. Too close to it.

As far as marketing - I was initially excited, but am now not sure if it's worth it in it's present form.

Thanks for checking it out.

I think the book has a lot of good components to it that works fairly well and can engage people with the content.

Realizing that the target audience would probably aim for books with around 300 pages, I'm not sure if anything I might want to see changed with content would be any kind of improvement, since it would probably create double the length of what is written, though potentially could make the story seem less truncated (which I imply, there are parts in the story where I feel like I overlooked vital story components, though that might be because I was using an e-reader instead of a printed book which I would be less likely to miss info; I did attempt to scan back over it.)

What I had in mind is, if you were to take a writing exercise with character and setting, how would you focus purely on the description of the characters, plot development and the world it comprises, as well as how some of the chapters correlate to that structure?

The world it comprises of is also evidently an alternate reality, which of course would suggest that trying to flesh out how the world exists, simultaneously with references to known popular culture, might also belie the age group the reader would comprise of (so if someone was reading this book 5-10 years from now, are they going to relate to Seinfeld or the silent era of film stars.) I think of it a bit like someone watching the first Robocop movie where it popularly creates this alternate sci-fi component to a company enmeshed with the Police department and also throws in reference to the guy on the TV, who doesn't contribute anything to the main story but is a reflection of the issue which satirizes humanity, including its degradation into degeneracy while offering a semblance of continuity within the context of the story. The MacGuffin as it were would be the criminal enterprise that was a byproduct of the society which was not isolated to the evils of individuals but rather the very enterprise that profited off permitting the criminality to continue.

In a way, I consider story components that hint at the larger aspect to also have various storyboarding about the political landscape, the character dynamics, as well as the ability for people to visualize the characters themselves. Of course, this assumes that the story isn't being focused specifically on the worldview of the narration.

Perhaps also what I had in mind would disregard the approach to writing, such as Kurt Vonnegut did by limiting his chapters to very short intervals. In this same approach it could be considered necessary to then apply continuity to the chapters, where if you were just starting off reading that chapter, you wouldn't need to return to the previous chapter to find out why the main character was injured (it would be like writing a paragraph where the entire premise of that action was reintroduced, and the character involvement was less ambiguous.)


Some of what I'm suggesting could be due to me being a very visual thinker (if I can't construct a visual impression of something I start to become disengaged very quickly. This is partly why I often focus a lot on non-fiction materials because I already have a memory of what the historical components entail.) Also, some writers like to emphasize things like weather and time of day as important and simple additions.

A lot of this is going to be redundant because you did incorporate this where it was necessary, though if you were to go over the book, go by each chapter and try to imagine:

- Sound, light, time and place, weather, smell
- Sights/Actions/Motivations/Emotions (based on the position of characters and the surrounding environments, this can engage important sensory elements that engage the reader. Implied thoughts using motion and gesticulations are used, though in this context it would be something that would be incorporated into the visual narrative beyond simply descriptor of plot devices, such as describing the technology and how the character came to be there, and what emotions are felt in the presence of these encounters.)
- Consider symbolism as a common motif that seems very transparent, and use it to illustrate the dialogue, and how the characters engage the direction of the narrative (which I'm sure is used but it's more of how it ties in more so; such as if someone notices something, it can't just be that one thing being referenced, but rather a clear contention in the dialogue that is pointed out. Think of it like an argument where the reader must decide what to believe and who to side with, instead of assuming the protagonist should be the one to root for.
- Possibly compile a list of visual images about each chapter, and perhaps even incorporate some AI generation using key features of each environment, just to see how it interprets it.

I suggest this because it will seem more engaging for you as well as you describe these components, and will have a similar effect as if you were listening to the story on playback and could then get visual impressions that might seem more evident are needed.

When I go back over some of the things I write I see the same issue I'm pointing out as well, as the real problem is translating what is "ideal" vs what is necessary in a story, and sometimes it's the result of an initial assumption about a story that seems to get lost in translation. This might be partly why most all literature follows a predetermined direction using third-person narrative, whereas a first-person could seem to lose the reader in what they are seeing rather than what they want to see; thereby wanting to force their immersion into the character might seem too distant. Whether the narrative device allows for a different level of immersion due to how a story is written, can probably differ greatly with the subject matter, since using the third-person can occasionally break the fourth wall of the story, and seem to clash with the reader, in as much as first-person is supposed to abide by laws of the narrative style, while not seeming closed off from allowing the reader to gleam aspects of other characters within it. As a structure device with third-person, it's also assumed that the reader must infer that the characters within it are understood as they are used in the story, and how it connects to the main character through dialogue.