I posted in the Literature community because I didn’t know there was a Writing community until I looked more closely. It’s been so long that I don’t actually remember my old account name, but just in case there’s a rule about mentioning one’s own work in this forum I’ll for the moment not mention the books here specifically, just my trouble.

About a year ago, I released my first self-published novel. It’s been a learning experience, and I was somewhat aware I’d be fighting uphill because I was writing a sci-fi story that was antithetical to a lot of the right wing techbro libertarian ideologies that are especially common in the subgenres I was trying to write to.

Unfortunately for me, as I mentioned here before on my previous lost account, I made the mistake of contacting the father of my sister-in-law, at her behest, and asked him to be my first novel’s beta reader. He wasn’t my first choice, but online resources for finding beta readers were sparse, except for aggressive marketing ploys trying to get me to sign up for things in return for the beta reading service. Her father is something of an insufferably arrogant Napa Valley wine snob type that wears his neoliberalism on his sleeve. I should have backed out the moment his first reply email to me, because the first sentence was “I will not talk about your politics.”

My politics involve what I think is a dreadfully possible scenario where billionaires obsessed with escaping the planet and establishing their feudalistic utopia on Mars ignore every actual problem with the idea and rule the Earth by proxy to be continually ravaged to feed and expand the highly unsustainable colony and keep the increasingly-sickly oligarchs alive there. Of course, there’s a fight against that, and even a revolution.

You can guess where this is going. Because of my “politics” and because I didn’t do what he said and have a titillating descriptive nudity scene for the late-teens main character (she’s the child of refugees that were killed at the Canadian border and lives a bit like a feral cat for her formative years), he gave an unasked for and highly damaging review on the book’s first day and then expected me to thank him for his trouble.

I’ve just released the second book of that same series, and the third and final book’s rough draft is in progress, but I’m demoralized, because while apparently according to Kindle Unlimited metrics people that read the book often complete it, that day one hamstringing made me nearly invisible to Amazon’s algorithm. Worse, the reviews I did get for my first book clearly didn’t read the damn thing because they made criticisms of things that didn’t happen and presumptions that involved a skimming of the blurb and nothing else, which didn’t actually happen in the book. For example, one said “this book has aliens in it and I don’t like that.” Billionaires on Mars aren’t aliens, except in the ways they already are on Earth.

To summarize my rant, I’m demoralized. Sales of the first book were a trickle at best, it’s very hard to get momentum for a second, let alone a third book in a series, when most people that might have liked it didn’t know the first one even existed. I’m pretty damn poor so every little bit would have helped. I haven’t given up, mind. I have one more book to complete and the rough draft will hopefully be done this month, and after finalizing it and releasing it, I’ll be attempting a different project that won’t be “political” in a way that offends techbros and their fans next time, but until then, what I made is all I got.

I mentioned my work here before, begged for anyone who read it to at least tell me what they thought of it, and while I got some positive messages, I don’t think any reviews came of it. I hate the algorithm and I can’t help wonder if I’ve been flagged for my fictionalized indirect critique of our Amazon lords and masters.

Rant over, I suppose. This is a brand new account so I hope this post goes through.