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.
I’ll be attempting a different project that won’t be “political” in a way that offends techbros and their fans next time
No. Keep shitting on them. Hells, write a whole book shitting on them, everyone hates them and with reason.
And Mecha-Lenins, everyone loves mecha-lenins
mentioned my work here before, […] , and while I got some positive messages, I don’t think any reviews came of it.
People don’t want to doxx themselves maybe. Or too lazy to do a mock goodreads account.
I wrote three books doing exactly that. The third one is nearly complete.
I’m still fighting uphill against a current of Mass Effect clones and related reactionary expectations from the genres.
Whatever the reason might be, the lack of positive reviews makes the work hard to find for people who might actually like it.
I haven’t read it yet. I’m trying to get into scifi. Is it oriented to young teens or adults?
Post the link to your book so I can read it. For OpSec purposes I’d advise you make this an account you only use to talk about your writing stuff, use another unrelated account for any other general chat etc.
Here’s a link to the book series. The first five chapters of the first book are available for free.
I don’t think anyone would have a problem with you advertising your books on this site, as long as you don’t doxx yourself. I’d like to read it for what it’s worth, although I don’t know if I could help much pushing it on Amazon
God thats unfortunate. I dont have any advice, just sympathy.
Greetings comrade! Welcome to the amazing world of self-publishing (even though I can see you’ve been at this for at least a year). When I self-published my first books I too was attacked for my politics. Any glance at the SF bestsellers on amazon will show that people who read this genre tend to be either gamers or veterans, which makes them fairly reactionary. (Ultimately, people who have money are the only ones who can actually buy books, and these people tend to be either libs or chuds.)
I think the best solution is to treat this as a learning experience, to keep honing your craft, and to work on pumping out as many books as you can as quickly as possible. I don’t know how quickly you write, but if you have the time it’s possible to pump out twenty or thirty pages in a day. At that rate, you can publish a book every month or two, and each time learn from the feedback you get. (It’s also possible to burn yourself out doing this, of course.) I have an old thread with more information about how to do this here:
https://hexbear.net/post/62032
Definitely one thing you have to do is finish the entire trilogy before you publish, so that if people like the first book they’ll buy the whole thing. One tip I remember (from the problematic Steven Pressfield) is: nobody wants to read your shit. They’re as interested in your book as they are in a thirty-minute infomercial. You have to make it sexy and violent and racy so that people would be crazy NOT to read it.
I’ll be publishing a leftwing SF trilogy within the next few months so I’m pretty concerned about this issue as well. I’m telling you to relax about bad reviews but I’ll probably be losing my mind over shitty reviews yet again fairly soon. I removed all but a handful of references to politics from these books (almost 1,500 pages of text), although by the third book I reference a flag that has the words WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! written on it. By then I figured that if people are still reading, they’ve probably already figured out that I’m a commie. Maybe just one reference to politics is enough to turn these people off, though. I mention that the characters are living in a workers’ state within the first twenty or thirty pages. Mais c’est la vie—la vie est merde! I won’t be surprised if this entire project goes up in flames because of one bad review. It’s such a pain because as commies, we’re supposed to be agitating, but if we agitate, no one will read our shit.
About the algorithm: all I know for sure is that it will give your book a little boost for the first month it’s out there. Some self-publishers say that’s why you should release one book per month so that your stuff is always in the “new releases” category. Ultimately, the entire self-publishing world is super fucked up, and while there’s a lot you can do to improve your chances, an element of chance is definitely involved.
Another commenter said that you should write a book that shits relentlessly on tech bros. Although this kind of contradicts everything I’ve written here, I fully support this approach.
