Evenjos

The who cares era is just a symptom of the unaccountability machinery of our era.

It's hard to care or be passionate when you are certain that anything you produce which is worthwhile or original will be crushed, lost in the ocean of slop.

...Or just ignore AI and use your human creativity to write an amazing story. Something that is NOT a stale echo of another story. Something that adds to a global conversation/debate or examines a concept/premise a fresh new light, rather that parroting ideas that have already been expressed ad nauseam.

And if you can't think of anything new? Maybe the creative fields aren't for you. The world doesn't need more writers. There are much easier ways to earn a living.

I have a 6 book contract with Podium, my debut was in the top 100 books of 2023 by Kirkus, and I am nowhere near quitting my day job.

I've paid attention to the publishing industry for years. Like all of the arts, it's oversaturated and there's a lot of churn.

IMO, writers who earn a full-time living as authors fall into three basic categories. They either a) established themselves as blockbuster bestsellers with the Big Five before Amazon democratized the marketplace, circa 2010 and earlier, b) they established themselves as blockbuster bestsellers as early adopters of the Amazon Kindle marketplace, circa 2011 to 2016, or c) they own an advertising agency, are married to someone who owns an advertising agency, they are slick marketing gurus, or they are major social media influencers.

There are exceptions. I see interesting innovations in the web serial space, where I play around. I sell advance chapters on Patreon. Some authors do earn a full-time living that way.

But in general, yes, it is very tough to be a professional author or an artist or a musician or an indie game developer these days. Everyone wants to be one.

I also see cynical authors and artists using AI to 100x their content production so they can nickel and dime their way into top seller spots. The algorithms boost anyone whose works consistently sell and bury everyone else.

I love rational fiction. Yes to Methods of Rationality, Mother of Learning, and also Paranoid Mage and a few others, including Majority by Abby Goldsmith.

Yes.

Ha ha, that was pretty good.

100%. I see a lot of originality in web serials and fiction by indie authors. I've more or less stopped reading books that were curated by the Big Five publishing houses.

The cons of thinking in public: - Everyone judges you. - Everyone can snap to a potentially wrong assumption about you or your motives. - The conversation can shift to a meta discussion about you as a person, or some other factor, instead of the argument or proposal you were originally concerned enough to publicly post about.

Thinking in private allows greater freedom in some ways, although you do exchange power for that freedom. There is a lot of power in public opinion.

I explore this theme very in-depth in my web serial, which I just recently launched on RoyalRoad! Torth by AbbyBabble.

Hahaha! This one does!

The indie author gold rush was basically 2012 through now. It's still in full swing. But much like the California Gold Rush, it's beyond a saturation point. There are all kinds of sharks in the water, selling seminars and promising riches.

Don't listen to idiots. But do listen to the people who sincerely tried and failed.

Few people want to talk about failure. But I've been watching the publishing industry for a long time, and it's not as simple as pressing the "Publish" button and watching sales roll in. Algorithms have changed the way things work. Bots promote works that are already popular or trending. It's harder than ever for newbies to get noticed.

Major studios are terrified of taking a risk on an unknown IP. That's why they keep snatching up IPs with established audiences. I can't wait until that attitude changes. There are plenty of small, unknown authors who wrote excellent series.

And then the studios are approaching each adaptation as a committee instead of as a visionary. It's writing-by-committee instead of writing as an individual.