/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18688688]

Just how hard is it to get a literary novel published? I mean, it can’t be that hard, right? The number of people who manage to finish novels, let alone start writing them is vanishingly small. How much competition can there possibly be?

[Anonymous No.18688702]

nice thread, fucking frog faggot.

[Anonymous No.18688720]

It's stiff. All it takes is for 100 people competing for the one slot to make it competitive. That's a small number of people.
Go to a community college course or your equivalent for creative writing, you'll find at least one or two talents that are better than you in the class. Even if it's just one guy, that's a lot when extrapolated. Not to mention most of these publishers are run by women, because unfortunately they're a goodly portion of literature majors. Maybe they don't overtly discriminate, but they're unconsciously looking for things catered to women.

[Anonymous No.18688737]

>>18688688
Go to a Writer's Fest and you'll see it is more woke than a BLM rally.

You can get published if:
>you have a built-in social media following with the right opinions and views
>you write a book that reinforces the narrative that penguin, random house, etc all carry on their social media sites
>you have dark skin, are female or trans, a refugee, alphabet person(LGBTQ2S+)

Essentially, if you have a story to tell that is outside of the mainstream, and especially if you are a straight white male, your entire ability to self-express has been restricted as your stories are not advancing the overall progressive push.

[Anonymous No.18688750]

>>18688737
Incel rant

[Anonymous No.18688767]

Why don't you publish yourself online and grind some followers on social media? That's my plan. This way when I get some public I guess it'll be easier to publish traditionally after the editor sees I've got some work done already. Like, it's more probable to be published if you have 2k followers on Instagram than if you have none. The point is to grind making posts and stuff and I that shouldn't be very hard - I'm pretty sure it takes less than a year to achieve that if you try hard enough. Sure, it's not ideal, but as the other anon said, publishers are going to choose books catered to the biggest target (self help, women stuff, ya fantasy etc) so you gotta do some work yourself besides writing. Good luck, frogfren, I believe in you.

[Anonymous No.18688787]

>>18688750
I literally wrote a book on getting too much sex

https://www.amazon.ca/City-Singles-Jason-Bryan/dp/0991825705

[Anonymous No.18688794]

>>18688688
No idea, but definitely not that hard that someone can't make in a lifetime. I don't write novels, because imo they expose a lot of you, and I'm definitely not comfortable with people messing around with my thoughts. But that is just me, I'm a somewhat paranoid in the schizo sense of the word, I got it under control because I'm deliberately avoiding doing such things like writing and whatever.

[Anonymous No.18688799]

How many followers counts as enough for a publisher to notice? It seems like by the time you got ten thousand you could just be selling straight to them and skipping the middleman. And if you had less than ten thousand I doubt a pub would care (or would they)? This is all assuming you're a straight white male etc

[Anonymous No.18688813]

>>18688799
The last "Writer's Fest" I went to in 2017 or 2018, I forget which, they had 10+ speakers at one event and each speaker did a land acknowledgement at the beginning of their talks and some rambled on about indigenous this, decolonial that. It was cult-like and the people there were extremely bluepilled. Out of hundreds of people there I was the only tall, straight white male with any hint of bicep muscles.

[Anonymous No.18688814]

>>18688799
Well, a couple of thousands should be enough if your writing is good enough.
>the more followers you have, the worse your writing can be

[Anonymous No.18688836]

>>18688813
I think it's unnecessary to ramble about bluepilled normies and fests, they wouldn't buy your shit even if you got it published. You gotta focus on finding your target audience (straight white male disappointed with life).

[Anonymous No.18688843]

>>18688787
>>18688828

[Anonymous No.18688848]

>>18688836
Target audience:
>people who are concerned that Canada is an increasingly lawless place with a nose-diving quality of life

https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/oncjbj/is_the_canadian_dream_dead/?sort=top

[Anonymous No.18688853]

>>18688787
I love that you got the Waldun endorsement and blurb.

[Anonymous No.18688856]

>>18688843
I love you bro. Someday we will be friends!

[Anonymous No.18688869]

>>18688737
But this is mostly for mainstream fiction. Sure, not all of that is genre fiction only, also plenty of female mfa-tier autofiction that is somewhat considered 'literary' (mainly because it isn't a particular genre) but is still very accessible. Assuming OP is asking about a 'real' literary novel, do they get published at all anymore?

[Anonymous No.18688900]

>>18688869
The entire publishing industry is setup to filter out as many original ideas and unique people as possible... hence why the most boring and mediocre authors sit at the top of the hierarchy with nothing to say that couldn't be accomplished by just going to their publisher's twitter feed and deducing the desired socially engineering viewpoints and neoliberal consoomer-reinforcing mentality they aim to steamroll their readers into.

[Anonymous No.18688902]

>>18688848
AH FOR JUST ONE TIME
I WOULD TAKE THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE
TO FIND THE HAND OF FRANKLIN, REACHING FOR THE BEAUFORT SEA

[Anonymous No.18688915]

Is social media necessary to get noticed? I know the answer is 'yes' and 'yes' and 'absolutely yes,' but I fucking hate it. Having an expressed opinion on social media is so cringe to me, especially if it leads back to your actual identity. I don't want to 'farm recognition.' Sometimes I think of the figures I respect and how disgusted they would be with me to know I have a Twitter profile, even though it has zero followers and zero tweets.

[Anonymous No.18688927]

>>18688915
You don't have to comment on politics or whatever to have a social media account, in fact if you build followers that way I would assume that very few of them would be interested in buying your novel or whatever because that's not what they showed up for.

[Anonymous No.18688935]

>>18688915
Just buy ads and don't engage any social issues.

You cannot win in 2021 with an opinion outside of the normal, accepted normie positions. However, what you can do is, be mysterious and only advertise your shit. Don't even bother with conversations on anything other than promoting yourself. There is NO BENEFIT to expressing any opinion that Penguin books or Random House would tweet. Keep that shit to 4chan.

Just smile and nod to everything normie while keeping your mouth shut and you can find success.

[Anonymous No.18688939]

>>18688915
Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to get published without social media presence. Contemporary writers aged under 40 are e-personalities who also happen to write some pre-approved, strictly Twitter friendly mediocrity.

[Anonymous No.18688972]

>>18688927
>>18688935
>>18688939

Good points all, thanks gents. I've noticed that some content creators I follow (who mostly task themselves with critically analysing video games lol, pls no bully), get some success out of promoting a video and getting out of there as fast as possible. I wonder if you can get away with that when building up your 'brand' initially.

[Anonymous No.18688979]

>>18688737
You are wrong and blame le society to hide from the fact that you are a bad writer. Sad!

[Anonymous No.18688980]

>>18688720
>you'll find at least one or two talents that are better than you in the class.
as if that mattered when it comes to actually getting published

[Anonymous No.18688984]

>>18688972
It's not a bad way to do it because they're bringing value. If someone's thing is videogame analysis, and they have 30 tweets about their dysfunctional family and orange man bad in between any vidya content, it dilutes their value a lot.

[Anonymous No.18688995]

this thread makes me want to drink (again)

[Anonymous No.18689001]

>>18688984
you don't understand the parasocial nature of social media

[Anonymous No.18689005]

>>18688979
Have you looked around society lately? Do you honestly believe it is nearly as good in 2021 as it was in 2001?

How old are you?

[Anonymous No.18689007]

>>18689001
That isn't a necessary thing to cultivate.

[Anonymous No.18689010]

>>18688979
I'm not aiming to be Shakespeare, just need to sell a couple of books a day while I continue to crank out my work.

https://jason-bryan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/tsk-chap1-july19.pdf

Have a wonderful day anon!

[Anonymous No.18689015]

>>18689007
But surely continually updating your thoughts and feed keeps people interested in your presence and mindful of you? People are hooked on 24/7 social communication, I'm not sure if 'getting in with the algorithm' is a thing on Twitter, but there's a reason why companies make scheduled posts there three times a day, even if it's sharing asinine memes. They know the value of presence.

[Anonymous No.18689043]

>>18689015
That is one way to do it for sure but the other way is to be the kind of account where when you post something, it's something quality. In my experience a lot of the 20-posts-a-day guys have some kind of blowup or burnout sooner or later, and even if they dont they tend to have long periods of shit phone-it-in content where I lose interest in them.

[Anonymous No.18689050]

>>18689005
>>18689010
Jason you raped all those women. paying a destitute child for sex is not something to be proud of

[Anonymous No.18689070]

>>18689043
You're right. I really tend to hate the journalists, public figures and content creators who seem to live on Twitter. It ruins my perception of them thoroughly. Narcissism is so easy to detect on social media it's baffling. I considered Abe Goldfarb one of my idols thanks to his impeccable voice acting in many niche Wadjet Eye PC adventure game titles, then I saw how ravenous he is on Twitter. Just completely destroyed my opinion of him and now I feel iffy about supporting his work. Apparently something like 10% of Twitter users make up 80% of the tweets, so perhaps there is a silent audience out there a little temperance could appeal to. Or I need to believe that, at least.

[Anonymous No.18689073]

>>18689050
Someone like you has never even had sex, let alone made a woman orgasm. I hope you find some love and light in your life that allows you some peace.

[Anonymous No.18689083]

>>18689070
Twitter is a place where everyone participates in "allowed conversations"

I've been banned there so many times. The last time I was banned, it was because I said "women don't have penises" on international women's day.

[Anonymous No.18689109]

>>18689010
Your prose makes me want to kill myself, and not out of jealousy but out of the suffering you experience when you stare at static for too long. I'm not gonna do it, mind you. I just wanna let you know the feelings your words evoke.

[Anonymous No.18689116]

>>18689109
Sorry you feel that way. Liquor store employees like it, perhaps you are simply too high-IQ?

[Anonymous No.18689143]

>>18689015
it's not just that but also the fact that your paying audience - if you are an individual 'creator' - will have to be sone kind of obsessive fan and this kind of supporter doesn't just want to consume your work but your whole identity. Especially when the environment is political (always at this point), nobody would want to support your fiction book if in real life you're a 'problematic' person or your ideas aren't aligned with his own ideas.

[Anonymous No.18689154]

>>18689143
Don't underestimate the number of people sick to death of the current social climate and who are happy to support counter-culture artists.

[Anonymous No.18689163]

>>18688688
Getting published is easy. You can do it in anfternoon on Lulu or amazon/createspace.
>hurrr self pub is for losers!
Proust, Whitman and Sterne self published.
Getting read is something else enitrely.

[Anonymous No.18689172]

>>18689154
counter-culture doesn't exist, unless you mean the really, really weird porn.

[Anonymous No.18689180]

>>18689172
Anything outside of corporate-controlled art is the counter-culture.

[Anonymous No.18689186]

>>18689180
when a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

[Anonymous No.18689194]

>>18689186
Yes if the tree goes to the pub with its book and starts grassroots networking.

Also the tree needs to buy some fucking ads where appropriate and mix things up, people want to buy things that apply to their lives. Half the fucking city in Vancouver has had a bicycle stolen from them by now. I've had 3.

The fastest a bicycle of mine was stolen was back in like 2014 when I used a U-lock outside the Nester's on Hastings. I went into buy a single roasted chicken, couldn't have been more than 45 seconds in-and-out and someone had already broken my lock and got away with my $400 used bike.

[Anonymous No.18689310]

>>18688688
Usually when an anon writes "literary fiction" the prose is florid but bad and the story itself is meandering, resentful nonsense

[Anonymous No.18689326]

>>18689310
>the prose is florid but bad and the story itself is meandering, resentful nonsense
my diary desu

[Anonymous No.18689333]

>>18689194
How many books have you sold and how much did it cost you
What is your net positive

[Anonymous No.18689336]

>>18689326
Exactly. One of you fuckers is going to write a great, insightful novel about the alienated modern young man. But most of you lack the skill, the empathy, the insight, or some combination of the three

[Anonymous No.18689344]

>>18689194
>400 for a used bike
Lol man you were robbed twice

[Anonymous No.18689353]

>>18689344
lol

[Anonymous No.18689355]

>>18689336
>tfw you just want to write scifi shit

[Anonymous No.18689367]

>>18689355
Go for it bro, the sci-fi game is entirely different

[Anonymous No.18689368]

Can a white guy still get away with saying nigger in a historical novel? Will publishers end our correspondence if they run into that

[Anonymous No.18689375]

>>18689368
Depends entirely on the context but the short answer is probably not

[Anonymous No.18689382]

>>18689367
idk I saw the same shit as fantasy taking over

[Anonymous No.18689389]

>>18689333
1st book back in 2013 barely broke even after a year, but I was with Amazon and only making $4 in profit per book or so after printing and shipping costs. At the time, I was also still making a high income as a porn affiliate, so I didn't work on the book. The process of completing it and releasing it drastically changed my life for the better and lead directly to having my 1st born child.

2nd book I have spent approximately $2,000 on developing the method of how to control the entire process from imagining a story to shipping the finished product out the door. I've been researching this for awhile now and now will be able to fully create a store-bought quality novel for about $1 USD. This method can also scale up so if you were in a position, by act of God or a little luck, that you had a demand of 100 books a day averaged out over a month
>A demand of 3000 book sales a month
you could hire someone to run the machine and they could probably pump out 10 books an hour at $25 an hour, so you could realistically fulfill 1600 books a month per employee.

After working the process for the last little while, I believe it will be much quicker to get the 3rd and 4th books finished and out the door now as the process of learning the physical book-binding, printing, cover design, and many other small details of artisan book binding had me hung up and frustrated at many, many points across the last few years. I originally used InDesign and had become pretty good at using it and just a number of months ago those fucks at Adobe NOW REQUIRE Windows 10!

Fuck Windows 10! I will never fucking use that shit. Holy fuck, Adobe fucked me hard because I had already spent AGES using InDesign to learn it and put my 2nd book in there and work with the layout.

I had to start completely over again learning how to do an internal book layout without fucking InDesign. Finally, my alcoholism is in remission as well, which makes the whole process worth it.

[Anonymous No.18689390]

Idk I just "published" my first novel on Amazon and my only real hope for it is that someone from here reads it and likes it.

[Anonymous No.18689392]

>>18689375
It wouldnt be some kind of glorified usage edgy stuff but it's definitely the word a character in those times and social circumstances would use. And there won't be some anachronistic SJW insert there to correct them about it.

[Anonymous No.18689398]

>>18689382
What do you mean?

[Anonymous No.18689401]

>>18689344
Was similar to this

[Anonymous No.18689437]

>>18689401
My point still stands. 3100 for a bike is insane, 400 is just a bad deal. I got a busted racing bike for 50 and it was good to ride after 50 more of repairs. Been using it for 12 years at this point.

[Anonymous No.18689458]

>>18689389
I skimmed your post for book sales numbers and net gain from sales and foumd none. Also I don't know what "porn affiliate" means but I'll avoid you entirely from now on.

[Anonymous No.18689460]

>>18689437
Yeah I certainly learned the hard way.

[Anonymous No.18689466]

>>18689458
I bought my own copies through createspace and sold them at bars and at street art fairs in Gastown from 2013-2015 or so.

A "porn affiliate" is someone who markets and sells adult videos through ads and such. I also produced my own adult site in Costa Rica back in like 2005 but I moved back to Canada because it was too dangerous down there.

[Anonymous No.18689476]

>>18688856
post more of those lewds, my nigga

[Anonymous No.18689479]

>>18689458
>porn affiliate
it's a euphemism. he lived in a third world country for a while and sold tapes of himself fucking poor underage women

[Anonymous No.18689484]

>>18689479
>literal milfs

[Anonymous No.18689490]

>>18688688
Depends if you're a black tranny or not

[Anonymous No.18689764]

What are good platforms for building an audience? Twitter? Tumblr? Wordpress? Others?

[Anonymous No.18689791]

>>18689479
lmao w/e sad

[Anonymous No.18690513]

>>18688688
if it isn't a formulaic genrefiction that could have been written by an AI and you aren't a brown wammenz you have no hope of being published in 2021

[Anonymous No.18690595]

>>18688737
Or if your books are good, retard

[Anonymous No.18690600]

>>18690595
Are there any mainstream masculine authors?

I've looked, I can't find a single one in Canada. Having gone to the "writer's fests" for several years a row in Vancouver, I never found a single author that I felt represented anything close to me. That's one of the reasons I have to try and write, the world is missing someone like me!

[Anonymous No.18690633]

>>18689344
lol

[Anonymous No.18690641]

>>18688688
Its easier than ever to shout into the void. Its more difficult than ever to find an honest ear to listen.

[Anonymous No.18690859]

>>18690641
>more books published every year than ever before
>thousands and thousands and thousands in English alone
>nearly all of them are complete garbage