YABookgate

[WelperHelper99]

So, my generation has to suffice with "our" experience being represented by the work of dead guys who could hardly have imagined the daily life of a millennial man?

To be fair, when I think millennials, I think broke college students smoking joints and shoving dildos up their asses. I don't think it deserves to be written about lmao.

 

[JJLiautaud]

I know someone who wrote big-breasted elf books for Kindle Unlimited.

He made enough money to paint a life-sized mural of his big-breasted elves inside his home.

These people are not normal.

Unfathomably based. I genuinely had no idea this was a genre mainly because im working through my backlog of milsf.

 

[Henri Barbusse]

Unfathomably based. I genuinely had no idea this was a genre mainly because im working through my backlog of milsf.

You missed an excellent chance to typo milsf into milfs.

 

[Generic Anime Girl]

No good books will ever be. published again the west has fallen

 

[Waifuchu]

So... How hard is it to break into dumb trends like the current "romantasy" thing? Because I'm a little tempted to throw together the most zero-effort, generic, paint-by-numbers shit in the world, throw it in there, and see if I make any cash from these people who can't tell that they're being mocked.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

So... How hard is it to break into dumb trends like the current "romantasy" thing? Because I'm a little tempted to throw together the most zero-effort, generic, paint-by-numbers shit in the world, throw it in there, and see if I make any cash from these people who can't tell that they're being mocked.

Genuinely have no clue. I'd imagine it's a numbers game.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

So... How hard is it to break into dumb trends like the current "romantasy" thing? Because I'm a little tempted to throw together the most zero-effort, generic, paint-by-numbers shit in the world, throw it in there, and see if I make any cash from these people who can't tell that they're being mocked.

Are the smut scenes going to be full of cuckdom and buck breaking?

 

[Waifuchu]

Are the smut scenes going to be full of cuckdom and buck breaking?

The emotional climax of the novel will be where the main character watches a bunch of black gnomes run a train on his love interest, sure.

 

[asceticHedonist]

So... How hard is it to break into dumb trends like the current "romantasy" thing? Because I'm a little tempted to throw together the most zero-effort, generic, paint-by-numbers shit in the world, throw it in there, and see if I make any cash from these people who can't tell that they're being mocked.

You would need to get the passive marketing 100% correct. On Amazon, this would mean having a professional-looking cover, which if you can't do it yourself would cost hundreds at minimum. You would need to do sufficient research to get the right keywords. Your blurb would have to be well crafted. The first ten percent of the book would need to be the perfect teaser, meeting or promising all of the genre expectations.

If you put it in Kindle Unlimited, you would need to meet genre expectations well enough to keep the reader reading. Kindle Unlimited pays the publisher a certain amount for each page read by each reader—one reader reads all of a 300-page book, you get paid for 300 pages; ten readers read all of that 300-page book, you get paid ten times as much, and so on.

The prose doesn't have to be of great quality. The story doesn't even need to be free of plot holes or inconsistent characterization. The measure of "quality" is how well you use the tropes and genre conventions. Not too derivative of other work, but not too divergent, either. The same thing, again, but different.

 

[Windows 10 Upgrade]

#OwnVoices may be to blame for this, as well, because they literally dictated who could write about whom, as in you, as a white man, couldn't make your main character an Asian or black or a woman, period.

This ended up biting Asian and Black women writers pretty hard on the ass too. They were not able to write about anyone other than a stereotypical struggle-narrative version of their own story - for example, Angie Thomas was not able to sell any of her Fantasy books but ended up having to write The Hate U Give before getting a look in. Since then, she was sort of forced to pump out some literary Blaxploitation since then.

I gather from old posts that you work in the industry, though I have no idea in what capacity, so this may be an unanswerable question from your perspective—is there anyone in mainstream publishing who looks at the complete abandonment of male-oriented literature as a problem, an unserved market?

Maybe I'm in an optimistic mood at the moment, but I can't believe that everyone is so ideologically captured that they don't care about leaving money on the table.

I don't think it's "unserved" other than what IS served is not kicking off at a rate that will make publishers stand up and take notice. There was a tweet somewhere by someone in the industry who said that whenever male-centric and male-interest books by male authors were being released, there was nobody to get behind them and push them with the same sheer power y as the stochastic marketing ecosystem of Tik Tok and Instagram reviewers - creators who are primarily female Zs and Millenials.

The decline in Epic Fantasy has been one of the casualties of this (as well as other factors such as an increase in the price of paper etc)

That brings to mind another question—I recall that during the suit to block the Penguin/Simon and Schuster merger, there was an infamous bit of testimony that 85% of books with $250,000 advances don't earn out, and I think there was another quote that implied no one in the industry has any clue how to run a publishing company as a profitable business—something about no one knowing what will sell most of the time. Maybe I'm thinking of all the commentary I read about the $250,000 figure.

I suspect there's only partial bit of truth to that. There's a HUGE difference between a book breaking even on costs going into profit and then finally... FINALLY "earning out" ... which means the publisher now has to start paying the author royalties. By that time every penny has gone into the black

So a book can be theoretically be profitable but never earn out. (Good old Hollywood accounting)

Technically it behooves an author to get an advance that never earns out as well, as you have paid "more" per book sold. Advances can't be recouped, so if you sell 10 books the publisher has paid you $25000 per book, but if you sell 250K books, then they are only giving you a buck!

Obviously mistakes are made - the Lindsay Ellis project probably looked like it would pull a LOT of weight.

Is anyone actually concerned with, let alone trying to solve, this apparent problem? Does anyone think that maybe finding the next—I don't know—Gary Paulsen, Robert E. Howard, or Brett Easton Ellis or Chuck Palahniuk might bolster the bottom line this quarter and for many more to come?

Good news: They exist and some of them do sell, 11 Booker Prize winners over the last 20 years have been guys - 7 in the past 10 years. Bad news: Lit Fic is notoriously low-selling, unless there's a huge crossover or you longlist for a Booker - think sales in the millions then.

Ark Press exists, and they seem to be pretty smart. They're offering a ten thousand dollar advance for the winner of a novel contest they are running.

10K is Chump change in terms of a Traditional Contract, gotta be honest! At about $50K there will be conversations in relation to the book actually doing something and $100K making a bestseller list of some sort. Obviously there's outliers but that's pretty much the bottom line.

Traditional publishing is in trades so they don't sell directly to the public, they sell to bookstores. So there's usually a set figure they can reasonably expect the title to achieve within the first few weeks. Later on the book will either move to an actual reader, or into the returns/remainder section to make way for new stock. That advance can often be an indicator of how hard they push bookstores to buy the product.

Wrt: the arrested author...

Back in the early 2000s there was a fanfic archive called Skyehawk run out of Australia. And it allowed underage Dumbledore/Harry fanfiction.( When I say underage, I mean 11 or 12.)

Until one day it didn't. Unleashing the howling mob

OMG, I remember that one! It allowed EVERYTHING.

So... How hard is it to break into dumb trends like the current "romantasy" thing? Because I'm a little tempted to throw together the most zero-effort, generic, paint-by-numbers shit in the world, throw it in there, and see if I make any cash from these people who can't tell that they're being mocked.

A couple of years ago I would have said easy, but the latest word on the book fair street trend is dying down. Witchy books are off the table, GOOD because what a damn glut.

Dystopian is back on some menus, horror, and some talk of a YA resurgence as well. REAL YA.

 

[World Famous Quasi Payer]

REAL YA.

What's being consider real YA?

 

[asceticHedonist]

...the book fair street trend...

The what?

 

[Argos]

What's being consider real YA?

I think not sf or fantasy-focused. Think Judy Blume, Richard Peck, etc.

 

[Hirbowedge]

I need some help understanding the Webnovel scene. The whole thing just makes 0 sense.

I go to webnovel.com or lightnovelworld, and there are stories with millions of views. The top ones have 1.5k - 2k chapters. Two THOUSAND. And some of them still on going. A bit of googling turns up that the top authors actually make okay money with these stories.

Yet, there is 0 cultural footprint of this stuff. No references on social media, no one talking about the stories they've read or making call backs to characters from these stories. Nothing. They don't even have wiki pages.

I can understand if this was the case for some other niche interest. Like, I don't know people sharing knitting patterns. I am not interested in knitting, or anything that would be even slightly related, so I know nothing about the state of the knitting social media. It can be a couple people sharing patterns on facebook, some old Web 1.0 forum that's still chugging along, or there might be some gigantic site that people make livings off of. I don't know, and that's fine.

But I read quite a bit. I read fantasy and sci-fi. I read manga, and even some fanfic. I follow people who talk about geek shit. How is it the case that there is this site with a gigantic collection of people writing millions of words?

4 millions of words. Four millions, and thousands of people giving it five star ratings on these sites. That's the length of the fucking Wheel of Time. Your mom probably hasn't heard of it, but when you talk about it on the web, people know the name at least.

Am I just in a bubble and these stories are actually super popular? Is it all chinese people? A glitch in the matrix that will cause the rest of my life to unravel?

Also, is any of this stuff actually worth reading? Does anyone have any recommendations for a story that would help me understand these people? Are the featured stories actually good? I am pre-judging them pretty harshly but even when I look at the top ranked stories, everything looks dogshit. From the cover art to the names of the stories. I think there is a daily 2k word quota, and I can't imagine good writing coming from that.

I want to understand the state of publishing on the web, but this shit makes 0 sense.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

I need some help understanding the Webnovel scene. The whole thing just makes 0 sense.

I go to webnovel.com or lightnovelworld, and there are stories with millions of views. The top ones have 1.5k - 2k chapters. Two THOUSAND. And some of them still on going. A bit of googling turns up that the top authors actually make okay money with these stories.

Yet, there is 0 cultural footprint of this stuff. No references on social media, no one talking about the stories they've read or making call backs to characters from these stories. Nothing. They don't even have wiki pages.

I can understand if this was the case for some other niche interest. Like, I don't know people sharing knitting patterns. I am not interested in knitting, or anything that would be even slightly related, so I know nothing about the state of the knitting social media. It can be a couple people sharing patterns on facebook, some old Web 1.0 forum that's still chugging along, or there might be some gigantic site that people make livings off of. I don't know, and that's fine.

But I read quite a bit. I read fantasy and sci-fi. I read manga, and even some fanfic. I follow people who talk about geek shit. How is it the case that there is this site with a gigantic collection of people writing millions of words?

4 millions of words. Four millions, and thousands of people giving it five star ratings on these sites. That's the length of the fucking Wheel of Time. Your mom probably hasn't heard of it, but when you talk about it on the web, people know the name at least.

Am I just in a bubble and these stories are actually super popular? Is it all chinese people? A glitch in the matrix that will cause the rest of my life to unravel?

Also, is any of this stuff actually worth reading? Does anyone have any recommendations for a story that would help me understand these people? Are the featured stories actually good? I am pre-judging them pretty harshly but even when I look at the top ranked stories, everything looks dogshit. From the cover art to the names of the stories. I think there is a daily 2k word quota, and I can't imagine good writing coming from that.

I want to understand the state of publishing on the web, but this shit makes 0 sense.

There's references to this stuff on like, the Asian sphere of the internet or in the developing world (maybe). It's really niche to Americans.

For, well, Japanese light novels, plenty have been adapted to manga/anime. Mushoku Tensei, Konosuba, the one about that Slime, etc. They have a presence in anime-manga circles but it wavers. Mushoku Tensei is kinda infamous. Of course, they've also got a pretty good history of all sorts of literature. Probably one of the easier entries into asian genre fiction.


As for the stories, they're iffy at best. Honestly, from what I understand, you're best off reading older Wuxia from before the internet age if you want something solid. Wuxia is the chinese genre for these kinds of martial arts/chinese sorta "chinese sword & sorcery" stories. Their stuff's been around since the 1920s (so, it rivals the age of western sword and sorcery), but the difference is that Mao kinda killed a lotta the chinese genre fiction writers and their work's been lost. I recall names like the Condor Heroes and whatnot. It's a pretty odd deep dive that you'll have to do. The one chinese webnovel that gets memed on /lit/ is Reverend Insanity, which got shitcanned by the CCP for being a little too anti-government.

And if you do this, you're gonna want to get familiar with chinese literature's basics. The Three Kingdoms (you know, the long saga with Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Lu Bu, etc.) is one. Then you have Journey To The West, Investiture of the Gods, and The Water Margin. There's also all sorts of compilations of folklore and myth too.


For Korean shit, I'm not that knowledgeable. The webnovels they have are depressing. But if you got the time, look up their folktales on Hong Gildong, their "Robin Hood"-esque folk hero.

Past these, I'm vaguely aware that Taiwan/Singapore/Thailand/Indonesia/Philippines has their own little genre fiction sphere with martial arts, urban fantasy, asian fantasy stories. Don't know that much about them since a lot of it isn't translated.

Hope this helped. Remember, people on the internet aren't gonna know what the fuck some niche asian genre fiction translated to english by amateurs is.

 

[Hirbowedge]

It's less of a question of finding something good to read, and more of a desire to understand where publishing is going. I have the feeling if I read any of these, I am going to force myself to finish it. But maybe I should still do it to understand the scene better?

It's just baffling that there is this gigantic collection of incredibly long stories, with tons of people monetarily supporting them, and it's totally invisible to the rest of the world.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

It's less of a question of finding something good to read, and more of a desire to understand where publishing is going. I have the feeling if I read any of these, I am going to force myself to finish it. But maybe I should still do it to understand the scene better?

It's just baffling that there is this gigantic collection of incredibly long stories, with tons of people monetarily supporting them, and it's totally invisible to the rest of the world.

it's a hell of a niche and it's really really not something talked about because, well, it's only a few steps removed from fanfiction.

 

[Hirbowedge]

But that's the thing. People talk about fanfiction. There is a popular conception of it. It maybe cringe tumblr shit, werewolves fucking and weird alpha-omega male preg fetish stuff, but people know about it.

This stuff is completely unknown, no? And in 99% of cases, people don't pay money for fanfiction. And fanfiction exists in a grey area of copyright infringement. I compared the active users of Ao3 and webnovel.com and while webnovel is smaller, it's also quite large on it's own.

 

[fist_of_khonshu]

I like YA books, but I wish the majority of it wasn't shitty fucking romance tropes. I do not care about Stephanie McWhiteBland's dilemma of picking between Generic Love Interest and Minority She Wont End Up With. I want actual good shit, that doesn't focus on romance. Like for fucks sake. And I can't even bring myself to try and ask for suggestions because it's always some degenerate "Dark Romance" (aka Rape and Abuse glorified) shit. God forbid you call it out too.

 

[Dead Lion]

Yet, there is 0 cultural footprint of this stuff. No references on social media, no one talking about the stories they've read or making call backs to characters from these stories. Nothing. They don't even have wiki pages.

First of all many of the most popular anime’s started life as webnovels so I disagree that they have zero cultural footprint. Over there they have this very good system where webnovels -> published LN’s -> Anime/manga adaptation.

Second of all specifically when it comes to the west a similar system exists. It’s a common thing to see specifically RoyalRoad where a story will be either completely deleted or early chapters will get deleted while new ones are still being published because one of the tiny publishers who watch the website for popular stuff picked up the novel. Maybe as time goes on a similar system to the Japanese one will appear in the west?

Webfiction is just not really popular in the west unfortunately. I’m mostly familiar with royal road because that’s where I spend my time and it’s a tiny community. Probably smaller than the farms or roughly the same size.

Wattpad is the biggest one and it’s mostly smut written by teenage girls for teenage girls. At least in Poland we have a publisher that deal in putting that stuff on store shelves i don’t know about the west.

But unless the light novel format catches on in the west it’s going to be hard to publish them. Webfiction can get absurdly long. For instance ascendance of a bookworm, a light novel that began life as a webfiction, ran for four years on the internet and now it’s being published one volume every couple of months. We’ve got 40 volumes and counting and they’re decently thick for a LN.

t. RR user of three years and LN slop connoisseur.