Capitulation 101

I’m in the process of writing my first novel. It’s a cyberpunk-inspired hard science fiction story set on Earth in the near future.

I intend to self-publish the book. This carries with it many implications. First and foremost, I’m solely responsible for the quality of the finished product. Not only do I have to craft an interesting story, I need to hire my own developmental and line/copy editors to help me ensure that the work is the best it can be. Then there’s recruiting beta readers: people I’m close enough to to trust with an unfinished manuscript, but distant enough that I’ll get honest feedback. There’s the mechanical aspects, formatting/typesetting the book, securing ISBNs, commissioning cover art, organizing the front and back matter.

And finally the part most writers seem to dread: marketing and promotion. Advanced Reader Copies sent to a select list, both as a final check to make sure there are as few errors as possible, and hopefully as a source of positive reviews, a set of social media posts, emails to my lengthy list of newsletter subscribers, paid advertising, and much more. Hypothetically leading to ultimate success (for a highly individual definition of success ranging from “I finished a book” to “I earn a good living from my work”).

Except I don’t have a lengthy list of newsletter subscribers or a massive social media following. I do have a minuscule mailing list, roughly two orders of magnitude smaller than Kevin Kelley’s semi-valid One Thousand True Fans that a creator needs to sustain their work. Not good.

Not that I haven’t started all the things that are supposed to yield a dedicated fan base. I have. I just haven’t continued them. I’ve got a handful of sites, three blogs, two of which rarely see updates (and the third just documents releases of software I maintain, that’s easy but boring). Even if I was updating regularly, the pathetic state of web search probably means I’d be posting into a void anyway.

I digress. In terms of writing, I there is just one place where I should be doing all the things to build a following, my alanlangford.com site. I should be posting there about progress on my work, offering samples, maybe discussing some aspects of the main characters. This should be easy. The thing is, I’m still not sure. I’m not sure about everything. What if I share part of a chapter now, and by the time I get through two to five more draft/revision cycles, that chapter is entirely cut? Have I been dishonest? Will people be disappointed?

I just don’t feel comfortable writing about this stuff until I’m certain that things I say are going to be part of the book are actually in the finished work. Anything else feels dishonest.

And yet I need to say something, somewhere, or have to settle for a number of true fans that I can count on one hand. That’s not an acceptable outcome either.

As a result, here I am on Substack, capitulating to the promise of benefiting from some network effect, akin to the community of fellow writers I’ve connected with on Mastodon. During the sign-up process, I was asked to provide a single sentence describing what this blog is about, and my best answer is “I don’t know yet.” My suspicion is that if I’m going to post regularly, this is going to be something akin to early “web logs”, some kind of open book journal that reflects the scattered, disjointed activities and interests that pass for my life.

This is in some ways a terrifying prospect. Much like many creative folks, I’d prefer that my fans came after my work, rather than before. But that’s not the way the world works. I was going to write “works these days,” but I have a feeling it was always this way; only the medium has changed.

Buckle up. I don’t know how weird this is going to get.