Dystopias seem to be the dominant science fiction type in the last decade or two. And the dopiness of the ones ending up on the large and small screens doesn’t encourage much hope in the genera. We have the ever popular “Handmaid’s Tale” that bangs away at the female victim of the evil patriarchy trope. And then there’s the “Hunger Games” which I suppose reflects the idea that somehow resources on Earth are about to collapse and a zero-sum game will emerge where we all will be fighting for our lives to get a loaf of bread. Wow! Who knew science fiction could be so much fun?
I’ve recently heard that horror is becoming a big genre with young men (apparently written stories and video and also video games). But that doesn’t alarm me. I think this is wrapped up with the popularity of video games and I think that is more a matter of the desire to work through puzzles and shoot monsters with guns (which is always a good thing!).
I have a theory that the current science fiction publishing model will not endure much longer. I don’t think they can make enough money from selling romantasy porn and feminist dystopia much longer. Of course, it’s possible that AI writing will completely destabilize all fiction writing. In that case the whole thing becomes academic. That would leave us just downloading AI slop at virtually no cost. But either way the world will be changing to resemble nothing like what we old-timers remember from the before time when books were an industry and grammatical sentences actually existed.
Of course, this is a hell of a time for me to become an author. But in a sense, it may be the best time for me to write. The barrier to getting published doesn’t exist. The only barrier is figuring out a way to let the reading public know my book exists and what it’s about. But that’s far from a trivial problem. Key words and algorithmic search engines and Amazon ad management are complicated and confusing topics and I’ll confess that I know next to nothing about any of that. But I’m slowly picking up some practical and painful experience.
For instance, so far today my Amazon ads have 23,417 impressions. I believe that means, that number of people had the chance to see my ad on the search pages they viewed on Amazon. Out of those thousands, only 16 people clicked on my ad. Out of those 16 people only two bought my book (e-book version). And that was with the e-book discounted to $0.99. So, there was $1.98 worth of sales. Of which I only get 30% (~$0.59). Now currently the cost per click is $1.71. Which means so far today I’ve been charged 16 X $1.71 = $27.36!
Obviously, this isn’t the way to become rich through writing. But it is a very educational exercise to understand how the current self-publishing model leaves quite a bit to be desired. But I still have few more ideas to try before giving up on my dream of becoming the next great science fiction author. Excelsior!