{"id":34495,"date":"2025-09-06T05:00:44","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T09:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=34495"},"modified":"2025-09-05T20:57:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T00:57:04","slug":"we-have-to-change-with-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/06\/we-have-to-change-with-them\/","title":{"rendered":"We Have to Change with Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

I watched a YouTube video<\/a> that described how a book that was struggling to sell a few hundred copies suddenly caught fire and ended up selling 1.5 million copies.\u00a0 Well, the secret was that they gave away 150,000 copies of the book for free.\u00a0 And then enough of those readers loved it that they got their friends excited enough to buy it.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019ll have to say, on the face of it, this sounds insane.\u00a0 I\u2019m not even sure how you would go about giving away 150,000 copies of a book.\u00a0 I guess you\u2019d set the price to zero on Amazon and then e-mail 150,000 people to let them know they can have the book free that week or something.\u00a0 But where do you even get an e-mail list with 150,000 science fiction fans?\u00a0 But then again, I have read a lot in the last few weeks about how even traditionally published books mostly only sell a few hundred copies altogether.\u00a0 That can\u2019t be considered success, can it?<\/p>\n

This has really got me thinking about how limited my little world of friends and family is in the larger scheme of things.\u00a0 Even on the web I only communicate with a few hundred or maybe a few thousand people at most.\u00a0 I guess these proverbial \u201cinfluencers\u201d may have a reach that extends into the hundreds of thousands and possibly a few million people but I\u2019m not sure how much this translates into marketability.\u00a0 Of course, I don\u2019t discount the youth market and how suggestible teenagers are.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not a market that I\u2019m currently interested in.<\/p>\n

But it was fun thinking about my book reaching millions of people.\u00a0 Hordes of adoring fans lining up on the highways leading to Dunwich all with the single fixed idea of having me sign their personal copy of \u201cThe Sniper\u201d so that it would become an heirloom that they could pass down to their children and their children\u2019s children unto the eighth generation.<\/p>\n

It kinda gets you, \u2026 right there.<\/p>\n

Well, anyway, I definitely have a lot to think about in anticipation of actually publishing this magnum opus.\u00a0 I still think I\u2019ll look at traditional publishing first because that is the traditional thing.\u00a0 And I am a traditional guy.\u00a0 But it\u2019s tempting to think of trying to break out into the big bold beautiful world out there and get as much feedback from the readers out there as I possibly can.\u00a0 After all P.T. Barnum was successful because he knew how to catch the public\u2019s attention.\u00a0 Possibly a lurid cover that has little to do with the plot of the book may be part of how you attract the great unwashed.\u00a0 Then again, covers cost money and maybe I\u2019m better off spending that on a huge e-mail list of science fiction fans.<\/p>\n

So, as you can tell I\u2019m staring out into the abyss and finding it abysmal.\u00a0 When I was a young fan of science fiction, I assumed that finding readers was not a problem.\u00a0 I thought getting published was the trick.\u00a0 Times change, priorities shift and we have to change with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I watched a YouTube video that described how a book that was struggling to sell a few hundred copies suddenly caught fire and ended up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,1289,1263,237,4,242],"tags":[76,1290,4484],"class_list":["post-34495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-fiction-writing","tag-my-fiction","tag-the-american-archipelago-book-1-the-sniper"],"yoast_head":"\nWe Have to Change with Them - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/06\/we-have-to-change-with-them\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We Have to Change with Them - 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