About a month ago, I released on Kindle the work of several years + Show Spoiler +, as I detailed in a previous blog. It's been quite an experience and I'm sure I've done everything wrong. The most annoying thing about the current creative environment isn't that people don't think that your work is bad...it's just that nobody will even try it. You're not competing for their money, you're competing for their time. It's really quite amazing how you can't give some things away for free. The sad news is that there really is no surefire way to spread awareness.
It's also pretty terrible if you're not part of a certain genre. The popular genres are flooded, but at least people are searching and combing through those sections. The top 20 the satire section is mis-categorized romances, old mainstays like Vonnegut and a few weird titles. The tone on r/selfpublish echoes this. The current system rewards mediocrity. One of the many paradoxes of the internet is that, now that everyone has a voice, it's almost harder to find any good voices.
I can't complain, though. I've had some tiny successes and promises of reviews (by the way, I'd be glad to gift a copy to anyone willing to promise a review).
The other funny and totally unexpected thing is that I started a Youtube + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/user/jerubaal101 channel as a companion. I intended it to be a companion to my novel and my essays....and it got discovered by my high school students....So a) I have to deal with that b.s. and b) I feel like I should try to entertain them a little bit instead of doing my dry stuffy PoliSci stuff. I'm still uncertain as to the format I'm going to go with. I thought it might be fun to have some group discussions on politics or philosophy, so if anyone is interested in doing that, let me know.
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