<story><title>Why are debut novels failing to launch?</title><url>https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a60924704/debut-fiction-challenges/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>boznz</author><text>Spent several years writing and editing my first book before thinking the job was finished when I hit the publish now button. But it is literally only half the job done.&lt;p&gt;The hell now is unless you get friends and family or an agency involved to push it and market it it will languish on the 500th page of any Amazon search forever. Oh and did I say that there are thousands of books a day released and there is nowhere you can self-promote stuff if you do not have social media, HN and reddit will also immediately block self-promotion even if relevant to the audience (I guess I can understand why). I guess the only ones destined to read it are the AI training algorithms.&lt;p&gt;Still it wont stop me writing, having a book published, even if nobody reads it is very self-satisfying and leaves something of you in this world when you are gone.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pavlov</author><text>Ten years ago I wrote a science fiction novel in Finnish, printed 300 hardcover copies at my own expense, and gave them away to people over the years. I would guess less than 10% of those copies have actually been read. (A few people claim they liked it, but of course that doesn&amp;#x27;t necessarily mean they read it.)&lt;p&gt;So, a waste of time and money? That&amp;#x27;s not how I feel about it at all. The creative process was illuminating. And as you say, it&amp;#x27;s satisfying to think that there&amp;#x27;s now a physical artifact of my mind that&amp;#x27;s longer and deeper than any other work I&amp;#x27;ve produced, and it will probably stay for a while on somebody&amp;#x27;s bookshelf after I&amp;#x27;m gone.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why are debut novels failing to launch?</title><url>https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a60924704/debut-fiction-challenges/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>boznz</author><text>Spent several years writing and editing my first book before thinking the job was finished when I hit the publish now button. But it is literally only half the job done.&lt;p&gt;The hell now is unless you get friends and family or an agency involved to push it and market it it will languish on the 500th page of any Amazon search forever. Oh and did I say that there are thousands of books a day released and there is nowhere you can self-promote stuff if you do not have social media, HN and reddit will also immediately block self-promotion even if relevant to the audience (I guess I can understand why). I guess the only ones destined to read it are the AI training algorithms.&lt;p&gt;Still it wont stop me writing, having a book published, even if nobody reads it is very self-satisfying and leaves something of you in this world when you are gone.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>devbent</author><text>&amp;gt; HN and reddit will also immediately block self-promotion even if relevant to the audience (&lt;p&gt;HN doesn&amp;#x27;t block self promotion if it comes up as part of a conversation, e.g. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m having this technical problem.&amp;quot; Re: &amp;quot;I wrote a book about how to solve that!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Also you can at least put a link in your profile!&lt;p&gt;Reddit has tons of self promos all the time, it just depends on the subreddit. Also it helps if you&amp;#x27;re a long time active member in a community.</text></comment>