There Are Fewer Soap Boxes Than Ever For Authors

About a year ago I wrote a post titled If A Tree Falls In A Forest (The Reason Authors Are Always Promoting Their Books) which was all about how authors' attempts at promotion can slip through the cracks, and about how so many folks will talk out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to authors trying to expand our audiences. And while all of that absolutely still stands, I wanted to talk about the fact that the changing landscape is making it more and more impossible for creators to reach an audience on our own.

There just aren't any soap boxes to stand on anymore.

Okay, so this was for AGGRESSIVE soap. My point still stands.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Nothing Works Anymore

I've been a professional author for something like 15 years now. If there's been a marketing gimmick that didn't require a huge budget, I've tried it. I've been on almost every social media platform, I've made half a dozen different kinds of content, and I've used all of the "smart" solutions to getting your work seen. And all of those things would have worked fine about 12 years ago. However, in the age of the Internet we find ourselves in, everything is broken, and nothing fucking works.

The short answer is because corporations broke everything. The longer answer is a little more complicated, but not by much.

Because most of this was deliberate.

The first major issue that we're dealing with is platform decay, which I talked about in my post The Reason Social Media Sucks For Everyone These Days (Not Just Creators). The short version is that social media sites used to offer good functionality, and there was a lot of cross-discovery. Your friends would see what you post on FB, and if you made a popular post on Twitter it could generate millions of views with tens of thousands of fresh audience members. These days the websites have been deliberately hamstrung so that there's no discoverability, and so that people rarely see anything on their feeds at all. And if you try to share a link to something that goes off that platform? That's a good way to have your signal buried, because the sites want to keep people on them as long as possible, and they want to hide any off-ramps someone might come across. You won't even show up to your friends and followers, and they have to go looking for you.

For some of my own numbers, in the past I'd share to FB and on a slow day I'd still get 400-500 views on something, with 1,000 or more on a busy/popular posting day. Now I share to more groups, and I have more followers, but I'm lucky if I get 20 views total. That's not an organic failure; that's a hand choking off air. And those numbers are the same with most other smaller creators I know not just on FB, but on all social media platforms they use.

The second major issue is the spread of websites these days. Think of it like streaming services. Once upon a time you had Netflix, and that was it, so you paid a little money and you got to stream whatever you wanted. Then Hulu wanted a piece. Then Disney. And with every company that yanked their copyrights and put them behind a separate paywall, you ended up with more services that were more scattered, diluting the audience and effect. The same thing happened with social media. Because it used to be you had Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, and maybe Reddit. Now you add in Blue Sky, Instagram, Threads, and apps like TikTok, and you have more platforms, but it's harder to be heard by a sizable audience on any one of them... especially if you work primarily in text.

And that's before we talk about the tsunami of AI slop, and how it's shut down websites like Digg because they refused to amplify that signal, but couldn't find a way to stop it from spreading. So that's even more legitimate options taken off the table.

All of that is bad enough... but on top of all those things, you also have so many platforms that are segregating advertisements and promotional posts. To be clear, not banning them. Segregating them.

Yeah, make your posts here. Folks will absolutely see them!

For added clarity, I am all about deciding in your group's rules that promotional posts are not allowed. Whether you're on Discord, Facebook, Reddit, or any other platform, if you don't want promotion happening in your group, that's your decision. But having a weekly thread where everyone links their promotional posts? Or having a subgroup where all the promotion happens away from the actual main page where people interact with stuff? Come on. We all know that no one is looking into those areas, or reviewing what came out that week. It's not happening. It's the equivalent of giving your younger sibling an unplugged controller while you're trying to play a video game so they feel like they're participating... and this has generally become the norm across most of the remaining social media landscape these days.

So if you post on social media it's very likely that your signal will be throttled if you share a link that leads off-site. If you try to get clever and share it in the comments, you'll have folks screaming at you for promoting in their groups. If you try to run a newsletter you'll have literally 1% of the people who subscribed to it click anything you shared (saw that when recently reviewing numbers). Convention numbers are down, and even the people who do attend aren't actually buying anything, or paying attention to authors and creators they don't already know.

What the fuck are we supposed to do? Well, the same thing I've been saying this whole time, because there is only one thing that seems to work anymore, and it's the one thing we, as creators, have zero control over.

Word Of Mouth Is All We Have

I've said it before, but I feel that I need to keep saying it because people don't seem to grasp how truly dire the situation is for creators. Because we literally cannot do anything to make the broken machinery all around us work. There is no magical keyword we can use to hoodwink the algorithm to make sure we get more views. There is no organic interaction we can perform that will magically cause our posts to be seen. There is no other social media site out there that's just waiting to give us views, reads, listens, and sales. Our hands have literally been tied, and unless we have hundreds (or thousands) of dollars to budget for ads on platforms, we can't really do much with the systems as they exist.

All we have is you. Our audience. People who want us to actually be seen, be heard, and to keep making more stuff. Because without your shoulders pushing the wheel right alongside us, we aren't going anywhere.

You are the wellspring from which we flow.

If there's a creator you care about, whether its me or someone else, make sure you do the following for them:

- Follow/Subscribe to Their Socials - Algorithms give preference to those with the most bodies behind them.

- Interact With Their Posts - Whether it's sharing, liking, and commenting on Facebook, upvoting on Reddit, or liking and commenting on YouTube, that interaction pushes creator's content up in the algorithm rankings

- Leave Ratings and Reviews - Positive reviews on books, on podcasts, etc. add up, and help creators get seen more

- Tell Your Friends and Family - We can talk until we're blue in the face, but no one is going to care. If you have friends or family you think would like what we make, tell them because we can't.

And after you've done all that, it helps to buy books, leave tips, become a Patreon patron, and all that... but even if you just lend your voice to helping make that wheel turn, that's still doing something that authors are unable to do for themselves these days. So until we figure out some other solution, I hate to say it, but you all really are our only hope!

As A Final Call To Action

In order to help focus the energy of your readers, you're supposed to give a call to action by giving them something specific to do. Well, if you've read this far, and you really want to help me get the word out about something, then head over to the YouTube channel The A.L.I.C.E. Files, subscribe, and give our episodes a watch! It's a sci fi reimagining of Alice in Wonderland with a couple of odd little twists and turns that I think most people who enjoy my stories will get a kick out of!

Most importantly, we need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watched hours before YouTube lets us actually keep ad revenue... so please, help us get there!

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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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Understanding The Flat Arc (Because Sometimes Your Characters Don't HAVE To Change)

I'd like to start this entry off with a bit of good news. I recently put out my first novel! Crier's Knife is a sword and sorcery tale, with all the flashing blades and fell magic you'd expect from something in the genre. Our protagonist is Dirk Crier, a mountain boy from a witchbred clan, and one day his grandmother sets him the task of fetching his cousin Teller. Teller has a knack for getting into trouble, but this time he's up to his neck in real darkness; the kind you don't walk out of without leaving a little blood behind you. So Dirk rides out to either bring Teller home, or to make sure his kin has plenty of company on the long road to hell.

Seriously, the first few chapters are free, go read them!

One of the questions people keep asking me about this book is who is my protagonist, and what's his arc? Well, Dirk is a member of the Crier clan who, left to his own devices, would be happy building himself a cabin on the slopes of Ben Morgh to live a fairly quiet life. But when trouble rears its head, it's his job to put it back down again. In short, he's the family's enforcer, and the nasty work tends to end up in his lap.

As to his arc, that got me wondering. Because, you see, most folks only know about the two major types of character arcs; positive character arcs (where a character confronts and overcomes a flaw or fear to succeed and become better) and negative arcs (where a character fails to overcome a flaw or fear, and hurts themselves or others in the process).

There is a third kind of character arc, though, according to Well-Storied; the flat arc. In a flat arc a character's morals and beliefs are challenged, but they hold true to who they are and overcome.

That is a perfect description of Dirk, and the arc he has in Crier's Knife.

"Flat" Is Not Synonymous With "Bad"

Now, there's a big difference between a character being flat, and that character having a flat arc. Because flat characters are dull, boring, and one-dimensional. Characters with flat arcs, on the other hand, are some of the most famous and lauded personas in literature.

Like this guy, for example.

At his core, Batman is a character with hundreds (if not thousands) of flat arc stories. Sherlock Holmes is another character with a lot of flat arcs (this condition is particularly common among detectives and serialized characters, if you keep track). The same can be said of characters like Conan, or Solomon Kane. Sam Spade, Hawk, and even Captain America find themselves with a lot of flat arcs, as well.

Because, you see, these characters already have The Truth figured out, when it comes to their worlds and stories. They don't need to climb a mountain to talk to a sensei, to uncover their inner strength, or to learn lessons to overcome a challenge. They know what to do, and they do it. So, as readers, we get the satisfaction of fast-forwarding to what many consider the "good part" of a positive story arc. The part when the protagonist has learned their lesson, overcome their flaw, and is ready to rock and roll.

(Also, to head off any quibbles here, characters who are serialized will have different arcs in different stories. It's true that character like Batman have had positive arcs and negative arcs throughout their runs, and those story lines tend to be the memorable ones. By and large, though, the bulk of their story lines are flat arcs, with the exceptions sort of proving the rule.)

There's Nothing Wrong With Holding Steady

I will admit that flat arcs tend to be some of my favorite stories. While I understand the appeal of a positive arc (because personal growth and change to overcome obstacles is motivating and engaging) as well as a negative arc (because, as I've stated in the past, I'm a great lover of the "fuck you" ending), I find that a flat arc is often the most useful for when you already want your character to know who they are, and to have their world figured out. And since flat arc stories tend to create conflicts that fall into the No, You Move category, they can be fun and compelling without the need to do a lot of navel gazing that may not be necessary for your story.

This quote is basically a summation of the flat arc conflict.

So the next time you're writing, remember that it isn't either self-discovery and success, or crashing and burning because you didn't overcome. Sometimes your character just looks at the world, plants their feet, and says, "Bring it on."

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing post! Hopefully it engaged some folks out there, and if you're curious what an engaging flat arc would look like stop on in and read the first few chapters of Crier's Knife for free!

If you want to stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. If you'd like to see more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, as well as my Amazon Author Page. Lastly, if you'd like to help support me and my work, consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi as a tip, or going to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron!