Adrian Tchaikovsky. Classic-to-be. Start with Children of Time.

Robert wrote: "Adrian Tchaikovsky. Classic-to-be. Start with Children of Time."

Amazing book

Robert wrote: "Adrian Tchaikovsky. Classic-to-be. Start with Children of Time."

100% could not agree more!

Amanda wrote: "Robert wrote: "Adrian Tchaikovsky. Classic-to-be. Start with Children of Time."

100% could not agree more!"

Except this is supposed to be new authors and Adrian Tchaikovsky has been published for over 15 years now. Incidentally, I also love his work, at least his SF work, but he is not a 'new author' which is what this blog is about: "Rising Stars of Sci-Fi and Fantasy"

Ryan Cahill

The Fallen (prequel novella)
Of Blood and Fire--Book 1 of The Bound & the Broken
Of Darkness & Light--Book 2 of The Bound & the Broken
The Exile--novella
Of War and Ruin--Book 3---due out 12/22

y'all might find New Speculative Fiction Stars 2020 2029 interesting

I don't think many know about Queer Space Books yet. I have a first novel with them, and there is a decent list of very unconventional titles there.

"Forget the classic tomes of adult sci-fi and fantasy that are bound to show up in recommendations almost everywhere. (I know a few immediately came to mind.) Now is a great time to start reading emerging authors who are writing the classics-to-be! These new writers have expanded the genre: showcasing more diverse characters, imaginative worlds, and embracing every subgenre possible." <---- Yeah, riiight...Not!! If this was a true statement, I am almost positive we'd be seeing far more self-published Indie Authors on this list every single year. (-_-)

Christopher Ruocchio's Empire of Silence (Sun Eater series) is easily my favorite new author I have found in the past year or so.

Mitchell wrote: "y'all might find New Speculative Fiction Stars 2020 2029 interesting"

Thanks for linking this!

I fell in love with Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. Cozy Fantasy at its finest.

I still have to read the Tamsyn Muir first two books of the series before the 3rd one, Nona the Ninth, is released!! ^^

More to add to my TBR!

Patty wrote: "Ross wrote: "If this was a true statement, I am almost positive we'd be seeing far more self-published Indie Authors on this list every single year. (-_-)."

Your self-published books, I assume is ..."

Okay, Patty. I'll admit you're at least partially correct about me trying to hint at my own self-published works. Though I would certainly like to see other self-published books (And authors!) make it on a rising-stars list, like this one, sometime in the near future. Then perhaps I wouldn't act so down in the dumps in regards to immensely-popular authors and their words being showcased like this, year after year.

By the way, could you or anyone else here perhaps tell me what constitutes a catchy book cover design?

Patty wrote: "Ross wrote: "Okay, Patty. I'll admit you're at least partially correct about me trying to hint at my own self-published works. Though I would certainly like to see other self-published books (And a..."

Okay, this was a firm but helpful reply in the end. I only wish this particular Amazon subsidiary had a like button or at least a thanks or acknowledgment button, so the commenter doesn't have to leave a reply every time there's a new post where they are mentioned in directly. I'll take your last bit of advice to heart, especially.

Ross wrote: """Forget the classic tomes of adult sci-fi and fantasy that are bound to show up in recommendations almost everywhere. (I know a few immediately came to mind.) Now is a great time to start reading emerging authors who are writing the classics-to-be! These new writers have expanded the genre: showcasing more diverse characters, imaginative worlds, and embracing every subgenre possible." <---- Yeah, riiight...Not!! If this was a true statement, I am almost positive we'd be seeing far more self-published Indie Authors on this list every single year. (-_-)"

I can only agree with you, they're focusing on trad-published authors who already have a decent enough backing (unless their publisher just sucks) but never actually helping to discover new authors, let alone self-published authors who need every bit of precious visibility.

At least 80% of my reads each year are self-published books each year. Rather than making the rich and famous even more so and feeding greedy corporations that give authors meager royalties, I'll give my money to someone who appreciates it.

Tomas wrote: "Ross wrote: """Forget the classic tomes of adult sci-fi and fantasy that are bound to show up in recommendations almost everywhere. (I know a few immediately came to mind.) Now is a great time to s..."

Thanks a lot for saying this, Tomas!

Many of the readers on here have no Earthly idea how many people are self-published authors but still remain in the dark, being virtually unknown because all-Or most-of the already popular 'mainstream' trad-published authors constantly keep on overshadowing the rest of us.

Just because I cannot afford a decent enough backing or professional-looking cover art right now doesn't mean the books I wrote should be kept hidden away and obscure forever.

On this note, you're welcome to add and message me on here, Tomas K. Grizzly.

Patty, I see your point, though there are some inaccuracies with your post. And I don't mean the mistake where you say that traditional publishers write better books (because it's authors, not publishers, who write books). I've seen the QA levels on trad-published books decline (more typos passing through editors, formatting worse than I could do in 30 minutes with a HTML/CSS guide, not using some built-in tools of e-readers, etc.). Many trad-published books have quite bland covers (just look at the books mentioned in this very post - how many of them are something you instantly associate with S-F or fantasy?) DESPITE the major funding. They have access to much better (or at least better-paid) cover artists than most self-pub authors yet the results are often... meh. But that's not my point here.

My point is different: both Amazon and the self-pub authors actually make a better % per sale of s self-pub book (because that money is split just between them) than per sale of a trad-published book. Unless something changed over the last couple of years, traditional publishers sell books for more yet give authors lower % royalties. Traditional publishers are ripping off both authors (through low e-book royalties) and readers (by price-gouging e-books). That was one of the main reasons I started to read self-pub books more, and I realized that the quality can be just as good. And the writers actually appreciate your reviews more.

As for the pricing of Ross' books... I don't know the parameters, but the minimum allowed price can get quite high for a self-pub book if the book is on the longer side. Even for shorter books, Amazon may not allow less than $10 because they want to make a profit on that as well, and the pricing system is designed with that in mind. That said, self-pub books are, by a vast majority, read as e-books, so the pricing of a paperback isn't a major point for most self-pub authors (again, the price difference between e-book and print is probably a major factor.

If some parts of my knowledge are outdated, feel free to correct me.

Patty wrote: "That's if the self-published book sells well or readers actually want to buy it."
Which isone of my points. Percentage-wise, Amazon gets a bigger cut on self-pub books than on trad-pub books. A $10 trad-pub book gives around $1 to the author, $1 to Amazon, and the rest is to the publisher (who uses part of it for profit and part of it to cover the costs). A $5 self-pub book gives the author around $3-$3,5 (assuming it's the 70% royalty territory) and Amazon around $1,5-$2 (details will vary depending on file size, taxes, etc). So a self-pub book (assuming it's good enough to sell) gives both the author and Amazon more money even if the book is sold on a lower price point - though, as you say, it needs to be discovered and stand up to reader's expectations first. And discovery is the biggest hurdle for self-pub authors who can't just grab $10k and splash it on a big launch promo.

You're right that there's a MASSIVE variety in the quality and originality of book covers among self-pub books. As someone who reads self-pub authors more than trad-pub, I've seen self-pub authors fail massively when it comes to their covers - but there's a difference between a large company with an almost unlimited budget and self-pub authors for whose even $200 may be hard to part with. But, yes, some of those books will lose readers faster than gain due to poor choice of covers. As for Ross, specifically, I've looked into my post and message history here on Goodreads and I've, in fact, mentioned something along those lines to him - TWO years ago. As for formatting - I haven't seen how Ross' books are formatted but I know - again, from other books I've read - that there are several ways to screw this up. And that trad-pub books screw up other aspects of formatting than self-pub books. Hell, I've seen people just directly upload their MSWord file to Amazon and that's it. Does it work? Yes. Does it look any decent? Rarely.

You mention price as a factor for the sale of self-pub books - and that's also a good point. But the fact self-pub books are more sold as digital rather than print is also because the lower price of ebooks (let alone services like Kindle Unlimited) make it easier for people to try new authors. Even downloading the free sample of an e-book is a good way - when you get to the end of the sample, you can buy the rest of the book with just one click.

My point here isn't to push Ross' books (or anyone else's for that matter), but to point out the obvious bias and the misleading title of this blog - which does nothing at all to help people discover something (because those books are well known). My point is that there's major bias and prejudice from various sources - including the staff and many users of Goodreads - against self-published books. Amazon will happily sell self-pub books as long as the author does the heavy lifting and emerges from the telephone number rankings to a point where they're getting sustained sales. Despite that, even many successful self-pub books get little space on these Goodreads blogs [which, more often than not, seems more like camouflaged advertising of big-name books than anything else]. That's one of my issues here.

Patty wrote: "I'm finding this more and more among self-published authors of the bad variety: they command respect and admiration by default, and they can't figure out why these big American corporations, like Goodreads, aren't right there promoting their books among books that have already proven successful with mainstream audiences. Sometimes I think the lack of tough love is what drives self-published authors towards KDP in the first place. They want the fame, they want the money, they want to put "author" on their social media profiles and get all the clout that comes with being published, but they don't want to have an audience first."

Yeah, the desire for gratification is a problem - in everything, not just writing. I was lucky enough to mostly encounter authors who write for the love of writing. That said, KDP is probably the most newbie-friendly way to publish something - which leads some to publish stuff that's not really ready in several aspects. And, knowing I have some expectations when buying a book, I'm not supporting that approach at all. So, again, my gripe is with cases where the person put quite a lot of hard work - up to hundreds of hours of revisions, makes sure to get things formatted right, does their best to create a story that actually makes sense - but people will avoid their book without even looking at the sample just because it's self-published, due to quite a numerous people publishing stuff that's not really ready.

Ohh, man!

What have I instigated on this thread all of the sudden? Well, it doesn't really matter how I instigated it, but I would like to add in a few lines quoted by you, Patty Wilby, and you, Tomas K. Grizzly, and take the time to reply to each one in turn...

Ist quote by Patty: "Did you know that local news coverage also gets aggregated into Google News? That's another vessel for self-promotion, because if your books are good enough to qualify for media coverage, then that's complimentary. Ask local reporters and journalists to cover your books as a human interest section. It'll cost you nothing to ask them."

My response: Patty, this is a really good idea and certainly one I am willing to try, sometime in the near future. I don't know if they'll answer or take me seriously or my novel series for this matter, but again, if there's any chance for me to gain extra publicity, then I'm going to take it and give it my best effort!

IInd quote by Tomas: "As for the pricing of Ross' books... I don't know the parameters, but the minimum allowed price can get quite high for a self-pub book if the book is on the longer side. Even for shorter books, Amazon may not allow less than $10 because they want to make a profit on that as well."

My response: Well, up until very recently, the pricing of my Kindle books was precisely the same as my paperbacks. But several months ago, a new friend and fan of mine suggested I change the prices of those books down to around $2.99 each. Not only did I take his suggestion to heart, but I even made sure to price each one properly, according to its length, overall. This includes the page and word count. So, the novellas are priced at $2.50 each, while the longer novels are $2.99 each. And you guys don't know this yet, but if you check my Amazon author page (Not Goodreads!), you'll see which I also have a trilogy of short stories, which is the most recent work I published. It is available for $2.00 in Kindle format and $5.00 as a paperback. Amazon doesn't seem to mind such a low price for a self-published book. On this note, either one of you are welcome to message me privately for the link to my Amazon profile, since I don't want Goodreads assuming I may be trying to hijack this thread.

IIIrd quote by Patty: "Here's the problem, though: a lot of self-published authors who are inexperienced think that larger books display better on a shelf, and so when I read my paperback of Eberle's Sky Fighters and Houndy Crunchers, this was an example of that trend. He had huge spaces between the paragraphs, no justified or formatted text (plenty of bolded/italic text, though), no footer/header, no proper paragraph indentation and no set text size. His book was huge, and more expensive as a result. It was not an omnibus. It was a small novel."

My response: Patty, I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but one distinct advantage I have as a self-published 'KDP' author is the ability to go back and make changes to one or more of my own books. Doing so not only allows me to change my covers to something which might be more well-suited for novels of the genre I typically write in (sci-fi and fantasy), but I can also re-upload my book-files whenever I make changes to any of those books I wrote in the past. And yesh, I actually do re-write my novels every so often. I even do a thorough proofreading job on every single book I write before I click on the 'Publish' button on the final KDP author's page used in publishing those works. I might not be able to afford a professional proofreader on my current budget, however, this doesn't mean I'll skip out on ensuring my books aren't of the low-brow quality which the 'Maradonia and Onision stuff' is infamous for. Plus, I've been doing complete or near-complete re-writes of the first 4 novels I wrote. And in doing so, I've also taken steps to ensure everything within them is as professional as a self-published indie author with a limited budget can produce. This may not yet amount to hundreds of hours of revisions as you mentioned, Patty, but I am sure I've done more than several dozens of hours worth of revisions already. And this is also considering I have other things to do with my life besides writing.

IVth quote by Tomas: "My point here isn't to push Ross' books (or anyone else's for that matter), but to point out the obvious bias and the misleading title of this blog - which does nothing at all to help people discover something (because those books are well known). My point is that there's major bias and prejudice from various sources - including the staff and many users of Goodreads - against self-published books. Amazon will happily sell self-pub books as long as the author does the heavy lifting and emerges from the telephone number rankings to a point where they're getting sustained sales. Despite that, even many successful self-pub books get little space on these Goodreads blogs [which, more often than not, seems more like camouflaged advertising of big-name books than anything else]. That's one of my issues here."

I agree with you, here again, Tomas. And I may not be trying to push mine or anyone else's books on readers who came here to quote un-quote 'discover' new authors. However, how can anyone who reads headliner-posts like this one be able to discover all the new authors or far more obscure authors like Tomas and I if we're never given a fair chance to make ourselves well known or notable enough? Sure, we can seek out local news coverage as Patty noted above, but even if we do and they publicize us and our works, will it be enough to get a major corporation, like Goodreads to mention us on one of their front pages? On top of all this, and in direct reference to the last billet Patty mentioned of me, I don't believe I've struck the last nails in my own coffin at this point. I've been working extra hard on trying to turn over a new leaf and restore the damage I've inadvertently added onto my already cracked reputation. And it was cracked mainly by negative reviewers here and on other social media platforms, namely Reddit, which I refuse to participate in for certain reasons.

This is all I have to say. It might be longer than anyone here would be interested in reading, but I wanted to clear up a few misconceptions in regards to me and especially my writing.

As for starting your own imprint... that may be quite tricky and depend a lot on where you live. I don't know how it is in the USA but one of my beta swaps is from Australia and I believe she mentioned on her blog that Australia's laws are written in a way that favors creating your own imprint. In my country... not really the case. It would probably be a ton of paperwork and an endless treadmill of visiting various offices to set this up - and having to do two tax reports each year. If I go directly to Amazon, I just put my royalties (when I have some) into my standard tax report and that's it (plus, in my country, royalties are free of income tax up to ~400€/month).
I also don't know how it goes with ISBNs across countries - and that's another advantage of KDP, you don't need ISBN at all for Kindle e-books and Amazon assigns you a free ISBN for print books if you don't have your own. The last time I checked [around 2018 or so], ISBNs in the USA are ludicrously expensive to buy unless you buy by hundreds on bulk discounts.
So, whether a writer does or doesn't create their own imprint may end up being a financially and legally prudent choice more than anything else - and very dependent on location.

When I browse for books - I check the name and cover first, those need to persuade me that the book is in the genre I want to read (I've already mentioned this). Then, I check the description - and if this makes it seem like something I'd love to read, it goes to my TBR (along with notes about the book and series length). Who is listed as the publisher has exactly zero impact on whether or not I'll read a book. Whether that's normal or rare behavior, I can't tell.

Patty wrote: "You're blaming "negative reviewers" for something you did."

This may be true, however, I am not blaming all negative reviewers for this. The ones I blame are the obviously fake 'sock-puppet' accounts like this one: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1... ...Who leave blank ratings of 1-star on one or more of my books and others, who aren't fake, but left scathing one-liners on them, such as: "What even the ever-loving f*ck is this?" ...Ohh, wait a moment. You wrote this, Patty? I had no idea! But, here's another somewhat scathing review of my 7th novel: "I won this book in a goodreads drawing.

DNF There's a lot happening, but I didn't know the names or the situation, so I was lost from the first page, and never caught up." ...Sadly, reviews like this one don't provide a lot of information on much, if anything which the reviewer found so off-putting about a book I wrote, which they read and subsequently reviewed.

Patty wrote: "It would probably help if you didn't blame your reputation on reviewers, since from what I've seen, even your negative reviewers say flattering things about you as a person (Marc "Dark Reader of the Woods" and Rebecca Maye Holiday both have perfectly valid complaints, but they both also point out good qualities in your books)."

I have nothing personal against either of those people. In fact, Marc and I are good friends, and I actually found most of his reviews comical, if not downright hilarious. I also promised him and at least a couple of others within my audience which I would finish the series for them. And I am doing it more for them and less for myself, actually.

Patty wrote: "As for the Reddit stuff, all I could find about your books on Reddit were a couple of posts complaining about a t-shirt with a quote of yours on it that looked weird or something. Nothing reputation-ruining."

In one of my past blog postings, I went into some detail about each of the two posts on Reddit which I found were pretty far out of line, even some critics allowed to be very rude. Since I still would rather not act out as though I am name-shaming anyone, I will only quote what I mentioned seeing in those posts on Reddit: "I have also stumbled upon a public discussion-thread about me and my series, on Reddit of all places! And no, the two or more users weren't singing my praises. In fact, both of them-Who I suspect are very bored, male trolls-Are using Reddit as a means to publicly name and shame not only those novels, but ME PERSONALLY, as an author. Not only are they guilty of this blatantly-shameful behavior, but they've also accused me of creating a fake-name of an author, whom I've given credit to in the acknowledgments portion of my 7th Sky Fighters novel."
(In the second post made on Reddit by this guy, he accused me of being quote-unquote "in love" with my Mom. Not to mention doing so and including a few choice cuss-words.)

Sadly, it was posts like the ones I found on Reddit, coupled with blank ratings and vague negative reviews of my novels which led me to inadvertently begin responding in kind, via my own scathing reviews of other authors' books I read, mostly at the behest of said authors, which resulted in Rebecca severing her ties of friendship with me. I actually do regret most of the things I've said, especially on those books I reviewed.

However...You did point one detail out, which I feel could validate my reason behind my negative reviews of those authors: Patty wrote: "There will always be critics. Some critics can be very rude, but they're allowed to be, and that doesn't mean it's their fault."

While this is a valid point as well, it kind of sounds like it's contradicting itself, because I'm sure many people decide to read books which they would not normally take any interest in. As a reader myself, I've picked up certain books and read some parts or all of them, because I was curious and wanted to honor the writers because I spoke to them here and agreed to give their books a read. And I'm sure many of those authors I met might have also wanted to give my books a try.

...So, does this mean they can trash my books all they want, but I can't do the same to theirs if I had enough reasons to dislike their books? Well once again, I'm sorry, but a wise man on Goodreads once pointed something quite important out: A lot of self-published authors, and especially Indie authors like me have to "wear many hats" if we decide to write novels to be published, somewhere. These include not only having to be our own copyrighters, but also our own editors and/or proofreaders, if we can't find someone else to do so, our own publishers-For those of us who have little to no choice but to self-publish, our own cover-artists or creators, our own promotion-team, our own distributors, for those who earned free copies, and our own campaigners and/or networking strategists...Whew!

This is a lot of hats to wear, for someone, whose main goal was to write a book and have it be published and available to a wide audience...Wouldn't you agree? Being a Jack-of-all-trades like this is bound to become stressful after a few years or so.

Patty wrote: "If you need to routinely edit and re-publish your books, that's a sign that you need to either hire a professional editor or move on from this series and start something completely new."

Sorry, but since this is an epic-saga-length novel series, which I am very close to finishing, I cannot simply abandon it. Especially when I already promised a number of my readers I'd see this project all the way through to the end. And besides, when I start something which I'm passionate about, I'll do whatever I can to ensure I finish it. Because I've heard it's always a good idea for us to finish the things (Projects) we started.

Sorry, this became another lengthy response of mine.

A small edit: Patty wrote: "I can look up your Amazon profile if I want to (I don't), but I might read your short story collection sometime. I'll add it to my to-read list if it makes you happy."

In all honesty, Patty, nothing would make me happier than to know you've added my short story collection onto your own 'to-read' list. Hearing those words is enough to convince me which even people who aren't so fond of me still find my works intriguing. You have my thanks in regards to this.

The best new sci-fi author has to be Melanie Kallas who wrote Liquid Fire. I hope more people get a chance to read it.