1
The genre is dystopian science fiction, but not hard scifi, nor using many weird words and names.
I did it with ChatGPT, but I wonder if there are better, specialized tools out there. I also tried DeepL, but they accept credit cards from Brazil in their pro version (which I need because the text is 25,000 characters long).
Thanks
On August 2020 I posted a fairly successful Show HN[0]for a service[1] that I had just built: "Serial Literature - Literature in weekly installments delivered to your email inbox".
Just last week I got a nice email of appreciation by a subscriber, which prompted me into look how it is doing. Something that I hadn't checked for more than an year, I think. So I decided to share, just out of curiosity, same data about its traction.
A relevant info is that I only promoted the service on the mentioned Show HN and, I think, on Reddit around that time, without much traction there though. Then I did a few updates adding more books. Then... I just left it there, working. Without worrying about maintaining it or marketing it. Which shows in the data below.
Another note for the HN crowd, the tech stack is a static site built with Eleventy, hosted on Netlify; using its Lambda Functions to save the data on FaunaDB serverlessly; then an AWS lambda function with a cron job to schedule the email delivery every night, using Mailgun. All of it on these services' free tier plan (so I could set and forget).
So, some limited analytics data (since I dind't set up any tracking).
Revenue : $0 (I never charged or intended too, I did built another site, kind of similar, but for new writers, with more for-profit goals[2])
Total subscribers : 1012 (the last one just yesterday, more than two years after any promotion).
Active subscribers : IDK (the query is a bit tricky, so I am just guessing from email delivery data, I think between 100 and 200 as of last December).
Emails sent by month since launch :
(emails can be sent from 1 to 7 times a week for each book a subscriber is currently reading)
2020 September ..... 4675
2020 October ....... 8021
2020 November ...... 5664
2020 December ...... 4660
2021 January ....... 3884
2021 February ...... 2809
2021 March ......... 2430
2021 April ......... 2145
2021 May ........... 1927
2021 June .......... 1441
2021 July .......... 1374
2021 August ........ 1191
2021 September ..... 1054
2021 October ....... 1156
2021 November ...... 801
2021 December ...... 751
2022 January ....... 1024
2022 February ...... 781
2022 March ......... 770
2022 April ......... 827
2022 May ........... 870
2022 June .......... 755
2022 July .......... 795
2022 August ........ 721
2022 September ..... 660
2022 October ....... 723
2022 November ...... 740
2022 December ...... 564
Emails delivery metrics: 98.59% delivered, 0.45% suppressed, 0.96% dropped (I don't track opening rate)
[0] Show HN link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24307752
[1] Site link: https://www.serialliterature.com/
[2] My for-profit, kind of similar site, but focusing on new writers wanting to publish original fiction: https://www.confabulists.com
https://writer.confabulists.com
This is the page focusing on convincing writers to sign up. It is a two-sided marketplace (writers and readers), but since I am just starting, there are no published writers yet -- who write in English at least. So if you write fiction of any genre, professionally or not, I invite you to try it.
Confabulists is the culmination of several personal experiences. First, I am trying to start a new career as a fiction writer. Which is hard. It is one type of content or art creation still heavily controlled by gatekeepers -- book editors. Amazon created a good option for self-publishing, but since it is not "media", it does not offer much opportunity for growing an audience. Or retain it, as there is no guarantee that a reader of one of your books will even know about the release of your latest one. In contrast, creative people that work with visual arts have TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch. Audio creators have the video platforms as well, but also Spotify, Deezer, Bandcamp. And finally, creators of the written word benefited from the resurgence of newsletters.
Substack took it to a new level, attracting great thinkers and journalists with a good model for these professionals to earn their money a bit more directly. I am a big fan of Substack. I created my newsletter there early on and tried three times to get a job there as a software developer (always politely rejected because they don't hire globally remote). But, despite a few recent efforts, I don't think Substack is a good place for fiction writers.
The main thing is that writing fiction takes time. It's hard to post new fiction weekly. And fiction is about past, completed works. Something that the current media landscape, newsletter tools included, strongly incentive against. You should always be creating new content. A new subscriber only gets your future work. Past texts are for those with a neck for digital archeology. That's why I created Confabulists. The main difference in the tool is that new readers, when they subscribe to an author, choose a book and start getting that book in installments from the first chapter. Completed books matter. "Old" fiction attracts new readers.
Another experience that led me to Confabulists was a free site that I built and launched in a Show HN [0] a couple of years ago: https://serialliterature.com
It was built for reading of public-domain classics in installments delivered by email. Just like Confabulists is for new authors. It got some traction here on HN and proved to me that people really engage in reading fiction in their email inboxes. At this peak, right after the Show HN, it had 800 active subscribers receiving installments from a book. Today, after two years, with zero marketing effort (I never even posted again on social media or anywhere), there are almost 200 active subscribers. No available book lasts that long in weekly installments, so these are either people who subscribed to a new book or new subscribers that found Serial Literature through word of mouth. For a zero-marketing effort, I consider this good retention and evidence that reading fiction through email has its audience.
I am solo on this. From idea to coding, to copy and design -- this last one with AI help with the illustrations. As a Brazilian and wanting to publish my work on it, I created it initially in Portuguese [1]. It was great for the beta reading of my first novel. And useful to find and fix some bugs and iterate the product until I had a solid solution. I think it is good enough to try to reach more people with its version in English.
I hope some fiction writers on HN find it useful too. Thanks!
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24307752 [1] https://www.confabulistas.com.br
Let me give you some context for my question.
I am a 42 yo developer, completely sedentary for the last 15 years or so, slightly overweight. I am worried about my overall health and mobility going into old age, so I started to exercise a bit last year; the thing is that I am utterly unmotivated by any sort of workout.
I never ever had the slightest motivation to go to the gym or any weight training. It's not that I hate; I just feel bored to death, I don't know. And my current long-term health concern is not enough motivation for daily commitment, I know. I am sure I won't like the motivational tactics of something like CrossFit, where someone shouting, high volume upbeat music, and group commitment are supposed to motivate you. I don't work that way. I am trying Pilates with my wife. Just the two of us and a trainer. The scheduled sessions and my wife has been helping me adhere to it for the last few months, but I know I don't look forward to the sessions and that, at some point, will make me quit.
I hate running as well, but I love to play soccer and sometimes basketball. The thing is that living in a high-density big city with busy friends is hard to find somewhere practical to play it recurrently. I am committed to finding a way to play it weekly, but even so, it will be just one weekly session of aerobic training without the functional part (which is what I am more worried about).
So, I am looking into what would motivate me to do some functional physical exercise. I am a builder. Building something will certainly motivate me. I do that with software all the time. Building things that don't go anywhere just for the joy of doing it. So I started to wonder if there is a hobby out there that demands the body enough to put me in shape.
And that brings the question: what could I physically build that would be good enough functional training while learning the craft of building it?
I am looking for something long-term. It could take years to build something acceptable, as long as the learning process is also physically demanding.
There are some more restrictions. I live in an apartment without a backyard, so no space to build a shed or anything like that. But feel free to mention good ideas that fit my purpose, and I can try to find a way to fit them into my life.
My first thoughts went to things like carpentry, masonry, sculpture, farming, gardening, ceramics. I am not interested in hobbies where you don't build anything but are fun for some people, like dancing or rock climbing.
Any ideas, HN?