Trying Something New
An Announcement about The Familiar and The Starward Exiles
(Note: Apologies for not posting the podcast today. But I figured posting too many emails would be more annoying than simply trading out the podcast for a post. A new podcast schedule will begin next week. I plan to go ahead and post one podcast on Monday, and an additional podcast for paid subscribers on Friday. The science fiction reviews from Mind Matters News will continue on Thursday like before. And I intend to write a fiction piece every other Wednesday (and posting another podcast episode on the weeks there isn’t a fiction piece), but that is discussed more in the email below. The goal is to try to provide valuable content without spamming everyone. Hope this schedule accomplishes that. Thanks!)
Out Feburary 3rd.
First, I want to thank all of you who’ve recently joined the newsletter over the last few months, and I want to thank those who’ve stuck with the newsletter for so long. It’s been over four years at this point, so I thank you for your dedication and patience.
I may have mentioned this before, but I honestly don’t remember, so I’m going to mention it again. I started this newsletter basically because, at the time, I didn’t have a Mind Matters News author’s page, and I didn’t want my articles to get buried in the website. So, I started a Substack, hoping to archive what I’d written. Before long, I began experimenting with content for the newsletter. Then Mind Matters News created my author’s page, and the issue of creating content for the newsletter became much more important. I’ve always wanted to create something new and unique for this platform but couldn’t really figure out how to do it. I started by uploading one of my novels onto the newsletter but quickly determined that writing fiction was death on Substack. At the time, neither my readers nor other followers on Substack seemed very receptive to fiction.
As much as I enjoy writing reviews, I do consider myself a fiction writer first, so this was quite the aggravating blow for me, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed with the newsletter. It seemed the reviews were all anybody wanted. So, for a long time I kept posting the reviews, then added the podcast, which can also be found on YouTube.
But now, I’m beginning to suspect that this is changing. I can’t be sure, and I’ve done zero market research to confirm this, but I am noticing more fiction writers on the platform than in years past, and there has been an uptick in subscribers over the last couple months, so I’m starting to think that Substack’s audience is beginning to grow beyond social issues.
And over time, something that should’ve been obvious finally occurred to me. When I first posted my fiction work, I posted the chapters of The Temple of Maggie Stone. I later took the posts down because I wanted to incorporate the novel into a broader series, and, at the time, I wasn’t very enthusiastic about the novel’s reception on this platform anyway. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Many of you are here from Mind Matters News, and you’re interested in science fiction whereas The Temple of Maggie Stone is urban fantasy. I should’ve known better, but my thinking was that since I enjoy both genres, others probably enjoy both genres as well. While I think this is the case for some, it wasn’t the case for everyone.
This leads me to a problem. The series I’ve been working on and am now wanting to advertise is an urban fantasy—dark urban fantasy in ChatGPT’s estimation. I would like to advertise the books here because I think at least some of you would be interested in them, but many of you won’t be, and I don’t want to annoy my current readers with advertisements for a book that isn’t what they typically read. So, I’ve decided to try something.
Instead of trying to find fifty-seven ways to ask people to buy my books, I’m going to start putting out segments of a science fiction series I’ve had rattling in my head for a long time. I figure the best way to advertise my books is with a segment of my writing, and as long as I make it clear that the book I’m selling is another genre of fiction, I don’t think there will be any confusion.
This way, I can sell the books, and I can provide something that I think you all would actually want to read. I’d like this story to be somewhat interactive, so if you have anything you’d like to see in this science fiction work, please leave a comment, and I’ll try to incorporate your ideas.
The bottom line is I’d like to start making some money with my books on this platform at some point, but I dread marketing, and I’ve badly wanted to provide something to you all that would give you something unique to this platform. Personally, I’ve felt there is some value in having everything I’m doing in one place. I thought it was more convenient. But as a consequence of this newsletter essentially being a hub, the material on here tends to be older than what’s on YouTube and Mind Matters News. I think this is very advantageous when it comes to YouTube because YouTube’s algorithm tends to bury videos way too fast, but I’m not sure if this is a problem when it comes to Mind Matters News, so I’ve wanted to do something unique on this platform that I thought you all would like. And the sci-fi story in my head is so big that I think it’ll go well beyond my advertising phase. It could become its own thing entirely if you all like it. If you don’t, I’ll have to think of something else, but I’ve desperately wanted to figure out a way to provide something unique here while trying to find a way to monetize my efforts, and I think doing this will accomplish both tasks at once. Please let me know if doing this puts you off, or if you’re not interested in reading a work of fiction and would rather just continue to receive podcasts and reviews. Perhaps, I can just do that and add a few advertisements for the books in between posts. I’d like to hear from you. I’d like to know what you all expect from this newsletter, so any feedback would be appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Gary Paul Varner