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*Short update: my keyboard is dead. I ordered a new one, but it hasn't come in yet. Here's hoping it comes in soon because even this is difficult to write. For now, enjoy this Chapter 1 excerpt from my bestseller, The Pulp Mindset!*
Despite this, the online space of new creators grows more with each passing day. These mavericks are snatching up what the dying industry is losing. Audiences still want entertainment, but not so much from the old guard. The twentieth century has finally been left behind, and the world is moving into a new age. You are living in a transitional period of art where anything goes.
New writers, however, are a bit lost at sea. Should they trust these old creaky corporate behemoths that are but a shadow of their former glory, or should they strike it out on their own in this burgeoning, yet confusing, landscape? It looks like a tough call, at first glance, but the answer is easier than it’s ever been.
The old publishing world—”OldPub”—is dying.
What were once the Big Five major book publishers that ruled the West have contracted, and the large lumber industry feeding their giant bookstore chain is drying up. The days of acquiring a big book contract and having a hit bestseller topping the charts for weeks is over. In an era where no one buys from those Big Five publishers anymore, this is a pipe dream. A writer who chooses this dusty path is looking at a dead end with a limited future. This OldPub world is breathing its last breaths.
Meanwhile, the new publishing world—”NewPub”—is thriving. This is the online independent space that is only stealing more and more of the old guard’s lunch with every passing day. While OldPub tumbles down the hill, the new blood pushes up instead.
Today, some authors make hundreds of thousands on their books without the interference of any publishing company. They do not have to relinquish an absurd cut of their profits to a publisher, either. What you can make in NewPub far outstrips what you could in the dinosaur industry. Others find niches for themselves, cranking out their works to a loyal audience that manages to steadily increase in number with each new release. The road ahead for new creators is rocky, but it can lead to much success with enough effort.
This NewPub world is the inevitable future of book publishing. The freedom offered here for both customer and creator is overwhelming. Ignore it at your own peril. Sadly, many new writers are.
Of course, there is still no guaranteed path to success, there never is with art, but there are more options to succeed in the wild west of NewPub than there is in the cold corporate fringes of OldPub. At the very least, you have full control over what you put out.
It goes without saying that if you are reading this then you are already either aware of the shift or curious enough to dig deeper into the subject. You want to see just what this fancy NewPub thing is all about and how to take advantage of it. Well, there are most likely a few reasons why you haven’t done so yet.
NewPub has a problem. It is tied to the outdated advice of dinosaurs from decades ago, holding new writers back from fully taking advantage of the wide open opportunities before them. These dinosaurs are part of OldPub, still passing out the same bad guidance that led their own industry into the death throes it is currently in and preventing upcoming writers from succeeding in this new landscape. Did you catch that? Yes, that’s right: what’s holding back new creators from succeeding is advice from an old industry that is failing.
Much of this either comes from misplaced nostalgia or an outdated mindset. There is nothing OldPub can teach you in order to succeed in NewPub. The fact that new publishing is even thriving at all is partially due to the fact that the corporate behemoths are floundering as badly as they are. But many new writers still find themselves attracted to the bells and whistles of OldPub.
For instance, if you are a writer who still thinks getting an agent or having a publisher logo on the side of your book is the key to success, then you are a victim of this backwards thinking. You have the wrong mindset for a new writer to have. This book you are currently reading is precisely for upcoming creators like you. Your sabotaged and antiquated mindset will hold you back, and keep you from being the best you can be.
To move forward, writers need a new mindset: a mindset based on customer-first practices and a writing style that prioritizes entertainment above all. In the entertainment world there was once a time when creators thrived by putting entertainment first, and it is an era you need to seriously consider when becoming a writer yourself. You have to take your focus back to the early twentieth century, from before the mess OldPub is currently in, and learn from the true masters.
What you need is a pulp mindset.
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This is a shift that requires looking to the past, long before the corporate minefield of OldPub became the lumbering, decaying mammoth it is today. You need to return to when writing was at its most prolific, wide-reaching, and exciting—all the antithesis of what the industry is today and what it champions. This means reconnecting with an unjustly-maligned past to construct a better future.
The pulps have suffered from much revisionism over the last century, mostly from those who have never read them or who take them out of context in order to prevent new readers from experiencing them at all. Understanding their success is invaluable in realizing just what has been lost over the years in modern writing, and what can be reclaimed.
When the pulps were around, everyone read. As they faded away and were replaced with fat, overwritten tomes about the drudgery of modern life, the audience walked away. Decades of this audience-repelling attitude has led to the current state of the industry. No one reads anymore because they think reading is about the garbage OldPub puts out. However, when the pulps were king this wasn’t the case.
Literally every aspect of OldPub is as anti-pulp as it can get, and that is why it is currently failing. This is to your advantage. NewPub embracing pulp is their ace in the hole that will help them win over their stumbling competition.
This pulp mindset will change your way of thinking and allow you to write stories totally unlike anything OldPub is dishing out, with their dwindling sales and audience interest. A new exciting world exists ahead, unconstrained by the limits of their dying industry. This brand new frontier before you is going to be built on pulp. It is inevitable.
You can be a part of this new pulp landscape, and it won’t take much at all. You only need to shift your way of thinking.
If you are not sure what being pulp entails, hold on, it will be addressed very shortly. First, some clarifications are needed.
Now, this book is not a How-To manual. It’s not about gaming algorithms for online book sales or a formula to writing a top seller. There are few practical tips to tell: it’s all about having a mental edge. This is a book about how to gain a mindset to survive as a new writer in the saloon shootout that is NewPub, and why you should ditch the boneyard that is OldPub. All that other material from writing formulas to book formatting to advertising comes after you have learned the pulp mindset.
First thing’s first, make sure you approach this new frontier with the right attitude and that requires doing things you were told not to do for decades by writing courses, literature professors, and historical revisionists. Assess the past and appreciate what it can offer you. In order to be pulp, you need to understand what that entails. There is more to it than the over the top comic art you’ve seen parodied countless times over your life. It’s also an attitude, and a writing style. You must put the audience first, and that is scary to modern writers!
Pulp is actually a good bit more dangerous than how “offensive” the art or language is. It breaks all the rules. You would be surprised to learn that pulp writers are far less limited than modern writers are because of their cavalier attitude towards creativity and craft. They could do anything, and they frequently did so.
Pulp writers in the first half of the twentieth century pumped out hundreds of thousands of words with no regard to genre or future political discourse. They concentrated on establishing awe, action, and clear moral stakes, and yet they had boundless imaginative ideas to prop it all up. What they did was put one rule forward: the audience must be entertained above everything else. Know your audience, and give them what they want before you throw a curve ball or whatever is that you wish to do. This is the key to the pulp mindset.
This sounds strange in an era of overbearing artist ego and fanatical worship of content makers, but it is paramount to changing the way you think about writing in this ever-shifting era. As stated earlier, the modern industry is completely anti-pulp and backwards, and that is why it is failing. In order to change that, you need to look for another way to progress past the muck of OldPub. You need to reclaim what was lost, and work forward from that.
The pulp path is the only way forward, and it is what NewPub can do better than anyone else. Remember: the dinosaurs are dying because they have abandoned what the audience wants. All you have to do is remember what they’ve forgotten, and apply it!
The audience and the artist exist together in order to work off each other, with the audience being the more important of the two. They pay, you deliver, and you both get what you want. It was once that simple. However, we live in a time where the audience wants more, and the artist offers less. How can this be reconciled?
You understand now. It is reconciled by looking back to a past long abandoned by the currently dying dinosaur industry and taking up what they have thrown away. It is about becoming a pulp writer and putting the audience first.
Yes, OldPub is dying, but you do not have to die with it. The solution to moving into the future lies in recovering a past you were told to avoid and dismiss without a second glance. You must do the opposite of what OldPub wants you to do.
The solution to the modern ails of upcoming writers involves gaining a pulp mindset, and marching into this dangerous NewPub world where anything can happen. This is what the book you are now reading exists to help you do. Read on and you will soon find yourself equipped with the pulp mindset you need to survive.
Welcome to the new world. You have quite the journey ahead of you.
The pulps have suffered from much revisionism over the last century, mostly from those who have never read them or who take them out of context in order to prevent new readers from experiencing them at all. Understanding their success is invaluable in realizing just what has been lost over the years in modern writing, and what can be reclaimed.
When the pulps were around, everyone read. As they faded away and were replaced with fat, overwritten tomes about the drudgery of modern life, the audience walked away. Decades of this audience-repelling attitude has led to the current state of the industry. No one reads anymore because they think reading is about the garbage OldPub puts out. However, when the pulps were king this wasn’t the case.
Literally every aspect of OldPub is as anti-pulp as it can get, and that is why it is currently failing. This is to your advantage. NewPub embracing pulp is their ace in the hole that will help them win over their stumbling competition.
This pulp mindset will change your way of thinking and allow you to write stories totally unlike anything OldPub is dishing out, with their dwindling sales and audience interest. A new exciting world exists ahead, unconstrained by the limits of their dying industry. This brand new frontier before you is going to be built on pulp. It is inevitable.
You can be a part of this new pulp landscape, and it won’t take much at all. You only need to shift your way of thinking.
If you are not sure what being pulp entails, hold on, it will be addressed very shortly. First, some clarifications are needed.
Now, this book is not a How-To manual. It’s not about gaming algorithms for online book sales or a formula to writing a top seller. There are few practical tips to tell: it’s all about having a mental edge. This is a book about how to gain a mindset to survive as a new writer in the saloon shootout that is NewPub, and why you should ditch the boneyard that is OldPub. All that other material from writing formulas to book formatting to advertising comes after you have learned the pulp mindset.
First thing’s first, make sure you approach this new frontier with the right attitude and that requires doing things you were told not to do for decades by writing courses, literature professors, and historical revisionists. Assess the past and appreciate what it can offer you. In order to be pulp, you need to understand what that entails. There is more to it than the over the top comic art you’ve seen parodied countless times over your life. It’s also an attitude, and a writing style. You must put the audience first, and that is scary to modern writers!
Pulp is actually a good bit more dangerous than how “offensive” the art or language is. It breaks all the rules. You would be surprised to learn that pulp writers are far less limited than modern writers are because of their cavalier attitude towards creativity and craft. They could do anything, and they frequently did so.
Pulp writers in the first half of the twentieth century pumped out hundreds of thousands of words with no regard to genre or future political discourse. They concentrated on establishing awe, action, and clear moral stakes, and yet they had boundless imaginative ideas to prop it all up. What they did was put one rule forward: the audience must be entertained above everything else. Know your audience, and give them what they want before you throw a curve ball or whatever is that you wish to do. This is the key to the pulp mindset.
This sounds strange in an era of overbearing artist ego and fanatical worship of content makers, but it is paramount to changing the way you think about writing in this ever-shifting era. As stated earlier, the modern industry is completely anti-pulp and backwards, and that is why it is failing. In order to change that, you need to look for another way to progress past the muck of OldPub. You need to reclaim what was lost, and work forward from that.
The pulp path is the only way forward, and it is what NewPub can do better than anyone else. Remember: the dinosaurs are dying because they have abandoned what the audience wants. All you have to do is remember what they’ve forgotten, and apply it!
The audience and the artist exist together in order to work off each other, with the audience being the more important of the two. They pay, you deliver, and you both get what you want. It was once that simple. However, we live in a time where the audience wants more, and the artist offers less. How can this be reconciled?
You understand now. It is reconciled by looking back to a past long abandoned by the currently dying dinosaur industry and taking up what they have thrown away. It is about becoming a pulp writer and putting the audience first.
Yes, OldPub is dying, but you do not have to die with it. The solution to moving into the future lies in recovering a past you were told to avoid and dismiss without a second glance. You must do the opposite of what OldPub wants you to do.
The solution to the modern ails of upcoming writers involves gaining a pulp mindset, and marching into this dangerous NewPub world where anything can happen. This is what the book you are now reading exists to help you do. Read on and you will soon find yourself equipped with the pulp mindset you need to survive.
Welcome to the new world. You have quite the journey ahead of you.
