Halloween is supposed to talk about the terrible, so our today's blog is about modern Russian science fiction.
Professional science fiction writers, as you know, died out in Russia somewhere in the second half of 2011, when publishing houses started to go to hell. Sales of the "artist" then sank sharply, and in almost all positions, with the exception of children's literature. The publishers clutched at first their heads, then their pockets, and, jingling trifles unoptimistically, turned to the people.
They told most of the authors they published about the same thing that one harmful grandfather said to his subsequently popular granddaughter: “Well, Lexey, you are not a medal, there is no place for you around my neck, but go and join the people ... ".
And they went. In people, or somewhere else - history is silent. But it was 2012 that wiped out the entire undergrowth of professional writers from the second tier and below. Fees fell so much that only stars of the first magnitude could afford to “live from the pen”.
Russian science fiction, of course, has not died - it is not easy to bring it out with dust - but writing has ceased to be a profession, becoming a pure hobby.
However, five years had not passed before the extinct population was restored: professional science fiction writers resurrected in the best traditions of phoenixes and renaissances. The magic word "proda" resurrected them.
Amateurs who were not accepted into publishing houses, hanging out on samizdat sites, usually laid out their novels not in a single piece, but side by side, head by head. I wrote a continuation (prod) - posted it on the site, wrote the next prod - posted it.
Once someone's brilliant head added money to this scheme.
At first everything goes as usual, the author lays out one chapter after another, readers get carried away more and more. And at some point the author says: “Stop! Further sequels will be seen only by those who praise me best of all! who will pay me 100 rubles! Noble dons fold, moneyless dons disappointedly disperse.
It was this simple scheme that revived people living on the income from writing books. The process of transforming the profession from knocking on the thresholds of publishing houses to online freelancing (exactly like describing the specifics of getting money with the help of kind words alone, without a gun) is extremely exciting, very instructive and draws on a whole series of articles on Habré.
But today there will be only a short reference - something like the simplest guide. It just so happened that I, as a curious person, hung out on these sites from the very beginning, and, moreover, I watched the process, so to speak, from the inside, which will be discussed later. And so my friend, a fairly well-known science fiction writer, asked me to write something like a guidebook. The result was a dozen abstracts.
First. Prod writers hang out mainly on two sites - Litnet and Avtor.Today (Litres, which launched the Chernovik project, is also trying to ride the wave of prod, but they are not very successful yet). The difference between these two sites is gender, excuse me, gender. They are called “blue” and “pink”. A screenshot of "blue" is at the top, while "pink", aka "Litnet", looks like this:
As you may have guessed, Litnet is the realm of naked male torsos, cubes on the stomach, “powerful clays” and female fantasy. To be clear, I don't know much about this sector. This is a different party, different money (much more) and different rules. Therefore, further we will mainly talk about Aftora Today (AT), where it’s not smack-smack, but bdysh-bdysh.
Second. The question that everyone is most interested in is - is it really possible to make money writing books? Yes, you can. Today, at AT, an author who guessed right with a book can get about 250 thousand rubles for it. True, top network authors sell that much in the first couple of days of sales. Supertops - for the first couple of hours. On Litnet, as I said, the tops have higher incomes - women read more and pay more willingly. But the competition there is much stronger.
The third. This profitability is provided by the audience of the site, the majority of which are young people who are used to paying on the Internet. This habit strikingly distinguishes them from the previous generation, who lived in the 90s, when they were saturated to the bone with prudence and stinginess. "Children of the fat years of Russia" do not see anything unusual in paying 100-120 rubles for the opportunity to read an interesting book. Achotakova? A set of stickers in Kontaktik costs 63 rubles.
Fourth. All the disadvantages of working with this audience stem from their willingness to pay. The main one is that they have an absolutely consumerist attitude to reading. Former merits, for example, are not worth a penny. For them, there are no "classics of Russian science fiction", they, in general, don't really care how many awards and titles you have. They are only interested in one thing - what kind of goods you offer them, what kind of books you have. If interesting, then I will buy. If not, sorry bro. Sit down, shake your medals on.
The fifth. What kind of books is a very important question. This audience is interested in a very limited pool of genres. This is LitRPG, boyars-anime (this wild phrase denotes a conditional adaptation to native aspens of multi-volume East Asian novels that have become fashionable in recent years), to a lesser extent - novels about "hit" and fantastic action films (female "lyry" and "academics" put out of brackets). All. Everything else is in the woods. Moreover, it is impossible to bring them down from this consumer diet. They do not feed and do not peck at other bait. And no loud fame will help. One of our most interesting young science fiction writers Andrey Krasnikov became very popular while writing a really talented LitRPG tetralogy. He was a natural star, apparently, he earned very well - he was read by tens of thousands of people, and this is not a figure of speech. Then he decided to write classic fiction. A couple of hundred of the most loyal fans signed up to read the book, and those seem to be purely out of courtesy.
The sixth: Due to their obsession with a very limited number of genres and the constant consumption of primitive and badly written books, most of the readers there are very low-skilled readers. Their reading skills are practically non-existent. If they are given a book with multiple storylines, they will drop it at the first chapter - it is difficult for them to keep multiple characters in their heads. I'm silent about all sorts of games with chronology or verbose philosophical digressions. Only one main character, only linear plot, only fights, only hardcore harem!
Seventh. Another important feature of this audience is that they don’t give a damn about not only your long-standing merits, but recent ones too. Your book can become a bestseller, you will earn several hundred thousand rubles and the same number of readers on it, but if you decide that you have got a stable audience and took God by the beard - congratulations, Sharik, you are a dunce! Your new book may “not go in”, and you will sit with two hundred readers, howling plaintively: “Where have you gone? Come to your senses! I'm your idol!!!" That is why, by the way, the local authors write multi-volume epics - if you are lucky, you guessed the trick and rode the wave - row until your breath is enough. The new series may not "enter".
Eighth: About “rowing while you can” or about lengthy scribbling. It should be clearly understood: Avtor.Today and similar sites are by no means a bookstore. The dumbest thing you can do when you get there is put your books out there and sit around waiting for sales. The local inhabitants are not very interested in the result, they are much more important than the process. They do not read books, but the continuations laid out by the author, “prods”.
This is not a shop, this is a workshop where people work live, and crowds of curious people wander from machine to machine and stimulate the masters they like with hard cash. Well, or a fair, where vagants amuse good people with songs. Everything is honest - as he sang, so he received. The song must be new, the song must be incendiary, the song must be sticky and not let go. I started playing Dvorak's Second Suite - I'm a fool myself. And every performance is like a new one.
Ninth: “And if you don’t publish books right away, then how?” - you ask. Naturally - for the most part. If the layout exceeds 15 thousand characters, your book will appear for some time on the main page of the site in the "Latest Updates" section. It is likely that a few curious weirdos will click on it and so - old woman to old woman - you will gain some kind of audience. Of course, there are writers who have 78 published books, it is certainly more difficult for them.
You should not limit yourself to the main publication, the legs feed the wolf, and one should remind oneself of oneself in all possible ways. They say that the release of smart, interesting, or at least resonant articles on a local forum contributes to the influx of new readers. Yes, yes, even Oldie does not disdain to dance lezginka there to write on the forum almost every day.
Tenth: But all these two tributaries - three tributaries, of course, mainly for penniless dons. Will you gain in this way an audience sufficient at least to obtain the status of a commercial author (and the opportunity to collect money from readers is given either when a certain level of popularity is reached, or with a history of published paper books)?
Hardly.
To gain popularity by gravity, it was necessary to come to this party at least two years ago. Now the competition for a place in the top is quite strong and is getting stronger every day. Well, or you have to guess the topic very well. But if you just have good books ... No, not like that. If your books can generate interest among the inhabitants there - but the popularity is growing slowly, contacting advertising specialists can save you. This market is not yet occupied and the efficiency of investments can be very high. 10 thousand rubles, invested in advertising a series of two books, of which only one is paid, in two weeks give a yield of “self-four” without a site commission.
The eleventh. Relatively low reading skills and poor quality of books on these resources. I understand that any literate author would prefer to be addressed to readers who do not need to be explained what Menzura Zoili is or even the meaning of the word "squaw". But we don't have other readers today. The ability to read texts more difficult "Oh and Ah go to swing" arises and improves on interesting books written by highly qualified authors. Qualification is raised by the qualified, there is no other way. If professionals do not come to feed this flock - for God's sake, a holy place is never empty.
Everyone will survive.
But no one gets better.
Twelfth and last. What is holding back the influx of good professional writers? As a rule, one simple factor: “Do I have absolutely no self-esteem, to climb into this sewer? Why should I, a subtle thinking author, capable of writing texts full of allusions and stylistically impeccable, like Ostap, dance in front of a dense, but impudent shkolota, unable to appreciate the quality of the work? Why should I write a moronic LitRPG?
To this I usually answer - write non-debility.
(followed by frenzied self-promotion, purists may not finish reading)
For me personally, when I first came to the site where books are laid out, sliced, it was a challenge. I have never written fiction in my life, only non-fiction. But after about two weeks, I bet that I would write a book that would satisfy four conditions.
- It will be written in the most despised science fiction genre - LitRPG
- I will write it under a pseudonym so as not to travel to the already existing readership
- The book will become popular
- I won't be ashamed of her.
I won the argument - all four conditions were met, although the last condition, of course, is extremely subjective. But recently I received some confirmation of it - quite unexpectedly for me, the book entered the long list of the prestigious literary award "Electronic Letter" with a very good prize fund. As far as I know, this is not only the first, but also the only LitRPG that appeared in the lists of non-amateur literary awards.
I had no illusions - I could not pass the expert jury, consisting of professional literary critics - the criteria by which they evaluate books, mine does not meet in any way. And so it happened - I did not make it to the shortlist. But, fortunately or unfortunately, I am stubborn and used to follow the principle “if you sit down at the table, then play to the end!”.
There is one nomination in which I can still try to push my shoulders. It's called "Readers' Choice" and all the books on the long list participate in it.
Here
This is how the book “They go to battle ...”, written by me under the pseudonym Sergey Volchok, looks like.
Here . Now I'm third there with a margin of several hundred votes.
If you haven't read the book, you can download it from the voting site, or where all my books are posted. And there, and there it is freely available. There is time, voting until November 15th.
And then - everything is like in Kipling's poem "If".
If you read it, and if you liked it, if you have a desire to support my book and if it does not contradict your moral principles, moral and religious norms, I will be very grateful to you for your support.
Always yours, Vadim Nesterov.
(the author thanks his home university NUST MISIS for providing a corporate blog for posting this article)
Source: habr.com