How many followers do you need in publishing?

The disheartening truth of modern publishing, it seems, is that your social media follower count dictates your probability for success.

I saw a tweet from a writer saying an agent loved the book but declined to take on the author because of too few followers.

I don’t know if this is true, but I’m inclined to believe it. That’s bad news for those of us who don’t like social media and prefer not to be on it because it’s unhealthy and time-consuming. That being said, I understand its importance but fear it’s relied upon too much by the publishing industry.

If a book is solid, people will buy it, and word will spread. Yes, social media helps this, but there was a time when it didn’t exist, and books still sold.

This doesn’t bode well for modern debut authors who might not have any following whatsoever. The way to gain followers is to publish a book that garners readers who want to learn about the author. You don’t need followers for that, just an account for people to find and follow

Regardless, that’s modern publishing, and you must adapt. I’m trying. I’ll follow you if you follow me. But it likely won’t be out of sincere interest on either part, only out of necessity to boost numbers.

So, how many followers is enough?

Alex Honnold gets paid $500,000 for not falling to his death …

Just when you thought The Running Man would never become real television–because watching hunters murder human game show contestants might be unseemly–Netflix screams, “Not so fast!”

Now, the streaming giant didn’t greenlight a dystopian, murderous gameshow that, if you added snow, might resemble present-day Minneapolis, but it managed to pay Alex Honnold, a professional mountain climber, $500,000 to scale a tall tower in Taipei.

The catch: Honnold won’t wear any climbing or safety gear. He falls, he dies.

And, boy, did people watch, with 6.2 million views of “Skyscraper Live.” I wasn’t one of them. I find it ghoulish watching what is ostensibly entertainment, knowing full well the star entertainer might plummet 1,667 feet to his death. Netflix had the dignity to put a 10-second delay on the program in case that happened.

Can you imagine if it did? Now, I’m thrilled it didn’t. But I envision Alex somewhere on the tower, and then all of a sudden, you cut to an image reading, “Technical Difficulties.” They would not have broadcast Alex falling and then cut away before the splat. Netflix is classy that way.

First, if you don’t know who Alex Honnold is, watch Free Solo immediately. It documents how Honnold climbed the 3,000-foot-tall El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in 2018 without a rope. Or anything. It was him, some sturdy shoes, and a bag of chalk for his hands.

Second, Alex Honnold, 40, is a lunatic. He’s mentally sound in almost every way, except that this married father with two kids climbs tall things for a living without anything to prevent him from dying should he fall. It’s called Free Soloing. And climbers absolutely have died in this manner.

If you think you’ve ever had a bad day at the office, like, some typos wound up in your boss’s PowerPoint presentation, just imagine what Alex’s bad day might look like. You’d need a human-sized spatula.

Alex Honnold is the best at what he does, no doubt. He’s freakishly strong and controls fear in ways I cannot comprehend. But all it takes is one crumbling rock, one spooked bird darting from a mountain crevice, and that’s the ball game. I imagine his life insurance policy has some hefty premiums, and his family will be well compensated should the unthinkable happen. But to inflict that on your children and wife strikes me as cruel. Just hang it up, man. Or wear ropes! It’s no longer all about you.

There was a minor kerfuffle over Honnold receiving “only” $500,000 to scale that tower. This is silly. Nobody forced Honnold to accept half a million dollars in exchange for the possibility of him splattering on the pavement. Maybe hire Scott Boras, of baseball agenting fame, to represent you. He’ll net you a fortune.

But this presents the ghoulish prospect of a bidding war to get Honnold to climb something else incredibly tall and dangerous to entertain the masses. Chances are, that’s already in the works because of Honnold’s success in Taipei, and because there’s an audience for it. But I’m not in it. For the sake of decency, I hope I’m not the only one.

#Questpit is this Friday! Why the heck not?

Never heard of #Questpit before, but it’s this Friday on X. Just check out @questpit in X for the details.

Basically, I’ve got my one-sentence pitch ready to go, and a few other tidbits. No idea what reactions it will get, but I suppose it can’t hurt.

What I hope doesn’t happen, and what I recommend everyone do if contacted by someone about their work: Do your research.

Predators lurk during these events to sway you to their services. Beware.

When writing ideas hit you in the shower …

When you’re writing a book, novel or nonfiction, it’s always on your mind. What can I do next? How can I improve it?

And when those revelations come, they don’t always arrive when you’re sitting in front of a monitor.

You could be in the shower, as I was, when an idea hit.

“Yeah, I can do that! That would work, and I can incorporate this character into it. Perfect!”

Those are the fun moments, and you can’t wait to start typing; otherwise, you’re bound to forget.

Anyway, onward.

I finished my first 1,500 words to the next book …

Some writers have a million stories waiting to jump onto the page.

I’m one of the few who don’t. I have vague ideas of what I believe can make a fun book, but nothing concrete.

Then I sit down and begin typing. And that’s when the fun begins.

First, I don’t outline. Nothing against it. I know some authors swear by it. I like to sit down at my keyboard, like it’s the steering wheel of a gassed-up roadster, and just go.

Ideas pop into my head, and things get moving.

And that’s where I am now. The finished book sits at 91,000 words, and I’m hoping to find an agent/publisher who gets what I’m trying to do. There’s no guarantee that will happen, and I might have to publish it independently. Thatdecision’s a little more than a month away.

Someone posted on X that you need to keep writing the next book. In this day and age, you do. You want to have something in the pipeline while your finished book is winding its way to market.

So, 1,500 words down, and at least 68,500 to go. I like to shoot for 90,000 words, which is roughly a 300-page book, but I don’t think people realize how long it takes to reach that word count. (Maybe some authors breeze to that number. I find it challenging.) Hopefully, if all goes well, I’ll get rolling on this next one. And I already have an idea for the one after that.

Onward!

Asking for the first time in eons (well, not really)

For the first time in at least a decade, I’ve reached out to a New York Times bestselling author to hopefully endorse a book I wrote.

It’s a new form of the querying process. You don’t like doing it, but you must. And it’s not that you dislike asking a particular author for this favor. You look up to these writers. They inspired you.

The prospect of rejection weighs on you. But as Hyman Roth of Godfather II fame once said, “This is the business we have chosen!”

So, it’s out there. Others will join it at some point, but you must start somewhere.

Here’s to hope.

Exploding Trees in the Land of 1,000 Lakes?

I have no idea if this is true, but because someone I don’t know posted it on X, I’m inclined to believe it is.

Apparently, if it gets cold enough, trees can explode! As if Minnesota needs another thing to worry about. ICE agents are running around arresting illegal immigrants, and people protesting ICE are invading churches. And now if someone tries to tap a maple tree for syrup, the damn thing could explode and leave a bloody, syrupy corpse amid the falling snow!

According to USA Today, a sudden drop in temperature can cause a break in a tree known as a frost crack, which is a vertical opening that can extend deep into the wood of a tree. While frost cracks can be loud and cause branches to fall off, it would be extremely rare for a tree to fully explode because of it.

The key words in that last sentence are “extremely rare,” meaning it’s entirely possible that a frozen tree can explode. Why the Defense Department hasn’t somehow utilized this as a unique form of warfare is beyond me. (Maybe they have, and they’re keeping tight-lipped about it.)

So, as a good chunk of the USA prepares for a winter storm this weekend, keep your distance from downed power lines and shivering oak trees.

Whaddya mean the Oscars snubbed Animal Farm?

Full disclosure: Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is one of my favorite books. For all the fretting about banned books in America (which is bullshit because anyone claiming such-and-such book is banned can easily purchase it on Amazon), you could literally be jailed or worse if someone catches you reading this book in North Korea. The Stalinist hellhole banned it because (suprise) the Dear Leader disliked its warning about communism.

The book chronicles a barnyard animal revolution to seize control of a farm where everyone can live in a utopia. Then Napolean the pig takes over and the farm devolves into modern-day Pyongyang. If that doesn’t scream animated children’s movie, nothing does.

Enter Andy Serkis of Lord of the Rings fame to direct a “reimagined” computer-animated version of Orwell’s cautionary tale. Whenever you see “reimagined” slapped on a famous story, run. And that applies to this flick, which, surprisingly didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best animated film. I thought it was a shoe-in because Serkis stripped communism from Animal Farm as an evil ideology and replaced it with capitalism (insert foreboding music here).

Not only did this completely neuter the entire point behind Animal Farm, it allowed Hollywood press people to write insufferable nonsense like “(Napoleon’s) desperation to belong among ruthless human billionaires and their cyberpunk-esque vehicles strikes close to home in 2025.” Good lord.

Stripping Stalinism as the corrupting force from Animal Farm is like reimagining The Silence of the Lambs with a vegan Hannibal Lecter. I’ve not seen Serkis’s idiotic take on Orwell’s classic, nor will I. The film had a limited screening in 2025 and will receive a wider release this year. If the reviews I could find are any indication, it’ll be out of the theaters faster than you can say “four legs good, two legs bad.”

Here’s a line from the Variety review: “… but the message feels muddled amid all the pratfalls and fart jokes.”

Yeah, that’s exactly what Animal Farm needs to appeal to a modern audience. Fart jokes.