What’s wrong with New Pulp?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. There’s a lot of reason to believe that pulp is alive and well in the mainstream. Seems like every new TV show has pulp elements in it. Superheroes, a total descendent of the mystery men from the pulps, absolutely dominate the box office.

Even with competition from far more visual mediums, pulp still manages to succeed in prose fiction as well. Self-published authors like Russell Blake and JF Penn do very well for themselves writing pulpy action/adventure thrillers, and Mat Nastos’ The Cestus Concern made it to the top of the Amazon charts.

But the rest of the New Pulp books? Not even close to doing that well. I don’t really know of any author who classifies themselves as a New Pulp author who is able to make a full-time living by writing fiction full-time.

I think the biggest problem is a lot of authors working in New Pulp approach it as a hobby as opposed to an occupation. And even those who do approach the physical act of writing with far more vigor than others, there are the other aspects of publishing that they take for granted.

Of course, for those who go through one of the New Pulp publishers, a lot of this is outside their control. Hard to put a link to a mailing list or to other books in the series if you aren’t the one who has final say over the ebook. But even still, one of the things that struck me about the informal New Pulp survey I conducted not too long ago was how few authors have websites they own or mailing lists and the results were shockingly low. Same goes for advertising on book lists, either free or paid. Some websites I’ve seen are a total mess without a listing of titles or buy links.

New Pulp has been kind of behind the curve and there’s no real reason for it. There are things that self-publishing and the Kindle revolution have made possible that are practically tailor-made for pulp. But New Pulp books were some of the last to make the switch over to ebooks. Even now, the majority of New Pulp books don’t include calls to action to pick up the next book in the series, leave a review, or sign up for a mailing list. There’s also the serial format, which has completely passed New Pulp by. I see an awful lot of collections of stories, so why aren’t those stories being released first individually in ebook format and then collected together in a bundle? Why isn’t anyone doing a weekly or monthly pulp serial on Kindle Unlimited?

Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone in New Pulp. Pro Se Productions’ Single Shot Signatures line is a good example of what more people in New Pulp should be experimenting with. I’m also planning to release at least one serial in 2015, potentially two.

I think the overall thing here is I see a lot of people in New Pulp lamenting that they aren’t selling more books and aren’t getting more exposure. But then when suggestions are made, I see some of those same people then turn around and say, “well what we’re doing is just fine.” Or worse, I see some say, “yeah, we should start doing that,” and then they continue to do the same things they have been doing.

I’m certainly not a best-selling author so maybe I’m not the one to comment on this. But I am trying some new things and here are some words of advice I’d give to other New Pulp authors:

• Try A Bundle – There are a lot of crossovers in New Pulp. Airship 27 and PulpWork Press recently released The Vril Agenda by Josh Reynolds and Derrick Ferguson. It’s a crossover novel featuring Jim Anthony, Super Detective and Dillon (and the cover should really carry both those logos, plus the subtitle on Amazon should include the characters’ names, but that’s another discussion). To try and drum up some more enthusiasm for this project, I think it would have been a great idea to sell a digital bundle featuring one or two Jim Anthony books and one or two Dillon books for 99¢, advertise the hell out of it, and include a link in the back of the book to The Vril Agenda. Or what about some multi-author bundles? A masked mystery men bundle or a horror bundle or a globe-trotting adventure bundle.
• Update Your Back-Matter – If you have control over your books and your books are in a series, try to include links to the next book in the series, maybe even with a preview of the next book. Also include links to your website and mailing list. While we’re on that topic…
• Get a Website and Mailing List – There’s one constant I’ve seen in all successful indie authors—they all have mailing lists. You can set up lists for free at both ReachMail or MailChimp (until you reach a certain number of subscribers), so there’s no reason not to do it. And everyone should really have a website they own. For one, it gives you a lot more control than a free site at Blogspot or WordPress. I use Bluehost with WordPress.org and I use a paid template (but you can certainly find very good free templates). I also use a plugin called MyBookTable, which offers a lot of ways to display my books with tons of buy links. And it’s even free or you can pay for an upgrade to get additional features.
• Publish Frequently – This is tough if you’re going through one of the New Pulp publishers because you’re restricted to their release schedule. But if you’re self-published, try to plan your releases strategically. I’m doing this right now. My Vanguard serial will contain five books in the first “season” and I’m going to release it monthly. To make sure I can manage this, I’m not offering the first book for pre-order until the fifth book is finished. And yeah, this takes time, but it can be done. I’ve started setting myself a writing goal of 1K Per Day. With that, I can write a 30K novella in a month, or two 15K serials (or three 10K shorts).
• Experiment – If something’s not working, change it. Sales on my Myth Hunter series haven’t been very good, so I’ve got plans to change things about them—new covers and I plan to finally write the third book in that series, then plan to write more. Never tried a serial? Give it a shot. Never done an ad campaign? Worth a try.

It all comes down to this one important point—no one cares about the pulp revival except pulp fans. And there are two ways to approach this. You can either shrug and say, “well then I’ll just focus on the pulp fans.” I think that’s a poor approach. For one, about half the pulp fans have already dismissed New Pulp just on the general principle that New Pulp wasn’t published during the heyday of the pulps. Two, look at how many New Pulp books are out there, and that number is growing. The existing New Pulp audience is so small that they simply can’t afford all the books that are released.

So I advocate the second way—expand the audience. To do that, you need to work harder at it, you need to invest some money into it, and you need to take it seriously. For those New Pulp writers that view this as just a hobbyist pursuit, hey good for them. This is more directed at those who seriously want to make a living at being a writer. We have to do the work or else it’s not going to happen.

And before anyone says anything, I fully acknowledge that I have not been doing this stuff myself. That’s why I’m changing things.

If you don’t want to do that, then fine, don’t do it. But then don’t go around complaining that you can’t make a living off writing and that nobody is buying or reviewing your books.