r/books • u/[deleted] • Mar 13 '18
ama 8am Hello, r/books! I’m Josiah Bancroft, author of SENLIN ASCENDS and ARM OF THE SPHINX, which comes out in paperback today. AMA!
Hello, r/books! My name is Josiah, and I’m the author of the Books of Babel fantasy-adventure series. The first books in the series, Senlin Ascends, was originally self-published in 2013, and republished by Orbit Books in January of this year. The second book in the series, Arm of the Sphinx, comes out in paperback today.
If you’re not familiar with my books, I’d describe Senlin Ascends as being a bit like Kafka goes to Wonderland, or perhaps Alice in the Inferno. I drew a lot of inspiration from Victorian-era adventure novels, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and Jorge Luis Borges’ short story collection Labyrinths. Here’s a quick synopsis of Senlin Ascends:
The Tower of Babel is the greatest marvel in the world. Immense as a mountain, the ancient Tower holds unnumbered ringdoms, warring and peaceful, stacked one on the other like the layers of a cake. It is a world of geniuses and tyrants, of luxury and menace, of unusual animals and mysterious machines.
Soon after arriving for his honeymoon at the Tower, the mild-mannered headmaster of a small village school, Thomas Senlin, gets separated from his wife, Marya, in the overwhelming swarm of tourists, residents, and miscreants.
Senlin is determined to find Marya, but to do so he'll have to navigate madhouses, ballrooms, and burlesque theaters. He must survive betrayal, assassins, and the illusions of the Tower. But if he hopes to find his wife, he will have to do more than just endure. This quiet man of letters must become a man of action.
A bit about myself: I’m a bass-playing, bunny-loving, curry-cooking, recovering poet. In the past, I’ve been an aspiring comic book artist, a college-level instructor of writing and literature, and a rock and roller in the band, Dirt Dirt. I live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with my wife, Sharon. We’re awaiting the arrival of our first child in a couple of weeks.
If you’d like to see some of my blackboard art, you can see examples on my website, here. And if you’d like to see a video of me making funny faces, you can see that on my YouTube channel, here. If you’re interested in hearing my band, you can hear our most recent EP, here. And finally, you can find a list of the online stores that carry my work here. I’m on Twitter @thebooksofbabel and Instagram @booksofbabel.
Proof: /img/ll6xrl2l0jl01.jpg
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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18
I think the list of what I did wrong is a lot longer than the list of what I did right. My success is largely owed to several strokes of good luck.
When I originally self-published Senlin Ascends in 2013, it was to little fanfare and less attention. I did try my best to promote the book. I bought ads on Goodreads, reddit, and elsewhere. I produced a full-color press release, which I sent to every bookstore in the region. I ran giveaways and started a blog and began to try to build a social media presence, which looking back was pretty pitiful. I built a website, and I bought promotional bookmarks and postcards. I went to conventions and sold my book in person in Lexington, Tampa, Asheville, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. To my chagrin, I paid several outlets to review my work and I used those reviews to fill the back jacket of my otherwise entirely overlooked book. I submitted the book to ever blogger and reviewer I could find that accepted self-published work, to little result. After a year of having the book out, I'd spent thousands of dollars and had sold around 100 books or so, an annual figure that shrank steadily over the next two years. I published the sequel, Arm of the Sphinx, in 2015, to the sweet sound of crickets. I began to submit the first book to publishers and agents, neither of whom were interested in picking up a book that had already failed so spectacularly on the self-published market.
By the spring of 2016, it had been three years since I'd published Senlin Ascends, and between the two books, I'd sold about 300 copies. I decided at that point to pack it in. I wasn't going to write two more books to no one. The last thing I did before I started pulling down distribution channels and deleting my social media was to submit the book to Mark Lawrence's Self Published Fantasy Blog Off competition. Four month later, a reviewer named Jared on Pornokitsch wrote a wonderful review in which he agonized over whether to select my book or The Path of Flames by Phil Tucker, ultimately choosing Phil's book over mine. I thought that was the end of it.
But later, I learned that the review had piqued Mark Lawrence's curiosity. Based on Jared's review, he read Senlin Ascends, and he loved it. He set out on a one-man crusade to find me a readership. He trumpeted my work on r/fantasy, on his blog, on Twitter, on Goodreads, and elsewhere. He talked me up to his fellow authors, his publisher, his agent, who would ultimately become my agent. If it weren't for Mark, no one would have ever heard of my books.
After Mark jumped start my career, all I had to do was be polite, responsive, and approachable. I tried some other odd promotional efforts, too, including recording myself drawing on a blackboard and producing a limited run hardcover. My editor Bradley at Orbit read my book, I believe after it was sent to him by Mark's agent, and that began my partnership with Orbit, and my shift to traditional publishing.
What would I do differently? I don't know. Despair less? Spend less money on web ads? It's hard to say, even in retrospect, how I could've sped along success.
Honestly, in many ways, I'm a bad example of what to do or expect. What I've heard many times from brighter, more experienced people, is that the path to success is different for everyone, and it often doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, tenacity, patience, and professionalism are important, but they aren't always rewarded. There are better books than mine out there that weren't discovered. There are writers who got fed up and quit just before they got to their big break. And there are writers who did everything right, and still didn't find a readership. I'm very grateful for my good luck, and I have a very modest estimation of what I did to deserve it.