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Comment by azhenley

1 day ago

Thanks to the positive encourage here and in my email, I've decided to go the self-publishing route. I setup a pre-order page and will release each chapter as I go. :)

Happy New Years, HN.

19 comments

azhenley

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tempestn  12 hours ago

Wouldn't normally nitpick, but just in case it's helpful as an author - compound verbs that end in particles, like "set up", "break down", "log in", "check out", etc., are all two words when used as verbs. They each also have single, compound word versions, but those are the noun forms. So, you set up the page, and now the setup is done.

  • Guestmodinfo  12 hours ago

    Thanx so much. Can you point where we can learn all this. These days it's hard to grab all that even when you read books a bit everyday

    • tempestn  12 hours ago

      That I don't know. I don't have an English or linguistics background myself, it's just a common mistake I've noticed.

      Ironically though, your reply has another similar one. You read books every day; reading books is an everyday activity for you.

    • jraph  11 hours ago

      See also:

      - set up [1] (notice that it's a verb)

      - setup [2] (notice that it's a noun)

      - Phrasal verbs [3]

      Unfortunately, I'm afraid it's mostly stuff one needs to know by heart, but I think it's often that the noun is the one that is all in one word and the verb is the phrasal one (composed of "base" and the particle, in several words). Note: I'm not a native English speaker.

      [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/set_up#English

      [2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/setup

      [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb

    • nkrisc  8 hours ago

      Essentially if you’re using it as a noun it’s “setup”, if you’re using it as a verb it’s “set up”.

  • cornholio  10 hours ago

    I think this kind of feedback is a good example of something an LLM is very good at suggesting. I regularly feed my important raw texts to an AI, and ask it not to rewrite it (!), but to give me line by line grammatical, style and tone advice, point out uncommon language, idioms or semantics etc. Also, they are good at fact checking, they can quickly verify each statement against web sources etc.

    On the other hand, LLMs are very bad writing partners, they are sycophants and very rarely give substantial criticism, the kind of feedback an editor would give and is mentioned in the article.

    This is the substantial service an editor will provide going forward in the AI slop era, where everyone and their grandma will self publish some personal masterpiece: a contact with the real world and setting the bar high, to the point you need to struggle to achieve the required quality. Writing a book, especially finishing a great book, is not supposed to be enjoyable, it's hard, grueling work.

  • asymmetric  12 hours ago

    Is it “set up the page” or “set the page up”? Or both?

    • tempestn  12 hours ago

      Either one works. And that's actually a way to help remember the general rule. If you can rephrase it split up like that (ie. 'set it up'), then that's the multi-word, verb form.

      Edit: actually, either way works, except when using with a pronoun. So, you can 'set it up', but you can't 'set up it'.

      1 reply →

huhkerrf  11 hours ago

To be frank, after reading your blog post, while I am interested in the topic you're writing on, there's no way I'm putting down a pre-order.

If you can't finish a partial manuscript when you have people reaching out to you and reviewers ready to provide feedback, how confident can I be that you'll actually write when you have a faceless pre-order instead? Or will life just get in the way again?

  • bartvk  9 hours ago

    It was a surprisingly honest blog post, but like you, I can't really see any reasons why self-publishing would work this time.

    • freehorse  6 hours ago

      I wouldn't pre-order (from somebody with no publishing track record) but working with publishers/editors you don't align with seems a major hindrance that now does not exist.

  • beaker52  7 hours ago

    To me it sounds like working with a publisher squeezed every drop of fun from the project for the author and freeing up the project could re-inject some personal excitement, motivation and intention again.

    • huhkerrf  5 hours ago

      Maybe, but it sure reads like he was dragging his feet long before that.

      Considering all the confusion and questions in this comment section, maybe he should have been more open to an editor.

beej71  15 hours ago

All those reasons you listed were why I never went with a publisher. I'm a big fan of print-on-demand. Good luck!