Book review-begging 101

There are many things I don’t like about how indie publishing has evolved under the influence of the “gurus”. One of these is the practice of review-begging.

(Note: Dean Wesley Smith gets credit for inventing the term review-begging. But it is too apt not to coin.)

Online review culture is a fact of publishing. As one of my former corporate bosses told me, “you can’t stop people from talking.”

And allow me to be clear here: there is nothing inherently wrong with readers getting together in spaces like Goodreads (or on Amazon, for that matter) to discuss their reactions to various books. This is no different from people discussing their preferences for anything else in the online world.

Online reader reviews, like everything else one finds online, is a mixed bag. Your mileage may vary.

I’ve seen some reader reviews that are extremely thoughtful.

On the other hand, I once saw a reader review that gave a book a one-star rating because the book did not have any dragons, and that reader only read books with dragons. Okie dokie.

I came across another reader review that gave a book a one-star rating because a dog happened to die in the book. The one-star reviewer then pointed out that he “didn’t read books in which animals die.” (One assumes that this particular fellow never read Old Yeller.)

I reiterate: there is nothing wrong with any of this. Everyone has a right to broadcast their opinion on the internet. (That’s sort of what I’m doing now, isn’t it?)

What is deleterious is that a handful of indie author “gurus” have convinced writers that they must behave like Instagram models. They must constantly primp and wheedle for reader reviews and ratings, like a teenager desperate for approval. There have been cases of writers giving away cash prizes, Kindles, and even laptops in exchange for reader reviews. The whole thing has become absurd.

And as is always the case, there is no easier mark than an indie author who is eager for success. The practice of review-begging has given birth to a cottage industry, eagerly filled by companies that make money by putting indie-published books in front of advanced reader copies (ARC) readers. The only qualification of said ARC readers is that they are willing to give their opinions about books online. What could possibly go wrong?

On the contrary, I have learned to actively distrust review averages on Amazon. Some of the best books I’ve read in recent years have had middling 3.5-star review averages. On the other hand, some of the astro-turfed 5-star average books have been mediocre at best.

(Note: whenever you see the reviews for a trad-pubbed book, you can assume that the review averages have been gamed in one way or another.)

I reiterate again: I have no desire to censor, quell, or discourage anyone from expressing their opinion about a particular book, movie, television show, or piece of music. That’s the consumer side of the equation. I’m opining from the creator side now.

When you start writing for the folks who are the most vocal online, you’re not just writing by committee (which is bad enough). You’re also writing for people who may not even be your primary readership. Most avid readers seldom review, or even rate, books. They’re too busy reading.

This is why I’m no fan of review-begging, or the self-appointed gurus who advocate for the practice.

-ET

The world before CNN: less information and fuller lives

Ted Turner passed on May 6 after a long, busy life. While his enterprises were numerous, he is best remembered for the Cable News Network, aka CNN, which launched on June 1, 1980.

Most of us did not get CNN right away. Even middle-class households were slow to adopt cable. Americans really did believe that we could exist with access to only four or five television stations in those days.

My parents purchased a cable subscription with CNN included in 1982. For many years, CNN included a partner channel called CNN Headline News. The idea was simple: all the major headlines in thirty minutes.

CNN has become controversial in recent years, depending on one’s political sentiments. President Trump has repeatedly referred to the network as “fake news.” Early on, CNN was mostly apolitical and mostly dedicated to reporting the news in an objective manner. There were no significant controversies like that back then.

On the contrary, pretty much everyone believed that there was something amazing about CNN. Prior to that, if you wanted to watch the news, you had to tune in right around dinnertime. The local news ran from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m., and the national news ran on each major network afterward.

Either that or (gasp!) read the newspaper. Most Americans had longer attention spans in those days, and actually didn’t mind reading the newspaper, but that’s another topic for another day.

I watched CNN sporadically during the 1980s, but I was a high school kid for most of that period. My CNN obsession began in 1989, with the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing. About a year after that came the first Gulf War. For both events, I was tuned in to CNN multiple times throughout the day.

Bad things happened before CNN became common in American homes. There were wars, government scandals, and troubling international events like the Tehran hostage crisis of 1979 to 1981.

Although I was a kid then, I don’t believe that most American adults ignored national and global problems. There was, however, a commonly held belief that attention was best directed closer to home. Plenty of Americans were dismayed at Nixon’s corruption, or Carter’s bumbling, but there was generally less outrage about the news.

Maybe this was because there were fewer news broadcasts to consume. (And this was long, long before the internet or social media). This made faraway events, including events taking place in another American city, genuinely remote.

It’s also worth noting that in 1980, almost all American adults of childbearing age were married. Most had children. Their personal lives were full and demanding.

This is another way in which 2026 is far removed from 1980. Nowadays, only about a third of young American adults are married, and even fewer have children.

Perhaps that makes it easier to sell them on the notion that the news is more important than their daily lives, that events in Washington DC are more urgent and pressing than events taking place in their living rooms.

Sadly, for all too many Americans in 2026, that is genuinely the case.

In 1980, it usually wasn’t.

-ET

Jennifer Big Eyes: generational name patterns

I was born in 1968. I did not go to school with a single boy named Ryan.

Thirty-odd years later, I was in the workforce. I met a lot of younger men (born in the mid- to late-1970s) named Ryan.

This was odd. Where had all these Ryans come from? And where had they been before, during my childhood, teens, and twenties?

The mid-1970s surge of boys named Ryan is an example of how generational naming patterns can turn on a dime. From the 1950s through the end of the 1960s, the following male given names were much more popular for newborns in the United States:

  • Mike/Michael
  • David
  • John
  • Mark
  • Scott
  • Steve/Steven
  • Kevin
  • Jeff/Jeffrey

The sudden (and relatively short-lived) increase in American babies named Ryan can be partly attributed to two factors: the popularity of the actor Ryan O’Neal (1941-2023), and the debut of the soap opera Ryan’s Hope in 1975. So if you’re an Xennial man named Ryan, it’s likely that you owe your name to a soap opera. The popularity of the name Ryan tapered off in the mid-1980s, right around the time that the soap opera’s ratings started to decline.

My name, Edward, was uncommon among boys my age. I was named after my father. Over the years, I have heard various explanations for the reason my father was given this name. None of them are entirely satisfactory. Edward is certainly not a family name for our clan, in any meaningful sense.

When I was a kid, I would sometimes meet adults who delighted in telling me about Mister Ed, the 1960s sitcom that featured a talking horse of the same name. They would then imply that I might have been named after the sitcom’s eponymous equine.

Despite my youth, I was quick to disabuse them of such notions. (Oh, the traumas that children had to endure at the hands of adults, before the advent of the “self-esteem” craze.)

My mother was born in 1946. She was named Linda—like more than a million other women born in that era. Linda was a much overused name during the Baby Boomer birth years. Linda was, in fact, the second most popular name for newborn girls during the 1940s, according to the Social Security Administration’s online database.

Throughout my life, I have met many Boomer women named Linda. I have never, so far as I can remember, met a woman my age or younger named Linda; but I don’t doubt that they exist.

When I try to think of any Linda who doesn’t have Baby Boomer associations, the only one who comes to mind is Linda Barrett, the fictional sexpot of Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).

But once again, there are Baby Boomer connections. Even though Fast Times at Ridgemont High is regarded as an early Gen X movie, the movie’s director, Amy Heckerling, born in 1954, is solidly in boomer territory. (Heckerling is closer in age to my parents than to me.) I think it’s safe to say that the name “Linda” belongs entirely to the Baby Boom generation.

The most popular girls’ name in the 1940s was Mary. Mary was my maternal grandmother’s name. She was born in 1922. I have never met a woman my age or younger named Mary, either. I have met some Mary Jo’s who were born in the 1960s and 1970s, but never a plain old Mary. Once again, I am sure that they exist; but they are comparatively rare.

Kayla is a girl’s name that came out of nowhere in the 1990s. One never encountered the name when I was a kid. I began meeting Kaylas around 2010, just as the first girls given that name were reaching early adulthood. I have nothing against the name Kayla, but what’s wrong with its more traditional analog, Katie?

Among Gen X girls, Jennifer is the most popular name, hands down. Jennifer was already becoming popular when I was born, in the late 1960s. But Jennifer really surged in popularity in the early 1970s. It is the most common name for American girls born in that decade.

This is why there are so many 50-something women nowadays named Jennifer. Jennifer Aniston (born in 1969) is just one drop in that vast ocean of Jennifers.

I went to school with more Jennifers than I can count. Later in life, I met many more who were just a few years younger than me (born in the first half of the 1970s).

I seem to have been surrounded by Jennifers from the very beginning. My mother informed me that when I was a newborn, the couple living in the apartment unit next to my parents had a two-year-old girl named—lo and behold—Jennifer.

The girl had especially wide, blue eyes. She was also fond of staring at adults, according to my mother’s telling. My mother therefore nicknamed her Jennifer Big Eyes. Over the years, Jennifer Big Eyes has come up in conversation from time to time.

Jennifer Big Eyes would now be, I would guess, in her early 60s. I don’t believe my mother ever knew her full name. I have no idea where she would be nowadays, or if she is even still alive. After that many years, anything is possible. But I do hope that Jennifer Big Eyes is still out there somewhere, and that she is doing well. One more Gen X Jennifer among so many.

-ET

OnlyFans and inevitable aggregations

As this video from Coin Bureau Finance explains, the OnlyFans gold rush is already over, and more changes are coming. The platform is inherently risky for investors and credit card processors; but that isn’t the only problem. The OnlyFans ecosystem is also subject to the aggregating forces that are present in any creator-based economy.

Henceforth, OnlyFans will likely be moving in two directions, neither of which is promising for the much-ballyhooed individual creator on the platform.

The first is the superstar creator. Often this will be a celebrity. Recently, there has been an influx of aging female celebrities joining OnlyFans. These are actresses who have aged out of leading-lady roles (don’t look for Sydney Sweeney or Zendaya to join anytime soon) but who are still young and attractive enough to draw in millions of simps with credit cards. Shannon Elizabeth is the most famous recent example, but she is far from alone.

The second direction is that of the AI-powered OnlyFans agency. In these cases, there may be a real live human female somewhere, providing some of the content. Increasingly, however, content that does not feature a celebrity will rely on artificial intelligence.

And according to the above video, artificial intelligence is already powering many OnlyFans accounts. The thirsty males who plunk down their credit cards each month think that they are gaining access to the woman on the other side of the screen. In reality, they are most likely chatting with a woman (or possibly even a man) in a call center-like facility in the Philippines or Vietnam.

Which brings us to another familiar realization: OnlyFans subscribers really are a gullible, pathetic bunch of men.

-ET

Homeschooling: the wrong solution to a real problem

A large number of school levy issues were on the ballot throughout Ohio this past Tuesday. Most of them were rejected by voters. Reading the comments on Facebook, I noted that those who voted against the levies were largely unapologetic.

There is a general dissatisfaction throughout America with public schools: their management, their methods of (taxpayer) funding, and the instruction that is taking place within them.

This dissatisfaction with public education has fueled a concomitant rise in homeschooling. When I was a kid, during the 1970s and 1980s, one never met anyone who was homeschooled. (Fewer than 1% of Gen Xers receive their education this way.) But nowadays it seems that every other young adult one meets is the product of homeschooling. Every young couple with children is at least talking about educating their kids at home. The percentages rise as the neighborhoods become whiter and more affluent.

I understand the dissatisfaction with twenty-first-century public schools. It seems that no news day is complete without a fresh report of some weirdness being taught in public schools, or some flagrant example of teacher misconduct.

And yet…I had a very different experience in the 1970s and 1980s. I attended both public and working-class Catholic schools, both at the grade school and high school levels. I received an excellent education. And while I liked some of my teachers better than others, almost all of them were intelligent adults who were deeply committed to their calling.

What happened, then? Sometime during the mid-1980s, one began hearing the catchphrase, “if you can’t do, then teach”. The careerism of the 1980s taught young people that teaching was a second-rate profession. If you were smart, if you were a capable student, then you didn’t want to be a teacher. No, that simply wouldn’t do. You had to be an attorney, a CPA, or a CEO.

Another important trend occurred during the Gen X growing-up years: a decline in the number of capable young women entering the teaching field.

As recently as the 1970s, teaching was considered a top career choice for the most capable young women. While some of my teachers were male, they were disproportionately female. Many of my female teachers were absolutely brilliant. My junior high science teacher, a woman named Mrs. Tierney, was as knowledgable as many college professors.

That all began to change in the 1980s, with the rise of “girl power”, and the idea that the brightest young women must compete in all traditionally male careers. The result was more intelligent young women working in law and finance, but fewer intelligent young women becoming math and science teachers.

Did society benefit most from more intelligent young women entering law firms…or from more intelligent young women entering the field of education? I’m going to let you draw your own conclusions on that one. (I don’t want to deal with the hate mail.)

What I will say is that there are trade-offs to all societal changes. Forty years ago, we began subtly denigrating the teaching profession (“if you can’t do, then teach”) and we began telling young women that they were passively accepting the patriarchy if they didn’t go toe-to-toe with their male classmates in the corporate boardroom.

Forty years have come and gone since all of those trends began. The excellent teachers who provided my education during the 1970s and 1980s are all retired. After casting the teaching profession as a second-rate career choice for four decades, many people are shocked to discover that—lo and behold—the field is now populated by mostly second-rate people. (In one of their Freakonomics books, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner documented the decline in teacher IQ within my lifetime.) Many parents are also shocked to discover that a disproportionate number of those teachers are left-wing ideologues who shouldn’t be trusted with anyone’s children. But that tends to go along with the second-rate thing.

And now many of those affluent white suburbanites have decided that public schools must be abandoned wholesale. Parents who once believed that a teaching career was beneath them have decided that they should take a break from their law firms and corporate offices to…educate their children at home. Can no one see the irony here?

I reiterate: I experienced public, industrialized education during the 1970s and 1980s. It really isn’t that bad when the right adults are in charge. The problem is that the right adults are no longer in charge, because the right adults are off doing other things. Among those other things (note irony once again) is now homeschooling their kids, because they no longer trust the people working in education.

I am grateful that I wasn’t homeschooled. I loved my mother dearly, but she would not have been capable of teaching me Spanish and algebra at home. In my experience, very few parents are well-equipped to provide competent instruction beyond the fifth- or sixth- grade level. Teaching at the junior high level and above really is a task that is best left to trained professionals.

The proof is in the pudding. I’ve met many of these young adults who were homeschooled in recent years. Most of them are nice enough, but there are noticeable gaps in their knowledge and social development. I would not have wanted to trade places with them.

Another important factor is the socialization and people skills that the organized educational experience provides. I was neither the captain of the football team nor the most popular kid in my school. But my high school experience was anything but four years of living hell. In fact, I rather enjoyed it.

More germane to our discussion here, my school years taught me about friends, enemies, rivals, and conflict management. These are skills that many screen-bound Gen Z young adults sorely lack. 

The solution to the crisis in public education is not for a million concerned parents to isolate their children and retreat behind suburban walls. The solution is for a million concerned parents to become involved and take back their public schools.

This is not like trying to take back the national government. Education is still largely managed at the local level. It is possible for organized groups of adults to bring about substantial changes.

This would be a lot more beneficial (for their children, most of all), and practical, than for every parent to try to become a do-it-yourself calculus teacher.

-ET

Political violence and “punch Nazis” LARPing

A USA Today columnist, Dace Potas, has sounded the alarm on the normalization of political violence in leftwing, progressive circles. He specifically cites the posthumous mockery of Charlie Kirk and his widow, which has taken a decidedly creepy and ghoulish  turn. The name of his piece is: “The left normalizes political violence. We can’t accept it.” You should read it.

Dace Potas is writing editorials for USA Today, while I’m just some guy in Ohio. But I saw this coming a few years ago, when the catchphrase “punch Nazis” became commonplace in progressive spaces online.

Why shouldn’t we want to punch Nazis, you ask. Isn’t that what Harrison Ford did in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

That’s all fine and good, if you’ve got a time machine and you’d like to go back and slug it out with a brigade of the Waffen SS. Be my guest, if you can pull that off. Knock yourself out.

But in most cases, what you actually read about is young punks carrying out cowardly attacks on 80-year-old men wearing Trump hats.

A part of me isn’t surprised. Folks on the far-left fringe have long engaged in a version of “stolen valor”, vis-a-vis World War II veterans, few of whom are still alive to speak for themselves. (Note: My maternal grandfather was a World War II veteran who engaged in combat with the real, historical Nazis—the ones who spoke German. My maternal grandfather lived well into my adult life. We had many long discussions. My maternal grandfather would have had nothing but disdain for twenty-first-century “antifa” goons.)

What “fighting Nazis” really looks like: my grandfather manning an anti-aircraft gun in the Atlantic, 1943

Here’s the problem with the whole “punching Nazis” thing. Who gets to decide who is a “Nazi”?

The historical Nazis are all dead. (A few may be living out the last of their days in nursing homes in Germany. They would be over one hundred years old in 2026.)

Okay, what about homegrown, American Nazis? The American Nazi Party, which had a grand total of 500 members in the late 1960s, doesn’t really exist today.

What about the Ku Klux Klan? There are fewer than 5,000 of them in the USA in 2026, scattered throughout the country. They mostly exist online.

So you’re not punching non-existent “Nazis”. And you can’t even find a genuine, sheet-wearing klansman to punch in Toledo or Poughkeepsie.

So who is it that you want to punch?

Let’s cut the BS, and define what is really going on here. What “punching Nazis” means in practice is: labeling those who disagree with you as ‘Nazis’ so that you can justify political violence against them, while LARPing as a member of the 82nd Airborne, circa 1944.

Likewise, “Antifa” is—if you’ll pardon my technical jargon here—a complete bullshit term. Calling yourself “antifascist” does not make you a freedom fighter, any more than me calling myself “Taylor Swift’s boyfriend” would make me that. If you want to fight fascism, join a branch of the US military, because they’re the last US-based organization to actually do that.

This doesn’t mean you have to silently agree with everyone on the political right. I certainly don’t. I find Matt Walsh (to pick one name at random) to be an insufferable killjoy who wants to outlaw all biblically non-compliant forms of sex (based on his interpretation of Scripture, of course).

But to compare Matt Walsh to Reinhard Heydrich is gross hyperbole at best…and it is the encouragement of political violence at worst, if accompanied by rants about “punching Nazis”.

-ET

Above: A self-styled Captain America (the comic book shirt on a grown man speaks volumes) encourages people LARPing as antifascists to engage in street violence against people LARPing as Nazis.

Everyone in this scenario is nuts. There are no heroes here (and certainly none that rise to the level of the men and women who fought in World War II).

A pox on both their houses, basically.

Safetyism and gym dress codes in Kentucky

A fitness club in Northern Kentucky (not far from my home across the Ohio River) has implemented a new, arguably draconian dress code for its members. While the new dress code would not quite pass muster in Iran, the Islamic Republic would regard it as a reasonable starting point. (Keep reading for some specifics.)

All hell is breaking loose on the local internet as a result. A new front in the War on Women! The patriarchy trying to control what women wear!

While the local gym’s new rules do not explicitly identify women as likely offenders of indecent dress, the policies target “uncovered sports bras and leggings”, items which men are unlikely to wear. Shirts, the new rules state, must cover the member’s “chest and cleavage”. “Inappropriate or revealing attire,” is henceforth verboten.

Since when has anyone ever worried about a man wearing “revealing attire”?Unless the reader is being deliberately obtuse, there is one reasonable conclusion: the new gym policies are designed to compel women to dress modestly when working out.

I have been going to gyms since the early 1980s. Leggings and halter-style sports bras weren’t in vogue 40 years ago, but some of those leotards from the 1980s were form-fitting, and practically guaranteed to raise testosterone levels in the gym.

I may have been distracted at times by such things; but I have never sustained an injury as a result of a woman wearing a form-fitting or revealing outfit in the gym. Never once in more than forty years. Nor have I ever labored under the belief that a woman is obligated to have sex with me because she wears this or that in my presence. By that logic, I would be entitled to everything I see that I might possibly want. And that’s a recipe for societal chaos.

Ergo, what women wear in the gym has never been an issue for me. And going back to 1995 or so, I don’t think many guys ever objected or even cared.

Then Gen Z ruined the gym for everyone.

A few years ago, it became fashionable for young women to call out men in gyms for real and imagined cases of ogling. This being Gen Z, it all took place on TikTok and Instagram.

In many cases, the accusations were either wild exaggerations or outright fabrications. But much drama ensued. Women were not “safe” in gyms with men, we were told.

Thirty years ago, Gen X women had no qualms about telling the occasional creep (yes, they do exist) to get lost or keep his eyes to himself. Women have lost an awareness of the power they wield, with a silent, icy stare or a simple rolling of the eyes.

Gen Z lacks such sophistications completely. For them, an online confessional (and probably some therapy) is required to address every grievance, every trespass. One thing we can be certain of, in any situation that involves conflict or tension and Gen Z, there will be drama.

Safetyism is the standard antidote to the drama of the younger generation. Safetyism is the elevation of both physical and emotional safety above all other concerns—including fun and spontaneity. Safetyism is what has given us microaggressions, pronoun rules, and the hyper-policing of all expression of male sexual intention.

Safetyism has now made its way into the gym, too. When I visit my gym, I reflexively look away from any pretty young woman who crosses my field of vision…as if she, like Medusa, could turn me to stone if my gaze were to linger a second too long. I do not want to end up in some attention-seeker’s TikTok video.

New dress code policies like the one described above are another manifestation of safetyism. If everyone wears baggy bloomers to the gym, if every one wears headphones and keeps their eyes forward at all times, then no one will ever be ogled, made uncomfortable, or microaggressioned.

It’s all rather ridiculous, when you stop to think about it. The world faces many genuine problems at present. Uncovered cleavage and derrieres are way, way down the list.

But this is what happens when safetyism takes over society, when the prevention of anything transgressive, edgy, hurtful or inappropriate becomes the paramount concern. Safetyism always comes with rafts of new rules. Quasi-Islamic dress codes for women in gyms in Kentucky are just one more example.

-ET

Involuntary Deeds: a new supernatural/psychological horror novella

A married woman in the suburbs develops a sudden and inexplicable interest in graveyard photography. Her husband wonders what’s going on with her.

But what secrets is her husband hiding?

Such is the setup of Involuntary Deeds, my new supernatural/psychological horror novella. The novella is set in Clermont County, Ohio, about twenty miles east of Cincinnati.

**View it on Amazon**

Involuntary Deeds is presently available on Amazon. It will be rolled out to the other major retailers (Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and Apple Books) in the coming weeks.

Amazon description:

Some crimes don’t stay buried.

Pam Vance never cared about cemeteries—until the day she couldn’t stay away from them.

What begins as a strange new hobby quickly turns into something else. An obsession. A need to photograph graves she’s never seen before… places she feels drawn to.

Her husband, Robert, knows something is wrong.

Then the warnings begin.

The ghost of a Revolutionary War soldier appears to Robert with a message he can’t ignore: stay away.

But Pam won’t stop.

Because one grave is calling to her—that of a sixteen-year-old girl who died in 1991. A death long forgotten.

But not by Robert.

As the past closes in, a truth buried for decades begins to surface—pulling the living and the dead toward a confrontation that can no longer be avoided.

‘Involuntary Deeds’ is a novella for fans of classic ghost stories in the tradition of Peter Straub, Shirley Jackson, M.R. James, and E.F. Benson.

KUWA 6226: a tale of an online urban legend!

I released a new book over the weekend: KUWA 6226!

This is the story of a deadly online urban legend. (See description below!)

View it on Amazon!

Kuwa6226 is a deadly online urban legend!

Throughout the world, people who make Internet inquiries about Kuwa6226 meet violent deaths.

In online forums and chatrooms, people are warned not to mention the mysterious entity.

But who, or what, is Kuwa6226? A supernatural force? A cult? A global conspiracy?

Most people say that it’s better not to ask…and Kuwa6226’s reign of terror goes unchallenged.



***

 

Then two unlikely sleuths, from opposite sides of the world, unite.

Minoru Watase is a corporate IT employee in Japan. Julie Lawrence is a college student in the American Pacific Northwest.

Julie and Minoru have each lost a friend to Kuwa6226. Together, they are determined to discover Kuwa6226’s true identity and eliminate the menace.

Their search will take them from the streets of Tokyo to an American college town in Washington State. When they finally come face-to-face with Kuwa6226, Julie and Minoru will be unprepared for the revelation…and the ruthlessness of their adversary!

Kuwa 6226 is a horror-mystery with endless twists and turns!

1980s coming-of-age college drama

Read NO SURE THING in Kobo Plus. Also available for purchase at Amazon, Google Play, Apple Books, and Barnes & Noble

No Sure Thing: a Gen X coming-of-age novel set in 1988 is now available in Kobo Plus.

Kobo Plus is Kobo’s version of Kindle Unlimited. I’ve been moving some titles in there on an experimental basis.

Kobo Plus, like Kindle Unlimited, will inevitably be swamped with trashy, sexually explicit romance novels. (Unfortunately, that’s probably already the case). But at least Kobo Plus does not require exclusivity. So I’m willing to give it a try for now.

No Sure Thing, like the title suggests, is a coming-of-age novel in a distinctly Gen X setting. While the novel is not autobiographical in any significant way, many of the characters and conflicts presented therein are based on people and situations that I observed myself during the 1980s. So it is authentic, if nothing else.

While there are several “love plots” in the book, this is not a romance novel in any traditional sense. If that’s what you’re looking for, look elsewhere.

But not all of the teen movies of the 1980s followed the traditional romance script. Consider the endings of Risky Business and The Last American Virgin. These were much more disillusionment plots than by-the-numbers romance plots (even though the romance element was heavily used in marketing both films).

Fast Times at Ridgemont High, despite the sex and comedy, also had several unmistakable disillusionment plots: Stacy learned the consequences of reckless sexual experimentation; Brad learned the pitfalls of hubris.

As noted above, No Sure Thing is available at all the major online bookstores.

-ET

AI slop and genre slop: the most pessimistic view possible, and reasons for optimism

David Van Dyke Stewart is waxing pessimistic about the state of indie publishing. In his view, indie publishing is so threatened by AI slop and genre slop that it is no longer worth doing anymore.

He announces in the video below that he intends to “step away” from indie publishing. He’s even flirting with the idea of unpublishing some of his existing novels, because he does not want to be associated with some of the ridiculous excesses that we now see in indie publishing.

A part of me fully sympathizes. As I’ve written previously, I can hardly stand to enter indie writing groups on Facebook anymore. 90% of the authors participating in such spaces are now writing shifter romances, reverse harem—and similarly ridiculous books adorned with man chests. Then there are the dogs and cats solving mysteries, the witch cozies, etc. It is possible for one to feel ridiculous by association.

As for AI…yes, that is a problem of an entirely different magnitude.

And yet…I remain optimistic, if not in the short run, then at least in the long run.

Why? Because I’ve seen this movie before. I remember almost twenty years ago, how everyone was predicting that the entire internet would be taken down—not by AI, but by content farms.

For those of you who don’t remember (or who are a little fuzzy) on the history, content farms were junk sites that were hastily written to maximize clicks in Google search results, and thereby maximize AdSense income. For a few years they represented a real threat to the integrity of the internet.

But the content farms eventually went the way of the pterodactyl. Google changed its algorithm. Search engine users became more discriminating, and learned to recognize query results that led to content farms. The economic incentive for the content farms went away.

That’s what I expect to happen with AI slop (and—to some degree—genre slop). How long can it remain profitable to turn out template-driven trashy romance novels, for instance? Even for the voracious porn/romance readership?

And once you throw AI into the mix, the race to the unprofitable bottom is inevitable. I look for the genre slop writers, and the AI slop producers, to eventually be driven out by their own excesses.

One irony here is that AI slop and genre slop have a mutually destructive, symbiotic relationship. Template-driven, repetitive genre novels are the easiest to produce with various AI programs.

What does concern me is that before it all goes away, it will completely undermine the Kindle Unlimited ecosystem. This is a real threat in the short- to mid-term.

But I don’t look for AI and genre slop to take down indie publishing as an industry. As long as the internet has existed, there have been both outright scammers and individuals who seek to maximize profit by turning out low-effort, repetitive content. That problem is not going to go away. One bag of tricks will simply be replaced by another.

The rest of us will soldier on. As for David Van Dyke Stewart, I hope that he soldiers on, too. I haven’t read any of his novels; but I have watched some of his YouTube content. He strikes me as a thoughtful fellow. 

-ET

Simp Nation comes through for Shannon Elizabeth: $1.2 million

I was a little too old to be part of the American Pie target audience in 1999. (I turned 31 that year.) I therefore never developed an awareness of Shannon Elizabeth, let alone an interest in her.

I am, however, not above finding certain female celebrities attractive. To pick an example that comes to mind: I wouldn’t throw Sydney Sweeney out of my bedroom for eating crackers, as they say.

But if Sydney Sweeney ever launches an OnlyFans, my money won’t be going into the till. I have never been tempted to simp online for anyone. I occasionally come across less famous YouTubers who make me think, “Yeah, she’s cute.” But that’s as far as it goes. What, after all, is the point?

As some of you may know, the 52-year-old Shannon Elizabeth recently divorced her husband and started an OnlyFans account. She is not using the online platform to give investment advice, perform unicycle tricks, or sing the full oeuvre of the Beatles a cappella. Shannon isn’t providing any nude content, either, though many OnlyFans creators do.

Source: OnlyFans

According to the front page of her OnlyFans account, the former actress’s offerings consist of the following bland fare:

• behind-the-scenes moments

• exclusive photos & videos

• candid glimpses of my life

• chatting with me directly

The key draw to all of this seems to be a distant, parasocial connection to Ms. Elizabeth. And for this, waves of thirsty simps have shelled out more than a million dollars during her first week on OnlyFans.

Perhaps I am simply behind the times. I’m not here to advocate for the world’s oldest profession or its customers, but a part of me can understand the rationale of a man paying for actual sex. The pseudo-sex of OnlyFans, though, would have bored me to tears when I was thirteen. As Clara Peller used to say in those 1980s Wendy’s commercials: “Where’s the beef?”

Why grown men are spending billions annually on this stuff is completely beyond me.

Speaking of beef: I have no beef with the women of OnlyFans, including Ms. Elizabeth. They are only taking money from willing marks.

The men are another matter, and I have a message for each and every one of them. To paraphrase Darth Vader in the original (1977) Star Wars: “I find your lack of testosterone disturbing.”

Man up, grow a pair, and quit spending money on OnlyFans. You make all men look like wimps and dupes by association.

-ET 

Another unlikely bestseller, and the futility of cancel mobs

Way back in 1973, a French writer named Jean Raspail penned a dystopian novel called. Le Camp des Saints, or The Camp of the Saints in English.

The Camp of the Saints presented an overwhelmingly negative view of mass immigration. The thesis of the novel was that Western societies are being destroyed from without by mass immigration, and from within by those who are sympathetic toward the waves of immigrants from the developing world.

Whether you agree with that argument or not, it is not exactly an original idea. Perhaps it was in 1973. It is certainly not an original idea in 2026.

Jean Raspail’s more than 50-year-old novel had long ago passed into obscurity, at least within the English-speaking world. Then a group of busybodies on Reddit learned of the book’s existence, and decided that here, alas, was an opportunity to engage in some performative outrage.

Members of the subreddit r/bannedbooks worked themselves into a lather, then pooled their efforts to get the book temporarily removed from the virtual shelves at Amazon. (Demonstrating the lack of self-awareness that is typical of such folks, they failed to see the ironic connection between the name of their subreddit, and the fact that they were actively seeking a book ban. But I digress.)

The Amazon book removal was quickly overturned, of course. But the controversy generated interest in a book that no one would have heard of otherwise. As a result, The Camp of the Saints skyrocketed to best-seller status at Amazon, finally peaking at #6.

If we didn’t know better, we might suggest that this was a false-flag publicity stunt, perpetrated by the original publishers of The Camp of the Saints. But we do know better, because we’ve seen this before.

The 2010s were the high point of the “social justice book mob”. This is how it worked in those days: A member of the so-called “book community”, who was active on social media, would find a passage, theme, or character in a novel that could be broadly interpreted as “racist”.

They would then make some posts on social media decrying the evils of the book, and stir up an online mob. The online mob would do the rest.

Such mobs were particularly common in YA fantasy literature. Notable mob targets from a little less than a decade ago include: The Black Witch by Laurie Forest and Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao.

Sometimes these mobs did real damage. Amélie Wen Zhao was so traumatized by the outcry against Blood Heir that she briefly delayed the publication of the book.

But patience with the social justice book mobs eventually ran thin for two reasons. The first was that, like most mobs, they overplayed their hand. Chinese American author Amélie Wen Zhao was no one’s idea of a white supremacist. The claims against her and her book were so ridiculous that almost no one could take them seriously.

Secondly, there was the “unintentional false flag” effect. Cancel mobs have repeatedly proven themselves effective at promoting the books, films, and artists that are their targets. The recent success of The Camp of the Saints is the most recent case in point.

I’m in my 50s. I haven’t read much YA fiction for many, many years. The last time I was in that market, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys were cutting edge. I heard about The Black Witch and Blood Heir, though—because the online morality patrol was loudly denouncing these books in public.

This works both ways, of course. Almost thirty years ago, I heard about Heather Has Two Mommies because conservatives were kvetching about a children’s book that portrayed LGBTQ families and parents in an approving manner.

None of the above is meant to imply that we shouldn’t debate controversial social issues. We should, however, not get too worked up about the impact of “message art”. This is true for you, too, regardless of where you stand on the political continuum.

Novels and films with political messages are most impactful early on, when no one has yet named the issue in public, often out of public reticence about a topic. Heather Has Two Mommies might have been able to make that claim when it was first published in 1989. Today, however, a book or film describing LGBTQ individuals in hagiographic terms is so commonplace that we merely shrug and move on. Likewise, it has been virtually impossible to write an original novel or screenplay about race in America for at least 30 years. The topic has literally been done to death.

Beyond the earliest stages, message films and novels usually devolve into repetitions of well-worn talking points. In this way, most message art is derivative, just like most political speech.

Outrage over such materials now also follows a predictable pattern, as the recent bestseller status of The Camp of the Saints demonstrates. Here is the takeaway: if you don’t like what a particular book or movie is saying (or seems to be saying), your best course of action is to ignore it. In this era of online cancel mobs and counter-cancel mobs, all your efforts to censor a work of art will be in vain. You will only contribute to its popularity, which may have been a long shot otherwise.

-ET

Authors and direct sales

In the video below, Kevin Tumlinson discusses his new direct sales strategy.

Just a few years ago, direct sales was regarded as a highly experimental, almost whimsical course. As recently as 2020 or so, conventional wisdom held that there was only one bookstore an indie author really needed.

Times have changed. All of the major booksellers (as well as distributor Draft2Digital) are taking measures to combat AI slop. Legitimate authors sometimes get caught up in these sweeps. Throughout 2026, there have been reports of arbitrary KDP account closures.

The point here is not to declare that any one retailer has nefarious intentions. Rather, the environment has changed. Building an author business on one platform is no longer the safe and sensible strategy that it seemed only a few years ago.

Increasingly, authors will need to rely on distributed ecosystems, which will embody various elements of discovery, marketing, and distribution.

The exact combination will vary for each author. For example, I regularly write here on my blog, so I have no desire to duplicate what I do here on Substack.  Other writers don’t want to do any kind of editorializing about anything, since giving one’s opinion about anything of substance invites backlash and social media mobs. Some writers will want to keep all their opinions to themselves. To each his own.

Likewise, Kevin’s storefront, while impressive, is more of a project than I would want to take on at this time. But I’m definitely expanding my presence beyond a single retailer and Kindle Unlimited. Twenty twenty-six is not 2016, or even 2021. We should not pretend otherwise.

-ET

The smut factor: why I’ve more or less abandoned online writers’ groups

The Jewish Bride, by Rembrandt

One of you asked me the other day which online writers’ group I recommend. Many of these groups exist on Facebook.

Ten years ago I would have been able to heartily recommend several of them.

Today, there are none that are very useful to me. Here’s the problem.

Over the last five years, the online writers’ groups have become inundated with writers of “spicy” (i.e., sexually explicit) romance and outright erotica (i.e., even more sexually explicit material).

Now let me be clear here. I am no prude. Oh…far, far from it. I am quite sure that some of my off-hours activities would shock and/or offend the prudish among you.

But there is a limit to how much I enjoy talking about sex, writing about sex, and creating stories around it. My tolerance for that sort of thing is fairly limited.

I don’t like sex stories for the same reason I don’t like pornographic videos: watching other people have sex is a bit like watching other people eat.

Similarly, talking about sex is like talking about eating. I eat lunch every day. But I don’t wish to spend more time discussing my lunch than I spend actually eating it. I have a similar approach to matters of the bedroom. Some of these writers and their readers need to spend less time with their noses in books, and more time with living, breathing people. (Nothing cures a chronic preoccupation with sex like a little of the real thing.)

From a business perspective, the marketing of romance/erotica has much more to do with the marketing of OnlyFans or other pornographic material than it does with traditional book marketing. A person who picks up a Michael Connelly novel is not responding to the same motivations as a person who watches pornographic videos, or who reads pornographic stories.

No ill will for all the “spicy” romance and erotica writers out there, mind you. But they’ve made the online writing space more or less useless for everyone else, with their sheer numbers.

-ET