The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 18 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Howey: Traditional Publishing Contracts Are Now the Last Resort for Authors
“Self-publishing used to be thought of as the last resort for writers. Now publishing contracts are the last resort, because as long as you own the rights, you have the freedom to make any decision you want down the road.”
Howey: Technology is to human brains what sugar is to gut biology
“Technology is for our brains, what sugar is for our gut. You know, our bodies have a natural craving for cheap calories and our brains have a natural craving for connection. And what sugar is doing to, you know, fatten us up because we weren't prepared for thi…”
Publishers keep backlist ebook prices high to avoid cannibalizing new releases
“I realized that as soon as a publisher owned that ebook, right, they were going to jack up the price to protect their other ebooks. And this is something a lot of authors don't think about your competition for them. Like the people that own your book competes …”
Howey: Print-on-demand renders standard book rights reversion clauses laughable
“Unless there's a reversion clause and most publishing contracts have them, but they're laughable. They usually just say, as long as the book is in print, the publisher retains the rights. And we talked about print on demand earlier. Now publishers can just mov…”
Howey: Schools naturally bias toward creating classrooms of future teachers
“The people in charge of school or all people ended up teaching
And if you think about what they're trying to generate a whole classroom full of teachers. They want us all have well-rounded knowledge and be really good at school stuff. And that's because the p…”
Howey: Traditional publishers collect ongoing revenue cuts for one-time upfront costs
“Most of these services are one-time costs like editorial cover art, the pagination, the layout of the words on the page. They do that once. And then they keep more for every sale than I get as the writer.”
Howey: Freedom of choice in book production beats publishers' economies of scale
“I would much rather choose my own editor than sign with a publisher and just get stuck with whatever editor they assigned to me. And I think freedom of choice is better than economies of scale.”
Howey: Free first installments prevent bad reviews and funnel paid readers
“I would rather someone read something for free because if they don't like it, they don't feel like they're not likely to write a bad review because what can they say? Like, I'm, I feel ripped off. Like I didn't pay anything. I didn't enjoy this. And so there's…”
Howey: Disrupting automotive hardware is far harder than building apps
“Building cars is very different from building apps. The disruption's much more difficult.”
Hugh Howey: Writing One Hour Daily Yields a Novel in a Year
“One hour a day of writing, you'll write a novel in a year, guaranteed.”
Howey: Making structural decisions mid-writing causes authors to abandon books
“Making decisions in the moment while you're writing I think part of you knows you're making the wrong decision. Like even if the book should be in first person or present or past tense, like these are very big decisions that if you haven't thought about them a…”
Howey: Do not constrain beta readers with rigid feedback instructions
“I kind of want them to share what they're good at spotting, and I don't want people to, I don't want to say I'm looking for typos when someone's really good at spotting plot holes and terrible at seeing typos.”
Howey: Book publishers cannot reliably guarantee or manufacture hits
“I knew that no publisher could guarantee me that I would have a hit no matter what they sell you when they sign you. If they had that ability, they'd have hits all the time and they're very rare.”
Howey: Traditional publishers give a new novel only a three-to-six-month window
“Usually we would leave a book on the shelf for three to six months before we would take it off, send it back and put something else on the shelf. So if you spend years writing a novel and you think like, this is my one shot and you go to the publisher, you're …”
Howey: Authors should stop obsessively tracking real-time sales dashboards
“The, it's a trap you fall into early on self-publishing, like watching every sale and tracking your weekly and daily and monthly streams. But then I found if the stream goes up a little bit, You feel it puts you in a good mood, but it doesn't last. If the sale…”
Hugh Howey: Rough drafts must reach the end before polishing begins
“The second advice I would give is to don't read your writing critically. That's not what the rough draft is all about. The rough draft is getting to the end of the story before you start polishing it.”
Howey: Amazon category inheritance gives books free placement across parent bestseller lists
“The way the categories worked is the parent categories were inherited by the child categories, which sounds confusing, but the way it works is if you put your book in, you know, general books dash science fiction dash general dash dystopia. Then your book show…”
Howey: Ambient Noise Allows Writing Flow, but Direct Interruptions Break Visualization
“I write better with zero distractions. I can write with like background noise. I could sit in a cafe with a lot of clatter and chatter and write really well. And I can write in pitch black with absolute silence. But if I'm in the middle of writing and someone …”