Bestseller

A black SUV expelled David Dill Stuck in jail for stealing a tomato from the Urban Food Factory, Clive is trying to avoid transfer to the medium-security branch of State Prison, which has no air conditioning. Last July’s temperature averaged 102 Fahrenheit and as a result, a dozen prisoners, allowed only four ounces of water per day, died of dehydration. Until now Clive had been able to avoid this threat due to his superior ability at cultivating cucumbers, a favorite among those of Tier One, the oligarchs who had taken official control of the country. His cellmate, Jerry, a burned Climate Intelligence Officer incarcerated for identifying the Viking Oscillation Pattern and therefore responsible for a massive expatriation of funds to Greenland for agricultural development, is working on a plan to get them out. They need to get to Lakebed to protect their families before the next tsunami hits the east coast. But will they get there in time? Felix ran his hand through his hair, looked at his watch, sighed, and slammed his laptop shut. He would have to rush to get to the presentation now. He grabbed his jacket and started along the sidewalk, shouldering past women with strollers, kids texting, and a nincompoop who couldn’t figure out where he was going. By the time Felix got to The Self Pub, there was a line outside the door. Now he probably wouldn’t be able to get the front row seat he needed to make eye contact with David Dill. As his mood began to sour, he caught sight of his friend Andy, who was wildly scooping the air with his hand. Felix had enlisted his participation because Andy went along with everything and was extremely punctual. “I was worried about you,” Andy said. “I was working on my book blurb, and I lost track of time,” said Felix. “I thought you hadn’t started it yet. The book, I mean.” What a dunderhead, Felix thought. Andy didn’t understand that there was no sense writing a book without having a great blurb, one that would knock everyone’s socks off. He took Andy by his upper arm and started to push him through the door. They made their way to the front of the room where tan metal folding chairs were arranged and sat in the first row. Display tables stacked with books had been pulled aside, making it difficult for lingering customers to circulate. Outside, a black SUV expelled David Dill, in aviator shades, an old leather jacket and the latest drop of athleisure kicks. His assistant was a short woman with ombre hair that went from silver to gun-metal gray. She was dressed in black and wore red lipstick and black-framed specs. She forged a path to the podium wearing a stingy smile as David Dill coughed and nodded to nobody in particular. “Well,” he said, scanning the room. “I’m so glad to be here with all of you at The Self Pub, this town’s first brick-and-mortar store exclusively for indie books.” Applause and whistles followed. “I mean, who would have thought that something like this could happen after the Anaconda phenomenon? But thanks to your participation and support, places like The Self Pub have become important resources for the writer community, offering you editorial and design support, marketing courses, book club meeting rooms, and events like these to promote your success as indie authors.” The owner, sitting in the front row, raised her hand. “We'll also have our recording studio operating next month.” David Dill raised his eyebrows and nodded. “What are you going to do, audiobooks?” “Yes, but we’re also starting a podcast to feature our authors,” she replied. “Uh, oh, some competition!” David Dill said. “By the way, how many of you subscribe to my podcast, Dilligent? A dozen hands went up. “And how many of you have reviewed it?” He looked at the audience and shook his head. “What’s that? Four or five? C’mon, guys, you’ve gotta go to the site and tell us what you think, honestly. We want to keep offering you expertise and success stories so you can quit your day jobs!” More applause followed. Felix’s problem was that he didn’t have a day job, not anymore. David Dill began his talk, The Ultimate Genre Hack. The slide on the screen displayed the names of book categories in brightly colored text boxes. Arrows connected each of these to other colored boxes showing subcategories, which in turn linked to a third column of boxes representing niches. On the next slide, which was animated, the niche boxes “exploded” into micro-niches like candy broken into multicolored pieces. Felix wondered whether cli-fi was a subcategory or a niche. He had considered sci-fi, but with the plethora of titles in that category–not to mention all the catastrophic weather events threatening–cli-fi was the way to go. That’s what he had read in a blog. David Dill cleared his throat to speak. “You all know, I’m sure, that for your book to be a bestseller, you only need to be the at the top of your niche. So, how do you do that? You have to write to the hottest category, and then search for a more specific subcategory. If you comb through the subcategories, you’ll find the bestseller in each. Then you need to determine how many copies of that book were purchased. You can do that by getting the book’s sales rank and putting the number into our Dilligent Kalculator and voilà!” David Dill clicked his clicker, showing a dummy result on the next slide. “The whole point is to find a subcategory with low sales for its top seller. Then, write a new angle into your story. The good news is that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel: simply look at other subcategories to find their new niches. When you recognize a distinguishing angle, transfer that into your subcategory to create a new niche.” The audience of would-be authors gave David Dill blank stares. “Here’s an example: Let’s say you write ‘romance, historical,’ and you think you can compete with the bestseller in the subcategory, ‘romance, historical, western.’ Now, all you need to do is add something new to that, like ‘time travel.’ So now you’ve got the only book in the ‘romance, historical, western, time travel’ niche. Put the book on preorder, get your street team to buy some copies, do some advertising on Anaconda, and you’re on your way.” Felix took notes so that he could make sense later of everything David Dill said. The audience murmured and rustled. Andy grabbed the sides of the seat of his chair until his knuckles turned white. “Don’t worry, folks!” David Dill resumed. “I’m going to walk you through the whole process. The link to the free Dilligent Kalculator is on my subscriber page, so make sure you sign up while you’re there, okay?” After the talk, Felix and Andy went to the coffee shop. Andy was quiet in the edgy way he had, so Felix sent him to get a table while he stood in line to order. Andy found a wobbly table for two in the corner. He was having one of his moments, so he sat down and took several slow, deep breaths. Then he folded a cup sleeve in two and wedged it under one of the table legs to make the wobbling stop. “Do you think,” he said to Felix as he took his coffee, “that the earth could ever leave its orbit and hurtle into space?” “Not this again!” Felix replied. “I told you that it couldn’t happen. It never will.” “But if it did, would all of the people just fall off?” Andy looked down, wrapping his hand around the warm cup. It was embarrassing to ask these questions, and sometimes Felix was intolerant. But he needed reassurance; he had no choice. “Look, let’s focus on something else. That usually helps. Here.” Felix swung his open laptop around to show Andy his book blurb. Andy read it, moving his eyes right and left in forced concentration. “I’d use ‘languishing’ instead of ‘stuck’ in jail,” Andy said. Languishing was a good word, one that described how Andy felt these days. His distrust about the earth and his groundedness on it made him feel dispirited. Felix took the laptop and looked at the text. He typed, hit Enter, then sat back, sipping his coffee. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “Languishing is an “SAT” word. People only search for it to find out what it means. ‘Stuck,’ on the other hand, is searched more often because it’s the beginning of many phrases ...” “Like Stuck in the Middle with You,” Andy offered. That was an old song he liked. “Sure,” Felix said. He looked at Andy, trying to reconcile his sometimes-brilliant insights with his phobia, then decided it was more than he could handle. He liked Andy, felt sorry for him even, but Felix had to get this book written and that had to be his primary focus. He didn’t want to let Natalie down. She was the best wife a guy could have. On his way home, Felix thought about how Natalie had left the ad agency two years ago to start her own business. She was able to do that because he still had his job, of course. Everything was okay until Felix lost his position to outsourcing. Now it was his turn to depend on her. Fortunately, her company was doing well. That was because she knew all about niches and micro-niches. Of course, Nat had the advantage of having worked in advertising. It’s hard to miss out on trends in that business. He could have done great at an agency himself except for the fact that he never pursued it. There was something cozy about working for a global corporation. It was real and tangible, and at the same time, nobody asked you for any details about your job. He should have seen it coming—the layoff—but he hadn’t, so now he was an author, which was the absolute best thing Felix could do given all the ideas he had been nurturing in his cubicle all those years. Felix wanted to be more like Natalie. She knew right where she needed to be with a campaign. Now he needed to show her that he “got” marketing. Why, he had already purchased a half-dozen apps to help him analyze book niches, discover keywords, correct his grammar, find reviewers, A-B test his cover art, and ... what was the other one he just got? Well, anyway, so far, he had invested hundreds of dollars in subscriptions for indie authors, and if that wasn’t a guarantee, well, he didn’t know what was!