Have any self published authors asked their local bookstore to sell their books on consignment and if so what was the response? If the answer from the bookstore was yes, did the bookstore sell actually some of your books?
JWT
Have any self published authors asked their local bookstore to sell their books on consignment and if so what was the response? If the answer from the bookstore was yes, did the bookstore sell actually some of your books?
JWT
I recently discovered that a book podcast had done a short episode about my novel, The Samual Paradox. I hadn’t been contacted beforehand and only stumbled across the episode afterwards.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely grateful for the publicity. I’m just curious about the etiquette and whether this is fairly common.
Do book podcasters generally choose books themselves and review them without contacting the author, or would you normally expect the author/publisher to have been involved in some way?
I’m an independently published author, so perhaps I’m simply unfamiliar with how these things work.
The episode is dated 26 July, although the presenter talks about the book as though it’s being discussed in August, which made me wonder whether these episodes are recorded well ahead of publication.
For anyone interested - here is the podcast link https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-book-lover-show/id1500302781?i=1000779398138
People 100 years from now might look back at us and wonder why we pumped patients full of chemicals and used radiation to treat disease, why we sat in traffic for hours every week, why we read books page by page, and why we relied on fossil fuels to power our civilisation.
They may find it equally strange that we spent years learning things from teachers standing in front of us, or that we accepted ageing and many forms of disease as unavoidable facts of life.
What do we do today that will seem completely bizarre to people in 2126?
People 100 years from now might look back at us and wonder why we pumped patients full of chemicals and used radiation to treat disease, why we sat in traffic for hours every week, why we read books page by page, and why we relied on fossil fuels to power our civilisation.
They may find it equally strange that we spent years learning things from teachers standing in front of us, or that we accepted ageing and many forms of disease as unavoidable facts of life.
What do we do today that will seem completely bizarre to people in 2126?
John Westley Turnbull
People 100 years from now might look back at us and wonder why we pumped patients full of chemicals and used radiation to treat disease, why we sat in traffic for hours every week, why we read books page by page, and why we relied on fossil fuels to power our civilisation.
They may find it equally strange that we spent years learning things from teachers standing in front of us, or that we accepted ageing and many forms of disease as unavoidable facts of life.
What do we do today that will seem completely bizarre to people in 2126?
People 100 years from now might look back at us and wonder why we pumped patients full of chemicals and used radiation to treat disease, why we sat in traffic for hours every week, why we read books page by page, and why we relied on fossil fuels to power our civilisation.
They may find it equally strange that we spent years learning things from teachers standing in front of us, or that we accepted ageing and many forms of disease as unavoidable facts of life.
What do we do today that will seem completely bizarre to people in 2126?
John Westley Turnbull
Weekend audibook recommendation: The Samuel Paradox is a near-future science fiction thriller exploring a world where household robots are becoming part of everyday family life. As the line between machine and family begins to blur, one decision changes everything.
If you enjoy intelligent, thought-provoking AI science fiction, The Samuel Paradox is now available on Apple Audio Books: https://apple.co/4gcNY3z
John Westley Turnbull
Science fiction tends to imagine AI and robots becoming dangerous because they become too intelligent, take control and eventually decide humans are an inconvenience.
But suppose we avoid all of that.
Imagine that in 30 or 40 years AI is completely mundane and tightly controlled by humans. Household robots are everywhere. They cook, clean, drive, repair things, look after children and the elderly, and handle most routine work.
Nobody has to work unless they actually want to. At first, it sounds like paradise. But then what?
For thousands of years, human life has been structured around the need to be active to survive. The need to work and earn a living. Remove most of those pressures and we are left with an enormous amount of free time.
Would people become happier? Would we devote ourselves to art, science, sport, exploration and relationships?
Or would boredom, lack of purpose and the need to find something meaningful eventually create new problems?
Perhaps the real challenge of advanced AI won’t be keeping it from destroying humanity.
Perhaps it will be finding a reason for humanity to get out of bed when the machines can do almost everything better.
What do you think happens to us?
Science fiction tends to imagine AI and robots becoming dangerous because they become too intelligent, take control and eventually decide humans are an inconvenience.
But suppose we avoid all of that.
Imagine that in 30 or 40 years AI is completely mundane and tightly controlled by humans. Household robots are everywhere. They cook, clean, drive, repair things, look after children and the elderly, and handle most routine work.
Nobody has to work unless they actually want to. At first, it sounds like paradise. But then what?
For thousands of years, human life has been structured around the need to be active to survive. The need to work and earn a living. Remove most of those pressures and we are left with an enormous amount of free time.
Would people become happier? Would we devote ourselves to art, science, sport, exploration and relationships?
Or would boredom, lack of purpose and the need to find something meaningful eventually create new problems?
Perhaps the real challenge of advanced AI won’t be keeping it from destroying humanity.
Perhaps it will be finding a reason for humanity to get out of bed when the machines can do almost everything better.
What do you think happens to us?
Science fiction tends to imagine AI and robots becoming dangerous because they become too intelligent, take control and eventually decide humans are an inconvenience.
But suppose we avoid all of that.
Imagine that in 30 or 40 years AI is completely mundane and tightly controlled by humans. Household robots are everywhere. They cook, clean, drive, repair things, look after children and the elderly, and handle most routine work.
Nobody has to work unless they actually want to. At first, it sounds like paradise. But then what?
For thousands of years, human life has been structured around the need to be active to survive. The need to work and earn a living. Remove most of those pressures and we are left with an enormous amount of free time.
Would people become happier? Would we devote ourselves to art, science, sport, exploration and relationships?
Or would boredom, lack of purpose and the need to find something meaningful eventually create new problems?
Perhaps the real challenge of advanced AI won’t be keeping it from destroying humanity.
Perhaps it will be finding a reason for humanity to get out of bed when the machines can do almost everything better.
What do you think happens to us?
Looking for something to read this weekend? Try The Samuel Paradox.
Set in the near future, it follows an ordinary suburban family whose lives are disrupted when they acquire a domestic robot and discover that living with an intelligent machine is rather more complicated than they expected.
It’s a relatively short read, so it can easily be finished over a weekend.
Available on Amazon, including Kindle Unlimited.
John Westley Turnbull
Looking for something to read this weekend? Try The Samuel Paradox.
Set in the near future, it follows an ordinary suburban family whose lives are disrupted when they acquire a domestic robot and discover that living with an intelligent machine is rather more complicated than they expected.
It’s a relatively short read, so it can easily be finished over a weekend.
Available on Amazon, including Kindle Unlimited.
John Westley Turnbull
Does anyone remember Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall (my favoutite sci-fi short story) later becoming a full length novel by Robert Silverberg?
The basic premise got me thinking about something slightly different. In Nightfall, civilisation repeatedly collapses and has to rebuild because people are confronted every few thousand years with an astronomical event they have never experienced before.
Here on Earth, we assume our civilisation started off when fire and tools were first used and our technologically advanced times are simply an extension.
As we learn more about human history, we keep discovering that ancient times were considerably more sophisticated than we once assumed. We also keep finding evidence of settlements, engineering and organised societies far older than we were traditionally taught in history books - at least when I went to school.
So here’s the speculative question:
Is it remotely conceivable that an advanced human civilisation existed thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years ago, collapsed for some reason, and that we simply don’t recognise it because most of the evidence has disappeared?
John Westley Turnbull
Does anyone remember Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall (my favoutite sci-fi short story) later becoming a full length novel by Robert Silverberg?
The basic premise got me thinking about something slightly different. In Nightfall, civilisation repeatedly collapses and has to rebuild because people are confronted every few thousand years with an astronomical event they have never experienced before.
Here on Earth, we assume our civilisation started off when fire and tools were first used and our technologically advanced times are simply an extension.
As we learn more about human history, we keep discovering that ancient times were considerably more sophisticated than we once assumed. We also keep finding evidence of settlements, engineering and organised societies far older than we were traditionally taught in history books - at least when I went to school.
So here’s the speculative question:
Is it remotely conceivable that an advanced human civilisation existed thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years ago, collapsed for some reason, and that we simply don’t recognise it because most of the evidence has disappeared?
John Westley Turnbull
Does anyone remember Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall (my favoutite sci-fi short story) later becoming a full length novel by Robert Silverberg?
The basic premise got me thinking about something slightly different. In Nightfall, civilisation repeatedly collapses and has to rebuild because people are confronted every few thousand years with an astronomical event they have never experienced before.
Here on Earth, we assume our civilisation started off when fire and tools were first used and our technologically advanced times are simply an extension.
As we learn more about human history, we keep discovering that ancient times were considerably more sophisticated than we once assumed. We also keep finding evidence of settlements, engineering and organised societies far older than we were traditionally taught in history books - at least when I went to school.
So here’s the speculative question:
Is it remotely conceivable that an advanced human civilisation existed thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years ago, collapsed for some reason, and that we simply don’t recognise it because most of the evidence has disappeared?
John Westley Turnbull
Looking for something to read this weekend? Try The Samuel Paradox.
Set in the near future, it follows an ordinary suburban family whose lives are disrupted when they acquire a domestic robot and discover that living with an intelligent machine is rather more complicated than they expected.
It’s a relatively short read, so it can easily be finished over a weekend.
Available on Amazon, including Kindle Unlimited.
John Westley Turnbull
Suppose tomorrow governments finally confirmed that UFOs are real. What happens next?
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that governments around the world simultaneously confirm that UFOs are genuine and that at least some of the sightings cannot be explained by any technology currently known to humanity.
What happens to society? What would be the biggest consequences for humanity?
Do people panic, or would most of us simply carry on with our lives after a few days of excitement?
What happens to our faiths and religions? Would confirmation of intelligent life beyond Earth challenge religious beliefs, or would religions simply incorporate the discovery into their existing beliefs?
And perhaps the biggest question: what exactly have we discovered?
Are UFOs evidence of extraterrestrial life, or could they represent an entirely different form of life that has always existed here on Earth but which we have never properly understood?
John Westley Turnbull
Suppose tomorrow governments finally confirmed that UFOs are real. What happens next?
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that governments around the world simultaneously confirm that UFOs are genuine and that at least some of the sightings cannot be explained by any technology currently known to humanity.
What happens to society? What would be the biggest consequences for humanity?
Do people panic, or would most of us simply carry on with our lives after a few days of excitement?
What happens to our faiths and religions? Would confirmation of intelligent life beyond Earth challenge religious beliefs, or would religions simply incorporate the discovery into their existing beliefs?
And perhaps the biggest question: what exactly have we discovered?
Are UFOs evidence of extraterrestrial life, or could they represent an entirely different form of life that has always existed here on Earth but which we have never properly understood?
John Westley Turnbull
Suppose tomorrow governments finally confirmed that UFOs are real. What happens next?
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that governments around the world simultaneously confirm that UFOs are genuine and that at least some of the sightings cannot be explained by any technology currently known to humanity.
What happens to society? What would be the biggest consequences for humanity?
Do people panic, or would most of us simply carry on with our lives after a few days of excitement?
What happens to our faiths and religions? Would confirmation of intelligent life beyond Earth challenge religious beliefs, or would religions simply incorporate the discovery into their existing beliefs?
And perhaps the biggest question: what exactly have we discovered?
Are UFOs evidence of extraterrestrial life, or could they represent an entirely different form of life that has always existed here on Earth but which we have never properly understood?
John Westley Turnbull