Do professional writers have to consider this "new reader" from a commercial point-of-view or is Stross just thinking about how he might adapt his writing to this group to be gracious towards them?
Not sure if there is some way to iterate given online feedback. Like, write a book from the pale, male, and stale point of view. Use an LLM to gather feedback on what people criticize. Then write almost the same book again, from the POV of a different character, taking into account interesting criticisms.
However, it may be better for a successful author to just get away from these hyper-online criticism spaces and write what they want to write, as long as they've got books lined up they're already excited to write.
Agreed. I don't want Stross skewing (especially unconsciously) toward his (imperfect) understanding of his most unhappy readers. Strength to your sword arm, Charlie! I get you, at least!
For 50 years I've read vast swaths of fiction, all kinds. Almost all of Stross and fellow travelers for instance.
So I'm pale, male, and stale, and (thus?) I can't for the life of me understand where the majority of the commenters here are coming from. I sure as hell don't want the miasma here bleeding into one of my favorite authorial sources of entertainment.
> Not sure if there is some way to iterate given online feedback.
There have been a some novels and novel-length works written a chapter at a time in public. The Martian by Andy Weir, for example is probably the most commercially successful. Many works by qntm (https://qntm.org/fiction) that are popular in this community have been written that way too.
Weir may have invented a new genre: STEMcore. His narrator-protagonists face a series of puzzles which they resolve with imaginative STEM skills and... well, that's most of it. I mean, he sets up a pretty good near-future world and gives the protagonist one big problem to resolve that helps drive tension (making it a quick read), but ultimately you're reading a short story that ate a physics textbook.
STEMcore (which, to be clear, is just a term I made up) mostly solves problems with STEM. Contrast with something like The Expanse which builds the setting from (some) realistic physics (plus a few enabling premisses) and mostly solves problems with politics and tactics.
I think Fifty Shades of Grey has had more commercial success than The Martian. It was originally published as an episodic piece of Twilight fan fiction (Master of the Universe)
Not sure if there is some way to iterate given online feedback. Like, write a book from the pale, male, and stale point of view. Use an LLM to gather feedback on what people criticize. Then write almost the same book again, from the POV of a different character, taking into account interesting criticisms.
However, it may be better for a successful author to just get away from these hyper-online criticism spaces and write what they want to write, as long as they've got books lined up they're already excited to write.