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Review: Storm Front, by Chris Nuttall

Another great review @Coiler and about what I expected from Nuttall given the, er, sensationalist cover and back-cover blurb

Also Germany East is blatantly a stop on the Underground in a world where the British Empire controls the entire globe
 
Another great review @Coiler and about what I expected from Nuttall given the, er, sensationalist cover and back-cover blurb

One thing that really helps is having a different perspective. If I compared a WWIII story to Team Yankee, Red Army, or Northern Fury H Hour, there'd be a feeling of coming up short most of the time. But if I compared them to William Stroock's "World War 1990", they'd look better-a lot better- in comparison.

So, by the standards of internet/self-published AH, being comparable to "Turtledove's better books" is a pleasant feeling. There's better things it could be, but there's also a lot worse.
 
I'm frankly surprised that one may fing anything salvageable in a book by Chris Nuttall. From my own experience of his writings back at the other place, his style was plodding, his plots hackneyed and his characterization shallow, and he could never resist the temptation to engage in political lectures, usually to defend a radical right-wing worldview (one of his stories featured literal race cards, and who can forget Ian Montgomerie the UN-appointed political commissar?). But worst of all was the way he pandered to the voyeuristic instincts of his male readers, by regularly inserting gratuitous rape scenes. I hope that he has at least grown out of that last habit.
 
[looks at Amazon]

Bloody hell you're not wrong. Does he sleep? Has he been possessed by John Creasey?

You've really got to admire the man's ethic. I don't think he's got a shred of natural talent, but he's made a respectable writing career out of keeping his nose to the grindstone and cranking out prose for 15+ years now. There's a lot of longform writing advice to the effect that "If you want to be a writer, write" and he definitely proves it.
 
It helps that he's always essentially writing the same story.

There's a fascinating long-form discussion to be had here, as Nuttall is a handful of authors I've seen across the genres that has managed to achieve true success. The key is to write formulaic titles across those genres, almost always in a long set of interlinked titles in a series (i.e. the scifi Ark Royal series) that cost £2-4 to buy, but are also on Kindle Unlimited and often either free at the start of the series, or permanently reduced to 99p or £1.49.

That gets readers hooked in, and then the price is gradually increased until book 7 is like £3.99. Add to that rampant self-promotion via newsletters, email blasts, those bundles of authors first books, and 'sign up to my newsletter to get the first two books free' and by now I reckon he's got a quietly profitable machine ticking over. Then start again in a new genre.
 
The key is to write formulaic titles across those genres, almost always in a long set of interlinked titles in a series (i.e. the scifi Ark Royal series) that cost £2-4 to buy, but are also on Kindle Unlimited and often either free at the start of the series, or permanently reduced to 99p or £1.49.

brb, off to pitch [checks Amazon top sellers list] Sexy Steampunk Girls Fight Magic Nazis, A Fifteen-Book Series
 
Yeah, I'm not entirely sure I'm jesting either and neither's my bank manager

I mean you've got two books already published you can use as a soft intro - just have the characters travel into an alternate history (which means SLP can publish them) and have one of them fall for an ex-SS Werewolf Who Is Also Secretly Jewish and then add in a half-arsed magic system that's based around [Rolls D20] uh, the suites of a playing card pack.

Then just put tbem all into Kindle Unlimited and make sure the cover art has the main character showing off a bit of cleavage
 
There's a fascinating long-form discussion to be had here, as Nuttall is a handful of authors I've seen across the genres that has managed to achieve true success. The key is to write formulaic titles across those genres, almost always in a long set of interlinked titles in a series (i.e. the scifi Ark Royal series) that cost £2-4 to buy, but are also on Kindle Unlimited and often either free at the start of the series, or permanently reduced to 99p or £1.49.

That gets readers hooked in, and then the price is gradually increased until book 7 is like £3.99. Add to that rampant self-promotion via newsletters, email blasts, those bundles of authors first books, and 'sign up to my newsletter to get the first two books free' and by now I reckon he's got a quietly profitable machine ticking over. Then start again in a new genre.

It's a pretty exact analogue of the pulps, where people figured out the formula and made tons of money. We sort of glorify that era since a lot of very good writers came out of genre fiction magazines, but 99% of it was repetitive dreck, and even good writers wrote some pretty bad stuff in sci-fi magazines.
 
99% of it was repetitive dreck, and even good writers wrote some pretty bad stuff in sci-fi magazines.

There's a tale of Tom Tully, one of the big forces in boy's comics of the mid-20th century, being asked why he had a story last 20 parts when he could've done it in 4, and replying that then he'd only be paid for 4 parts.
 
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