Ellis, I very much enjoyed the story; it grabbed me by the neck.
Some observations: The painstaking detail of numbers, investments, and sales occasionally slows the narrative, and the emotional stakes of the authors’ struggles, though compelling, can feel almost procedural in their repetition. A tighter focus on one or two central author experiences or more weaving of their emotional responses with Loren’s operational perspective might give the story even stronger momentum and emotional resonance.
This said, the story is precise in its observation and methodical in its form. Loren’s work, tracking books, requests, and patrons, establishes a rhythm that is almost hypnotic in its order. Against this, the authors’ voices—Emily, James, Abigail—break the rhythm, urgent and anxious, their struggles counted in numbers, debts, and unpurchased sales. The tension between system and human experience is where the story lives. The narrative constantly moves between the ordered, impersonal mechanics of Loren’s catalog and the raw, immediate stakes of human effort and expectation. The friction between these two realms gives the story both its intellectual weight and emotional resonance.
The story is careful in its use of repetition and enumeration. Numbers, forum posts, and sales data do more than inform—they structure the narrative, giving weight to scale and consequence. Dialogue functions as action. The forum exchanges unfold entirely as text, and in them argument, persuasion, and ideology become movement. Voice carries the story as much as plot. The sense of dialogue is brilliant—the exchanges between Emily, James, Abigail, and Loren unfold almost like scenes in a play, each line carrying tension, personality, and stakes. The contrast between Loren’s calm, methodical system and the authors’ anxious, often desperate responses creates a natural dramatic effect. The forum debates, the in-person confrontations, and the interior calculations all function like carefully staged scenes, with the catalog, numbers, and procedures acting as the “set” that structures and amplifies the drama. This theatrical quality gives the story a vivid, immediate presence and makes the human stakes feel both intense and compelling.
Yet the narrative sometimes slows under its own rigor. The detailed accounting of sales and debt, repeated across multiple authors, risks dilution. To strengthen the story, a tighter alignment between form and content could help. Focusing more closely on one or two central author experiences or interweaving their emotional responses more directly with Loren’s operational perspective would allow the tension between system and human experience to emerge even more vividly. Reducing repeated accounting or streamlining some of the detailed asides could sharpen the narrative momentum without losing the story’s meticulous observational quality. Allowing the structural precision of the system to highlight, rather than compete with, the human stakes will make the story both formally elegant and emotionally resonant.
Even with these digressions, the story succeeds. It is observant, formally controlled, and quietly humane. ‘Close reading’ reveals a careful architecture of rhythm, voice, and perspective, where order meets anxiety and structure gives shape to the chaos of human desire. It leaves a lingering impression, exacting in its details yet generous to its characters, and I loved it. 🐈
'Grabbed me by the neck' might be the best review I have ever received, especially coming from you.
Your critique regarding the numbers is spot on. It's a difficult balance: I wanted the 'procedural' nature of their debt to feel suffocating, but there is a fine line between suffocating the character and suffocating the narrative momentum. It sounds like I may have leaned too heavy on the calculator here. I also wanted to show that this applies to all authors - self-published, hybrid, and traditional.
Sounds like I'm looking for an excuse, haha. I'm not. I'm taking your views very seriously.
I am particularly struck by your observation of the 'theatrical' quality of the forum posts. I viewed that thread as a stage where the actors are shouting into the dark—a clash of desperate voices against an immovable logic. I am glad that friction came through so clearly.
Thank you for the close reading. It is exacting, generous, and exactly what the story needed.
You already have it: whether to edit, streamline, strengthen, or deliberately weaken is the choice of the author—especially the editor-author.
Sometimes, allowing a section to remain weaker serves the story better as a whole.
Example: The Great Gatsby.
I think it was the detailed descriptions of the parties or the Valley of Ashes that were sometimes “slower” or less plot-driven. Yet they built atmosphere, developed characters, and created a specific rhythm that made the dramatic moments—like Gatsby’s reunion with Daisy—hit harder, if my memory serves me correctly 🦥.
This is a narratological tool (pacing, contrast, thematic emphasis, etc.), which Fitzgerald might have used deliberately—or which literary critics invented to create jobs for themselves 🐕🐈🐕
One thing missing from this (on purpose, I assume): how much does it cost to run the book lending system? And who’s paying for it?
I have to say from the first few paragraphs, I immediately thought about the e-book lending system most libraries have, because my husband makes good use of it. This does raise an interesting question: e-book lending makes it much easier for people to borrow a book than before. No need to live anywhere close to a library, just sign up online and check it out directly to your tablet device. Is this stealing? Not when the library has a license for each and every electronic title it lends. Does it reduce purchases? Well, yes—which is why libraries don’t usually have unlimited copies available for distribution. If the book is in high demand, often the waiting period can be weeks long, so if you want to read the book immediately your only option is to purchase.
Also, someone’s paying for the infrastructure: both the physical copies in the physical library, and the electronic ones in the digital library. And that someone is all of us, in the case of a public institution. And there’s the catch: the very system that these authors claim is reducing their sales is the one they themselves subsidize through their tax dollars.
If a book picks up enough momentum though, people will not want to wait weeks to read it—which is why marketing is key to sales. Generate enough buzz around a book and people will part with their hard earned cash to obtain their own copy. Of course, marketing on that scale takes serious money, and the only ones with that sort of money are the independently wealthy and major book publishers. Another vicious cycle.
Another thought provoking story, Ellis—thank you! I’m almost tempted to stiff you by checking your own book out from my local library 😉
“That sounds like a problem with your business model and not with mine.”
😂😂 and her book, “The Space Between Us” is perfect. This almost has me hopeful about libraries. I was thinking about Libby here. Also I have 2 books that are overdue and I need to return. 😂Love the twist.
Which one?
Do you think it's ok that trad-pub books are given out on different terms (including financial) than self-pub?
Even on Amazon, the DRM settings are completely different. I don't consider that a fair business practice, to be honest.
Thank you for reading and participating in the discussion. I really appreciate it.
Ellis, I very much enjoyed the story; it grabbed me by the neck.
Some observations: The painstaking detail of numbers, investments, and sales occasionally slows the narrative, and the emotional stakes of the authors’ struggles, though compelling, can feel almost procedural in their repetition. A tighter focus on one or two central author experiences or more weaving of their emotional responses with Loren’s operational perspective might give the story even stronger momentum and emotional resonance.
This said, the story is precise in its observation and methodical in its form. Loren’s work, tracking books, requests, and patrons, establishes a rhythm that is almost hypnotic in its order. Against this, the authors’ voices—Emily, James, Abigail—break the rhythm, urgent and anxious, their struggles counted in numbers, debts, and unpurchased sales. The tension between system and human experience is where the story lives. The narrative constantly moves between the ordered, impersonal mechanics of Loren’s catalog and the raw, immediate stakes of human effort and expectation. The friction between these two realms gives the story both its intellectual weight and emotional resonance.
The story is careful in its use of repetition and enumeration. Numbers, forum posts, and sales data do more than inform—they structure the narrative, giving weight to scale and consequence. Dialogue functions as action. The forum exchanges unfold entirely as text, and in them argument, persuasion, and ideology become movement. Voice carries the story as much as plot. The sense of dialogue is brilliant—the exchanges between Emily, James, Abigail, and Loren unfold almost like scenes in a play, each line carrying tension, personality, and stakes. The contrast between Loren’s calm, methodical system and the authors’ anxious, often desperate responses creates a natural dramatic effect. The forum debates, the in-person confrontations, and the interior calculations all function like carefully staged scenes, with the catalog, numbers, and procedures acting as the “set” that structures and amplifies the drama. This theatrical quality gives the story a vivid, immediate presence and makes the human stakes feel both intense and compelling.
Yet the narrative sometimes slows under its own rigor. The detailed accounting of sales and debt, repeated across multiple authors, risks dilution. To strengthen the story, a tighter alignment between form and content could help. Focusing more closely on one or two central author experiences or interweaving their emotional responses more directly with Loren’s operational perspective would allow the tension between system and human experience to emerge even more vividly. Reducing repeated accounting or streamlining some of the detailed asides could sharpen the narrative momentum without losing the story’s meticulous observational quality. Allowing the structural precision of the system to highlight, rather than compete with, the human stakes will make the story both formally elegant and emotionally resonant.
Even with these digressions, the story succeeds. It is observant, formally controlled, and quietly humane. ‘Close reading’ reveals a careful architecture of rhythm, voice, and perspective, where order meets anxiety and structure gives shape to the chaos of human desire. It leaves a lingering impression, exacting in its details yet generous to its characters, and I loved it. 🐈
'Grabbed me by the neck' might be the best review I have ever received, especially coming from you.
Your critique regarding the numbers is spot on. It's a difficult balance: I wanted the 'procedural' nature of their debt to feel suffocating, but there is a fine line between suffocating the character and suffocating the narrative momentum. It sounds like I may have leaned too heavy on the calculator here. I also wanted to show that this applies to all authors - self-published, hybrid, and traditional.
Sounds like I'm looking for an excuse, haha. I'm not. I'm taking your views very seriously.
I am particularly struck by your observation of the 'theatrical' quality of the forum posts. I viewed that thread as a stage where the actors are shouting into the dark—a clash of desperate voices against an immovable logic. I am glad that friction came through so clearly.
Thank you for the close reading. It is exacting, generous, and exactly what the story needed.
You already have it: whether to edit, streamline, strengthen, or deliberately weaken is the choice of the author—especially the editor-author.
Sometimes, allowing a section to remain weaker serves the story better as a whole.
Example: The Great Gatsby.
I think it was the detailed descriptions of the parties or the Valley of Ashes that were sometimes “slower” or less plot-driven. Yet they built atmosphere, developed characters, and created a specific rhythm that made the dramatic moments—like Gatsby’s reunion with Daisy—hit harder, if my memory serves me correctly 🦥.
This is a narratological tool (pacing, contrast, thematic emphasis, etc.), which Fitzgerald might have used deliberately—or which literary critics invented to create jobs for themselves 🐕🐈🐕
One thing missing from this (on purpose, I assume): how much does it cost to run the book lending system? And who’s paying for it?
I have to say from the first few paragraphs, I immediately thought about the e-book lending system most libraries have, because my husband makes good use of it. This does raise an interesting question: e-book lending makes it much easier for people to borrow a book than before. No need to live anywhere close to a library, just sign up online and check it out directly to your tablet device. Is this stealing? Not when the library has a license for each and every electronic title it lends. Does it reduce purchases? Well, yes—which is why libraries don’t usually have unlimited copies available for distribution. If the book is in high demand, often the waiting period can be weeks long, so if you want to read the book immediately your only option is to purchase.
Also, someone’s paying for the infrastructure: both the physical copies in the physical library, and the electronic ones in the digital library. And that someone is all of us, in the case of a public institution. And there’s the catch: the very system that these authors claim is reducing their sales is the one they themselves subsidize through their tax dollars.
If a book picks up enough momentum though, people will not want to wait weeks to read it—which is why marketing is key to sales. Generate enough buzz around a book and people will part with their hard earned cash to obtain their own copy. Of course, marketing on that scale takes serious money, and the only ones with that sort of money are the independently wealthy and major book publishers. Another vicious cycle.
Another thought provoking story, Ellis—thank you! I’m almost tempted to stiff you by checking your own book out from my local library 😉
Thank you for such a detailed comment on this.
It would be ironic if my own book (soon to be "books") would be read through a library, haha.
I’ll read it carefully and will get back to you as soon as possible. Looking very much forward to reading it 🌱
It is a challenging one, when beliefs are firm. Take your time, no rush.
Ohhh damn, great twist at the end!!! Awesome read, thank you!
Thank you for reading!
“That sounds like a problem with your business model and not with mine.”
😂😂 and her book, “The Space Between Us” is perfect. This almost has me hopeful about libraries. I was thinking about Libby here. Also I have 2 books that are overdue and I need to return. 😂Love the twist.
Well, doesn’t this one make you think! I’m still doing the math. Excellent work!
Well done. Thank you so much for this.
This was phenomenal!
I uploaded a long comment on your post. Notes, posts—I still feel very much like a lost soul in this Substack forest. I loved the story.