ANNOUNCEMENT:

The tentative release date for my book is July 24, 2026, on Amazon. I’ll update you if anything changes.

UPDATE: The kindle version of the book is available for pre-order.

Link: Wait. What Was the Question? - Kindle Version

Paperback coming next, but there are some additional wrinkles for physical books.

REST OF POST:

Meandering Story:

I wanted to lead with the punchline.

I’ve always gotten annoyed by people who tell long, meandering stories and save the main point for the end. It feels like they’re scared that if they start with the conclusion, everyone will tune out or start arguing. But when you lead with what you actually want to say, people know what to listen for. They can make connections as you go.

Dumping a whole story on someone without context forces them to hold everything in their head until the big reveal. That’s a lot to ask.

It’s actually a bit like how AI works. A language model has a limited “context window”—the maximum it can hold and process at once. Make that window too big and the model starts making weird associations and errors. When it needs more information than what fits, it’s doing retrieval, summarization, and stitching together partial answers. A lot can go wrong in that process.

A failure to effectively break a big problem into the correct small pieces seems to be an issue that plagues both computers and humans.

Law school teaches something similar, like a conclusion sandwich. You start a paragraph with your conclusion, state the applicable rule (some law or court case), analyze how the rule applies to your facts (usually with citations to your sources), and end by restating the conclusion. Clean, direct, and effective. Professors still don’t read it and mostly look for easy ways to deduct points, like the format of your citations.

About the Book:

The title is: Wait. What Was the Question?

I’m writing under the pen name Miles Brooks. It’s close enough to my name. The wife thinks it sounds classy and modern. Full disclosure: When my primary audience is the internet manosphere, I have to avoid connections between that and my real life. Our space is a bit challenged in the PR department. Also, by using a pen name, if the book doesn’t sell, I won’t have that anchor attached to my real name if I approach publishers with my next book.

It’s about 50,000 words, which is considered short for a novel, but it doesn’t feel short. It’s voice-driven, so the language is dense and punchy and very well-trimmed and edited. That said, the length makes it an easy pass for many traditional publishers and literary agents. Personally, I think it’s a plus not to waste the reader’s time with padding.

Most literature people would classify it as “Upmarket Fiction”. The official Amazon categories are Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction, and Humor & Satire. I’m allowed to select three, but can e-mail to request more, so I’ll probably add Psychological Fiction, Humorous Fiction, and Family Life once the pre-order entry is live.

We’d be here all day if I got into the weeds describing the subject matter and how the book is structured, the voice and character-driven unreliable narrator approach, and how the book progresses. I’ll just paste the product description that will appear on Amazon:

—

Archer Wood can talk about anything. Childhood, relationships, breakups, women he loved, and women he never understood.

Just don’t ask him anything real.

After a divorce and court-mandated therapy, Archer fills every silence with stories. He turns dates and therapy sessions into performances. He dodges real conversations with his best friend. Even with his daughter, who is growing up faster than he’s ready for, he sticks to stories instead of saying what matters.

But that kind of connection only works for so long.

As everything begins to close in—a string of relationships that never quite begin, shared custody of a girl who is no longer a child, and a best friend whose own life is falling apart—Archer is forced to confront what he’s spent years talking around: a family shaped by loss, a marriage that ended long before the divorce, and the uncomfortable possibility that he’s becoming exactly the kind of father he never meant to be.

Wait. What Was the Question? is a sharp, funny, and deeply human novel about avoidance, the stories we tell ourselves, the connections we miss, and what happens when the performance stops working and you run out of ways to change the subject.

Perfect for readers of Jonathan Tropper, Nick Hornby, and Matthew Norman.

—

The Process So Far:

The Traditional Route:

After getting the manuscript to a point where I didn’t want to stare at it any more, I started contacting a few literary agents. One of my daughter’s friend’s moms is an author and gave me a quick overview of the process.

I think I’ve queried eight agents so far. Most are pretty specific about the kinds of books they represent, so the idea is to find someone who’s a good fit for what you’ve written and pitch them a tailored letter. Not just spam every agent like an online dating site.

It’s actually a really pathetic process. Real authors — people who have written actual books — are on this website as supplicants, sending query letters (essentially like a cover letter and resume) to literary agents. Like unemployed losers begging for a job, hoping to get lucky, whining when agents don’t respond or change their status.

That’s the nature of the beast. Writing a book is hard and time consuming, but only a tiny sliver of what authors do. And not the most important part. Without an established audience, it doesn’t matter how good a book is or how good an author is. An agent representing your book is supposed to open doors and expand your reach, while if you just drop your book on Amazon, you’ll be lucky to sell a dozen copies to family and friends.

99% of literary agents never respond. The other 1% respond with a form rejection. Every once in awhile, someone wins the lottery and an agent requests to see a manuscript. Which still only results in the agent signing the author less than ten percent of the time. The general rule of thumb is if you have’t heard anything in two months, it’s probably a pass but okay to send one polite nudge, then never bother the agent again.

I can’t figure out what the point of the traditional publishing path is.

Traditional publishers don’t market your book. Literary agents kind of do, but they have a big list of books they represent, so they’re not specifically pounding the pavement to get you more sales. They just get you in the door with publishers.

I guess it gives you an aire of legitimacy if an agent picks you up and a real publisher puts your book on bookstore shelves. After all, the wine mom book clubs across the country don’t pick random Amazon books. They pick something from a reputable publisher off of the New York Times bestseller list.

If you end up publishing through the traditional path, you typically get a 25% royalty for your electronic sales, and something smaller for hardcover and paperback. For comparison, Amazon gives you a 70% royalty for the kindle version of your book (less for paperback and hardcover). This means if a traditional agent and publisher don’t get you three times as many sales as you’d get on Amazon, you’re just losing money. And they don’t market your book, so I’m not clear what it is they do that gets you more reach.

If any of the agents I’ve contacted get back to me, I’ll ask.

The Modern Route:

Most new authors self-publish on Amazon, where their book dies.

It doesn’t matter if the book is good or bad, because their biggest shortcoming isn’t their writing. It’s their audience. If you’re unknown, you sell 12 copies, mostly to family and friends. The Amazon algorithm thinks your book sucks because it’s not selling, so it never shows up in recommendations or very high up on search result lists. The only people who ever find it are people specifically looking for it as you peddle your book on social media trying to sell a few more copies.

But the barrier to entry is low. You can type a book in a word processor that spellchecks for you, have AI check your grammar and suggest line edits, have some beta readers from social media give you feedback, have AI draw you a book cover, upload your document to Amazon, skim it in the previewer to make sure the formatting looks okay, and you’re pretty much done.

But unless you’re big, Amazon is essentially just the warehouse where people can buy your book. You function as the marketplace by trolling around social media being entertaining and growing your audience.

Of note, nearly every kindle book on Amazon sells for 9.99. That’s due to Amazon’s royalty structure. If your book is priced at 2.99-9.99, you get 70%. Anything outside of that range and you get 35%.

Selling on the cheaper end of that range is a bad move for niche authors with a niche audience. Most authors don’t make money on mass market appeal, where random strangers read the book description and buy it because it’s cheap. They make money on the loyalty of their niche audience, who are often the only people that read the book.

Next Steps:

We’re about two months out from my tentative July 24 release date. I’ll probably query a few more literary agents, mostly because I’m really curious about the traditional process and why it appears so disadvantageous. I can’t figure out why so many people work so hard for a shot at this. I don’t expect a response, but that gives everyone I’ve queried already and anybody new I query the standard eight weeks.

I’ve uploaded everything to Amazon, the formatting looks good. I’m going to go over everything a couple more times, then I think after I click a button, it becomes available for pre-order.

The Future:

I’m about 10,000 words into my next book. It’s hilarious. A little dark. But very silly. It’s slow going because the day job is kicking my butt, I have a lot of family obligations eating every spare minute, and my dad isn’t doing well health-wise.

But when I do sit down to write, I’m just as excited as when I was working on my first book. Maybe more.

Conclusion:

The biggest thing I’ve learned from this process is that writing is only the beginning. The real work in writing a book is being a self-promoting influencer. To grow a brand and an audience. To get people who like you — not just now you write and how you think, but just people who think you’re cool — to follow you around the internet.

Because that’s who reads your book, and that’s who tells their friends and family about it. Traditional publishers don’t. The Amazon algorithm won’t.

That’s where you guys come in.

It would suck to work really hard on a book, then nobody ever reads it. Disappeared into the void of Amazon. I wrote something because I want people to read and enjoy it.

If you like anything I write here, or from the good ol’ days on Reddit, Wait. What Was the Question? is full of voice-heavy, snarky humor, a not-very-aware hypocritical main character, and even a few emotional beats I snuck in here.

So buy the book, tell your friends, spread the word, etc. It means a lot.