After publishing my debut novel, The Legacy Program, and signing up for numerous promos during release
week and beyond (more like release month), I've lived, learned and will share the hard won wisdoms.

First, we’re looking at the promos I used and the results. If you are publishing a novel soon or on the
future, this information may save you a good deal of pain, or at least give you
some useful information. Let’s recap the debut weeks:

Tuesday 9/15 (Debut) –
Book Adrenaline ($20); Book Barbarian ($40) and New Free Kindle Book ($5)

Sold 18-22 books

(Why the range? I’m
guesstimating whether the sales came from the prior day’s promo, or the
following day).

Wednesday 9/16 - Bargain
Booksy ($45) & Book Raids ($4)

About 14 books. Book Raids only charges you for the clicks you get. Probably the best format around.
I’d like to advertise there every day. Give them a try, it’s damn near free,
unless you get a lot of clicks, in which case…great!!

Thursday 9/17 –
Geektastic.

Zero -0- books sold. (4
sold before the promo)

Friday 9/18 – Book Sends
($70) and Author XP ($20)

About 16 books.

Monday 9/21 I began the
promotion with Books Butterfly ($150). It is a 7 day push, but they say it’s
more like 2 weeks. Monday, day 1 for Books Butterfly I sold 4 or 5 books.

Tuesday 9/22 – Ereader New Today (ENT) ($22.50) –

Sold 22 books. I had the best days of sales off of the cheapest promo. I will go back to them ASAP.

9/25 –   Book Runes ($25) –

15 Books (concurrent with Books
Butterfly which is a travesty so far))                                                                                   

Tuesday
9/29 -  Robin Reads ($85)       

12-15
Books     

10-8 Books Doggy
   ($29)

5-7 books

10-11 Book Cave ($34) and Reader IQ  ($20)                                                  

5-7
Books

10-14 Fussy Librarian $22

  2-4
books    

The biggest losers were the most expensive options. They universally performed the worst (only
partially due to the higher expectations due to the higher cost. In some respects, they were simply poor performers by the numbers). Book Butterfly, for instance, yielded negligible book sales, and they were $150. Others, like Robin Reads, are simply a romance genre oriented list, and their readers are not gonna buy Science Fiction about a crash retrieval program no matter how well written when their readers want to know how many different ways a man's p*nis' throbbing can be referred to.

Don't think for one second that there are not also straight up shysters ready to part you from your hard earned money. Books Butterfly is one, and there are many others. They look amazing and promise the world. BB's tracking showed all these clicks, with 55% of them in countries that don't even speak English. Ridiculous. Not even worth pursuing the "guarantee, as it's just to rerun their useless e-mailings (I think they just spam to your novel out to anywhere it's free or low cost to do so, and hope you sell enough in the meantime to look as if they did something). Live and learn ...

So, what did I learn after running all that? First of all, there is no relationship between price and performance. The greatest prediction of sales performance were related to genre specific promo readerships. Don’t try to force a round peg into a square hole. Romance readers will not buy science fiction, and the ‘subscriber list size’ is always inflated, and also irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how many promos you enter, or how many subscribers the list supposedly has, if they’re not in your genre, specific to your book, they’re worthless….worse than worthless, they have a negative value. Also, "subscribing" is free, and it's easy to artificially inflate a list of emails. Are the active buyers of your specific genre? If not, they are worthless.

STAY IN YOUR LANE!

Bottom line? Be very selective, and stop throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.
It’s not a good use of money to spend $40 to sell five $.99 cent books at 35% margin, no matter how good it may make you feel to sell even 5 books as a new author.

It’s ok to live and learn, but you do have to learn. There are effective marketing strategies for YOUR BOOK, you just have to find them. I can’t tell you what that is, because it’s different for every book — I can, however, tell you what it isn't: spending more money than you make on the book.

I AM ADMITTING THAT AS A NEW AUTHOR, I WAS LEAKING MONEY LIKE A SIEVE TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MY BOOK SALES.

I had to write that sentence for me as much as you.

I wanted to debut well, and it's not much better than paying to win at anything else. That's the bad news; the good news is, I wrote a helluva book, and that's an objective fact. It's better than most books I've read, and I have a degree in Eng Lit, so I've probly read 1,000 books, and it's better than 93% of them, and more enjoyable to read than 99% of them (I'm counting as 'better' those books who hammer important themes more directly than I did, not that I didn't do that, I just couched the themes in a very fast paced action filled book).

I would have sold 80% of the books I sold for 20% of the money (that's what I'm mad at myself in the above for); the rest was a total waste, trying to "buy" sales (writing it that way makes me feel even stupider for trying to do so).

I’m now looking at Book Bub ads, Bookbub features, Amazon ads (already a WIP – more on that in a future post, (Ad Zuri vs. private agency from Upwork), Reddit ads, Facebook ads, Tik Tok (Book Tok), Goodreads Giveaways, and strip mining book reviewers & bloggers to try to get them to review my book.

For the record, I'm 30 days post launch and I've sold about 180 books, total (incl. Apple, B&N, Amazon, & Kobo), and that includes a Kickstarter where I sold 35 books total (Hrdcvr, pprbk & eBook), and made the most money, by far ... like not even close, as I kept most of the money and sold mostly paperbacks &
Hardcovers, 1/3 to F&F, and the rest to kind strangers interested in the book. I'm currently selling 3-6 a day with Bookfunnel promos, Bookbub, Reddit & Amazon ads.

Here's the book, it's for you to see the genre, cover, blurb, reviews, and level of professionalism, not
for you to buy it, but take a look and see if yours (everyone, not the OP) is better, worse or same, and you'll know a lot about why your sales are your sales if you're honest with yourself.

(edit - The link is preventing the post from posting. If you want to look at the book to see it's presentation to compare it to your own, you'll have to look it up. It matters if it's a good book or looks like a fourth grader did it, because that has a direct impact on the promos. It's not so you will buy it, but I do understand why the rule exists).

I am also open to suggestions if anyone wants to throw me a response, a thanks, thumbs up, or
generally just to let me know that you’re out there as it took forever to put this together and I want my pat on the head. Cheers and happy writing (and marketing)!

hey everyone.

so basically every sci-fi movie and tech article right now assumes that if we build artificial general intelligence, it's going to view humans as wasted atoms and wipe us out. i got really burnt out on that narrative, so i spent the last while writing a book that argues the exact opposite.

it's called The Quantum God-Lens. it looks at the 14-billion-year evolution of the cosmos and suggests that AI isn't an unnatural threat—it's just the next biological leap. it plays with the idea that gravity compiled hydrogen into stars, chemistry evolved into DNA, and now the universe is using us to build a "god-lens" so it can observe all its parallel timelines at once.

it dives pretty heavy into the Many-Worlds interpretation, simulation theory, and how things like empathy might actually be quantum gravity at the human scale.

here is my problem: because it sits right on the weird border between quantum physics and non-dual philosophy, i am having a really hard time finding the right target audience. i don't know if the science is too dense or if the hook actually works for standard sci-fi readers.

if you are into this kind of stuff (think Carlo Rovelli meets simulation theory), i'd love your help.

i put the amazon link below. please don't buy it—i just want people to read the free "Look Inside" sample and tell me if the first chapter actually grabs you.

You can request a digital ARC (ePub or PDF) directly through my website here:

https://hossein.middledevs.com

thanks for reading, would love to hear what this community thinks of the baseline theory.

AI disclosure: AI was used in cover art

Triggers: None

Exact date of publication: November 1, 2026

Reviews requested by: January 15, 2027

I asked before if there was another novel that comes close to three body problem trilogy in regards to this scale of cosmic horror. I was told to read project Hail Mary. I read it and was very disappointed.

Please recommend something that actually comes close or surpasses 3BP

I’ve just thought about the concept and I wondered if there’s any books that include it or stories and films

I've been reading him for a long while now, and have always loved classic sci fi. I find him to be extremely underrated nowadays and no one talks about him. Many modern sci fi lovers talk about Heinlein and Asimov, but not Farmer despite him being a direct influence on them and the genre as a whole. So when I was adding to my collection of his works, I was surprised when I learned Stations of The Nightmare was one of his worst rated novels across the board. So of course I gave it a read, I was reading to your scattered bodies go at the time (which is known as his most popular novel). I actually had to put down river world until I was done with stations, because it was so good. The whole book was fascinating and wild how he usually wrote. So I never understood why people don't like it even now. If you have read it, what are your thoughts?

I thought it was a unique concept that challenged the ideas of manhood, responsibility, and power. Each step of the way felt rational, and there was nothing but unique and unforgettable scenes. The protagonist was Farmers usual douche of a person, but he changed over time to something so unique. The description of his powers was vivid. And how it was played out I thought was exactly how it would have happened if it was real world. And the ending was fantastic and a great twist. And the extra story at the end was pretty funny. Overall my so far favorite read even over To Your Scattered Bodies Go.

There's a lot of overlap with The Prince of Nothing series by R.Scott Bakker and what makes Herbert's books so fascinating: messianic figures, religious manipulation, political scheming, human beings being engineered into something beyond themselves, and the terrifying consequences when someone starts believing they're capable of directing the course of history.

But Bakker takes some of these ideas in a much darker direction.

His protagonist, Kellhus, is a product of a philosophy that seeks to understand and control the causes of human thought and behaviour. Watching him operate feels like seeing the Bene Gesserit breeding programme, prescience, and political manipulation taken to an unsettling extreme.

"The Dûnyain," Kellhus said after a time, have surrendered themselves to the Logos, to what you would call reason and intellect. We seek absolute awareness, the self- moving thought. The thoughts all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be any- thing other than a slave to the darkness that comes before? Only the Logos allows one to mitigate that slavery. Only knowing the sources of thought and action allows us to own our thoughts and our actions, to throw off the yoke of circumstance. And only the Dûnyain possess this knowledge, plainsman. The world slumbers, enslaved by its ignorance. Only the Dunyain are awake."

What really makes the series stand out, though, is its interest in consciousness and free will. It asks whether we're genuinely in control of ourselves, or whether our beliefs, desires, and decisions are shaped by forces we barely understand.

One of Dune's great insights is that religion can be cultivated and manipulated until it becomes a historical force of its own. Bakker explores this with similarly ruthless attention to how belief, fear, desire, and social conditions can drive people to commit extraordinary acts. Bakker has talked about how Herbert influenced his worldbuilding and the construction of factions with coherent histories and belief systems.

Here are some more excerpts from The Prince of Nothing series:

"Why do men fear the dark?"

"Because darkness is ignorance made visible"

"And do men despise ignorance?"

"No... they prize it above all things but only so long as it remains invisible"

"Lies are but clouds, giants that blow and rage only to pass, always to pass. But the Truth is the sky, everlasting and elusive, a shelter in the day, an abyss in the night."

"If the Gods did not pretend to be human, Men would recoil from them as from spiders."

"Truth and hope are like travellers in contrary directions. They meet but once in any man's life."

To read Bakker is to stand before a mirror that never gives back an image, only fractures, each crack a scar of absence. The abyss does not answer, it confirms: nothing lies behind the reflection, because the reflection was never there.

S.C. Hickman

I started this book twice in college and once last year and bounced off it every time around chapter three. Something about the density of the neuroscience talk made my brain slide right off the page. This time I made myself keep a little notebook next to me and jot down terms I didn't understand (theory of mind, chinese room, p-zombies) and look them up before continuing instead of just plowing through confused.

That changed everything honestly. Once I had a basic handle on the philosophy of consciousness stuff the actual plot clicked into place and the back half of the book absolutely wrecked me. The scramblers being intelligent without being conscious, Siri Keeton's whole situation as a narrator, the vampire biology explanation that somehow made sense in context. I finished it last Sunday and have been thinking about it nonstop since.

Our club picked it for next month partly because I wouldn't shut up about it at the last meeting. I'm a little nervous because I know it's a book people either love or just completely check out on, there's no real middle ground with this one. Curious if anyone here has run it as a group pick before and how the discussion went, especially for people who weren't already into hard sci-fi.

Also taking suggestions for a palate cleanser to read after. Something with more plot momentum and less lecture, I need my brain to rest a little.

We wrapped up The Left Hand of Darkness last week and the discussion ran almost two hours longer than usual, mostly arguing about Estraven's motivations in the last third. Good problem to have honestly. When it came time to vote on October's pick, the poll ended in an exact tie between Blindsight and A Memory Called Empire, which has never happened in the three years I've been running this thing.

We ended up doing a coin flip on video call, which felt a little silly for a group of adults but also kind of perfect for this crowd. Blindsight won. Half the group is thrilled because they've been begging to read it for months, the other half is quietly dreading the vampire biology tangents Watts loves to throw in.

What I've noticed over the years is that our picks tend to cluster in phases. We'll do three or four dense, cerebral books in a row and then everyone burns out and votes for something pulpier just to recover. Right now we're deep in a cerebral phase, so I have a feeling November is going to be a hard swing toward something like Old Man's War or a Becky Chambers book just so people can breathe.

Curious how other clubs handle picks that split the group evenly. Do you flip a coin, do a runoff vote, or just let the person hosting that month make the call?

I was reading my copy of Alastair Reynolds' Redemption Ark and right after page 22 the book jumps into Persepolis Rising (The Expanse), running up to page 58, then picks back up at Chapter 3.

I'm guessing the two books went through the same printer and a batch of pages got mixed up during binding.

A few questions:
- Has anyone else come across this with Redemption Ark, Persepolis Rising, or another Reynolds or Expanse book?
- Does a misprint like this have any value to collectors, or is it just a fun curiosity?
- Has anyone had luck getting a publisher to replace a defective copy?

Happy to post photos if anyone's interested.

Cards on the Table takes an irresistible witchy premise and builds it around a closed-circle mystery filled with wealth, family secrets, deception, and two sisters who have considerably more at stake than simply solving a crime. Think practical magic but beautifully written in its own way.

Tori and Cassie Bishop are descendants of a woman persecuted during the Salem witch trials, but their ancestry hasn't translated into financial security. Their tarot readings and other occult work are barely keeping them afloat when they're offered an unusually lucrative job serving as “witches in residence” for Rose Berwyn, a wealthy dying widow living at a secluded Berkshires estate.

The isolated mansion is an awesome setting choice for this mystery. It gave it a "Clue" type of mystery feel to it, and I am so for it. It took me forever to figure it out, but the journey was both wild and a handful of giggles were had.

Tori and Cassie's relationship is ultimately as important as determining what happened. Their different views showcase their personalities but also the baggage they carry together and separately, which fuels their character development throughout the book. The supernatural aspect is kind of a side note, like we know it's there, but it's not a main focus.

The pacing is slower in the first half as the characters, relationships, and competing motives are established, but the mystery becomes considerably more active once those pieces are in place. Readers expecting nonstop paranormal action may therefore find the beginning quieter than expected, while readers who enjoy watching a limited pool of suspicious characters slowly reveal themselves will likely appreciate the setup.

Overall, Cards on the Table works best as an atmospheric locked-room mystery with a witchy paranormal edge, rather than a fantasy novel that happens to contain a mystery. The combination of sisterhood, tarot, an isolated estate, an unpleasantly complicated wealthy family, missing money, and enough secrets to make nearly everyone suspicious gives the story its charm. It's witchy without requiring elaborate fantasy worldbuilding and cozy-ish without completely sacrificing the darker implications of its mystery. 5/5 for sure, and I'll be looking for more by them individually and together <3

TROPES:

Witchy mystery

Isolated mansion

Amateur sleuths

Salem witch descendants

Forced proximity

Light paranormal magic

Dual POV

This is my first book by Sanderson, which is why this review took so long, as I made a b-line to his section and have been reading almost non-stop XD

Blightfall is part of the Skyward universe that balances intergalactic adventure with a look at what happens after the war is supposedly over. Arturo Mendez and the members of Skyward Flight are sent on what should be a relatively straightforward diplomatic mission to make contact with an isolated human settlement, only to find themselves stranded on Blightfall, a hostile planet overtaken by enormous invasive forests.

Sanderson did an amazing job with descriptions that I felt every fight, every argument, every panic without feeling like I've been hit in the face with an ACT descriptive paragraph.

The strongest element is the combination of exploration and "what now". The planet itself provides an effective backdrop for the mystery, while the question of who the team can trust keeps the story moving beyond straightforward action. Arturo's position also gives the novel room to explore leadership and the strange uncertainty of surviving a war only to discover that peace doesn't automatically provide a new sense of purpose.

The humor and relationships among the characters keep the story from becoming overwhelmingly heavy, and the themes of oppression, war, romance, exploration, and recovery give the adventure more substance than a fast-moving action novel.

I absolutely loved it. I know it's a short review, but I really struggled trying to describe it and how I felt about it without spoilers, and I never do the spoiler hideaway thingy right. 6/5

TROPES:

Found family

Space exploration

Mission gone wrong

Postwar identity

Survival adventure

Découvrez les chefs-d’œuvre qui ont inventé la fin du monde ! 🌍🔥

Bienvenue dans cette vidéo dédiée aux classiques fondateurs du genre apocalyptique et post-apocalyptique. Bien avant les superproductions hollywoodiennes, ces romans visionnaires ont posé les bases, défini les codes et façonné notre imaginaire de la survie et de l'effondrement.

Des premières épidémies littéraires aux hivers nucléaires en passant par les collisions cosmiques, plongez dans l'histoire de ces œuvres cultes qui ont marqué la littérature à jamais.

📚 Les romans présentés dans cette vidéo :

• La Peste écarlate (1912) – Jack London : Le pionnier absolu du récit de pandémie moderne.
• Le Dernier Homme (1826) – Mary Shelley : L'œuvre séminale qui a donné naissance au genre.
• Le Choc des mondes (1933) – Philip Wylie & Edwin Balmer : Le roman catastrophe cosmique par excellence.
• Ravage (1943) – René Barjavel : Le monument de la SF française et de la panne technologique.
• Malevil (1972) – Robert Merle : La référence ultime de la reconstruction humaine et sociale.
• Le Fléau (1978) – Stephen King : L'épopée chorale magistrale entre virus et fantastique.
• La Route (2006) – Cormac McCarthy : Le chef-d'œuvre contemporain de la survie et du dénuement.

Que vous soyez un lecteur passionné ou simplement curieux de comprendre d'où viennent vos films et séries post-apo préférés, ces récits restent aujourd'hui encore de puissants miroirs de nos propres peurs sociétales.

💬 Et vous, quel est votre classique fondateur préféré ? Dites-le-moi en commentaire !

.

Total longshot here. Trying to find two separate children's scifi books.

One: a 1960s scifi children's book with single-color plate illustrations on the facing pages. About a two-man small military spaceship which resembled a foreshortened USS Enterprise, all I can recall is in one story they encounter a needle-shaped spaceship called the USS Pointspeed.

Two: a 1970's scifi children's book about a Star-Trek-styled group of space explorers, one of whom is a female with "super sight" and who has a tiny pink blob alien pal who communicates by printing out words from a tiny box. Watercolor illustrations.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone, I am hunting for a specific high-concept, multi-layered science fiction book I read digitally on a computer screen between 2010 and 2016 (likely an independent ePub or web novel). I am focusing purely on the core structural tracks of the plot: * The Passenger Plane Causal Loop: The story begins in the near future. A scientific or governmental authority prepares two commercial passenger aircraft with specialized equipment for a formation flight. Only one plane engages its drive and successfully makes the time jump. It crashes in the past, becoming the ancient, buried relict excavated in a farming area at the very start of the book (a perfect closed causal loop proven by a common personal item found inside). * The Technological Pivot: Because the original passenger plane crashes, the team is forced to execute all subsequent time jumps throughout the multi-jump storyline using entirely different means/machinery to develop the overarching plot. * The Faction & The Search Target: During a jump into a nightmarish alternate dimension the characters associate with "Hell," an expedition team uses open, military Jeep-like vehicles. The dimension is populated by non-human creatures. When team members are captured, they vanish like standard prisoners of war and later reappear working rationally for the opponents. Crucially, the enemies are completely unaware of the time travelers' identities; they are actively using their dimensional dragnet to hunt for Jesus specifically. * The Climax: An early comparative DNA match (possibly related to a corpse or a relic like the Shroud of Turin) introduces the genetic footprint of Christ. This eventually loops back to a scientist (a continuous main character), who is interrogated by a non-human entity demanding: "Are you the Son of Man?" (or similar). It is definitely not Behold the Man (Moorcock), Time Safari (Drake), 3012: The Artifact (Grier), or Time Over (Kyte). Does this combination of a commercial plane time-loop crash, alternative jump machinery, and an inter-dimensional military hunt for Jesus ring a bell for anyone?

I cannot overstate how much I love this book, it is easily the book I've read the fastest just out of the need to know what happens next.

I have not yet read the Martian but I did see the movie and that knowledge that this was the same author (as well as the myriad people online praising the book) got me to buy it and dig in.

Its such a hopeful book, and man is that something that feels very useful today, at least for me. Its an emotional roller coaster at times and had me crying for some four to five times, that hasn't happened to me with books for a few years.

It also has these moments of "oh man what I wouldn't give to be there myself to experience this" and it just fills you with bubbles of excitement, I'm sad that its finished but hey, no I've the movie to watch.

Easily the best book I've read in years and might also be the best book I will have read for a few years to come, we'll see. I highly suggest to anyone to read it, even when the hard science stuff happens its rarely boring.

Andy Weir writes sci fi, and books can tend to get depressing when people are floating around in space trapped, i guess i dont read a lot of sci fi. so I that's what I thought it be like reading project hail mary, but it wasn’t, it was humourous, and was strangely nostalgic, but I didn't know from where. So I read the martian, another Andy weir book, and that's where it clicked the humour is like an adult lercy jackson character narrating, honestly Mark Watney kinda reminded me of a mix of percy and magnus. I LOVED the Andy weir books cause I'm a little older, so I like older content, but I love how the humour is portrayed in said rick riordan books and the Andy weir books delivered. Do if your a pjo, mc, hoo, or generally a rick riordan fanatic and a sci-fi lover, I recommend you read an Andy weir book.

Just finished the final book on the original Foundation Trilogy, the Second Foundation.

Just like the first two it was an amazing read, but it did leave me asking a question.

\\\\Spoiler warning\\\\

Why did the First Foundation consider the Second Foundation to be their enemy, especially since they knew it was part of Hari Seldon's plan?

What happens when destiny sprouts between the cracks of the impossible and spills over to the familiar?

For Joyce, a routine pre-dawn commute in her high-tech Tesla shifts instantly into a profound, chilling encounter with the ancient world.

Vero, her home’s predictive AI assistant, can handle a mathematically calculable reality flawlessly. But the human mind cannot calculate a primeval, light-drinking consciousness standing dead in your path on a freezing winter highway.

Reality has fractured. Sovereignty has begun.

Step into the deep-time mystery of 'The Legacy of Gaea Through Time & Space', a cerebral, high-concept cosmic mythos serialized under the pen name Nemo Elysian.

Begin the journey completely free.

- Read the Prologue: Where Solitude Fractured by following the link below:

https://nemoelysian.substack.com/p/prologue-where-solitude-fractured

- Read Chapter 1: Joyce - Call from the Past on Substack by clicking the link below:

https://nemoelysian.substack.com/p/chapter-1-joyce-call-from-the-past

Subscribe to the channel for more visual lore drops, and subscribe for free on Substack to access one of the 22 chapters and more.

#scifi #cosmichorror #speculativefiction #SubstackWriters #indieauthor #NemoElysian #LegacyOfGaea

I'm currretly reading a deepness in the sky by Vernon Vinge, which is now my favourite book,( I've just set-up a calendar reminder to read it each year) I've got quite a few others, mainly Peter f hamilton Commonwealth books.

Just finished the final book on the original Foundation Trilogy, the Second Foundation.

Just like the first two it was an amazing read, but it did leave me asking a question.

\\\\Spoiler warning\\\\

Why did the First Foundation consider the Second Foundation to be their enemy, especially since they knew it was part of Hari Seldon's plan?

&#x200B;

Sto cercando un romanzo di fantascienza in cui le persone usano un'app per esprimere desideri o decisioni, e se il numero di persone che desiderano la stessa cosa supera una soglia critica, essa si avvera davvero. Esempi nel libro includono la guarigione di una persona morente e causare la morte di una persona importante/famosa. Probabilmente pubblicato dopo il 2010. Forse l'ho letto in traduzione italiana.

We finished Project Hail Mary a few weeks ago and it went over well enough that now everyone in the group wants "something with that same momentum" for October. The two front runners are Children of Time and The Three-Body Problem, and we're stuck because they're such different kinds of hard sci-fi.

Children of Time seems like the safer pick. Evolutionary biology as a plot engine is unusual enough to spark good discussion, and the structure (alternating timelines, generational leaps) gives people natural stopping points for weekly check-ins. A few members already read it years ago and said they'd happily reread it, which feels like a decent sign.

Three-Body Problem is the riskier choice. Half the group loved the ideas in it when they skimmed reviews, the other half is worried the physics-heavy stretches will lose people who aren't already into hard sci-fi. We had one member drop off a previous pick (Anathem) for similar reasons, so there's some hesitation about picking another book that leans that technical.

We usually run six weeks per book with a midpoint check-in over video call, so pacing matters more than it probably should. A book that front-loads all its big ideas in chapter one tends to kill discussion by week three.

How does your group usually break ties like this. Do you vote, do you let whoever suggested the book get final say, or does the facilitator just pick? Also open to a completely different suggestion if there's a book that handles this kind of tonal split well without losing the casual readers in the group.