"What would you say you do here?"

Man, I just read.

My last post was out of the norm, but it aligned with the overall mission: I find good books to read, and I boost them. Once in a blue moon will I ever go negative, and only if a point needs to be illustrated. I’ll cover movies along the way, because I like movies, and I like good entertainment, and I especially like good stories.

Since you’re probably new here, that’s really what you need to know about Trucker Man Reads. Because of my job, I do a lot of audiobooks. I still squeeze in some print reading, but I do have a family and other interests (writing, illustrating, etc.)

Being an indie author has a built-in challenge: readers generally distrust the caliber of your work because it hasn’t been vetted by gatekeepers. The quality of those gatekeepers is another discussion for another day: it remains a fact that readers trust their preferred outlets, many of which retain their clout based on legacy and longevity, and you as a part-timer are trying to break in from the outside.

During the late 2010s and especially during the pandemic, a lot of indie creators found an audience on YouTube, specifically with critical observations of popular art. (This was far more often the case with movies, comics, and video games than it was with novels.) Novels had just undergone their own reader revolution, specifically with sci-fi and fantasy, which is also a story for another day, suffice it to say that the fight has been had, the victors made their names, and the makers of the craft continued onward.

(I’m also on YouTube.)

The point of this is that there was a narrow window wherein writers and creators could gain the clout of a long-running institution through insightful critical takes. In fact this would function as marketing for their creative projects. After all, the Internet has taught us that people respond to negativity far more readily than they respond to positive passion.

(The responses to my last post were very constructive, even the ones that disagreed with me. I only had to ban one guy for an extremely bad response, born largely from his own poor reading comprehension. So thank you guys.)

The window for that model is closed. Small creators like myself would do better to find and boost things they like, and if they’re dead-set on making a marketing effort out of it, then just talk about the things from your work that align with the popular projects you like.

I’ve been on Substack for a couple of years and the staggering majority of my posts are about books I like to read. Sometimes I cover movies I’ve enjoyed. For an entire year I just posted reading updates on Sundays. From time to time I’ve mentioned my own books, but overall I talk about reading.

And I’ve made a point of staying positive.

Now, in the interest of brutal honesty, there are probably times when I’ve been too positive. I won’t go into the details, but it has to do with why I abandoned the star-rating system. There’s too much of a variance in quality among books that I rate three, four, or five stars. Some four-star books are books I’d never read again, or never recommend to anyone—so what good is it to rate it four stars?

My metric going forward—I established this recently—is just three tiers:

Tier One: I read this and I think it was a waste of time. (Rare.)

Tier Two: I read this, it was fine-to-good, I probably wouldn’t read it again. (Common.)

Tier Three: I read this, it was great, I will read it again, I will buy it for my own library. (What I’m really after.)

I think that’ll produce the most accurate gauge for my assessments in the future. I’ll use it for movies and comics, too. For example, I mentioned Jurassic World: Rebirth in that last post. That’s a Tier Two. Out of all those movies, it’s in the upper half, but I really think that only the first and third movies were Tier Three. (Yes, Jurassic Park 3 is good, maybe I’ll write up why.) Occasionally I’ll sit down to watch Jurassic World if it’s on, but I don’t crave it.

All that being said, I’m going to do more posts about the Tier Three book series I’ve read throughout my life. The books that decorate my shelves, the books that I go back to every few years, and what I absolutely love about them. Every year I read over a hundred books across several genres because I’m hunting for more Tier Threes to add to the pile. And obviously, that’s the kind of stuff I’m trying to write.

Whether I succeed is up to the reader.

On that note, check out my Boys Adventure novel from Raconteur Press, called FOSSIL FORCE. It’s about a kid named Patrick who moves to a small desert town in Utah and accidentally activates a proto-Indian power armor, introducing him to a world of wonder and danger in spades. There’s an epic battle scene in chapter 11 that readers have loved. I think you will too.

Thanks for reading. Stick around, we’ll find things we love.