One of the oldest arguments in publishing is whether writers should write quickly. Solar Sail Theory approaches the question from a different direction. Every book you publish becomes a discoverability asset: another doorway for readers, another wake spreading across the internet, and another opportunity for luck to find you. Fast(er) writers don’t just produce more books—they build bigger sails.
We spend a lot of time talking about launches in publishing. Launch week. Launch numbers. Launch strategies. But publishers eventually learn something authors often overlook: books aren’t just products. They’re plants. Some flourish immediately. Others take years to reach their full potential. The real strength of a publishing business isn’t found in a single launch—it’s found in a backlist that keeps growing, season after season.
Every story has a plot. A detective solves a murder. A spaceship crew saves a colony. A retired man plants tomatoes. But the stories readers remember long after the last page are rarely about those events alone. Beneath the plot lies a deeper story—the emotional truth, the question being explored, the reason the story resonates. As an editor, one of the most important questions I can ask is: What is this story really about?
Some of the most important things in life begin as something small and uncertain. A packet of seeds. A first chapter. A conversation. Standing in the garden this spring, watching green shoots push through the soil, reminded me that growth is often invisible until suddenly it isn’t—and that the things we plant today may become far more than we ever imagined.
Most people look at a photograph like this and think, How pretty. I look at it and think, Why? Fort Bourtange is a stunning star-shaped fortress in the Netherlands, but what fascinates me isn’t its appearance. It’s the sheer amount of labour, planning and expense that went into building it in the late sixteenth century. What sort of world made such a massive defensive project seem necessary? And what would it have been like to actually live inside its walls? One aerial photograph opens the door to questions about history, war, economics, daily life—and why setting matters so much to fiction writers.
Fantasy readers often trace the genre back to Tolkien, but fantasy’s history is far stranger and more varied than many realize. Long before epic quests and dark lords dominated the shelves, writers such as Lord Dunsany, George MacDonald, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Machen, and Hope Mirrlees were exploring dream kingdoms, lost worlds, fairy realms, and mysteries lurking just beyond reality. Join me on a journey down the forgotten paths of fantasy and discover what the genre looked like before Tolkien’s road became the main highway.
Selling direct isn’t just about keeping a larger share of the sale. From a Solar Sail Theory perspective, direct sales does something even more valuable: it extends your sail and reduces drag at the same time. Every product page, bundle, subscription, and reader resource becomes another opportunity for discovery, while direct relationships with readers create momentum that can continue for years. At the same time, selling direct reduces your dependence on retailer algorithms, visibility changes, and platform policies. Sometimes the best business decisions solve more than one problem at once—and direct sales is one of them.
Modern smartphones have become surprisingly capable astronomy cameras, making it easier than ever to capture stars, planets, and even the Milky Way. But the real appeal isn’t the technology—it’s the experience of looking up at the night sky and connecting with the vast universe beyond our everyday concerns. For science fiction readers, photographing the cosmos can be a powerful reminder of why we look to the stars in the first place.
Most products fade quickly after launch. Books rarely do. At Stories Rule Press, we believe great stories have a long life, finding new readers months, years, and even decades after publication. That’s the enduring power of a strong backlist—and why we’re building a library for the long term, one story at a time.
Every published novel has a hidden history. Behind every finished book are deleted scenes, rewritten chapters, abandoned plot lines, and countless small decisions that readers never see. The first draft may discover the story, but revision is where the story reveals what it was trying to become all along.
