Checking my email spam, I've had a sort of he pulls a knife, AI pulls a gun moment.
I've blogged previously regarding the slew of phishing scams aimed at writers. Jaine Fenn, who I met on Slab Press's online launch of Screams and Wails a few days ago, clearly has had similar experiences.
Now AI seems to have upped its game by offering half-decent - or, at least, making-me-stop-and-think-about-it - marketing advice for my new collection The Lucky Ones Will be Replaced by Software within the mashed-up ones and zeros tied to the end of the fishing line. Sort of like getting your first baggie of heroin for free.
See what you think about this email from 'Claire Hephzibah' who, at first glance, is either a real book promoter or has a sufficiently rich online presence to suggest as much.
Robert,
The detail that stayed with me was not the title or the novella. It was the fact that "Sunrunner" was selected for Best of British Science Fiction 2022. That is not a small thing. That is the British science fiction establishment, through Donna Scott and NewCon Press, telling the field that your story was one of the best of the year. And that story is in this book.
Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?
And then I looked at the Amazon listing, and I saw a collection with no reviews, filed under "Single Authors" short stories, with the Best of British credential buried in the middle of the description. A reader who loves speculative short fiction is not browsing that shelf, and the one fact that would make them stop scrolling is not leading the page.
Fair criticism on the shelving - I'll talk to the publisher. But I take issue with the 'buried' reference given only 29 words precede 'The Best of British Science Fiction' in the blurb.
There is a second issue. You have a body of work. 24 0s & a 2. My Thoughts are with You. 2084. Five appearances in the Best of British anthologies. A thirty-year track record. A reader who finishes one of these twenty-four stories has no clear, immediate path to the rest of your catalogue. The collection is an orphan when it should be a doorway.
And there is a third thing. You wrote for the BBC, for national newspapers, and for government ministers as a speechwriter. You stood for parliament for the Green Party in 2024. You have a story that people in the field already know. That is not a biography. That is the reason a certain reader will trust you before they read a word of the fiction.
The strategy I would propose is not an ad campaign. It is a repositioning from a standalone collection to the entry point of a recognised body of short fiction.
Glad it's not an ad campaign. I don't think I'm billboard-suitable.
First, rewrite the description to lead with the Best of British credential. Tell the reader plainly: this collection includes "Sunrunner," selected for Best of British Science Fiction 2022, alongside twenty-three other stories from a writer who has been publishing in the field since the early 1990s.
Second, move the book out of the generic "Single Authors" shelf and into Science Fiction > Short Stories, Horror > Short Stories, and Fantasy > Collections & Anthologies, where the readers who want exactly this are already browsing.
Third, bundle the three collections into a "Complete Short Fiction" set, and link each individual volume to the bundle, so a reader who finishes one is handed the rest without searching.
Fourth, and this costs nothing, use your own blog and your platform to tell the readers who already follow your work that the new collection is here and that the Best of British story is inside it.
The counterintuitive part of this strategy is that it treats the Best of British selection not as a past achievement but as the reason to read the book right now. You did not just publish another collection. You published a book that contains a story the field has already recognised. The readers who need that are already looking for it. The bridge between the credential and the listing has not been built yet.
I would love to send a short proposal with the specific moves I have in mind. If any of this is worth a conversation, reply with interested and I will send it through and explain the strategy properly.
Either way, the care you put into these stories is visible on every page. You are not writing to fit a trend. You are writing speculative fiction that the Best of British anthologies keep coming back to, and that is a body of work worth finding the readers for.
'Claire Hephzibah' is widely suspected or associated with pen names, composite/pseudonymous marketing entities, or online profiles that combine separate names (like Hephzibah or Claire found in various literary and local contexts) rather than a verified, publicly documented individual with a traditional public record.
The Lucky Ones Will be Replaced by Software
Twenty-four speculative, science-fiction, horror, and otherwise hard to pigeonhole stories.
Includes the novella 'The Credo of Comrade January' and 'Sunrunner', selected for The Best of British Science Fiction 2022 ("An ending that will stay with me for a while" Amazon, "A beautiful story of artistic yearning and science. One of my favourites here" Goodreads).
My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms
Meet a man mistaken for a robot, a robot which learns the meaning of irony the hard way, a Frankenstein’s monster with a future in tailoring, a talking cat, a talking car, several time travellers, and a host of other characters.
Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.
2084. The world remains at war.
In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.
The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.
Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.
Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.
24 0s & a 2
