Laterpress Weekly: June 4th, 2026 (Issue #191)

Nate's Notes:

For the last several years, I’ve used Goodreads to keep track of my reading. There are gaps in the data (for example, I haven’t logged every Goosebumps book I read as a child), but it is a pretty close accounting of my life as a reader. I’m at 792 books read, 4 DNF, and another 391 as “Want to Read.” That shelf is how I keep track of books I own and haven’t read yet. (Once upon a time, it was over 650. I’ve sold or donated a TON of books this year to declutter. I… indulged in a lot of retail therapy in the form of big book lots from eBay at the height of pandemic restrictions, and I’m still working through that.)

That adds up to 1,288 books, which is a lot of data about my tastes. I wondered what information I could glean from it.

When logged into Goodreads on PC, on the “My Books” tab, at the bottom of the left side of the screen is a section called “Tools.” The last option is “Import and export.” From there, Goodreads can create a spreadsheet containing all of your data. The spreadsheet’s data included: Title, Author, Publisher, Number of Pages, Year Published, my genre / shelf tags, and dates read. I took that spreadsheet and brought it to ChatGPT to help analyze it.

Want to know your top 10 or top 25 most read authors? It can tell you. No need to sort alphabetically and manually tally it up. Want a list of every book you’ve read from a specific author? It can provide that. It gave me a random list of books from my TBR pile to focus on next, choosing only the first book in a series that I hadn’t read yet. No suggestions to jump to Book 8 if I’m on Book 3. When I asked what other data we could glean from the spreadsheet, it offered 12 ideas to try.

I wanted to go deeper than a surface level summary of data, so I asked ChatGPT to give me an analysis of my reading preferences and tastes. Its response was lengthy, reviewing my top authors, genres, and what it described as my five “reading modes.” In the interest of transparency, you can read its full analysis HERE. Since it’s talking about me, I can say its conclusions feel reasonable.

All of that is interesting enough, but can I make the data even more useful? I wrote the kind of fantasy novel I would want to read. Can this data about my reading habits provide insights I can use to market my book to others with similar tastes? AI had 15 different ideas for me on that score, recommending I lean on my cast and visual imagery when making my pitch. This moves the conversation beyond “How do I market my book?” into “Which of these tactics resonate with me and are worth trying?” I’m not likely to use its suggested phrasings, but I can see how I’d walk the path it's suggesting. Note that your mileage will vary on this, depending on how much knowledge an AI has about your books to begin with, or how well they're explained in prompts.

I assume most of us write in genres we enjoy and read ourselves. If you like to keep track of your reading like I do, analyzing that data can provide some guidance and an initial sense of direction if you’re struggling with marketing ideas. The data already exists. Put it to work for you!

Speaking of putting your own data to work for you... we're working on updates to a feature that can help do just that. Stay tuned!

Interesting News and Stories from Around the Publishing World:

​Turning Writing from a Hobby into a Sustainable Career - In a guest post for Hapitalist, Loretta Bushell from Reedsy offers five tips for those who want to transition writing from a hobby into a long-term career. None of them are sexy, and you’ve probably heard some of them before, but sometimes reminders are helpful. The odd-numbered suggestions in her list are the ones I think people gloss over or ignore the most.

​"You're Not a Real Writer If You Use AI!" - Kevin Tumlinson does not use AI to write text for his books, but has been open about how it has helped him in other areas of the process. That distinction has not made him immune from being told he’s “not a real writer” for using AI, despite all the books he published before the technology even existed. In this video, he talks about how he uses AI, and argues there is a big difference between using a tool and letting a tool do all the work for you. Craft, intent, and critical thinking all continue to matter. He has no patience for the notion that using AI at any point in the process invalidates someone’s work.

​Modern Writers Are Terrified And It Shows - Dov James worries modern cancel culture and social media toxicity is getting into the heads of authors, leading to self-censorship and fear influencing creative decision making. He wants artists to stop asking for permission and have more confidence to stand behind their vision. If it’s inevitable that someone won’t like the thing you made, might as well make the thing you wanted to, right? His comments feel part pep talk to artists, part indictment of how people behave online.

Top quote: “If you create anything remotely interesting, someone will hate it. Someone will find it problematic… If absolutely nobody dislikes your work, there’s a decent chance you wrote something emotionally sterile. You can’t make something emotionally sharp without someone eventually cutting themselves on it.”

​Around the World, Reading Is Becoming More Social - Social media makes it possible for people all over the world to discuss books with each other, free of geographical constraints. Silent book clubs allow people to be “alone together” reading what they want in the company of others, with optional chatting time after. It’s nice to see people using books to forge social connections.

This article also illustrates how poor traditional publishers can be at knowing who their customers are, highlighting the importance of owning your customer data. (Laterpress allows authors to download purchase history and retain more customer information than retailers like Amazon.)

​Launch Day Is Not Judgment Day - Most books do not go viral or achieve massive success the day they release. And those that do become instant bestsellers often come from authors who have spend years building a backlist and a fanbase. A book's ultimate fate is not decided in the first day / week / month. Susanne Dunlap offers thoughts on how to approach that first month after release, and what to do with the data you gather.

New From Laterpress:

​13 Things Authors Should Put in Their Newsletters (Besides "Buy My Book") - Over the coming weeks, we will be expanding our YouTube channel with helpful content that isn't explicitly about Laterpress. As the title suggests, I share 13 ideas I had for fun newsletter content. If you're struggling to figure out what to say in yours, this might help. These ideas were previously mentioned in the Nate's Notes segment of an earlier newsletter. The video format allows me to expand on those thoughts and bring them to a new audience.

Coming Friday, June 5th, 4pm Eastern / 3pm Central - Writing the Worst First Date Ever with Laterpress AI - Our live streaming series working on an urban fantasy romantic comedy with Laterpress story tools continues. This week, we'll be reviewing plot beats, scene cards, and text for our protagonist's trainwreck of a first date.

This Week's Featured Story:

The Ice Princess of Enceladus Station, by Justin Thomas Zimmer

Simonee Saran is a hacker, a thief, and a construct—a synthetic life form, grown from AI generated DNA—living in the shadows of Enceladus Station, a city-sized outpost orbiting Saturn. When she's blackmailed into stealing from the governor's daughter—the same woman she's fallen for—she sets off a chain of events that cracks open the station's ugliest secrets: buried legacies, family coups, and a dead woman who isn't dead.

Now caught between a ruthless aunt, a reckless nephew, and the most powerful family in the outer system, Simonee has to decide what she's willing to lose to protect the people who took her in—and the woman who may never forgive her.

The Ice Princess of Enceladus Station is a sci-fi thriller about found family, stolen futures, and the lies people keep to protect the ones they love.

Meme of the Week: