Dathan auerbach reddit

The publishing industry has changed dramatically. Here's one inspirational, though inadvertent, success story. It was September , and the Pensacola, Florida, native was checking out some user-posted stories on " NoSleep ," a subreddit. The message board thread allows registered visitors to upload original, personal tales of terror, and Auerbach had a whopper to share.

Titled "Footsteps," the thenyear-old college philosophy teacher's story was a foggy first-person perspective recollection of the time when, for no discernible reason, he woke up in the woods, not his comfortable bunk bed. NoSleep readers loved it and wanted more, so Auerbach—who'd never written any fiction prior to "Footsteps"—quickly put together a follow-up, "Balloons.

Eleven months later, Auerbach self-published—via his own imprint, Vultures —his well-received Reddit stories as a fleshed-out, meticulously refined page novel entitled Penpal. By December, without a publicist or an official marketing team behind it, Penpal landed on the leading horror website Bloody Disgusting 's list of 's 10 best horror novels and was on its way to a movie deal.

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In its completed form, Penpal available for purchase here is an engrossing, chilling blend of coming-of-age storytelling and realistic, non-supernatural horror that'll should keep readers far away from dreamland. So, mission accomplished, only it's on a much larger scale than Auerbach ever imagined. His success story is indicative of the book publishing industry's recent shift in release dynamics.

Gone are the days when aspiring fiction writers had to hunt down agents and cross fingers that corporate publishing houses would read their manuscripts, let alone want to produce hard copies for bookstores. James , the endless possibilities afforded by the Internet have changed the game. Best of all, the paradigms of self-publishing aren't nearly as daunting as one might expect.

In his own words, the Penpal author walked Complex through his unplanned yet highly effective path to becoming a published, buzz-worthy novelist. As told to Matt Barone MBarone.