Finding Your Readers

How Yellowface made me rethink my approach

Like a lot of you, I recently read Yellowface by R. F. Kuang. Without giving anything away, it’s the tale of a mid-list author who’s just scraping by while her glamorous best frenemy gets the big book tours, huge advances, expensive ad campaigns and high profile media coverage.

Boy, did that hit home.

In the end, I put the book aside with a gloomy sigh. Science fiction rarely gets featured on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book, or written about in the book sections of the Sunday papers. Sometimes, it’s possible to feel caught in the following vicious cycle: