Contemporary Authors

• Bandwidth - 2018 47North, Seattle, WA
• Cumulus - 2016 CreateSpace,
• (Short story) True Blue - 2017 CreateSpace,
• Neon Fever Dream - 2016 CreateSpace,
• Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0 - 2014 CreateSpace,
• Uncommon Stock: Power Play - 2014 CreateSpace,
• Uncommon Stock: Exit Strategy - 2015 CreateSpace,

• Eliot Peper Home Page - http://www.eliotpeper.com/p/about.html

  About

  Eliot Peper is a novelist and strategist based in Oakland, CA.

  He writes fast-paced, deeply-researched novels with diverse casts that explore the intersection of technology and society. He is the author of Bandwidth, Cumulus, True Blue, Neon Fever Dream, and The Uncommon Series and his books have been praised by The New York Times, The Verge, Popular Science, Businessweek, San Francisco Magazine, io9, and Ars Technica.

  Eliot is an editor at Scout and an adviser to entrepreneurs and investors. He has helped build technology businesses, survived dengue fever, translated Virgil’s Aeneid from the original Latin, worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture capital firm, and explored the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Mustang.

  BBC, NPR, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Tech.co, Quartz, and VentureBeat have featured Eliot and his writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, Xconomy, The Mission, and the Chicago Review of Books. He has been a speaker at places like Google, Qualcomm, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Future in Review, and the Conference on World Affairs and is comfortable with all formats.

  Mailing List: http://www.eliotpeper.com/p/inner-circle.html
  Twitter: @eliotpeper
  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eliotpeper
  Medium: https://medium.com/@eliotpeper
  Press Kit: http://bit.ly/1TYeizx
  Email: elpeper [at] gmail [dot] com

  Literary representation: DongWon Song at Howard Morhaim (dongwon@morhaimliterary.com).

• Medium - https://medium.com/s/story/who-do-we-want-to-trust-writer-eliot-peper-on-his-new-novel-and-the-future-of-tech-6ce14c84e21b

  QUOTED: "For Bandwidth, it was actually a feeling I had about my own life. One of the things that I was noticing, and I think this was influenced by the very divisive news cycle leading up to the 2016 election, was that I wasn’t enjoying reading journalism as much. There was just so much out there, and I noticed, as I was reading the news, that I became emotionally upset."
  "I realized that if I wanted to change the situation, I would actually have to take control of my own media diet. So I started reading books that I had an inherent interest in rather than because they were part of the height of the cultural conversation or the political conversation at the time. I became much more specific and thoughtful about which stories I wanted to read so I would actually have reason for investing that time and attention. ... It changed how I was thinking about the world."

  Media Diets, Climate Change, and the Tech Backlash
  An interview with author Eliot Peper on his new novel and the future of tech

  Go to the profile of Bryan Walsh
  Bryan Walsh
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  May 1
  Eliot Peper. Photo: Courtesy of the author

  1.1K

  The risk of writing speculative fiction in a time when the world appears to be hurtling forward at a dizzying pace is that you may end up overtaken by events. In his new novel, Bandwidth, Eliot Peper creates a near future where one digital company controls access to nearly all of the world’s information and media — and where a group of insurgents decides to manipulate that feed for their own purposes.
  That might sound familiar, but Peper finished Bandwidth well before anyone had ever heard of Cambridge Analytica. The Oakland, California–based novelist, who consults for tech companies and VC investors in his spare time, has a knack for exploring how the growing pervasiveness of tech will shape how we live, work, and even think.
  “There’s a tech backlash right now focused on social media platforms, but I would encourage readers to take that a step further.”

  ‘Bandwidth’ is out on May 1. Photo: Courtesy of the author
  I recently spoke with Peper about the tech behind the world of Bandwidth, how he slimmed down his own information diet, and why he doesn’t see his work — which takes place in a world that has been burned by severe climate change — as dystopic. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
  Bryan Walsh: You were writing Bandwidth in late 2016. What was on your mind when you were creating this world?
  Eliot Peper: For Bandwidth, it was actually a feeling I had about my own life. One of the things that I was noticing, and I think this was influenced by the very divisive news cycle leading up to the 2016 election, was that I wasn’t enjoying reading journalism as much. There was just so much out there, and I noticed, as I was reading the news, that I became emotionally upset.
  Well, I was a journalist at a weekly news magazine at that time, and I can tell you I wasn’t really enjoying doing it either.
  Oh my God, I can only imagine. I was noticing that you have friends sharing many articles that are fueled by outrage. That outrage is very legitimate, but it is not the emotional state I like to have as my baseline. One of the things I realized was how haphazardly I had been investing my time and attention.
  “What if instead of just trying to change one behavior — voting — you try to algorithmically stack the deck?”
  I realized that if I wanted to change the situation, I would actually have to take control of my own media diet. So I started reading books that I had an inherent interest in rather than because they were part of the height of the cultural conversation or the political conversation at the time. I became much more specific and thoughtful about which stories I wanted to read so I would actually have reason for investing that time and attention.
  And what changed? What did you notice?
  It changed how I was thinking about the world. It changed the emotional state from which I lived on a day-to-day basis. I learned way more and was much happier.
  When I got into the requisite Thanksgiving politics conversations that so many Americans were having at that time of year, I found that I actually had different perspectives than a lot of people I normally would agree with because I had been reading different stuff. That made me realize that to a large extent, what we read impacts who we are. The media we consume shapes our worldviews.
  In Bandwidth, you have a company called Commonwealth that is, as you’ve described it, Amazon plus Google plus Facebook times 1,000. It feeds everyone their media directly. And then you have a band of activists who can hack Commonwealth, as it’s known, and by controlling the media people are being fed, essentially manipulate them. Do you think that’s realistic?
  In the story, one of the characters uses this analogy to hard versus soft martial arts. Karate is a famous hard martial art. It’s all about strikes and punches and jabs. Then you have martial arts like aikido, where you turn the actions of your opponents against them in a way they might not anticipate. That’s what we’re seeing in the news today with Cambridge Analytica and all the scandals around it — a much more interesting and potentially disturbing manipulation of our digital lives.
  “Stories are the original virtual reality.”
  Trying to use targeted ads to change one single behavior is a first step, but you can go much, much deeper. What if instead of just trying to change one behavior — voting — you try to algorithmically stack the deck? What the folks who are manipulating the feed in Bandwidth are trying to do really surgically is change the worldview of powerful individuals. Rather than needing to convince them about an issue, they’ve already shaped their values. They’re actually trying to do it from the inside out, instead of from the outside in. If I can actually convince you of the truth in my perspective on the world, I no longer need to manipulate you. You’re actually going to be my ambassador for those values.
  Isn’t that kind of scary, especially in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal?
  We need to be cognizant of the incentive behind the people and things we interact with. In the case of Facebook, for example, you have a company with an advertising business model. And that can privilege emotional engagement in a way that clearly leads to really negative outcomes in media.
  If you travel to Mexico, the newspapers’ front pages are often covered in really gory car accident pictures. And it’s obvious why: It grabs your attention, and people buy the papers more often. If we want to avoid getting cheated, we need to be really self-aware about the incentives and reasoning behind the different digital services we use. And Facebook is clearly an example of that.
  “I realized…I would actually have to take control of my own media diet.”
  The other part of the question is who do we want to trust? If you think fake news or Cambridge Analytica was bad, wait until you see video and audio that are perfect simulacrums for an actual person — and we’re already beginning to see that. Digital media itself will no longer be proof of anything. And once recorded media ceases to be evidence of anything, what do we do next?
  How do you imagine that future?
  Whenever I try to think about the future, I try to think about history. So, I think that the yellow journalism period at the turn of the 20th century is fascinating, because you suddenly had printing presses that allowed people to publish anything — and most of what they published was optimized for emotional engagement.
  There was a famous story of a UK paper at the time that completely invented a fake moon landing. They had a whole series of articles that followed the news of this moon landing, and everyone thought it was real. Of course, it was total bullshit. But what happened is that, initially, because the technology was new, a lot of people thought, “Well, hey, if it’s printed in a newspaper it must be true.”
  It’s like War of the Worlds on the radio.
  Precisely. The same thing happened with television. And the same thing today is happening with the internet. We had this assumption that, for the most part, the things we see on the internet must be trustworthy. And now we’re going through that rough coming of age where we’re discovering that’s no longer the case.
  And so if you look to history, what happened after the yellow journalism period?
  People started demanding trustworthy sources. And that’s where many of the big respected media brands of the 20th century were born, like the New York Times, like NPR. It wasn’t that the medium itself was untrustworthy. It was that we had to learn how to be more critical of what we were consuming in the medium. That actually created new opportunities for people who wanted to build trustworthy brands using that medium.
  In the future, won’t digital companies try to create this trust? I imagine it’s going to be very much in the interest of a Facebook or a Twitter to try to ferret out what’s real and what’s fake and say, “We have a standard that you can trust.”
  That makes perfect sense. In Bandwidth, the backstory behind Commonwealth is that it became so powerful and ubiquitous because they established themselves as the place on the internet that was absolutely trustworthy. A place where you could trust the infrastructure, just like how when we go in an elevator, we want to trust that it’s not going to fall and kill you.
  That’s the danger we face on the internet today. You’re putting your data out into the world, and you’re trusting all of these people you’ve never met to protect it for you. And many of them do a really, really, really crappy job.
  And right now, no one really feels safe on the internet.
  There’s a tech backlash right now focused on social media platforms, but I would encourage readers to take that a step further. Take that same danger and map it onto other parts of life where computers are already a big component. And suddenly you realize that trusting the information infrastructure we use is going to be the challenge of the 21st century.
  The other major theme in Bandwidth is climate change. This is a future where wildfires have turned Southern California into cinders, where the Arctic has melted, where climate refugees are everywhere. Do you think that’s where we’re headed?
  Oh, I think it’s far too late to head this future off. The question is how do we create a civilization that is resilient in the face of these guaranteed challenges? We need to build new technologies and new human institutions to help us adapt. And we’ll need to make difficult decisions to prevent the situation from getting worse.
  What role do you think near-future speculative fiction can play in helping that process along?
  At its best, fiction challenges us with difficult questions rather than simply providing answers. Fiction allows us to take the hardest realities that we might face personally, like the loss of a loved one, or that we may face as a society, like climate change, and it allows us to engage with them, not only intellectually but also emotionally. It’s not an analysis. It’s not a report. We’re seeing people struggle with these things, and that gives us a new perspective on them.
  Stories are the original virtual reality. They pull us out of our day to day, and suddenly we’re living in this different world.
  Do you see the future that you’re writing about as dystopic?
  I really don’t. Whenever I’m working on a new book, I always ask myself, where is the nuance? Where are the gray areas that are worth exploring? And I look at that both on a character level and with the world-building, with how I imagine the future itself. I think there are many things in Bandwidth that are actually very positive: National inequality has gone down in the U.S., and health care is much more available. There are a bunch of wonderful things about this future, including the convenience of having Commonwealth, a convenient and ubiquitous digital layer of personalized data on top of everything.
  I always try to see where is the conflict? Because I find that conflict interesting. It’s that place where the choice between good and evil is much more confusing than we think it ought to be.
  Go to the profile of Bryan Walsh
  WRITTEN BY
  Bryan Walsh
  Journalist, author, dad. Former TIME magazine editor and foreign correspondent. Writing END TIMES, a book about existential risk and the end of the world.

• Reedsy - https://blog.reedsy.com/uncommon-author-an-interview-with-eliot-peper/

  QUOTED: "The human side of startups doesn’t get a lot of exposure because everyone wants to talk about advice and best practices. Few people want to talk about how it destroyed their relationship with their wife; or how they were sleeping with their co-founder; or how for their series B round they were about to get a ten-x valuation bump on the first round until lead investor had a heart attack the night before and it fucked up their entire company. That stuff happens all the time. I’ve been shocked by the shit that goes down in Silicon Valley."
  "People don’t talk about that stuff publicly in a non-fiction context — they don’t want to make that their sort of public life. The beauty of fiction is that you can experience that alongside the character. You can give people a window into what it’s like to be the startup or to be in business. And I think for people interested in learning about entrepreneurship that’s really special because there’s a lot more to it that just lean product development."

  Uncommon Author - An Interview with Eliot Peper
  July 31, 2014 - Perfecting your Craft - Leave your thoughts

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  Eliot Peper
  “For someone who loves a book, would make their day? What would make them happy or make them think of it again or think that it’s cool? And I’m always struggling with that.”

  Update! We interview Eliot again for the release of the sequel to Uncommon Stock - come check it out!

  Eliot Peper is the nicest man in the world. At least, that’s how we felt coming away from our interview. His first novel, ‘Uncommon Stock,’ a startup thriller, is both an indie success story and the debut book from Colorado’s FG Press. Eliot’s background is in venture capital and consulting for the tech industry, including spells running his own startups. We met to talk about what it was like transitioning from entrepreneur to authorpreneur, and what it was like working with the newly-minted FG Press.

  Edit: As of 2016, FG Press has closed its doors. Eliot Peper is now a full-time indie author.

  —-

  REEDSY

  Your first novel is about startups. You’ve had plenty of experiences in the business world, but had you written much before?

  ELIOT PEPER

  I hadn’t written fiction since high school, but I had experience with storytelling. My background was in startups — I was a founder, then an early employee at a couple of different startups, and then an entrepreneur-in-residence at a VC fund. As you guys I’m sure know yourselves, the fuzzy front-end of building a business, most of it’s storytelling. You’re trying to pitch investors, you’re trying to bring in talent, you’re trying to tell people about the problem you’re trying to address; you’re always telling stories whether it’s to customers, investors, partners, team members — that’s a lot of what you do on a day-to-day basis. So I’d been doing a ton of that, but I’d not been doing anything like writing a novel.

  REEDSY

  I thought it was interesting how widely your book was picked up by the business community. A lot of business writing is generally non-fiction, right?

  ELIOT PEPER

  Non-fiction is interesting for obvious reasons. Most non-fiction is “Here are the lessons I learned doing something,” or with biographies “What did this person learn through living their life?” For business, I find fiction particularly interesting because it gives you this secret window inside the character’s head.

  There’s a boatload of non-fiction out there about business — “I built GM, or I was the CEO of X company, so here are the things you should think about when starting a company or in your daily life.” But it doesn’t show you that, as I’m sure you guys are experiencing right now, when you’re building a business it’s a human experience, right? Especially for founders who are struggling through their first company or their first couple of companies. It’s a crazy emotional roller coaster. The human side of startups doesn’t get a lot of exposure because everyone wants to talk about advice and best practices. Few people want to talk about how it destroyed their relationship with their wife; or how they were sleeping with their co-founder; or how for their series B round they were about to get a ten-x valuation bump on the first round until lead investor had a heart attack the night before and it fucked up their entire company. That stuff happens all the time. I’ve been shocked by the shit that goes down in Silicon Valley.

  People don’t talk about that stuff publicly in a non-fiction context — they don’t want to make that their sort of public life. The beauty of fiction is that you can experience that alongside the character. You can give people a window into what it’s like to be the startup or to be in business. And I think for people interested in learning about entrepreneurship that’s really special because there’s a lot more to it that just lean product development.

  REEDSY

  Yeah, like you don’t need to have abstracted a principle for a story to be useful to someone

  ELIOT PEPER

  I’m sure you guys are experiencing this if you have advisors or mentors that you’re going to for advice. You’ll talk to one guy and he’ll say “Well, in my last business we did this, and we learned that you have to do X.” Then you talk to someone else and they’ll give you the exact opposite advice based on a totally different anecdote.

  A lot of business non-fiction is like that — it’s a lot of anecdotes, and it’s really easy to mythologise people. So you look at the big names like Steve Jobs or whatever, and once they’ve achieved success it always feels like you can retroactively go back and say why they achieved success in the past. That’s a really weird thing to do. From a scientific process perspective that’s really bad, but that essentially covers all narrative non-fiction. You have to have that “What did you learn at the end of the fable?” ending, and I think fiction gives you a lot more freedom in that sense. You’re exploring just how humans wrestle with and overcome obstacles. Those obstacles could be killing Gilgamesh, or it could be taking a company public.

  REEDSY

  It’s like parables, basically, or Aristotle’s version of Ethics. He doesn’t try to say what bravery is, he just says “Bravery is Achilles.”

  ELIOT PEPER

  I think the human mind is wired to understand complex problems through stories. It’s boring to read a complex problem that isn’t part of narrative.

  REEDSY

  How have you applied your startup background to the daily routine of writing? I feel like a lot of startup advice is of the ‘work smarter, not harder’ variety. Can you apply that to writing?

  ELIOT PEPER

  I think the process of writing is very grinding, in terms of the actual drafting of the manuscript. I don’t even know how you would go about doing that smarter. I don’t really outline, I just spend time brainstorming constantly. On a walk I’ll think about where the characters are, where things are heading, what the next scene should be, what the final scene should be. I feel like I’m in good shape if I know the next scene I’m gonna write, and some kind of North Star that the climax will be. If I have more than that planned out it usually gets stale or I don’t stick to it anyway. I have to spend time immersed in the world psychologically, then I sit down, start writing, and there’s very little I can do aside from forcing myself to make the time, sit in front of Word, and not go on twitter. A lot of it is knowing how to be diligent and how to have discipline.

  That corresponds to business. It’s way too prevalent with my friends in tech and the startup world who are like “Oh my God I was up until 4am finishing this last release!” To me that’s like saying “Oh my God, I’m terrible at managing my time!” You know, that’s basically what you’re saying. It was less that I tried to take the lesson ‘work hard at all costs,’ and instead take the lesson ‘only do what matters.’ That’s really difficult to do.

  As an author it’s so easy to spend all my time blogging and emailing and pitching journalists or influencers to try and get more coverage for the book, to do events, to do signings, to just be on Twitter and Facebook or whatever promotional tools you’re using. You can let that suck away all your time. But at the end of the day the people who read my books, my actual readers, they just want the next book — they don’t give a shit what I post on Twitter. To an extent, me having a public face, at least they can feel like they’re getting to know me.But you really have to look back and say “I need to be spending at least the majority of my time doing what actually matters.” In business it’s just as difficult. It’s very easy to spend your time just being external facing when the only reason people are going to be interested in you is to improve their lives by solving a problem. If you’re not solving that problem in what you’re doing every day, that’s a problem.

  I think that’s probably the one lesson I took from business. The ‘work smarter, not harder’ side’s more relevant in the PR side of things and how you connect with readers. We’re trying to experiment with that. I have a twitter account for the protagonist of ‘Uncommon Stock.’ We built a real website for the fictional startup in the book. We got Foundry Group, the VC firm, to announce an investment in them on April Fools day. That’s sort of fun. My dearest hope is that if I do something that delights my readers, that when they’re at happy hour tonight and they’re quaffing a beer, they’ll say to their friend “OK, they actually did this.” If that happens that’s one more word-of-mouth referral. Anything I can do to inspire or delight my readers, that’s what I’m going for.

  REEDSY

  It seems like delighting a reader is much healthier than growth hacking.

  ELIOT PEPER

  Yeah. If you look at the public discourse about how to get readers, the majority of it is the growth hacking kind of stuff. It’s all about how can you engineer your own success and manipulate people into liking you, and I don’t know — I don’t really like to be manipulated as a reader, so I don’t really want to do that as a writer.

  REEDSY

  Do you have any role-models in the self-publishing space?

  ELIOT PEPER

  I like Hugh Howey. He’s the wünderkind, right? But he’s also really personal and personable. He shares what he does, and it feels real. Or, you know Neal Stephenson? He’s a prototypical Big 5 author; he’s been a best-selling author for decades, he has a huge audience, in that sense he’s very mainstream. But he writes on Slashdot and other random forums all the time. The people writing for the New York Times Book Review would never have heard of these places. He’s interesting because if you go to his website, it’s pretty minimal. It’s sort of lame. But he’s also on Slashdot and all these random place, writing super in-depth, honest answers to forum questions from trolls. I find that compelling because it’s like “That’s pretty cool, you’re just being real, that’s who you are, you’re a sort of goofy nerdy guy, you read Slashdot so you started writing there too.” It’s been very popular. His forum posts turn into memes that people share around writing blogs — I think that’s fun.

  You don’t even have to stick to publishing. Macklemore self-published his first albums, was never signed by a major label, and was able to build a fan-base because his songs are awesome and he made funny videos for them. Now he’s turned that into having some of the top-listed songs over the past couple of years. That’s pretty cool, that’s pretty fun. With the writers I admire most the biggest thing is they write really good stuff, but the other part is in the rest of their lives they come across as really genuine.

  REEDSY

  What sort of relationship are you building between yourself and your readers?

  ELIOT PEPER

  I try to think of writing as literally storytelling. I don’t just hand over the manuscript and that’s that. I try to think of it like I’m literally sitting at a campfire talking to people. If you’re sitting at a campfire with your friends, you don’t want to be awkward, right? It’s better to tell a story they want to hear. And afterwards you’re still their friend. It’s not like the relationship is over — you’re going to roast marshmallows over the fire and have a conversation about it. That’s how I look at being a writer. I can connect with my readers in a new way or share something with them they might not otherwise know. Like on my blog I write about business because some of my readers are interested in startups and that’s part of why they read my stuff, but I also share personal stuff because if they like my book they might want to know more about me.

  Do you know Joss Whedon? I find him really interesting. I’m not very sophisticated about films, but what he’s famous for is that while many of the shows he’s made haven’t been that popular in terms of ratings, the people who did watch it were obsessed with it. He’s had the highest aftermarket sales of anyone. The prototypical guy for this is George Lucas. He turned a weird 70s sci-fi movie into the underlying mythology of America, and represents some enormous amount of toy sales and other crazy external licensing sales.

  The guys who are now doing all these superhero movies are obsessed with Joss Whedon because they’re trying to do the same with these comic book franchises. So they’re trying to take X-Men and turn it into these multiple blockbuster movies but also have video-games and all these other ways fans can experience the story. Joss says he has one question in mind that I think applies to every authors, and that’s “What can you do that would really delight your fans?” For people who really like your story, how can you double down and give them extra stuff that they would just want more and more of if they really love that story? There’s a really wonderful essay on this, that’s also relevant for early-stage entrepreneurs, called ‘1000 True Fans’.

  I’m still figuring that out. If people read Uncommon Stock, what more would they want? I know they’d want the sequel because they’re all asking for it, so that’s good — I’m working on that. But beyond that what are other things that, for someone who loves a book, would make their day? What would make them happy or make them think of it again or think that it’s cool? And I’m always struggling with that.

  If I was constantly thinking about how I could sell more books, I wouldn’t enjoy the experience of being a writer much. If I want to look at the world cynically, my experience becomes cynical.

  REEDSY

  It’s a bad filter on the creative process.

  ELIOT

  You’re going to have a filter no matter what. If your filter is ‘how can I create something that people will love,’ that’s a fun filter to have. If your filter is ‘how can I create something that people will buy, not only is that less fun from the creative perspective, but it’s also very difficult to ascertain. It’s not obvious what people will buy. If you’re trying to select for that, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have any higher chance of success than someone who’s just trying to create something that people will love, and they’re going to have a much better time doing it.

  REEDSY

  You worked with FG Press on ‘Uncommon Stock’ — what was that like? Did it free you from the commercial pressures traditionally published authors work with, like having to earn out an advance?

  ELIOT

  First of all, FG Press gives no advances. You have a 50/50 split on all royalties. A typical big-5 contract gives the author about 15% — that’s fancy math, but that’s more or less what it breaks down to. FG Press is giving a much larger cut on royalties and they’re giving no advance, and I wanted it that way. I think the advance system sets up the wrong incentive. Then the author is writing a book and selling it to a publisher, rather than selling it to a reader. The people who are important to me are my readers. My publisher is important to the extent that they help me either produce something better or do something that makes my readers more happy. I would self-publish in a heartbeat if FG Press was not providing those things for me.

  The commercial pressures are tied to advances, but the reason that authors are subject to those pressures is because they want the advance. That’s where things can get messy, and that’s part of what FG Press set out to try to do differently. Does that create different challenges? Of course. If you’re not giving advances, the writer has to support themselves until book sales start coming in — if they do. That’s not a universally good decision — you need to choose which risk factors you want to take on to produce the kind of content you want to make. That’s what they’re doing, that’s their model, and that’s why it’s different. They’re betting that authors who publish through them willingly want to build a readership and want to earn money based on how popular the damn book is, regardless of whether a high-level editor thinks you have potential.

  REEDSY

  What is FG Press offering their authors in exchange for the initial 50%?

  ELIOT PEPER

  First of all they’re writing the checks for the initial production costs. It’s true, they take that financial risk, so that’s great for authors who can’t write the checks to take the risks for editing and production. That’s useful and it shows that they’re committed to the title. It just doesn’t cost that much to produce a book. The part where they really add value is through helping to establish a community of readers. As a — very personal — example I was sharing my book with Brad because I thought he would like it, and he’s a well-known guy among people who might also like it. If he likes it and writes a review of it, it could be really useful for helping me connect with new readers.

  When I wrote the book and we released it, that was super useful. Not only did he post about it but he talked to TechStars. TechStars bought ‘Uncommon Stock’ on a license for all of TechStars — present and future founders. So every TechStars person now gets sent a digital copy of Uncommon Stock. I’d have never been able to achieve that on my own because I don’t have those relationships and I don’t know those people. But working with FG Press it was really cool to be able to do things like that. Or as another example, Foundry Group issued a fake investment. Would they have done that if I was a random self-published author? Probably not, right? So there have been many opportunities working with them for serendipity in terms of working with them that have definitely benefitted me hugely and that I really appreciate that I think also benefit readers. That was a cute stunt, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that for readers.

  Honestly, the way that I see it at the end of the day and the way that I think FG press is trying to build themselves and the philosophy they take to the table is that they want to just create a publishing model that makes common sense for authors and book production, and then they want to treat everyone like a friend. I’m doing a panel at a tech event. I called FG Press and said “Guys, I have this opportunity with this big panel — wouldn’t it be fun if we could like get excerpts of the book to everyone going?” So we’re creating this co-branded landing page where everyone can go pick them up if they want to. Then FG Press said “If you’re looking for people for the panel, here are a couple of CEOs in the Foundry portfolio that could be a good fit.” So that’s awesome, it makes the panel even better. And so I get to meet a bunch of CEOs who give me good material for my sequel. It’s an all-around everybody-wins.

  REEDSY

  How important was it working with an editor?

  ELIOT PEPER

  First of all, I need an editor, and I think anyone who thinks they don’t is crazy. If you want to produce something that’s really fun to read, it needs to be edited by someone who knows what they’re doing.

  I had a couple of different stages. I shared the drafts with Brad but he wasn’t providing on-going feedback and I didn’t want him to. When I’m working on my first rough draft feedback slows me down, it doesn’t speed me up. I need to basically vomit onto the page, and then take that sack of shit in Word format and try to make it better. My first filtration process to try to make it slightly better was sending it to a couple of beta readers who I’d been really selective with. These were people who I had to trust would both be super honest — not just say it was nice or whatever. I had to know that they’d give me lot of constructive negative feedback.

  They also each had a specific perspective they could add. One of them for example was probably the top Angel investor in San Diego, and he also studied Literature at Stanford. And so he has this dual perspective of knowing a lot about the English language and loving books, but also being very involved in tech and early-stage startups. I had a friend from grad school, who ended up being my developmental editor, who used to be an editorial exec in Hollywood. She had the whole movie perspective on how those structured plot elements. Movies are incredibly structured stories, and I don’t know that stuff. Having her perspective to help inform where the story could be improved was really useful. They sent back feedback in different forms. Some sent an email with high-level thoughts, some people sent me page references. I thought it through, took it on balance, incorporated it.

  Then I wanted to do a more in-depth, structural look at it because, as I said, I don’t really outline. That’s how I feel comfortable in the creative process but it means more work at the end because you end up having things that don’t work or don’t make sense or aren’t tight enough in terms of plot and character development. So I did three rounds of developmental editing with my friend from grad school. We made a lot of notes, had a couple of phone conversations, and then I would go through and address the problems I thought were important. We did three of those, and each got more gritty. The first one, she didn’t even make notes. She read it, wrote down thoughts, talked through some of the high-level issues. The next one was more scene-oriented, and the final one was more paragraph-by-paragraph.

  Once we were done with that, I did one more round of beta readers, different people, got different feedback, incorporate it… and that’s when Brad was giving a lot of detailed feedback. Finally, once we were satisfied with the content we moved onto language. So I did a round of copyediting, then two rounds of proofreading before formatting it for Kindle and print and all that.

  REEDSY

  Thanks for your time Eliot.

• TechCrunch - https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/eliot-pepers-bandwidth-is-a-riveting-novel-exploring-the-dark-side-of-feeds-and-geopolitics/

  Eliot Peper’s Bandwidth is a riveting novel exploring the dark side of feeds and geopolitics
  Danny Crichton@dannycrichton / May 1, 2018
  Comment
  Eliot Peper
  The feed is the greatest psychological and mental manipulation tool that has ever been invented. Every day, billions of people open apps and scroll through algorithmically selected content designed to emotively engage us. Through the feed, we enter an intellectual stupor, downloading information to our brains without critical thought, without filters. Who ultimately controls those feeds, and can they use that control to change not just the emotions of their audience, but our very understanding of reality?

  The feed and its discontents is the theme undergirding Bandwidth, the latest science fiction novel by Eliot Peper, released today by Amazon Publishing imprint 47North. The novel, the author’s sixth, is the story of Dag Calhoun, a lobbyist who gets caught up in a war over climate change and the world’s response to it. In this telling, activists fight not through picket signs and petitions, but instead with the modern weaponry of algorithms — controlling the feeds of global leaders to change their very understanding of the world.

  The book is straight out of the Peper oeuvre, combining a thriller plot with a deeper introspection of technology and its effect on our actions and our futures. It’s an engaging, electric read, but also one that forces us to confront the state of the world today and our impact as an industry on politics.

  The book is also the latest milestone in the entrepreneurial writing career of Peper, who migrated from the startup and VC worlds to pursue his creative passions full-time. He describes his background as “a bit of a pinball career path,” studying international environmental policy, working at a plasma arc startup in the clean energy space and then working at a venture firm.

  Yet through all of those experiences, something was gnawing on him about the content that he was reading, particularly about business. “Folks don’t want to publicize some of their less overtly positive experiences,” Peper said. “They don’t want to throw shade on other people, so business books sometimes miss some of the human experiences.”

  Peper, who has been a voracious reader his entire life, thought he could offer that missing link by writing speculative fiction. “Writing fiction, you have to synthesize your ideas about the world,” he explained, and “put that all in a story that is compelling and illuminates something about the world for readers.” That led to his first trilogy of novels called the Uncommon Stock series, which are thrillers set against the backdrop of a fast-growing startup and show the sorts of highs and lows (and danger!) you don’t get in the business shelves.

  Over time though, Peper has grown more philosophical about technology and its role in society, using his plots to explore ever more complicated connections of accelerating technological change. “We live in this world where our institutions and the tools we use every day are changing fast,” he explains, arguing that “my grandparents wouldn’t understand many, many things about my life today.” Peper often gets ideas for novels from the news and general events happening, and uses the medium of the novel to explore their nuances in-depth.

  That sort of thinking shows up in Cumulus, his fourth novel about an eponymous company that utilizes its vast user data to provide better transportation services called Fleet, but also uses that data to attempt to block criticism of the company. Peper, who is a native of Oakland, California, integrates the vast inequality that technology has created in Silicon Valley into the core of the plot.

  For Bandwidth, Peper wanted to respond to the challenges of the 2016 election, and the challenges of managing one’s own media diet. “In 2016 with the presidential campaign running in full swing, it felt that there was so much news that it was almost hard to escape from,” he said. “I really wanted to take more agency in the ideas and the stories I was inviting into my own heart.”

  That thinking led Peper to start speculating on what would happen if you controlled that intake. “If you could personally curate the media diet of someone else, could you control their thinking … could you change their world view? That was the seed of Bandwidth,” he said.

  Bandwidth is the first work in a trilogy, although each novel will be independent, set in the same universe but with different characters and themes. The next book is called Borderless, and will focus on the decline of the nation-state, and comes out October 30th.

QUOTED: "If you could personally curate the media diet of someone else, could you control their thinking ... could you change their world view? That was the seed of Bandwidth."

Eliot Peper's Bandwidth is a riveting novel exploring the dark side of feeds and geopolitics
Plus Company Updates. (May 3, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Plus Media Solutions
Full Text:
United States: TechCrunch has issued the following press release:

The feed is the greatest psychological and mental manipulation tool that has ever been invented. Every day, billions of people open apps and scroll through algorithmically selected content designed to emotively engage us. Through the feed, we enter an intellectual stupor, downloading information to our brains without critical thought, without filters. Who ultimately controls those feeds, and can they use that control to change not just the emotions of their audience, but our very understanding of reality?

The feed and its discontents is the theme undergirding Bandwidth, the latest science fiction novel by Eliot Peper, released today by Amazon Publishing imprint 47North. The novel, the author's sixth, is the story of Dag Calhoun, a lobbyist who gets caught up in a war over climate change and the world's response to it. In this telling, activists fight not through picket signs and petitions, but instead with the modern weaponry of algorithms -- controlling the feeds of global leaders to change their very understanding of the world.

The book is straight out of the Peper oeuvre, combining a thriller plot with a deeper introspection of technology and its effect on our actions and our futures. It's an engaging, electric read, but also one that forces us to confront the state of the world today and our impact as an industry on politics.

The book is also the latest milestone in the entrepreneurial writing career of Peper, who migrated from the startup and VC worlds to pursue his creative passions full-time. He describes his background as "a bit of a pinball career path," studying international environmental policy, working at a plasma arc startup in the clean energy space and then working at a venture firm.

Yet through all of those experiences, something was gnawing on him about the content that he was reading, particularly about business. "Folks don't want to publicize some of their less overtly positive experiences," Peper said. "They don't want to throw shade on other people, so business books sometimes miss some of the human experiences."

Peper, who has been a voracious reader his entire life, thought he could offer that missing link by writing speculative fiction. "Writing fiction, you have to synthesize your ideas about the world," he explained, and "put that all in a story that is compelling and illuminates something about the world for readers." That led to his first trilogy of novels called the Uncommon Stock series, which are thrillers set against the backdrop of a fast-growing startup and show the sorts of highs and lows (and danger!) you don't get in the business shelves.

Over time though, Peper has grown more philosophical about technology and its role in society, using his plots to explore ever more complicated connections of accelerating technological change. "We live in this world where our institutions and the tools we use every day are changing fast," he explains, arguing that "my grandparents wouldn't understand many, many things about my life today." Peper often gets ideas for novels from the news and general events happening, and uses the medium of the novel to explore their nuances in-depth.

That sort of thinking shows up in Cumulus, his fourth novel about an eponymous company that utilizes its vast user data to provide better transportation services called Fleet, but also uses that data to attempt to block criticism of the company. Peper, who is a native of Oakland, California, integrates the vast inequality that technology has created in Silicon Valley into the core of the plot.

For Bandwidth, Peper wanted to respond to the challenges of the 2016 election, and the challenges of managing one's own media diet. "In 2016 with the presidential campaign running in full swing, it felt that there was so much news that it was almost hard to escape from," he said. "I really wanted to take more agency in the ideas and the stories I was inviting into my own heart."

That thinking led Peper to start speculating on what would happen if you controlled that intake. "If you could personally curate the media diet of someone else, could you control their thinking ... could you change their world view? That was the seed of Bandwidth," he said.

Bandwidth is the first work in a trilogy, although each novel will be independent, set in the same universe but with different characters and themes. The next book is called Borderless, and will focus on the decline of the nation-state, and comes out October 30th.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Eliot Peper's Bandwidth is a riveting novel exploring the dark side of feeds and geopolitics." Plus Company Updates, 3 May 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537245120/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=238e14a5. Accessed 15 July 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A537245120

QUOTED: "Peper guides his story with a sure hand, lacing its narrative with issues and references that resonate powerfully."

Bandwidth
Publishers Weekly. 265.10 (Mar. 5, 2018): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Bandwidth

Eliot Peper. 47North, $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-1-5039-5442-7

In Peper's very credibly rendered near future, Dag Calhoun works for Apex, a lobbying firm whose clients include the Commonwealth, the world's biggest communication infrastructure provider. The Commonwealth's feeds, personally tailored to each individual, are described as "the permeable membrane through which you experienced and participated in culture, the arbiter of what you found when you searched and what you discovered when you dipped into the roiling, throbbing cosmos of global conversation." When Dag crosses paths with the enigmatic Emily Kim, he is shocked to learn that a group of "castaways" living with her off the grid on the San Juan Islands are manipulating the feed to shape global socioeconomic policy. Matters come to a head when Dag, who realizes that he himself has been manipulated for years by the castaways, discovers that his efforts to serve as their advocate to sway industrialists on international climate change initiatives is in direct conflict with one of Apex's most lucrative--and dangerous--clients. Peper guides his story with a sure hand, lacing its narrative with issues and references that resonate powerfully in the age of net neutrality, algorithms, and social media hacks. Agent: DongWon Song, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. (May)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bandwidth." Publishers Weekly, 5 Mar. 2018, p. 52. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530430276/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cdf6dfcf. Accessed 15 July 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A530430276

• NYTimes
  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/books/review/claire-north-84k.html?rref=collection%2Fissuecollection%2Ftodays-new-york-times
  Word count: 393

  QUOTED: "The depth and vulnerability of Dag’s perspective, his loneliness and the value he places on his few real friendships, kept “Bandwidth” feeling real and urgent."

  Amal El-Mohtar

  In a setting that could be a prequel to “Trail of Lightning,” Eliot Peper’s BANDWIDTH (47North, $24.95) is a thoughtful meditation on the ethics of power among those who broker it. Not far in our future, San Diego is a perpetually burning wasteland, the Arctic has melted and Dag Calhoun, a partner at a lobbying firm called Apex Group, helps rich people get richer from catastrophe.

  But while working on behalf of Commonwealth, a company that provides internet to most of the planet, Dag is recruited by a secret organization called the Island. Their ability to hack into people’s feeds — the augmented reality through which everyone experiences the world — grants them unprecedented powers of surveillance and persuasion. But while Dag’s in the business of breaking the world, the Island’s in the business of saving it — and they want Dag to be their double agent.

  “Bandwidth” is a book that savors everything: Dag dwells as much in the scents and tastes of coffee and tequila as he does in philosophical problems of means justifying ends and the limits of ethical persuasion. Peper manages a great deal of complexity without sacrificing clarity or pace, and I read it all in a single fascinated sitting.
  ADVERTISEMENT

  That said, the book gives me pause where its women are concerned. A portion of the plot hinges on the premise that one’s sexual predilections can be deliberately and artificially curated, and while I could see the effort made to embed that premise in the novel’s context, it still left a bad taste in my mouth; similar logic underpins rhetoric about “turning people gay” or “curing” homosexuality. Still, the depth and vulnerability of Dag’s perspective, his loneliness and the value he places on his few real friendships, kept “Bandwidth” feeling real and urgent.

  In an afterword, Peper observes that “in an age of acceleration, contemplation is power.” It’s a good note on which to end — perhaps with an exhortation to digital readers to seek this column in print, where you can linger and contemplate to your heart’s content.

• Critiquing Chemist
  https://critiquingchemist.com/2018/05/01/bandwidth-by-eliot-peper/
  Word count: 879

  QUOTED: "Sprinting right out of the gate, Bandwidth maintains a breakneck pace throughout, keeping the reader on the edge of their seats as they fly through this quick read."

  May 1, 2018

  Bandwidth by Eliot Peper

  Rate: 4.5/5

  Medium: Book

  Overview (No Spoilers):

  Having enjoyed two of Peper’s previous novels, Cumulus and Neon Fever Dream, I was excited to have received an ARC of his upcoming novel Bandwidth. Peper continues to develop and grow as a writer, with his newest novel being his best yet. In this fast paced read, we follow the perspective of Dag, a lobbyist whose past is peppered with a whole closet full of shady dealings. Although perhaps I should amend that idiom to the closet being actually overflowing into the entire house. Sprinting right out of the gate, Bandwidth maintains a breakneck pace throughout, keeping the reader on the edge of their seats as they fly through this quick read. As with Peper’s previous novels, advanced technology assumes one of the leading themes, specifically exploring not only the benefits but the capabilities and applications when in the hands of those with less than sound intentions. I thoroughly enjoyed the unique situation proposed in which the moral and ethical route was marred and ambiguous, forcing not only Dag to work through his own conclusions, but encouraging the reader to ponder as well. Overall, Bandwidth offers an intriguing glimpse of technology, political, and climate challenges that potentially await us foreseeable future, alongside exploring the quandary of how far one can stretch morality under the guise of ‘doing the right thing.’

  Additional Insight (Spoilers Abound):

  Will Javier and the rest of the Island’s genius inhabitants reconcile with Emily after her betrayal? What else has Emily done for the sake of the greater good that has gone beyond the this interesting group’s moral constraints.
  Will Rachel figure out that it was Javier that built the loopholes into Commonwealth? Did Emily build any back doors that Javier was ignorant of and wasn’t caught by the Commonwealth.
  I thought the ending, with setting up the governments vs. a massive company (Commonwealth), is well worth pondering and I’m curious if Peper will dive into this concept more in future books.
  The ending sets us up for more Analog novels! Will we get to see more Dag now that he has found himself and has grown a conscience? How will his past come back to haunt him as he attempts to lead a more ethical path?
  Were the mysterious partners angry at Dag for his abrupt resignation and undermining of a key client?
  The Analog bar was a reoccurring scene within Bandwidth. Are there other similar places of technological blackout?
  How did Lynn Chevalier record in Analog? I really thought that would come into play in Bandwidth, however perhaps in a following novel.
  As much as I disliked Empress of a Thousand Skies there were very similar technology capabilities and themes, however both authors focused on different user effects and applications. Additionally, Peper’s Bandwidth was significantly more developed, with regard to character and world building, along with overall level of detail.
  Vocabulary Builder:

  When reading it is common that I encounter words that I’m not privy to the exact definition, however it is easy to infer the meaning of the aforementioned word based on the context of the sentence and story. As such, relatively new to the Critiquing Chemist, you’ll find an additional section that includes vocabulary words that I encountered upon reading the book being reviewed that either had to look up the definition or a word I do not currently utilize on a regular basis in my everyday repertoire. This endeavor is easier when in the Kindle format, and potentially impossible with audiobooks, however I’m going to attempt to continue this section for future book reviews. I’ll be using the definitions from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

  Variegated: having discrete markings of different colors

  Agave: any of a genus (Agave of the family Agavaceae, the agave family) of plants having spiny-margined leaves and flowers in tall spreading panicles and including some cultivated for their fiber or sap or for ornament

  Repartee: a succession or interchange of clever retorts

  Dissonance: an instance of such inconsistency or disagreement

  Realpolitik: politics based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical or ethical objectives

  Despot: a ruler with absolute power and authority

  Riposte: a retaliatory verbal sally

  Accretive: the process of growth or enlargement by a gradual buildup

  Surfeit: an overabundant supply

  Betide: to happen especially as if by fate

  Triumvirate: a group or association of three

  Heuristic: involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods

  Moraine: an accumulation of earth and stones carried and finally deposited by a glacier

  Verdant: green in tint or color

  Insouciance: lighthearted unconcern

  Panopticon: an optical instrument combining the telescope and microscope