Let's build a world together.
My most recent Minecraft video has got 192,000 views, and 12,000 likes, in 24 hours.
My book posts are typically seen by anywhere between 4 and 20 people. They usually get no likes at all, unless I pay to promote them or share them to my group chat.
This huge chasm is not surprising. Minecraft lends itself to the visual mediums of tiktok and instagram, books do not. Minecraft is also hugely popular, whereas Phillip Carter is not yet a household name. I still have a lot of work to do to get there, mainly writing some more books and then publishing them.
(turns out writing books and publishing them is a big deal if you’re a writer).
I have done live readings on my instagram and tiktok, and they were popular, but posts don’t get anywhere unless I pay to promote them, and with how much profits an author gets from books (around $2 at most) it’s very hard for ads to break even.
Whereas Minecraft stuff, and jokes,
Essentially, it is much harder to pitch a book than it is to show people a cool thing you built. But that’s okay, because I am a storyteller, and as long as I am creating and telling stories and entertaining people, I am pretty happy with life. Minecraft gives me a new way to tell those stories, and as my channel grows, it will become the thing that pays for my book ads.
Pictured: Phillip Carter and Richard Dawkins hanging out. I thanked him for inspiring my Sci-Fi books, he asked what they were called, and about a week later I sold precisely one copy. I like to think that was him.
So evidently I can still go out to book events, meet smart people, and write my own books, and I am quite happy to let that grow naturally and organically - putting out a story every now and again, a poetry collection here or there1, whilst the block game provides for me a way to be clever and funny with an unmatched immediacy.
The huge popularity of my Minecraft content means that I can see a real future for it, a new way for me to tell stories and tell jokes. I've been doing it for two years already, streaming on twitch. Some of my new standup has come from those streams, where I've told a joke whilst placing blocks, and realised it was pretty good thanks to a kind comment, so written it down.
In that way I have had some very unconventional standup practice. I might not be going out every night like other comedians (for a long time this was simply not affordable to me), but I am telling jokes almost every night to a live audience regardless, and some of you have travelled here, to substack, to discover what my block-game brain can create when I turn my attentions to literature.
I hope you like what you discovered.
An invite
I am about to enter a new era as a content creator, where I put out regular Youtube videos about an adventure I have inside Minecraft. I will be telling jokes, inventing machines, and building a story along the way.
I invite you to it today because you can be there before episode one of the new series comes out (I am thinking of an October launch).
You might already be on the Youtube. It is where my old writing podcast lived, and it’s where it will return, but I have big plans to bring together these seemingly disparate parts of my life as an artist and to create something truly new.
Also, I am building a giant pyramid in the world. Every new subscriber will add a single block to that pyramid.
There are other perks, too. I’m working them out, but one idea was to name trees or statues after people who join my patreon. This is similar to the pre-order perks for Who Built The Humans? where two of my first ten readers supported the book and got their names inside it!
The Patreon is also automatically connected to my discord server, which is an exclusive chatroom for people. It also doubles as a writer’s retreat, because why not.
Minecraft is sort of like painting, except I don't have to tidy up after myself afterwards. I like that. I am bad at tidying.
So, to summarise.
This is an unconventional way to tell stories, which is why I am doing it.
Books will not slow down, I play Minecraft lots already.
I will build stuff from the books, in the game.
Some of my standup evolves on stream. You’ll hear it here first.
If you watch the live videos, you can suggest new things which I might build in the world, whilst telling jokes.
The videos will be significantly better than the one below, as I have been upgrading my software lately.
So if you want an unconventional type of story from me, come check out the Youtube channel, hang in the Twitch streams, and have a relaxing evening or two watching me build that giant castle in the background.
You can also check the new FREE FICTION FRIDAY, here.
(everything in the thumbnail of the below Youtube video was made by me over a few years on the world)
About poetry. An upcoming post will announce the title of my debut collection.