Steven Booth is an author, artist, publisher, and entrepreneur. Having earned a BA and two master’s degrees in the fields of nonprofit management and teaching, Steven has found his calling as a publisher and full-time creative. The founder and CEO of Genius Books & Media, Inc., he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and business partner, Leya, and a revolving collection of cats.
Market Like It’s 1999 is a practical guide for authors, artists, and entrepreneurs who are tired of chasing algorithms and marketing trends that never seem to stick.
Instead of offering hacks or shortcuts, this book returns to fundamentals that worked long before social media dashboards and automation tools took over. It explains why marketing often feels uncomfortable, confusing, or fake—and how to replace that feeling with clarity.
At the center of the book is a simple but powerful question: What business are you really in? Not what product is being sold, but what problem is being solved. By answering that question clearly, marketing becomes less about performance and more about connection.
Through practical examples and straightforward language, the book shows how testing ideas, recognizing real signals, and showing up consistently in the right places can build trust over time. Phones, email, websites, live rooms, and modern tools all still work—when they are used to support real contact instead of replace it.
This is not a promise of overnight success. It is a framework for sustainable visibility. The focus is on steady presence, clear communication, and building something that lasts without burning out or losing integrity.
For creatives and business owners who want marketing to feel honest again, this book offers a durable path forward.
The Art of Being Foundis a clear, human guide to how creators and fans discover each other in the modern world. It is not a marketing manual. It is a practical way to understand how people actually move through the world, what they pay attention to, and why certain voices stay with them long after the moment of discovery.
If you make anything—stories, music, videos, art, ideas—you already know the inner tension between wanting to be seen and wanting to stay safe. This book helps you approach that moment with clarity instead of fear. It explains why the “fear of looking foolish” is so common for creators, why consistency matters more than volume, and how small, steady actions build trust over time. You will learn how fans look for the voices that feel like home, how emotional resonance works, and how to create a presence that is sustainable for you, even on difficult days.
Instead of pushing you to be louder, this book shows you how to become more visible in ways that fit your personality, energy, and creative weather. It also offers a realistic look at the roles of publishers, curators, reviewers, and the wider ecosystem your work enters—what they can do for you, and what will always remain yours alone.
Whether you are at the beginning of your creative life or many years into it, The Art of Being Found gives you a gentle, steady framework for showing up in the world without burning out—and for letting the right fans find you in their own time.
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<div class="element-number case-upper"><span class="ttext"><span class="element-number-term">CHAPTER</span> <span class="element-number-number">4</span></span></div>
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<h1 class="element-title case-upper font-variant-normal"><span class="ttext">HOW FANS MOVE THROUGH THE WORLD</span></h1>
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<p class="first first-in-chapter first-full-width first-with-first-letter-f"><span class="first-letter first-letter-f first-letter-without-punctuation">F</span>ans do not move through the world in straight lines. Their attention wanders the way weather does—slowly, subtly, pulled by currents they scarcely notice. A fan’s path toward a work is never a single moment, never one dazzling encounter or one perfectly placed recommendation. It is a drift of instincts, curiosities, private rituals, and quiet affinities. To understand how works are found today, we have to step away from the mechanics of platforms and return to something older, more human, and far more enduring: the inner life of the fan.</p>
<p class="subsq">Every fan lives inside their own world of meaning. They have their own patterns of curiosity, habits of seeking, ways of moving toward the stories that will matter to them. Some wander through bookstores with the reverence of a pilgrim, touching spines, reading first pages (or last—or if you’re like me, somewhere in the middle), waiting for a spark.</p>
<p class="subsq">Others comb through search engines, pursuing faint trails of genre, theme, or mood until they land on something that feels like home. Still others follow the quiet echoes of conversation—an offhand mention in an interview, a reference in a podcast, a thoughtful essay that leads, almost incidentally, to the writer’s name. And many more simply drift through their daily lives until a sentence, an image, or a feeling catches them off guard and lodges in their mind.</p>
<p class="subsq">If we looked closely enough, we would see that every fan has a private ecology of discovery, built not from algorithms or formats but from the rhythms of their own personality. Some are seekers, scanning constantly for the next story, the next voice, the next emotional experience that will widen their world. Seekers hunt by instinct. They browse review sites, search phrases, and online nooks the way a naturalist explores a field: eyes open, senses attuned, always ready for a flicker of movement. They may never click “follow” on anything, but they pay exquisite attention to the patterns they recognize. A good sentence can stay with them for days. A compelling premise can prompt half an hour of research. A single footnote can send them searching for a creator’s entire backlist.</p>
<p class="subsq">Other fans move through the world more quietly. They are not actively searching so much as absorbing the signals around them. A quote shared by a friend. A novel mentioned in an article. A feeling they can’t shake after reading a passage. These fans aren’t passive—they are receptive. They allow the world to introduce works into their lives in their own time, trusting that what matters will find them when they’re ready. And when something finally does catch their attention, they approach it with a kind of tenderness, circling around it until they feel the moment of readiness settle in.</p>
<p class="subsq">And then there are fans who fall in love with a voice before they even fall in love with a work. They encounter a writer somewhere—perhaps years before the writer releases anything new—and they keep that voice tucked in their memory. Sometimes this is a deliberate attachment, an intentional act of “I want more of this person.” More often, it is the softest of recognitions, the barest sense of familiarity, the sort of feeling that grows without needing to be encouraged. These fans become loyal long before they become visible, and often long before the creator ever knows they exist.</p>
<p class="subsq">What all fans share, regardless of their habits, is the profound way they relate to stories and the people who tell them. Humans are wired to respond to voices. We are drawn to patterns of thought, to emotional textures, to narrative rhythms that feel compatible with our own interior landscapes. When a fan encounters a writer whose voice resonates, the connection is not merely intellectual—it is neurological, emotional, even somatic. As the research on fandom shows, our brains respond to characters, narrators, and creators in ways that mimic real empathy and real relationship. We fill in the gaps instinctively; we take on emotional textures unconsciously; we develop genuine affection for voices we have never met in person.</p>
<p class="subsq">A fan does not need direct contact with a creator to feel connected to them. They do not need a comment thread or a social media exchange. They do not need a newsletter reply. Connection happens internally. It is built from exposure, repetition, and emotional congruence—tiny signals that accumulate in the fan’s mind. Over time, these signals form a sense of the creator as a presence, a companion, even a guide. This is why a single sentence in an interview can spark attachment, or why a fan who has never once interacted publicly can still buy everything a creator writes the moment it appears.</p>
<p class="subsq">Fans also carry stories with them long after they close the book. They remember the feeling of being understood, the comfort of companionship, the joy of discovery, the surprise of insight. They return to those who gave them that experience, sometimes out of loyalty, sometimes out of longing, sometimes simply because the world feels a little more navigable in the company of a familiar voice. This is not fandom. This is the ordinary, enduring magic of human attachment.</p>
<p class="subsq">If we step back far enough, we realize that all fan behavior—seeking, drifting, researching, lurking, following, recommending—is part of a single, ongoing motion. Fans move toward the voices that feel like home. They move toward clarity, toward empathy, toward resonance. They move toward what feels real. And they do this regardless of the decade, the medium, the dominant technology, or the current fashion of discovery. Fans behaved this way in 1994, in 2009, in 2025, and they will behave this way long after our current tools have vanished.</p>
<p class="subsq">To understand fans, then, is to understand something simple: People want to feel something authentic. They want to be guided, surprised, comforted, challenged, delighted. They want to encounter a mind that speaks in a way that aligns with their own sense of the world. And once they find that voice, they want to stay close to it—quietly or openly, intermittently or faithfully, privately or publicly. This is the gravitational pull at the heart of reading—or consuming any form of creativity. It is not technological. It is not generational. It is not new.</p>
<p class="subsq">It is human.</p>
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Charlotte Wilson is an investigative journalist reporting on a global pandemic that seems to have no identifiable cause. When she is contacted by the COO of a multinational biotech company claiming he has the answer to what’s making people sick, Charlotte and her producer Nick start dreaming of Pulitzers and national syndication.
But as she begins to uncover the truth, Charlotte discovers she is at the center of a conspiracy that is 12 years in the making, one that touches every part of her professional and personal life. Millions of lives depend on her breaking the news, but the story is so big, will anyone believe it? Charlotte may not live long enough to find out.
Steven Booth’s The Orchard is many things – an intriguing mystery, an intense suspense tale, a terrifyingly plausible bio-thriller – but overall it’s just plain great. Pick it up at your own risk. You’ll be in its grip from the first page to the last…and thinking about it long after you put it down.
—Steve Hockensmith, author the Holmes on the Range mysteries and The White Magic Five and Dime
5.0from 1 reader
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<h1 id='c6'><i>Chapter Five</i></h1>
<div>I sat down in the booth in the small café. I wondered how Nick had found this place. It was a fifties-style setup, with pictures of Elvis, Marilyn, and Ike everywhere. There were jukeboxes at the tables, and the booths looked like they were stripped directly from the interior of an old Corvette or Bel Air. I signaled the waitress, who wore a silly pink gingham outfit, a little pink hat, and an intense air of boredom. She also had the requisite facemask and gloves on, to try to stave off WBS. That this restaurant was even open was a bit of a miracle.</div>
<div class='indent'>After slopping coffee into our cups, the waitress wandered off to chat with a coworker, without even stopping to wipe up the splatter.</div>
<div class='indent'>“What’s so damned important that I had to fly thirteen hundred miles to Wisconsin to meet you in this dump? You said it was juicy. Come on, spill it.”</div>
<div class='indent'>He smiled, the big silly grin brightening his stubbly face.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Well?” I prompted.</div>
<div class='indent'>“It’s Verigro,” he said, as if that explained everything.</div>
<div class='indent'>I waited. He continued to smile. I opened a creamer and poured it slowly.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Aren’t you going to ask me about it?” he asked, the smile falling ever so slightly.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You’re getting to it, I’m sure.” I sipped my coffee. It tasted liked it had been burning for hours.</div>
<div class='indent'>Nick huffed. “You take all the fun out of things, you know that, Lotte?”</div>
<div class='indent'>I decided to take pity on him. “Okay, fine. Gee, Nick,” I said with mock enthusiasm, “what about Verigro?”</div>
<div class='indent'>The smile returned. “There’s something going on. Something big. Peter Youngs wants to talk to you.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Who’s that?” I had never heard of him.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Oh, just the Chief Operating Officer.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Hold on!” I said. Nick shushed me and looked around as if CNN was sitting on his shoulder. “Hold on,” I repeated, more softly this time. “The COO? Why the hell would he want to talk to us?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“No, not us. He wants to talk to you. Asked for you specifically. Wouldn’t say what it was. I doubt he wants to show you pictures from his last vacation.”</div>
<div class='indent'>I sat back in my seat, which made flatulent noises as I shifted. Verigro was the largest biotech firm in the country, maybe the world. It made Monsanto look like a high school chemistry class, and Du Pont look like a baking-soda volcano. If I remembered correctly, Peter Youngs was Verigro’s rising star. He was billed as young, brilliant, and powerful. If he had something to say, and he had to tell it to an investigative reporter from Seattle, it must be one hell of a scandal.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Do we have a meeting?” I asked, keeping my voice almost to a whisper.</div>
<div class='indent'>“About two hours from now. Some restaurant on Third Street. He originally suggested he meet you at Lake Park, but I told him it was too cloak and dagger.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Did you do a background?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Right here,” he said, handing over his portable. I paged through some basic stuff: Verigro’s history, its current stock price, its board of directors—and I stopped. Errol Foster—the owner of Foster Media Network, in other words, our boss—held a position on their board.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Did you see this?” I said, turning the portable so that he could look.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yeah,” he said, nodding. The smile was plastered to his face again.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You know he’s going to go apeshit if he gets a hold of the fact that we are following this story.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“If it pans out, it’ll be the biggest scoop in years. He’s got to see that the story is better for the network than whatever he’s got invested in Verigro shares. He’s always been a health food kinda guy. Not exactly a biotech fanatic.” He took a sip of his coffee and lowered his eyes. “Besides,” he said into the cup, “you can always sweet-talk him into running it.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Nick,” I said, raising my voice again, “I’ve told you before to drop it. Foster and I haven’t had anything to do with each other in years. I doubt I could sweet-talk him into checking his watch.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”</div>
<div class='indent'>I glowered at him, then went back to paging through Nick’s research. Verigro began as a participant in the Human Genome Project back in the 1990s. Fifteen years ago, they pioneered the technology for selective codon sequencing of DNA, which allowed them to write codons to order. They could now insert foreign genes precisely into the DNA sequence of nearly any organism and do it cheaply. If it came down to it, they could rewrite the entire genome of an organism from the files they had in their database. I kept waiting for them to start programming Tyrannosaurs, but that wasn’t the business they were in. They made transgenic foods—mostly crops, but some transgenic animals as well—economical and safe, with little chance of replicative fading. Verigro’s flagship product was BioStar, a gene from some unpronounceable thermophilic deep-sea bacteria which programs crops to stay fresh without refrigeration and maintain the nutritional value of foods after cooking. BioStar was hailed as a miracle, especially in third world counties. No more famine. Verigro was the hero of the biotech world.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You think it’s about BioStar?” I asked. The waitress approached to refill our coffee cups, and Nick leaned back in the booth as nonchalantly as he could muster.</div>
<div class='indent'>Once the waitress had retreated behind the counter, Nick moved forward again, conspiratorially. “Yeah, I do,” he said simply.</div>
<div class='indent'>I looked at him for a moment, trying to remember. “Isn’t their CEO running for Senate?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yeah, Jackie Hughes is the front-runner, and is supposed to win in a landslide.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“If we run this story, it will destroy Hughes’s political career.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yep,” Nick said.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Fuck,” I said quietly. If there was something wrong with BioStar, then this really was a Pulitzer waiting to happen.</div>
<div class='indent'>“I know the feeling,” Nick said.</div>
<div class='indent'>“The meeting’s in two hours you said?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yeah. Macchione’s Italian Garden. Just you two.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“But you got us a truck, right? In case he wants to talk on the record?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“No. No truck. We’re flying under the radar on this one.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“What do you mean, no truck? Didn’t you get this cleared with Jared?” Jared was our news director in Seattle.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Nope. I wanted to see what we had before I stuck our necks out. There is a small but real chance that Youngs just wants to air some corporate dirty laundry.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“You unmitigated ass,” I said, and I meant it. “Your plan was to get the story, then have me use my feminine wiles to persuade Foster to run a piece that could possibly cost him several million dollars in stock? Is that about right?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Well, when you put it that way…” he trailed off.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You have to tell Jared. Call him right now!” I commanded.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Look, Lotte. I’m the producer. This is my call. If we screw up, it will be my ass, not yours. You have to trust me, okay?”</div>
<div class='indent'>I sighed. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “I do trust you, Nick. But this is crazy, even for you.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, the smile returning.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Did you at least get me a hotel room? I’ll need to freshen up before I meet with Youngs.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Next door.” I looked out the window to see a large, modern-looking hotel. “Parking’s underground. The key is waiting at the front desk. I brought you a suit. It’s in your room.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“At least you did something right,” I grumbled.</div>
<div class='indent'>“I heard that,” Nick said sweetly.</div>
<div class='indent'>I headed for my car with visions of a shower and a quick nap in my future.</div>
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