Thank you all for your thoughts and feedback
I certainly groan whenever Stephen King or others create yet another protagonist who is a writer. And yeah, I agree this story is more likely to be appreciated by writers, or those who follow all the
hysteria debates about the future of books, or four out of five dentists who chew gum, than by readers who are/do none of the above. But in this case, it was kind of the whole point of the story that he was a writer -- I couldn't make him a detective, for example, and still tell the same story -- so I felt okay about that. And given that podcast consumers of scifi tend to be pretty hip to and caring about the topics covered in my story, I feel pretty darn good about the home my story found.
And the story itself was meant as a satire, of course, taking people's most doomalicious predictions of how ebooks are going to destroy fiction (or at least the incentive to create quality fiction), and pushing that to the extreme. It was certainly fun to write. I fully admit the whole economic model of it is a bit shaky (I mean, who really believes that public arts funding for writers would EVER get past the GOP?), heck, maybe even shakier than expecting to make real money selling your ebook on Amazon for .99 cents, but again, I'm not being a true hard scifi futurist predicting that the eMob may really take over publishing and the patronage system will actually return. Everyone knows that in the future we will be slaves to our alien overlords and have no time for creating or consuming fiction. So we might as well have fun while we can. And I can only hope in the future (before The Great Conquering) to improve as a writer and tell stories that appeal to everyone (like Stephenie Meyer does!), and don't leave so many unsatisfied readers. And, of course, that my eMob rep will promote it.
Thanks again to everyone for listening to it or reading it. It is quite an honor, truly.
Randy