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babydonthurtme posted:Yeah, pretty much. David Gaughran has a long post talking about their surcharge, which is a separate charge they even used to apply to free books. I'm sure there might be regional issues wrt ebook delivery or licensing (at least for the bigger publishers), but it doesn't account for the huge cut they are taking. The amazon reviews for that book all read like they're written by the same person. They don't sound like reviews, they sound like book blurbs.
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Aug 13, 2011 21:56
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Well, got my first book self-edit done today. About to send it to a few trusted friends for beta reading, and depending on how that goes, should be sending it out for professional editing in a month or so. Pretty excited, though self-editing took way, way longer than I'd anticipated. A good learning experience, however. Back to writing book 2. 22k words in so far, but I've been so focused on editing it'll probably take me a bit to get back into the groove.
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Aug 13, 2011 23:16
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Mortanis posted:Well, got my first book self-edit done today. About to send it to a few trusted friends for beta reading, and depending on how that goes, should be sending it out for professional editing in a month or so. Pretty excited, though self-editing took way, way longer than I'd anticipated. A good learning experience, however. Congrats! I had to take a break for months before I went back to my second book (well, being in my last semester of college didn't help). About halfway done with my second book now.
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Aug 14, 2011 00:25
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What's the best way to seperate paragraphs in which the narrative switches? I was thinking of just having * * * But would a line break be better in some instances?
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Aug 15, 2011 12:55
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justcola posted:What's the best way to seperate paragraphs in which the narrative switches? I was thinking of just having If you put a line break, won't that make it jump pages on the e-readers?
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Aug 15, 2011 17:03
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justcola posted:What's the best way to seperate paragraphs in which the narrative switches? I was thinking of just having Use the asterisks.
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Aug 15, 2011 18:30
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Yeah, I used a row of asterisks in my book and they showed up fine even on Kindle's notoriously finicky formatting.
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Aug 16, 2011 07:54
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I took some advice from other I am writing what I call K23 Sides Stories, very short stories that show the everyday goings on in my world. I've posted the first two: The Tale of Mr. Alumooney Bedtime for Elves Do people do anything similar?
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Aug 16, 2011 15:54
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Sorry, newbie here, but I've been exploring Kindle Direct Publishing for self-publishing an e-comic. Naturally I want to keep as low a price as possible to attract buyers, but it seems that for an e-comic of any reasonable image quality Amazon's delivery fees would make it unviable. Let's say I charge the minimum possible of £1.49 and the comic is 10 megabytes (what I assume is acceptable quality for 22 illustrated pages), that's £1.00 of that £1.49 gone in delivery. From what's left over I get 34 pence profit per sale. Is this the best deal available on the market, or can I do better somewhere else? I'm assuming above, of course, that delivery fees apply irrespective of whether something is transferred to the buyer over wiFi or 3G. Am I right?
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Aug 16, 2011 18:12
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I just put up a novel on the Amazon Kindle store. I have no idea if it'll sell well at all, since I don't really have $$ to do much proper marketing. But gently caress it, I love writing and I just wanna get some stuff out there, see if it's worth it.
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Aug 17, 2011 03:42
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I thought it had been processing for ages but I hadn't finalized the costing, sheesh. In the sleepy villages and old mining towns in the north of England walk Oscar and Apples. Two drug dealing brothers who live in the shadow of a great hill, growing a field of cannabis that could supply the whole county. As summer draws to a close and they prepare to collect the illicit crop, their numerous enemies begin to plot and scheme to bring the brothers down. Who will harvest the marijuana fields? Who will win the heart of the most beautiful woman in town? Which brother is taller? Find out by reading 'OSCAR AND APPLES'! http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005FCKIKU boom
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Aug 17, 2011 14:48
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I quite like the cover. Glad we could help deciding on the final version. Adding to lists.
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Aug 17, 2011 20:40
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(nothing to see here)
Azure_Horizon fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Nov 2, 2013 |
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Aug 17, 2011 21:56
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That's a really cool cover. Does it fit on the Kindle? Seems pretty tall. Anywho, I'll add links.
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Aug 17, 2011 21:59
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FingerbangMisfire posted:That's a really cool cover. Does it fit on the Kindle? Seems pretty tall. it does. It's 500x1280. But yeah, my friend, the illustrator, when he showed me that cover? I just about died. I've never seen a cooler cover on a book, aside from some of the covers for Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski. Azure_Horizon fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Aug 17, 2011 |
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Aug 17, 2011 22:11
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Exioce posted:Sorry, newbie here, but I've been exploring Kindle Direct Publishing for self-publishing an e-comic. Naturally I want to keep as low a price as possible to attract buyers, but it seems that for an e-comic of any reasonable image quality Amazon's delivery fees would make it unviable. how are you formatting the images? When I exported Zombies of the World to Kindle, I had a hard time trying to figure out how large to make images.
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Aug 18, 2011 00:05
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I also put up The Dream Metropolis on Smashbooks as well, if you could get that link in there!
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Aug 18, 2011 01:25
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Azure_Horizon posted:
Absolutely love the cover and the title. Good luck!
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Aug 18, 2011 02:32
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 That Cover!
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Aug 18, 2011 02:55
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Thanks dudes. Let's hope the cover is enough to generate interest somewhere. I don't have any $$ to market it properly. =[
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Aug 18, 2011 04:02
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Twitter, social network bombing and book review blogs is pretty much all any of us have done (though I did buy an ad on SA, which was neat), so I wouldn't worry about that. You can succeed without spending a dime on marketing. Just need to self-promote.
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Aug 18, 2011 04:18
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FingerbangMisfire posted:Twitter, social network bombing and book review blogs is pretty much all any of us have done (though I did buy an ad on SA, which was neat), so I wouldn't worry about that. You can succeed without spending a dime on marketing. Just need to self-promote. Book review blogs? Like which ones?
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Aug 18, 2011 04:44
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FingerbangMisfire posted:Twitter, social network bombing and book review blogs is pretty much all any of us have done (though I did buy an ad on SA, which was neat), so I wouldn't worry about that. You can succeed without spending a dime on marketing. Just need to self-promote. speaking of promotion, what have you guys done for middle and long term marketing? I've sent out the press releases, requests for reviews and mentioned my book on social networks but I want to keep reaching out to new people but I'm not sure how to keep promoting it.
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Aug 18, 2011 06:12
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Azure_Horizon posted:Book review blogs? Like which ones? Big Al's Books and Pals is great. Daily Cheap Reads as well. Those are just off the top of my head. clockworkjoe posted:speaking of promotion, what have you guys done for middle and long term marketing? I haven't thought about it much, honestly. I've mostly just tried to maintain a strong web presence.
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Aug 18, 2011 06:52
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clockworkjoe posted:speaking of promotion, what have you guys done for middle and long term marketing? I've sent out the press releases, requests for reviews and mentioned my book on social networks but I want to keep reaching out to new people but I'm not sure how to keep promoting it. To me, posting on forums seems to be the best long term strategy. You could article write under a pen name or something and put those articles on places like hubpages or your own "pen name / book review" blog, but be aware you will need to fill that kind of stuff with other content as well or people will know it's really just you spamming your book and move on.
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Aug 18, 2011 13:10
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clockworkjoe posted:how are you formatting the images? When I exported Zombies of the World to Kindle, I had a hard time trying to figure out how large to make images. Right now I just have the first page as a jpeg file, not even coloured in. When I resize it down to something that would fit within the Kindle size of 600 x 800 pixels, I get a file of 111 kilobytes. I suppose that's not too bad, as 22 such pages would come in at less than 3 megabytes. How much the colour would add to the file size though I can't say until I get my hands on a completed page (which should be today).
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Aug 18, 2011 17:44
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Azure_Horizon posted:The Dream Metropolis Amazon posted:Pricing information not available. Smashwords lists it for $3.99, though. (And, I'm going to have to second the "great cover" comments here.) Also, FingerbangMisfire, I spotted something odd in the OP: quote:[http://www.amazon.com/Unearthed-Des...10139007&sr=1-1]Unearthed Destiny by Rick Ferraro[/url] Don't know if it's a forum hiccup, but refreshing the page didn't work, so I figure I might as well point it out.
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Aug 19, 2011 04:05
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Thanks man. Will fix.
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Aug 19, 2011 05:10
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vilkacis posted:Smashwords lists it for $3.99, though. I have no idea what's up with Amazon, honestly. It's $3.99 there for what it's worth, just follow the Smashwords link for now.
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Aug 19, 2011 10:24
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What do you all consider more important: Editing or a good cover? Professional editing will help with narration, picking up plot holes, finding slow parts as well as grammar and comma problems. Professional editing could change a good book to a great book, or at least help make a mediocre book hurt less. It only helps for people that pick up your book, though - it might help them to buy more of your books, but it only matters once they've been hooked. A good cover will catch more eyes, though. It helps with that initial pull in, hopefully converting a "maybe buyer" into a purchase. Sadly, a lot of people seem to pass on a book with a mediocre cover, even if the blurb is interesting and it might be something they might otherwise buy, because a mediocre cover says "unprofessional" to them. It's sad people look that way, but true none the less. Put another way, if you had enough cash to cover only one, which do you think would A: produce better sales, and B: make you feel better about your work?
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Aug 19, 2011 23:19
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Both are very important, but I would go with one that's not only cheaper but easier to acquire: A good cover.
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Aug 19, 2011 23:30
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If the editor would absolutely 100% catch the errors and was guaranteed to make my book better, I'd go with the editor. But I doubt that's the case. On the other hand, I know that working with an artist, I can 100% get a cover I love provided the guy listens to me and doesn't suck. So I would probably go with the cover. Not because I'm cocksure about my writing, but because I have a fascination with how an artist my interpret it.
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Aug 20, 2011 00:14
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Cover and description will net you the short term sales, editing will net you the long term sales due to reviews, word of mouth, sequel purchases, etc. So both if you hope to continue to sell books in larger quantities, with each relying on the other.
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Aug 20, 2011 00:17
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Hey, you cheated  EDIT: I am myself a cheater since I have an editor who works for free, making the cover choice easy. FingerbangMisfire fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Aug 20, 2011 |
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Aug 20, 2011 01:15
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Mortanis posted:What do you all consider more important: Editing or a good cover? Why would you sell your work short? Editor, editor, editor. Do you want to be known as a lovely writer with good covers?
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Aug 20, 2011 01:24
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So like, I have a novella live on amazon.com for $2.99. They wouldn't let me charge less (.99$ was what I was wanting), because I'm just a small-fry self-published no-name rear end in a top hat. Or something to that effect. Anyways. It's titled American Idle, and I'd love ideas for a better cover than what I have. Link is here: http://www.amazon.com/American-Idle-ebook/dp/B0057OBSZA/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1 Also maybe some ideas on free publicity? Edit: Somehow I missed the other pricing thing. I fixed it so that the cost is $.99. Thanks for the heads up. I shoulda known I missed SOMETHING. The_Doc fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Aug 20, 2011 |
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Aug 20, 2011 03:10
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You can definitely charge $.99. I charge $.99 for all my shorts. What is this no less than $2.99 madness you speak of?
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Aug 20, 2011 03:43
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FingerbangMisfire posted:You can definitely charge $.99. I charge $.99 for all my shorts. When I was working out the details of my book before publishing it, Amazon refused to let me go under $2.99. But I wasn't planning on selling a 260pp novel for any less than $3.99 at the moment. There wasn't an option to go cheaper.
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Aug 20, 2011 04:25
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Doctor Zero posted:Why would you sell your work short? Editor, editor, editor. Do you want to be known as a lovely writer with good covers? See, that's how I feel as well. I'm actually kinda surprised at the number of replies about the cover. It's not just about sales for me. Naturally I'd like to make money, but I feel I'd be more rewarded, personally, by having an editor tackle my stuff. Yes, if you can do both, then you should do both. I'm looking at maybe not being able to do both, and feel editing would be my best bet, but wanted to see what others thought.
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Aug 20, 2011 05:15
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Azure_Horizon posted:When I was working out the details of my book before publishing it, Amazon refused to let me go under $2.99. But I wasn't planning on selling a 260pp novel for any less than $3.99 at the moment. You can do $.99 if you opt for the 35% royalty instead of 70%. Otherwise, yeah, you're right.
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Aug 20, 2011 06:29
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