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I assure you that this is completely and totally unrelated to anything, but: I edit. I believe your book belongs to you, and I'm merely a second pair of eyes offering an alternate perspective to help you make your book -- which belongs to you -- the best it can be. I also don't blog about my clients, because seriously why would you that is insane. One client says: "... for anyone thinking of getting editing done, vseslav rocks; I've been working with him on my novella and he's been fast, helpful and thorough. I recommend giving him a try if you can  I do not, sadly, know the mayor of Boston, nor do I wwebsite as on the internet. But I love words, I sleep with the Chicago Manual of Style, and my rates are negotiable. I can be reached at vseslav.botkin@gmail.com or PM. The first thousand words are free; all genres are welcome. (I also worship Glycon the snake god, but I'm not like a dick about it.) Happy 2012, Self-Publishing Goons!
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Jan 1, 2012 11:38
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Holy christ. Major end of the year push out of nowhere - 76 copies last week. Anyone else see a massive increase from their normal sales? For reference, the week before I sold 36, and the week before I sold 27. Really, really glad I bumped the price. Dunno if that had anything to do with it but w/e in theory I'll finally see a royalty check in two months!
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Jan 1, 2012 16:35
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Roar posted:Holy christ. Major end of the year push out of nowhere - 76 copies last week. Anyone else see a massive increase from their normal sales? For reference, the week before I sold 36, and the week before I sold 27. I suddenly sold about 10 copies of my best selling book just yesterday. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to holiday Kindle sales; on the other hand, it also moved the book to its highest ranking ever (about #22,000 overall, and #7 in Kindle poker books), so that was nice. Edit: Overall, it was my best month even before yesterday, too. I sold over 40 copies of that book, and over 60 total books for the month. The best selling book is priced at $4.99, too, so I'm expecting a reasonably nice royalty check in a couple months. Also, I don't know if it was mentioned here, but some people have seen their Amazon payment settings automatically reset to "Check" from EBT. It happened to me, and it's definitely worth checking your settings to make sure. OrangeKing fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jan 1, 2012 |
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Jan 1, 2012 18:36
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Going to a holiday party last night and meeting people who didn't know me but had read my books was weird. To them I was just AN AUTHOR and not a friend of theirs who had written some stuff...
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Jan 1, 2012 19:56
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leb388 posted:He also posted a nice passive aggressive blog post about me, saying I'd be a better writer if I followed religious principles. And while we're discussing holiday sales, I got... one! Maybe I should up the price after all.
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Jan 2, 2012 00:40
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Since we are sharing numbers, I'll chime in. 50 copies earning $209.65 284 copies of the assorted parts: $190.00 64 copies of SS: $133.95 60 copies of my various Erotic shorts that I started about week 2 in Dec.: $125.40 These numbers don't include the scant few sales from BN and SW. I totaled it all up @ $659.00, half of which will be donated to Doctors Without Borders. The only thing that sucks is having to wait till Feb. till I actually get the payment for Dec. I plan on running the same charity promotion every year, and hope it will become more and more popular! MattDaddy fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jun 22, 2013 |
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Jan 2, 2012 02:41
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MattDaddy posted:Since we are sharing numbers, I'll chime in. Awesome! My goal for this month is 100 total book sales between all of my titles, and to release another book by the end of the month. Writing new stuff is tons of fun, and seeing the passive income roll in from the stuff I wrote months ago is very rewarding. Thank you for existing, self-publishing/the Kindle.
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Jan 2, 2012 02:56
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My goal is to break 20 units sold. Here's to hoping.
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Jan 2, 2012 04:44
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I've published three works since starting in December, and managed to sell 20 copies via Amazon, 3 via B&N, and 5 through Smashwords. 28 is pretty decent, right? I mean, that's like laundry money and bus fare.
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Jan 2, 2012 04:48
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If it makes you guys feel any better, I'm talking about erotica. My sci-fi short story still has sold just about jack poo poo.
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Jan 2, 2012 04:59
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I released Antigen the week before Christmas and I've had 25 sales. I think that about exhausts my friends and family, though.
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Jan 2, 2012 19:08
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Humbaba posted:I released Antigen the week before Christmas and I've had 25 sales. I think that about exhausts my friends and family, though. I wish I had 25 friends and family willing to buy one of my books! On the other hand, I guess non-fiction is a little more specialized...most of my friends aren't interested in reading a poker book. It amazes me how quickly these things can snowball, at least relative to your previous sales. It took me three months to make enough money to get Amazon to send me a $13 payment when I first started; I think I made more than that on the first day of this year. It's hardly like I'm getting rich or anything, but still. The point being: for those who are frustrated about their sales (or lack thereof), believe me, they can suddenly take off when you least expect it, for reasons you don't even understand. I still don't think my book was featured anywhere or anything like that; it was selling a copy every few days until late November, when it got up to about a copy per day, and then the last week or so, it's been selling several copies each day.
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Jan 2, 2012 20:08
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Roar posted:If it makes you guys feel any better, I'm talking about erotica. My sci-fi short story still has sold just about jack poo poo. How many erotica stories do you have listed?
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Jan 2, 2012 22:56
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Humbaba posted:How many erotica stories do you have listed? Four. It would be five if not for Skyrim.
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Jan 3, 2012 07:57
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Roar posted:Four. It would be five if not for Skyrim. Skyrim does the same thing to me, or I should say, it did, but I've lost my inescapable need to play it constantly! I have 5 erotic books out now, with my goal being to write 2 every week for the next 3 months. It's seriously going to be a challenge. I'm not comfortable selling something less than 6k words. The last thing I want my pen name to be known for is writing overpriced smut. I'm perfectly fine writing reasonably priced smut. By the time the 3 month finish line gets here, I should have over 30 total titles for sale. I'll definitely report back at the end of this month to show my progress. If sales get crazy like I am hoping they will, I'll write a book/guide to the process I use. (No, it's nothing illegal or plagiaristic.) Is plagiaristic even a word?
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Jan 3, 2012 13:29
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I thought about writing some "erotica" in order to make some cash, but honestly I cannot seem to actually write out a sex scene to save my life. Nothing like failing at writing porn to make you feel kinda  about how awesome you are in the bedroom.
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Jan 3, 2012 15:01
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I thought about writing some "erotica" in order to make some cash, but honestly I cannot seem to actually write out a sex scene to save my life. I have to admit, it is not the walk in the park it would seem to be to write a sex scene. It is like walking a fine line between "dirty enough" and "too flowery". Most of the audience for erotica are female, so I try to cater to what I think a woman wants to read. Most of the stuff I have done so far is typical third-person style. Right now I am experimenting with writing in the first-person. It's not easy at all to do that as a man, but I think I'm doing ok with it so far.
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Jan 3, 2012 18:00
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Sup. Fingerbangmisfire, your buddy hooked me up with a sweet cover and I'm going to pimp it on this forum once it clears and stuff (tomorrowish). Anyway, I was wondering if there was a consensus on CreateSpace. I'm finishing up a book of dirty poetry and I feel like it is something that, in an ideal situation, should be consumed when it's really easy to just thumb through it. I'm racking my brain as to whether this has been discussed in this forum, and I know a bunch of you have done Smashwords, but honestly, I don't want to sell a bunch of these myself (by like buying a bunch of them and then selling them through my website). I guess some general input on the difference between the two would be appreciated. Yeah, this is vague, but I thought I'd run it past you guys first.
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Jan 4, 2012 21:42
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bollig posted:Sup. Fingerbangmisfire, your buddy hooked me up with a sweet cover and I'm going to pimp it on this forum once it clears and stuff (tomorrowish). You don't need to buy a bunch to sell with CreateSpace. It just gets listed on Amazon as a paperback version and when someone buys it they print a copy and mail it straight to them.
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Jan 5, 2012 01:19
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Humbaba posted:You don't need to buy a bunch to sell with CreateSpace. It just gets listed on Amazon as a paperback version and when someone buys it they print a copy and mail it straight to them. Cool. Yeah, but it looks like you do have the option of getting it yourself? And you also get a Createspace store that, probs, no one will buy from? I'm assuming Smashwords is pretty much the same thing, just a different entity?
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Jan 5, 2012 01:56
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Smashwords is more commonly used as a single point of entry to get your book onto multiple sites. I'm not aware of a print on demand option (which not to say it doesn't exist). The most common approach I've seen is to publish digitally on Amazon, B&N and Smashwords. The Smashwords portion handles Smashwords itself, Apple, Kobo and Sony. Folks do Amazon and B&N separately so they get the higher royalty rate straight from Amazon and B&N and don't have to give Smashwords their cut. Then once the digital bit is covered, setup CreateSpace to do a print on demand paperback version. That version can be sold directly through Amazon. When you set that up, you pay for a sample to make sure everything looks good and you have the option to order more physical copies if you want to sell them yourself. You buy your copies at a fairly reasonable price and can sell them at a markup yourself if you want. My personal plan has been to not bother with it and just sell them through Amazon. Packaging and shipping books myself feels like  given that there's not much more profit in it.
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Jan 5, 2012 02:53
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One thing I have noticed with increased prices is increased refunds. Out of the 50 sales I've made this month so far, I have 3 refunds. I didn't have any with $0.99 prices. 
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Jan 5, 2012 14:24
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Roar posted:One thing I have noticed with increased prices is increased refunds. Out of the 50 sales I've made this month so far, I have 3 refunds. I didn't have any with $0.99 prices. Hell, I somehow had a refund on a book that was being offered for free one day last week! I think a lot of it is new Kindle owners getting used to their devices. Making all my shorts $2.99 has been a booming success. It's way easier to keep track of my royalties without having to worry about factoring in different rates. Now I just add the sales up and multiply by $2.09 to see where I stand. Of course, I'm still experimenting to find out if the $2.99 price for short (10k-20k word) stories is a worthwhile change for normal fiction compared to erotica. It looks like the people who buy erotica are a bit more willing to spend a little extra to get their rocks off. I guess I look at it like this: A six pack of beer  will set you back at least 6 dollars. With that money you can drink it all in one night, get buzzed, and wake up feeling lovely the next morning. I'm only asking for half that much and you get a book that will entertain you for at least an hour that you can read again and again if you so want.I do sell a few less books overall with the higher price, but so far my readers seem happy and let me tell you, it's way better to sell 100 copies and make $209 than to sell 300 copies and make $103 dollars. I'm not trying to boast, but already this month I'm looking to clear over a thousand bucks. That's chump change compared to what many authors are already bringing in.
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Jan 5, 2012 16:14
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Humbaba posted:Smashwords is more commonly used as a single point of entry to get your book onto multiple sites. I'm not aware of a print on demand option (which not to say it doesn't exist). The most common approach I've seen is to publish digitally on Amazon, B&N and Smashwords. The Smashwords portion handles Smashwords itself, Apple, Kobo and Sony. Folks do Amazon and B&N separately so they get the higher royalty rate straight from Amazon and B&N and don't have to give Smashwords their cut. Then once the digital bit is covered, setup CreateSpace to do a print on demand paperback version. That version can be sold directly through Amazon. When you set that up, you pay for a sample to make sure everything looks good and you have the option to order more physical copies if you want to sell them yourself. You buy your copies at a fairly reasonable price and can sell them at a markup yourself if you want. My personal plan has been to not bother with it and just sell them through Amazon. Packaging and shipping books myself feels like You might want to reconsider that last item. I make a significant amount of profit off of packaging and shipping books myself. For example, Amazon royalties on a print copy net me something like two bucks; even adding in the cost of shipping from Createspace, I make almost 6 dollars a copy selling print copies on my own, and a not-insignificant number of my print copies have been sold in that manner (I've sold something like 30 copies myself versus a single copy on Amazon). That really adds up. Checking in to say I've been on the KDP Select thing with my erotica almost since the program started. I had completely forgotten about the free promotional days they offer, so I made it free from yesterday to tomorrow, and have seen a big boost in units moved. I had previously sold only two copies, and I've now moved about 255 in about 34 hours or so. I'm waiting to see how this translates to sales afterwards, but it's pushed the book rather well with absolutely no advertising. I may try this with the Kindle single published under my own name next week and see if it causes a ripple effect to the novel.
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Jan 5, 2012 16:35
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My girlfriend beta-read it for me, but we all know that loved ones cannot be trusted to be the brutally critical taskmasters we so crave and desire (at least those that are not themselves writers or editors). She said it was fine, but eeehhhhh. I don't like it. psychopomp fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Apr 13, 2014 |
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Jan 5, 2012 18:28
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psychopomp posted:I churned out a piece of erotica under a pen-name and threw it up on KDP select to give it a try. Interesting! I had an editor for my work, but I'm not under the delusion that it makes any sort of difference when it comes to erotica. I'm also figuring that the follow-on effect going from erotica to dark fantasy is likely to be slight, but I figure if nothing else there are 200+ eyeballs (and uh...other organs) for my work and publishing company. The most interesting side-effect is the increased number of Euro sales.
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Jan 5, 2012 20:16
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My editors are the friends and loved ones I can convince to actually get around to giving me feedback.
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Jan 5, 2012 20:26
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bollig posted:Sup. Fingerbangmisfire, your buddy hooked me up with a sweet cover and I'm going to pimp it on this forum once it clears and stuff (tomorrowish). Awesome man. Glad it worked out. Looking forward to seeing it.
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Jan 6, 2012 01:09
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I forgot to post this earlier, but my book is part of a giveaway on my friend S.M. Boyce's blog. 31 days, 31 signed books are being given away. Mine is US only but there are two days left to enter, and plenty more books after that: blog.smboyce.com/giveaways-jan-2012
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Jan 6, 2012 01:24
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My pro. editor went AWOL for almost a month and half dealing with family issues, but it appears things are back on track to finally get this novel perfected.
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Jan 6, 2012 05:07
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Perhaps I can offer a different perspective in this thread. I have an agent. I am published by a Big Six house and have no plans to leave it. And yet as of today I have something self-pub'd on the Kindle store. My 'traditionally published' book is a silly Shakespearean mashup called "Two Gentlemen of Lebowski", which got the world's attention (not to mention the publishing industry's) thanks entirely to goon enthusiasm. It is now in its fourth printing with Simon & Schuster, and I'm working on pitching a second book, which S&S has first refusal on. In the afterword of my print book, I mention going to see Anne Hathaway in "Twelfth Night" in Central Park. Well—I wrote an essay about that experience when it first happened, and I thought it would be fun to dust that essay off, revise/expand it and put it on the Kindle. My publisher is fine with this—it's not a full book so it doesn't violate their option on my next work. My editor had no objections, and my agent has been very supportive. (Hell, the agency offered to help me with the formatting.) This despite the fact that none of them will see any money on it. Why? 'Cause I'm treating the whole thing as an advertisement for my print book! The subject material dovetails; I put a nice prominent Amazon link at the end, and "author of Two Gentlemen of Lebowski" on my cover. Hopefully some people will trip over this, enjoy it and buy my print book too. Anyway, my short piece is called "Twenty-Four Hours to Twelfth Night"  You can buy it on Amazon for $0.99: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B006UMHXEI/adambertocci-20 Or get a free copy (PDF or HTML) from http://www.adambertocci.com/author/ And as things rumble on, if I can share any insights about the ways self-pub and traditional-pub can complement each other, I will. Icon-Cat fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Jan 8, 2012 |
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Jan 7, 2012 15:35
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Kindle All Stars 1.5 has been announced! "This is a YA oriented collection that WILL be distributed to school children in Africa as part of a larger project called Worldreader http://www.worldreader.org/support.php Keep it clean. Absolutely no profanity will be allowed. We're looking for about 10-15 never before published short stories fewer than 20 pages in length." Submission Guidelines: 1. ONE space after each word, comma, or semicolon 2. TWO spaces after a period, question mark, exclamation point or colon 3. ZERO spaces between words and dashes or hyphens 4. QUOTATION MARKS are " NOT ' ' should only be used for apostrophe and a quote within a quote 5. PARAGRAPH INDENTS should be a single tab (or auto-indent) with no extra spaces and should not be made using spaces at all--check every indent in your story 6. PARENTHESES are to be used as per this example: (keep calm and carry on) notice there are no spaces between the parentheses and the letters 7. PROOFREAD your own submission after its final edit is approved 8. LANGUAGE--if you would normally write in the Queen's English, submit your story in the Queen's English, otherwise submit it in American English 9. FONT should be Calibri set at 12 pts, double spaced * If your version of WORD does not have Calibri, use Times New Roman 10. BREAKS should have no extra empty lines and should be separated with *** 11. ALIGNMENT should be to the left, not justified--please do not center your title or your byline ** ALL DOCUMENTS should be in .doc or .docx format and double-spaced Initial submissions that do not meet the guidelines may be declined. Final submissions that do not meet the guidelines will be declined. Please also provide the following: --a clear photograph --a 2 to 3 sentence bio that follows the formatting guidelines already discussed --any relevant links including your twitter, website and/or blog, goodreads profile, etc Make sure your submission is as publication-ready as possible. We will not be doing line edits. It would behoove you to have an editor/proofreader look at your submission before you send it even if that's just another writer friend. March 2nd is the submission deadline, all submissions go to kindleallstars@gmail.com.
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Jan 8, 2012 00:58
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Icon-Cat posted:Perhaps I can offer a different perspective in this thread. Congrats, and thanks for your perspective. Your books look really cool. I think both sides have their pluses and minuses. Traditional publishers still have huge distribution power as far as getting books into stores, and can provide the editing that a lot of indie books need. But indie books allow writers a lot of creative control and the ability to experiment. Definitely share any insights you have.Azure_Horizon posted:Kindle All Stars 1.5 has been announced! Well, I can't say they're not specific.
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Jan 8, 2012 07:42
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It's because it's an interim anthology and they're not doing line edits this time. KAS 2 will be a lot less restrictive, most likely.
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Jan 8, 2012 10:29
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I'll remove the couple of "damns" I have in one of my short stories and submit it. A little bit of self-censorship is worth potential publicity if it gets accepted.
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Jan 8, 2012 10:37
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leb388 posted:Congrats, and thanks for your perspective. Your books look really cool. I know there's a lot of horror stories about the traditional publishing world, but, what can I say, I was treated very well—my editor always made my book better, they made an admittedly low-budget attempt to promote me, I was kept involved with creative decisions like the cover, etc. etc. I can tell you right now that bookstores are more important than people give credit. Amazon is not the be-all and end-all of my print book sales, much as some people on the Internet envision a techno-fetish future. We saw just how crucial bookstore numbers were when Borders died. The people who will do very well in the e-publishing world are people who can crank out genre books bam-bam-bam. That's not me. I can spend years on things if I like, and I'm all over the place creatively, different genres and forms and media. JA Konrath (to name one big name) is a machine. He puts out his murder-mystery-thrillers at a brisk pace and his audience is never disappointed. He wouldn't be where he is today if he was writing literary fiction and spending two years on each book. I don't expect my above experiment in e-publishing to do very well by itself. If ten people discover (or re-discover) and purchase my print book because of it, I'll turn a cartwheel. But it got the piece out there in a more professional form than its prior home, which is nice. It's not like I could sell it to a magazine or something at this point, it's old news. But if I come up with more short pieces, I wouldn't have any qualms going through the same process—whether they dovetail nicely with a print book I'm trying to sell, or not! If nothing else, the covers are fun to make! Icon-Cat fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Jan 8, 2012 |
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Jan 8, 2012 15:38
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Icon-Cat posted:JA Konrath (to name one big name) is a machine. He puts out his murder-mystery-thrillers at a brisk pace and his audience is never disappointed. He wouldn't be where he is today if he was writing literary fiction and spending two years on each book. Speaking of which, his upcoming book is put out by Thomas & Mercer, which is an imprint of Amazon's new publishing division, and his previous one in the same series was released by Amazon Encore, another arm. I'm not sure if this says that Amazon's publishing is more like self than traditional publishing or whether J.A. Konrath gave up on the self-pubbing route and wanted a more traditional relationship.
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Jan 8, 2012 18:53
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Just found this ramble by Alan Moore. Check it out at 2:50, where he says that the best way to do things these days is to publish yourself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuaWu2uhmRQ Takeaways: 1. Publish yourself. 2. Don't rely on the market or the publishing business. 3. Don't rely on the critics to tell you how good you are.
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Jan 8, 2012 19:55
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My sales are continuing to trickle in. Not a flood but I'm connecting with people from California to South Africa. I re-generated my landing page for the goons and it is here for your enjoyment*: http://www.flotillaonline.com/goons/ I had a conversation with one of my in-the-wild fans who came upon Flotilla, bought it, enjoyed it and reached back to me to tell me what he thought of it. He loved the different elements I brought together in Flotilla. He says that it's a great coming-of-age tale, has great characters and hilarious scenes. The action sucked him completely in and once the third act started, he couldn't put it down. I should have a review on Amazon from him by tomorrow. All good points - my goal of introducing Flotilla to bigger audiences is continuing. I've reached out to Books, Inc. in California, a sci-fi bookstore in Sweden and the aforementioned community of Seasteading enthusiasts in South Africa. It's taking some time to connect with people but I'm consistently making new friends wherever I go. Very encouraging. Next steps are to leverage some friends and their contacts in the LA area to re-connect with the Adam Carolla Show. Adam helped me through a fairly rough patch creatively when I was first writing Flotilla and by way of thanks I hid a ton of easter eggs throughout Flotilla that fans of the ACS show will immediately identify. The book doesn't hinge on it, but they're there and people get a kick out of it. * Note, it's a straight HTML-based page because I'm between copies of Illustrator and Dreamweaver atm ...
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Jan 9, 2012 04:22
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in my post - that means I'm right no matter what.
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I'm also having a trickle of sales this month, though I'm pretty happy about that. I mentioned around New Year's that my goal for the month was to sell 100 ebooks for the Kindle, and it feels like I'm going to reach it, possibly with room to spare. My best month so far had been December, when I sold 64 copies; so far this month, I'm already up to 50 books sold. I'm still quite a long way from my self-published books becoming my main source of income, but it has become a nice supplement to my regular freelance work.
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Jan 9, 2012 04:33
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