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To any non-US goons in this thread: Being non-US myself, at first I was resigned to having to deal with checks from Amazon and the bank delays and fees associated with cashing a check from abroad, but I found that one of the major banks here has a branch in New York. By using the routing number of the New York branch, I'm now able to receive direct transfers from Amazon. This may be a pretty good thing to check on for anyone else who lives outside the US so you won't have to deal with checks and all the little nitpicky problems that can follow them (long postal times, getting lost in the mail, delays, bank fees and such). Obviously, I still need to request a tax number from the IRS (and you do too, unless you want 30% of all your royalties to go to the IRS). My country has a tax treaty with the USA, and that 30% rate will be reduced to 5% with an ITIN (Individual Tax Identification Number). Basically you apply for that with the W-7 form (which requires an additional 2 documents: a letter from the company stating that you will be receiving royalties from them and a legalized/certified copy of your passport), wait a few months to receive it, then submit a W-8BEN form to Amazon, Smashwords, Createspace, etc to notify them of your issued ITIN. This will allow them to release the money they had withheld for tax purposes from before, and also change their withholding from that point on from 30% to 5% (or whatever rate your country has with the US). I found that the easiest way to start the process of getting the ITIN is through Smashwords, because they will print and sign a letter for you to include in your ITIN application. Although Amazon also offers this letter as a download, the IRS has been known to reject this on the basis that the signature on it isn't actually signed by a person but printed from your computer. Smashwords allows you to request this letter after you've earned just $10 in royalties, so I basically buy copies of my own work in order to reach that quickly to get the process started (I mean, you get the majority of the money back anyway!). The reason I wanted to do this quickly is that, if you wait for too long and Amazon/etc send off your 30% earnings to the IRS, you're going to have to deal with the IRS to get your money back. It's easier and quicker to do this before that happens. I received my letter from Smashwords after about 4-5 weeks. My next step is getting my passport certified/notarized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the US Embassy here, so that I can send it and the Smashwords letter to the IRS for my ITIN application. From what I've read, this will take about 2-3 months on average. The IRS will mail back a letter containing the ITIN, which is then used from here on out with every US-based company. A poo poo load of more work (I guess that's what I get for being non-US, hah), but worth it in the end. I hope. I mean, I've earned about $400 in royalties in the past 2 months and I plan on trying to making enough to do this full-time. Here is a link to the Smashwords FAQ that I found useful: http://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq#ITIN Midrena fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Jan 9, 2012 |
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Jan 9, 2012 12:27
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Romper Billson posted: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. Konrath has been very up front about taking whichever route makes the most sense for him at any given time. The Amazon print deals apparently had very good terms and he felt like he'd make more money through them than he would by straight self-pubbing. There was an interview he did with Barry Eisler a couple weeks ago and they mentioned Eisler turning down the 500k deal last year. Then Eisler signed with Amazon (could have been T&M) a few months later. It came out in this interview that he's already earned out the advance with Amazon. Of course, the advance could have been 0 and he just had amazing royalty terms.
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Jan 9, 2012 15:27
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Questions for you Kindle folk: I was a recent upload (this weekend). My cover was part of my .mobi and it's not showing up in my Amazon "click to look inside" preview. I'm told that this is a common problem of late, a bug they're working out. Anyone else heard of this, having trouble with it? Also, it used to be that Kindle docs said on the Amazon page, "Length: X pages (estimated)". I'm not seeing that on recent uploads either. What gives?
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Jan 9, 2012 21:52
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Has anyone managed to find a reliable marketing person/agency/service for e-books? I have a client who is willing to pay for this, but I'm not confident in my own promotional skills (and also lack the inclination, frankly).
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Jan 10, 2012 00:11
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Icon-Cat posted:Questions for you Kindle folk: I just insert the image into the Word file at the top and uncheck the option on KDP when publishing that asks if you want to use the image inside your cover. Works like a charm.
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Jan 10, 2012 00:14
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I like goons and want to support them! All I have is a nook, though. Which of you fine authors are published in B&N? Give me links and I will spend some money on words and write some reviews.
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Jan 10, 2012 00:20
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Pope Eggs Benedict posted:I like goons and want to support them! All I have is a nook, though. Which of you fine authors are published in B&N? Give me links and I will spend some money on words and write some reviews. Pick me! Pick me! http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/antigen-db-baldwin/1108033238?ean=2940013888579&itm=1&usri=antigen quote:Alex’s life as a graduate student is transformed when a laboratory fire destroys three years of research in a single morning. As he works to pick up the pieces he must overcome hostility from his department head and come to terms with his feelings for his lab partner. Then love and science combine to put him in a position to perform research in a way he never imagined possible. What he discovers will change his life, and the lives of those around him, forever.
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Jan 10, 2012 01:08
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Pope Eggs Benedict posted:I like goons and want to support them! All I have is a nook, though. Which of you fine authors are published in B&N? Give me links and I will spend some money on words and write some reviews.
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Jan 10, 2012 11:37
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Pope Eggs Benedict posted:I like goons and want to support them! All I have is a nook, though. Which of you fine authors are published in B&N? Give me links and I will spend some money on words and write some reviews. In on dis: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-corridors-of-the-dead-jonathan-d-allen/1107817032?ean=2940013521407&itm=1&usri=corridors+of+the+dead. I'm actually glad to see a Nook user; as handy as the Kindle and Amazon are, I'm starting to get a little concerned about their dominance. Although that hasn't stopped me from continuing to experiment with Select. I mentioned in another post that I put my erotica up for free for three days; previous to that, I had sold basically zero copies. I got to something like #1,400 in the free rankings, certainly nothing special, but a big boost to the story's profile. I gave away close to 400 with zero advertising, and have seen a trickle of follow-on sales, along with a few borrows, which have really surprised me. So I've decided to put the short story with my name on it, Kayson Cycle, up for three days now to test the waters and see what could happen with an actual marketing push. It's outpacing the erotica quite easily, and it's "sold" more than a copy a minute for the last hour. I haven't seen any follow-on for my full-length novel just yet, but then again I don't imagine many have had a chance to read the story. I'll update every now and then to let you guys know how it proceeds, since I know we're all a little hungry for ideas that actually work.
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Jan 10, 2012 15:53
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I'm a little concerned about Select's push towards a subscription model of selling, particularly as the actual "pay" is so low and completely out of the hands of the authors. I know Amazon had approached (and been rebuffed by) the traditional publishers for back libraries to offer via subscription before they released Select, and I think that's the way they'd like to go... but as it is, aside from its use as a promotion tool, I don't see Select as that great for authors and the exclusivity really bugs me, and it limits the hell out of my promotional avenues.
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Jan 10, 2012 15:59
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The thing is, people will pretty much download anything if it's free. I don't really see it as a good sign of sales or not, though the promotional aspect of it is nice for other works. The exclusivity is a no-go for me, though, unless I put together something specifically for Amazon...which I'm not crazy about. Something about shoving aside the other competitors just doesn't seem right. It's not like Amazon and I are friends - it's all business.
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Jan 10, 2012 16:05
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Oh, I hear your concerns, and I feel exactly the same way. None of my longer-form fiction will ever go on Select. I've promised myself that. I have too many friends and acquaintances with Nooks and other reading devices to put all my eggs in that basket. The exclusivity is ridiculous, and at the moment I'm just glad the window is only 90 days. But, like both of you said, I'm viewing it as a promotional tool, and little else; literally my only goal for this exercise is to get both my publishing imprint and name into people's minds, if only for a few moments, as something that they may see again down the road. It's also given me another "event" to push through my social media promotional channels and hopefully drum up a little more consciousness. I have a few interviews and author spotlight events coming up in the next few weeks, so this is meant to bridge the gap between the holidays and those events. My overall goal is to keep consciousness of the name and brand at a low boil until April, when my next book hits. This is already a win just for keeping that going. Any follow-on sales will be gravy.
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Jan 10, 2012 16:17
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Honestly, all of my stuff is on Amazon and in a couple weeks I'm probably going to release a bundle of short stories. At that point I'm probably going to enroll each of the individual short stories in Select and make them free on a rolling basis with links to the package. Also, here's a cover that was designed by FingerbangMisfire's pal. Cool dude:  Minniwicket The Gnome's Brave Adventure This will not be in the bundle. This will be a separate series.
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Jan 10, 2012 18:08
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My book's on the Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flyday-laura-e-bradford/1100144254 Right now I don't have any plans to put my next book on Select. Maybe a short story, or a future book, but Amazon has such an iron grip on pricing that I like to keep my options open. Also, people were talking about writing erotica, and there's currently an Ask/Tell about it: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3459102 She even posted a how-to guide.
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Jan 11, 2012 01:49
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leb388 posted:My book's on the Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flyday-laura-e-bradford/1100144254 I had no idea! Thanks, leb!
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Jan 11, 2012 03:00
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Pope Eggs Benedict posted:I like goons and want to support them! All I have is a nook, though. Which of you fine authors are published in B&N? Give me links and I will spend some money on words and write some reviews. I might as well share my stuff too! I'm about a month into KDP Select, and while I netted a ton of exposure for being free around Christmas (with about 2,000 downloads), I'm really not fond of having my options limited for so long. Really wish Amazon would just let people set their books free whenever.
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Jan 11, 2012 03:59
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Enjoy, my goonie goons.
MattDaddy fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jun 22, 2013 |
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Jan 11, 2012 04:22
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Just found out about this thread. I'm about six pages into it so far. Mostly trying not to jump in and answer any questions which'll probably prove to have been answered around Page Twenty-seven; I'll get through this eventually. For now, since this seems to be part of the reason for the thread, here's some stuff I've done for the Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Gremlin/e/B006N4OI0K Lurkers is probably the gooniest. But, grab one, or all, or none; up to you. tarepanda posted:It just occurred to me that it would be neat to make a Goon anthology and publish it, then buy a banner ad or something... but then we'd have to hammer out pricing and money distribution, etc. This having been a while ago, I wonder whether it's already happened, or just been abandoned. But, as much as I can't really do shorts anymore [any stupid idea expands instantly into a whole novel, for me], I've got a thing or two handy which I'm not sure what else I'd ever do with--stuff three or five pages long. I'll watch for updates on the idea later in the thread. One thing that's probably been recommended, but is technically about preferences: personally, I like to go through a given book in WordPad, add the hypertext manually, and compile a .prc through Mobipocket Creator. Calibre isn't terrible, but it does spit out some weird formatting errors without much explanation. In case that helps anyone.
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Jan 11, 2012 06:11
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The anthology idea comes up every few pages but we never seem to be able to work out the logistics. But, you know what? Enough farting around. I'm willing to act as editor if you guys are willing to actually write stuff. We'll donate the money to some appropriate charity To Be Determined and be heroes. Anybody got a good idea for a theme? Do we even need a theme?
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Jan 11, 2012 08:31
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I've got some stuff to submit to an anthology if we get one going.
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Jan 11, 2012 08:50
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vseslav.botkin posted:The anthology idea comes up every few pages but we never seem to be able to work out the logistics. I'm still reading through the thread [Page Thirty-six now; whee], so I'm still cautious about replying to anything. But I'm totally in for the compendium idea. I've got a severely short thing here somewhere which, as a matter of curiosity, has become a sort of working example for writing: a professor will print up a few dozen copies and staple them, giving one to each student, and read through it as they follow along; then there's this weird Q&A thing afterward for everything from 'Does the character actually exist outside the story' to 'How'd you decide on this word.' Funny, since the answers are all pretty much 'I had a netbook, an idea, and an hour to kill.' Anyway: I've still got the netbook [though it's not the netbook I'm typing this into], so I'll see if I can dig the thing out todayish. It may be short enough to just post directly in here, unless I'm right in thinking that I've got a .pdf of it somewhere too. EDIT: Okay. Finally done. And, yeah: most of the questions I was tempted to reply to with Ooh! Me! Me! I know! have been answered. But it wasn't a total waste of time: at the least, I added about fifty bookmarks to /Kindle—useful stuff. This being pretty recent: MattDaddy posted: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. You're more optimistic than I am. I had a book set to $0.00 for five days, about a month ago; amidst several thousand sales, one was returned. I was wondering what level of bloodymindedness it takes to go through the effort of returning a book and getting the $0.00 back. If that was more about someone accidentally returning it [or accidentally buying it, never catching the price], then I might feel a little better about it. Since there are apparently always questions about formatting and compiling, I'll clarify on a point I made in the earlier post. Personally, I write books in whatever makes sense to me at the time [I've written stuff on the MeadSpiral platform, using the UniBall plugin], ultimately get the thing into WordPad, add the laughably few available hypertext tags, then throw that into Mobipocket Creator to compile into whatever.prc; then whatever.prc can go into any given Kindle for playtesting. I wouldn't use Mobipocket to convert whatever.doc directly. That way lies bugs. But, if you can handle the BBCode on this board, you can likely handle the dozenish hypertext tags the Kindle recognises: <I> and <B> and <P WIDTH="0"> and whatever. On that subject, there are actually many trillion more codes [not really] which I'd recommend the hell outta. Go through and use codes like +mdash; and +eacute; [sigh: apparently, the board translates those even if I start with +amp;—pretend the plus is an ampersand] and whatever to replace characters. The Kindle [among its various versions to date] doesn't seem to have a standard at any given time; sometimes it'll just display a simple character; sometimes it'll do something weird if it's not being told precisely what to do. If you don't know a given &code; offhand, copypaste the character into wikipedia.org and you should be able to find out. About KDP Select and exclusivity and all: I'm okay with it. But all I've ever uploaded stuff to has been the Kindle. I've been a little annoyed with B&N since the twentieth century, when Borders were okay with stocking my stuff [and look where that got'em] but Barnes&Noble had no interest; I looked at the first Nook in a store, and ruled it junk. I've heard that the Nook is better now [possibly better than the Kindle], but I'm still a little miffed. Anyway: I don't mind being exclusive to the Kindle, for now. If you look at the terms, you'll see that it's for three months at a time, autorenewing if you don't tell amazon.com to cut it out; and it's not required per entity—you can drop one title into KDPS while keeping everything else more fluid. That half the point of KDPS is allowing a KindleBook to be borrowed for free [plus eighty bucks a year to be all Primey] makes it worth it. The more people turning KDPS down, the less borrowed books fall into the fund—about half a million bucks per month. As of now, I make more off the borrowing of a KindleBook than I make off the sale; also, when it's merely borrowed, it seems to count as a sale within the little bestseller rankings. So I'm kinda just thrilled that the legacies trying to spread EBooks to all markets are staying out of KDPS: you can't just borrow Patterson's thing, but you can just borrow mine. About pseudonyms: I use them a lot. Really a lot. The argument that having a number of pseudonyms works against branding per name is perfectly valid. In fact, it kinda can't be stressed enough. But it's a habit I got into last century, when I wasn't allowed to release more than a book per year; different names allowed me to release things once a month or so. Today, I'm still stuck in the habit, and I'm not sure what would happen if I just consolidated all this stuff under a single entity. Probably weirdness. So, if you're starting up and wondering whether to release various things under various names, I guess the real question to ask yourself is why. Because you wanna write textporn erotica for the cash, without tainting your 'real' identity? Fair enough. Otherwise, I'd urge you to save yourself while you can. By the way: my longitudinal study is ongoing, but I'm catching that releasing books under a name like Gremlin might be less than fully wise. People are weirdly bigoted against xenonyms, and will cite them when adhomineming: Dude's got a weird name; he probably somehow sucks. But I'm sticking with it if only because, in fact, it's what everyone calls me IRL anyway; all my normal names are in fact pseudonyms—fictional people who, curiously, are more successful at writing. And...this is getting into MegaPost territory. I'll go away for a bit now. Oh—but I glanced at the server, and that short thing I was thinking about for the goonthology has been sitting there since I uploaded it in 2009: http://gremlin.net/offline.pdf As a dumb warning, that's the version I just wrote and uploaded. Later, I caught...something I can't remember precisely now. I think, around the second page, I used the same word twice in a single paragraph, which looked stupid. I'll track that down and get back to you when I've fixed it again. ANOTHER EDIT: Found the dumb repeated word, at the end of Page One: He's not supposed to drink anything that heavy with the pills he's supposed to be taking twice a day. Read that as pills he's meant to be taking, or something. Damnitologist fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Jan 12, 2012 |
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Jan 12, 2012 00:47
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Feelin' a bit discouraged at the moment. Since I started around this time last month I've had a total of $8 of sales on Amazon, $3 on B&N, and about a buck and a half via Smashwords. Don't get me wrong - that $12.50 is more than I'd be making if I hadn't been writing - but compared to some of the numbers I've seen... ugh. Am I on par? Doing awfully? Doing okay? I really have no frame of reference. Haven't sold more than two or three ebooks the last week and it's getting me a little  I guess.
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Jan 12, 2012 05:42
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psychopomp posted:Feelin' a bit discouraged at the moment. Since I started around this time last month I've had a total of $8 of sales on Amazon, $3 on B&N, and about a buck and a half via Smashwords. Don't get me wrong - that $12.50 is more than I'd be making if I hadn't been writing - but compared to some of the numbers I've seen... ugh. Not quite enough information. Is the eight bucks from amazon.com built up from thirty-five cents per sale? That isn't terrible. If it's a couple bucks per sale, then it's less good. Still, from what I've seen, about half the KindleBooks currently on the market have never been bought at all. Technically, if you've got sales, plural, you might be above average. EDIT: Thinking about it, you might mean eight bucks retail, not profit. Though, again, the question is how many units we're talking about.
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Jan 12, 2012 05:49
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Yeah, 35 cents per sale profit, three different short stories. A couple sales on B&N and Smashwords, and 21 on Amazon. A lot of those probably went to friends and family, one time I KNOW A WRITER sales. Wonder if I'd do better with longer works.
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Jan 12, 2012 05:51
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psychopomp posted:Yeah, 35 cents per sale profit, three different short stories. A couple sales on B&N and Smashwords, and 21 on Amazon. A lot of those probably went to friends and family, one time I KNOW A WRITER sales. Funny. In reading this thread, I've been wondering how hasty I'd been in thinking that uploading short things was a bad idea. It had occurred to me, in the beginning [nearly five years ago now], that, with magazines approximately dead, the Kindle could be used for tiny shortstory things; but it never quite felt right to spam the market with things spanning five or ten pages, to me. Apparently, for whatever reason, people are getting comfier with really short things for about a dollar each. So I'm rethinking that now. A little. About your actual question: if you can write longer things, I wouldn't tell you not to. Whether longer things necessarily outsell short ones is something I can't yet guess. I'd say that you should just write what you wanna write. Maybe I'm spoiled, but I'd rather write something I liked, that no one wanted, than something I wasn't okay with but which got me seven figures a year in free cash. At some point, you kinda have to look at what you're getting paid for. And a job not well done really kinda finds a place in your brain, reminding you that you're not what you wanted to be.
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Jan 12, 2012 06:01
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Hm. Interestingly I hear that it's become a possible market for novella-length work as well. Basically I started with the short fiction to shake the rust from my keyboard and tighten up my prose before I started on anything more ambitious. I set myself the goal of writing at least 1000 words a day (more like 5 or 6k if I get in a good groove), and just started cranking out stories. Three of them I deemed fit to publish, gave to my first reader to proofread, and I'd sort of like to settle into a weekly release schedule for awhile to build up a bit of a catalog before moving on to longer works. It might not be the best plan, but it's 'A' plan.
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Jan 12, 2012 06:08
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I'm not sure whether a novella is even a thing anymore. When I got started, a novel was at minimum sixty thousand words [which I feel oddly bad about when I do anything that short]; then NaNoWriMo dropped that to fifty; now I'm hearing that a novel is as little as forty. With short stories easily hitting twenty thousand words, and with the invention of novelettes [whatever those are], we might be chasing a Novella of the Gaps by now. Maybe it's a good thing. If everything's just Kindling, which hasn't even technically got pagecounts, we could be seeing the end of wordcounts as any sort of important thing. EDIT: Thinking about NaNoWriMo just reminded me of something I wrote a couple months ago. A friend's kid ran into an assignment to play with a fifty-thousand-word thing last November, and asked me whether I had any tips, being a bigtimey writer guy. So I threw this together for her, and anyone else to read through: http://gremlin.net/main/2011/11/02/how-to-write-good I'm not sure it answers any direct questions in this thread. But maybe it can't hurt. Damnitologist fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Jan 12, 2012 |
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Jan 12, 2012 06:14
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Replaced by file sizes and reader gut feeling for "too short" or "too long".
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Jan 12, 2012 06:20
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Filesize is a neat point. A few days ago, at the end of the year, I crammed every strip of a webcomic I do into a KindleBook. Mostly supposing that there might be those who'd wanna read 486 strips without having to be online at the time. The filesize came in at twenty-eight megs. About half what a KindleBook can be at all. Let's go to the backend and set prices.... I set it at $2.99, because I'm comfy with that. Now I've got options. I can get thirty-five percent or seventy. I set it to seventy to see what the delivery fee would be. My cut of the 70% would be $0.00, because the delivery fee would be four something—more than the total price of $2.99. I dropped it to 35% and got about a dollar. Because, at 35%, there's unaccountably no delivery fee. So, I'm not sure how that makes sense, or if it'll be this way tomorrow. But it's amusing to know.
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Jan 12, 2012 06:57
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I'd say you are on par with what the average new self-publishers earns their first month or so. Many don't sell a single copy. There are several factors to look for, but first of all you must be able to answer this question: Is your primary goal writing to make money or for the enjoyment and artistic side of it? If you're primarily doing it for enjoyment/creative expression, you need to realize that luck will then be a much more relevant determining factor in your success. An author with 3 dynamite, awesome, legendary books that only winds up selling 10 copies might be happy with that...would you be? If your primary motivator is money, then my friend, you're talking about a different ballpark altogether. (No one is saying you have to sacrifice one for the other, either...it's just a question of motivation!) If you are into writing full-length novels, I would suggest serializing it. Make the first part available for .99 cents (give it away free as much as you can also) and subsequent parts @ $2.99. Each part should be at least 10k words long. It has worked very well - I still sell a bunch of copies of all the parts and the complete work. So far, that book & series has made me well over $3,000 since the first segment was released in May/June of last year. The entire length of your book can be totally fine in novella form; the older, super-thick, 1,000 page monstrosities are a by-gone result of publishers telling artists to "Make it longer" so that the book took up more shelf space and brought in more sales. So many good books ruined because authors felt compelled to fluff them up. If you want to do short stories, try to work your rear end off and put out at least 1 quality work every week with decent cover art, blurb, etc. Make things like the font for your Name and the edges of the book uniform, maybe create your own imprint that will immediately tell people, "Hey, this is a psychopomp book!" and sell it for $2.99. Period. Lower the price when sales start to slow down. People are leaning away from all the .99 cent books because most of them are poo poo. Creating fantastic work is a great experience. Creating perfect work is not. This is a business, and "Good enough" is truly "Good enough." Don't worry about making some masterpiece just now - do that poo poo later once you're bringing in some serious dollars and lounging around in your bathrobe all day because you don't need to drive to work anymore. I wholeheartedly recommend anyone that hasn't checked out the throwaway_writer's posts over at Reddit do so right now. He's got the system figured out and is reaping one hell of a reward. Sure, it takes a lot of work to make it happen, but volume is what works. Spank out as much as you can and eventually you will start to see a fine monthly income. After all, 100 shorts making you $2 a day each is $200 a day. I could easily live on that and quit my day job, no problem. MattDaddy fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Jun 22, 2013 |
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Jan 12, 2012 14:45
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I'm sort of going with a serialized approach now - one released at 99 cents, one waiting on the cover art from my graphic designer, and one being written. After I release all 5 I'll put out a collection, write another 5, then release a collection and a big ol' omnibus. psychopomp fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Apr 13, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2012 15:12
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MattDaddy posted:I wholeheartedly recommend anyone that hasn't checked out the throwaway_writer's posts over at Reddit do so right now. He's got the system figured out and is reaping one hell of a reward. Sure, it takes a lot of work to make it happen, but volume is what works. Spank out as much as you can and eventually you will start to see a fine monthly income. After all, 100 shorts making you $2 a day each is $200 a day. I could easily live on that and quit my day job, no problem. psychopomp posted:I want This, but I'll settle for "getting by".
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Jan 12, 2012 15:54
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I may be saying this as a father of two working full-time and taking college classes, but even still I can't imagine writing a short story once a week - and doing good cover art, proofreading...that seems to me like way too much for something once a week. Also, don't feel bad about lackluster sales. One of my favorite shorts I wrote has sold less than ten copies. Just keep on trucking, you never know what the audience wants until you put it out there.
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Jan 12, 2012 16:00
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Some great advice in these last few posts. Going to look into serializing my novel soon; that's a really great idea and I'm not sure why it hadn't occurred to me before now. I think Gremlin's right, too. I often lose sight of what "success" in sales really means when you see people like Konrath and Locke. They're the extreme outliers, but we hear more about them because of their success so it seems to be the norm. I try to keep that in mind when I get discouraged, but it's tough sometimes. Definitely been where you are, and when I get to that point, I start planning a new promotion. It may or may not work, but it occupies my mind with something that's less self-destructive and negative. It just takes time to build an audience, and the first few months seem to be the most painful, unless you've already built a great platform. Honestly, I'm realizing that those folks who built a big platform upfront are also outliers, as blog/twitter/facebook/etc. success seems to be just as random, assuming posts are of equal quality. Sometimes you just have to wait for the die to land on your number, which is where persistence pays off.
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Jan 12, 2012 16:38
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Remember - if there's a million stories on Amazon, somebody has story #1 and somebody has story #1,000,000. Of course it's more likely someone has story #1, #22, #74, #122, #124, and so on... but they all started out with 0 sales at position #1,000,000. If I was Joe Konrath I could turn those trite two lines into a whole blog post, but I'm not so I'll leave it here and nobody will care about it. 
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Jan 12, 2012 17:07
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quote:Sometimes you just have to wait for the die to land on your number, which is where persistence pays off. And every book you write is another number you have in play. So my business/promotion plan is basically keep on writin'.
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Jan 12, 2012 17:15
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Just got the email from Amazon that the KDP Select program - for the first month, the rate ended up being $1.70 per borrowed copy, which is pretty solid. Of course, only one copy of one of my booklets was borrowed (I only put the $0.99 pamphlets up there), so I made $1.70.
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Jan 12, 2012 18:52
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OrangeKing posted:Just got the email from Amazon that the KDP Select program - for the first month, the rate ended up being $1.70 per borrowed copy, which is pretty solid. Of course, only one copy of one of my booklets was borrowed (I only put the $0.99 pamphlets up there), so I made $1.70. Same here. $1.70 is much better than I thought I'd get. This month already I have like 26 borrows. That's about 44 dollars, a nice addition. Still not sad that I'll be dumping the program most likely in favor of a wider distribution with my erotica, though. Smashwords has been picking up big time lately. My most recent title over there has sold just as many copies as Amazon, and I've made a higher royalty on it.
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Jan 12, 2012 19:11
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So your .99 stories on Amazon got paid the 1.70 if they were borrowed? That's a nice surprise. I haven't done anything with KDP Select because I only have a few titles and I'm gambling that wider distribution will make me more overall. Once I have some more titles available I'll enroll one in Select as a loss leader.
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Jan 12, 2012 19:35
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vseslav.botkin posted:The anthology idea comes up every few pages but we never seem to be able to work out the logistics. I see this coming up again and again, so I want to get it off the ground too. Can I be co-editor? I can contribute a short story and ebook formatting/fixing typos. Once we have everything set up to take submissions, I think we should post in Creative Convention and invite everyone to submit a story. For a charity, what about Doctors Without Borders/MSF? They seem to do good work.
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Jan 12, 2012 21:16
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