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You have no ideas how many different font and colour combinations I tried before settling for that. It is a bit stark, and I'd prefer the title to be smaller too, but it just wasn't readable in the Amazon preview thumbnail that you see in search results if I did that. I had to enlarge it and beef up the letters a ton (with contrast and drop shadows etc.) from what they were originally to make it legible at small scale. It was a lot more ethereal before, and less in your face - but you just couldn't make out the words from the thumbnail. I wasn't sure if you could upload a different cover to the one in the actual e-book, or if that was against the rules. If you can, I would rather have had the more ethereal cover in the book itself, but I played it safe and put the same in both places. Fenarisk posted:That is a drat nice cover, I like the description too. I was worried about that. I got my guy to put the car on the cover as a clue to the modern setting, but I'm hoping that the description will clue people in that it's not a present day retelling of the original. If it's not doing that, I will have to revisit it. The description was done in a bit of a late night rush, to be honest.
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Jul 15, 2011 01:20
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Oh, it's certainly not bad. I don't quite like the font, but it's not bad by any stretch.
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Jul 15, 2011 01:45
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Harvey Buckfast And The Case Of The Bottled Water Baron is an exciting detective novel. Harvey Buckfast. Veteran. Drunk. Sexist. Private Detective. Business is slow for Buckfast until he gets a visit from the niece of the bottled water baron, John Ogorkiewicz. Missing, presumed dead, she needs proof. He takes on the case, unaware of the underlying conspiracy that will make the entire city quake in fear. But not before Buckfast has a bottle of whiskey and a pack of smokes. 98p on amazon.co.uk ** Don't have pm so I can't send it to fingerbang. I'm still fiddling with the pricing for amazon.com as well, but whichever. Enjoy!
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Jul 15, 2011 14:25
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I'll add dude. Congrats on getting it out there! As always, gonna suggest hitting up the Reddit thread too: http://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublish/
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Jul 15, 2011 20:23
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FingerbangMisfire posted:I'll add dude. Congrats on getting it out there! As always, gonna suggest hitting up the Reddit thread too: http://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublish/ I put a link to the first review of my book but it disappeared from the front page. Do you know why? This is the link http://redd.it/ir3m8
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Jul 16, 2011 18:46
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clockworkjoe posted:I put a link to the first review of my book but it disappeared from the front page. Do you know why? This is the link http://redd.it/ir3m8 Make sure you're on the "What's New" tab, not the "Hot" one. I had the same problem at first.
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Jul 16, 2011 18:49
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I'm seeing it over here. Reddit can be hinky sometimes, too.
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Jul 16, 2011 21:59
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Yeah, I see it now too. weird.
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Jul 16, 2011 22:27
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Reddit can be slow and what kind of sucks is that the mods have to approve pretty much every external link. My guess is wagedomain or dickpeterson finally approved it. Sorry for our slowness if that's the case.
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Jul 16, 2011 22:29
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Okay, got around to uploading my Innsmouth story to Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/74320 The first 50% is viewable from there for free, for anyone who is interested. edit: oh, yeah, I posted to the Reddit as well for what it's worth.
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Jul 17, 2011 18:07
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I am reading it. Are you English? Just because of the arse mention. Also perhaps check out http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/ if you haven't already
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Jul 17, 2011 23:33
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justcola posted:I am reading it. Are you English? Just because of the arse mention. Guilty, as charged. I did think about trying to write American, and going all rear end / faucets / sidewalks, but I figured I'd probably miss something anyway if I tried. I did think about IFP when I first wrote the story, but they have an upper limit of 5,000 words unfortunately. Getting anyone interested in the sort-of 15-30,000 word range seems to be really hard these days, now that magazines and newspapers don't really run fiction. If Kindle publishing does anything positive maybe it will be to provide a new venue for short fiction, because everyone seems to agree that shorts are by far the best way to start out and learn how to write. (I'd agree with that, too.)
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Jul 18, 2011 19:18
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I finally got around to putting a cover, real copyright notice, and a contact page ala John Locke, for my two books. Putting a cover in the kindle book is a pain in the rear end because you have to save it as HTML(what I upload my stuff as), then modify it using notepad. But having them in makes them look that much more professional.
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Jul 18, 2011 21:52
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The Domino Project published a terrifyingly comprehensive spreadsheet that's worth your time if you're looking for ways to promote your book.
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Jul 18, 2011 22:23
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That's a great link. It will take some time to fully digest. Anyway, I now offer free US shipping for Zombies of the World http://www.zombiesoftheworld.com/store/ Also, I've been experimenting with making promotional graphics for ZOTW. What do you think of this? Does it grab your interest? 
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Jul 18, 2011 23:15
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Let's talk length! So, my first book is a full-length novel clocking in at 65k words (which using the horrendously inaccurate but something-of-a-benchmark 250 words per page rule is about 260 pages of a traditional published book). I have a piece I wrote a year or two ago that I'd like to publish, but it's most likely a series, or much longer, work. I have about 35k words right now, and a good stopping point. Is that too short for a $1-$3 eBook? What are the guidelines for that?
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Jul 19, 2011 00:27
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clockworkjoe posted:That's a great link. It will take some time to fully digest. I wanted to ask you specifically, how did you go about doing a kindle version of ZotW? From what I've heard PDF's don't turn out very well so did you have to cut back on a lot of the art, or was it just a matter of doing a completely new format for the kindle to make it work? The art looks good, it grabs my attention because it's well done and shows a clean distinction in the variety of the zombies in the way the book presents it. Also, if 65k words is considered a novel I'm debating increasing the price of my books after a time, because I'm easily double that (at least) for all 3 novels but charging 2.99 at the moment (which I think is still a good intro price for a new author and impulse purchase price point). Fenarisk fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jul 19, 2011 |
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Jul 19, 2011 00:31
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Myrddin Emrys posted:I have about 35k words right now, and a good stopping point. Is that too short for a $1-$3 eBook? What are the guidelines for that? People pay a dollar for my short stories (the longest of which is 9k), so I definitely wouldn't be worried that 35k is too short for $1.
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Jul 19, 2011 01:21
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I had to drastically redo the layout of the book to make it work for Kindle. I basically made each page pure text or just one image - with page breaks after each image. Very simple layout. It was kind of a nightmare. I hope people that get the Kindle version are satisfied with it.
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Jul 19, 2011 05:21
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clockworkjoe posted:I had to drastically redo the layout of the book to make it work for Kindle. I basically made each page pure text or just one image - with page breaks after each image. Very simple layout. It was kind of a nightmare. I hope people that get the Kindle version are satisfied with it. I paged through it on my smartphone (it didn't work all that well) as well as on my friend's ipad and my computer (it looked great on the latter two). I only ask because on those it did look very nice. The only issue with the smartphone was some word wrap funkiness where only 3-4 words of a sentence from picture captions would be on new pages, but I know those aren't the intended devices. I wish more RPG's were optimized for kindles to look so nice.
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Jul 19, 2011 05:31
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Fenarisk posted:I paged through it on my smartphone (it didn't work all that well) as well as on my friend's ipad and my computer (it looked great on the latter two). I only ask because on those it did look very nice. The only issue with the smartphone was some word wrap funkiness where only 3-4 words of a sentence from picture captions would be on new pages, but I know those aren't the intended devices. I wish more RPG's were optimized for kindles to look so nice. Yeah, I had to spend a few weeks figuring out how to make it work. I should do a screencast about it. However, I can't imagine how I would design a book with pictures to look good on a smartphone. I can't find any definitive guidelines on ebook design like I can with print design - like how big to make images, what DPI they should be, where to place page breaks etc. edit: I'm really glad to hear it looks good on the ipad and computer. I tried an .epub version and put it on a friend's ipad but it looked horrible - it wouldn't render the text on like half the pages and images were missing etc.
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Jul 19, 2011 05:54
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I just posted this question in the Reddit thread, but I wanted to ask here as well: Does anybody bother watching book trailers? Would you make one for your self-published piece? I'm thinking about anything as simple as an author introducing himself to readers or as complicated as you'd want to make.
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Jul 19, 2011 07:33
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No. I'll read the blurb instead of sitting through two minutes of music and random things. I love the Wheel of Time series and I couldn't bring myself to watch that trailer that was made for Towers of Midnight. I tend to watch things with authors because I like the authors and know that it'll be worth my time. Harlan Ellison is a big example of that. Video is something I don't really like though, since I read muuuuuuch more quickly than people can talk/video is edited, so I'm biased.
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Jul 19, 2011 12:54
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FingerbangMisfire posted:I just posted this question in the Reddit thread, but I wanted to ask here as well: Does anybody bother watching book trailers? Would you make one for your self-published piece? I'm thinking about anything as simple as an author introducing himself to readers or as complicated as you'd want to make. No, because typically people who watch book trailers are probably going to buy anyway, for $1-$2. They're not mainstream in the slightest. Most people probably don't even realize there ARE book trailers.
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Jul 19, 2011 13:52
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So it's been a few weeks since I published the book, almost a month in fact; thought I'd give you all a status report. Sales have been good, at least for an indie book coming from a completely dark horse writer. I haven't broken a hundred copies yet, but I'm well over the halfway hump. Reviews have been EXCELLENT, which really cheers me - seven 5-star reviews and 3 4-star reviews. People have been extremely kind. So far, the best vectors for advertising have been Project Wonderful, Twitter (of course) and base word of mouth. Facebook ads have been useless so far, but I suppose that's just how that goes. Anyone else have different experiences? I'm really looking forward to the next 30-day cycle. I know people say that this sort of thing takes a lot of time, but my experience so far has really given me hope for success.
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Jul 19, 2011 16:29
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One thing that pisses me off is that douchebag on reddit. He basically posted something asking for fake 5-star reviews from redditors to boost sales of his kindle book. He's sold way more than me so far, as he said on his twitter account he made like 600 sales in one day. I want to know what the gently caress he did besides asking reddit to commit fraud (the overwhelming response on reddit, by the way, was "gently caress you").
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Jul 19, 2011 16:46
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Ugh that sucks. I even debated posting a review under a pen name on Amazon as a single boost but couldn't stomach doing it. If you even mildly liked the drat book leave a review for any of the goons in this thread! I've sold a total of 63 copies of my first book and still only have 2 reviews  I do know that it's common (especially for indies) to do review trades but that seems just as iffy on the moral scale.
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Jul 19, 2011 17:09
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Question. Do any of you guys post free fiction up? I've put up a few small pieces on my website for free, a short story and a fictional 'article', that help show the flavor of my trilogy. If you do, how do you feel it works out for you? Should I keep it on my site, or should I set them up as ebook editions also? Oh, and feel free to have a look if you want, too.
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Jul 19, 2011 18:34
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Fenarisk posted:If you even mildly liked the drat book leave a review for any of the goons in this thread! I've sold a total of 63 copies of my first book and still only have 2 reviews One thing I've found that works a bit is giving out free coupons on Smashwords or wherever and then having a contest on twitter or wherever. Then just ask for reviews. It got me a video review, which was cool as hell to see.
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Jul 19, 2011 18:49
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Goat Bouillabaise posted:Question. Do any of you guys post free fiction up? I've put up a few small pieces on my website for free, a short story and a fictional 'article', that help show the flavor of my trilogy. If you do, how do you feel it works out for you? Should I keep it on my site, or should I set them up as ebook editions also? Go ahead and set them up as ebooks as well, then link to the ebook version from each page of the relevant story in a prominent place. Remember that you own the copyrights with your own material; you can do pretty much anything you want if you're not locked into a contract that says otherwise.
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Jul 19, 2011 19:45
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I don't watch book trailers. I made one for my short story anthology, and it was hard to make. A comment by a book marketer I admire changed my mind about book trailers. I had gotten the impression that indie authors needed all the exposure they could get, thus I NEEDED a trailer. As she pyt it, the kind of people who read aren't the kind to learn about books via video. Mixing media in the wrong way. FingerbangMisfire posted:I just posted this question in the Reddit thread, but I wanted to ask here as well: Does anybody bother watching book trailers? Would you make one for your self-published piece? I'm thinking about anything as simple as an author introducing himself to readers or as complicated as you'd want to make.
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Jul 19, 2011 20:23
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ravencorinncarluk posted:A comment by a book marketer I admire changed my mind about book trailers. I had gotten the impression that indie authors needed all the exposure they could get, thus I NEEDED a trailer. As she pyt it, the kind of people who read aren't the kind to learn about books via video. Mixing media in the wrong way. The other way to look at it is the kinds of people who watch BOOK trailers are the kinds of people that don't really need to be marketed to so aggressively.
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Jul 19, 2011 20:26
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Myrddin Emrys posted:He basically posted something asking for fake 5-star reviews from redditors to boost sales of his kindle book. Where the gently caress was this rear end in a top hat?
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Jul 19, 2011 20:39
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If you need reviews: go here http://hampton-networks.com/ It's a list of indie book blogs. Find the list of blogs in your genres and start submitting away. It will take awhile, most will ignore you, but occasionally you'll find someone who will bite. I'm in line to reviewed on Fantasy Cookie next month. Roshi fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Jul 19, 2011 |
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Jul 19, 2011 20:59
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Oh that's brilliant. Thank you.
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Jul 19, 2011 21:04
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I went to the trouble of doing a web series for my book and it hasn't gotten me much response, at least that I can tell.
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Jul 19, 2011 21:13
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I've got a dumb question. When it comes to offering review copies, how do you guys go about it? Do you just send the reviewer a mobi file / .prc / whatever?
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Jul 19, 2011 22:03
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Flopstick posted:I've got a dumb question. When it comes to offering review copies, how do you guys go about it? Do you just send the reviewer a mobi file / .prc / whatever? Smashwords coupons are your friend. You can make a coupon code for 100% off your book. Then just hand out the code and they can choose how to download it themselves.
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Jul 19, 2011 22:10
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Flopstick posted:I've got a dumb question. When it comes to offering review copies, how do you guys go about it? Do you just send the reviewer a mobi file / .prc / whatever? And my god, many of these blogs are ugly. Myrddin Emrys posted:Smashwords coupons are your friend. Some want the actual ebooks. Read the guidelines. Roshi fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jul 19, 2011 |
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Jul 19, 2011 22:12
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FingerbangMisfire posted:Where the gently caress was this rear end in a top hat? http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/isj2h/reddit_im_really_fucking_desperate_and_could_use Basically, his twitter account proved that all the stuff he mentioned in the "plea" was fake (he lives in his own apartment and has for a while etc). He's apparently sold 600+ copies overnight, and made it onto the Kindle top 100 (he was #58 earlier) because he asked people to buy it or if they don't want to buy it just mark it 5 stars and move on. Roshi posted:Some want the actual ebooks. Read the guidelines. A simple email request is usually enough to just hand over a coupon code. They really just don't want to pay anything out of pocket.
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Jul 19, 2011 22:22
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