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FauxCyclops posted:No joke, my first book was an exercise in frustration. It went up on day one with big nasty black boxes all over everything, and the first paragraph was getting cut off on some readers for months. To add to this, the greatest service you can do for yourself is to clean that HTML up, removing most of the remaining crap that Word adds on even with a filtered web page. I use HTML Tidy Online (http://infohound.net/tidy/) and I rarely, if ever, have problems with epubs or mobis. The Smashwords grinder still screws my formatting up, but I attribute that to them still wanting Word files (sigh). quote:Candy had already grabbed the X-Box 360 controller and was logging into X-Box Live so she could compete with people around the world. She loved the combat games, loved to compete against other people, to virtually kill them. 
workingdogv1 fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Jan 10, 2013 |
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Jan 10, 2013 14:23
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gently caress Smashwords forever. Unless you actually make sales on their main site, I'd highly recommend Draft2Digital instead. They can't get you onto Baker&Taylor or Diesel yet, but most people can deal with missing out on all zero of the sales they'll ever get on those two portals. All I needed in order to be completely sold: They fixed an ePub error for me and e-mailed me to let me know what it was, and then still got my last book active on the Apple store in less than 72 hours. It was basically "Hey, caught an invalid fit designator for your cover image; that thing works on mobi but not in standard ePub. We switched it to [whatever it was]. Let us know if you have a problem, otherwise we're submitting tonight." I literally had a real person contact me. It was awesome. 
Sundae fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 10, 2013 |
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Jan 10, 2013 17:55
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Hmm, bookmarking that to check out later. I like Smashwords' coupon feature the most, but that does look intriguing and would hopefully take some of the guesswork out of the "meat grinder". I hate having so little control over the formatting.
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Jan 10, 2013 18:13
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Sundae posted:gently caress Smashwords forever. Unless you actually make sales on their main site, I'd highly recommend Draft2Digital instead. Right now it says the site is in beta. What are the chances of getting in on it or getting a signup code?
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Jan 10, 2013 21:14
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Everyone I know in the other writing thread and in another writing forum got in, so decent odds I guess? I had an invite the same day I requested a code.
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Jan 11, 2013 00:02
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I requested one today too, I'll let you know.
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Jan 11, 2013 00:05
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That's good to know. I'm thinking about finding another editor. Yeah, I wrote that book like 8 years ago, but rereading it makes me wince in places. I'm kinda poor right now (I've gotta get the roof fixed and a strut replaced) and the idea of slapping down $150 per run through is painful. Wow, the Goon Reads site has come a long way since I first signed up. I think it's time to reread the thread, and check out the resources being part of SA has to offer. Since you guys are have a lot of experience, tell me what is wrong with the first two covers? What I think might be wrong and what the voices of experience here might have to say are probably two completely different things.
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Jan 11, 2013 00:08
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Everything is wrong with them. The text, the image, the content, just everything. I mean the second one is poser art. How come you let someone else publish the Tandy saga?
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Jan 11, 2013 00:35
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Echoing the above. The titles are cumbersome, the font has little radiation symbols in it, the poser art. They are textbook examples of what not to do. "Year of the Zombie: Diaries of Becka: Volume One: New Year's Day". And there's also "Year of the Zombie: Legends: Volume One: Among the Dead". You need to axe your titles and consolidate them into something coherent, then you need to burn your covers and start from scratch on something that resembles an actual book. FauxCyclops fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jan 11, 2013 |
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Jan 11, 2013 01:00
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Ant, you seriously need to do some cover research and reconsider how you think about cover designs. Let's compare some covers and titles here: http://www.amazon.com/Deadlocked-ebook/dp/B006OOSWRO/ http://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Apocalypse-Infection-Unleashed-ebook/dp/B008R53WBO/ http://www.amazon.com/World-War-Oral-History-Zombie/dp/0307346617/ http://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Z-Beginning-Manel-Loureiro/dp/1612184340/ http://www.amazon.com/Hollowland-Amanda-Hocking/dp/1453860959/ http://www.amazon.com/Forest-Hands-Teeth-Carrie-Ryan/dp/B004EYUDMS/ All popular zombie or zombie-like books (well, and a zombie-based dystopian romance by loving Amanda Hocking), most with pretty good sales rankings or long histories of sales, except for maybe the last one. (However, that's probably the loving publisher's fault for setting the eBook price at $9.99.) Still, it's an acceptable cover. Look at what they're doing. Now go back and look at yours. Your titles don't stick, either, but that's another issue. I could buy "Year of the Zombie" as a title, maybe. It's at least short enough to remember. The rest of it sounds like a M:TG expansion gone haywire. Next, repeat after me: I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever use Poser, DazStudio, Bryce, or anything 3D that I made by myself in a cover ever again. 3D in general is best avoided unless you know exactly what you're doing, but home-made 3D is probably the worst idea ever. As a side-note, the first cover you posted (minus the pile of items) immediately made me think of the Dungeons and Dragons hardcover manuals.
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Jan 11, 2013 02:14
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FingerbangMisfire posted:My psychotic anthology of short stories was released on Kindle last night. Paperback to follow. Didn't you say you had a poo poo deal with them? Why did you put out another book with them?
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Jan 11, 2013 02:14
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Different publisher. Another indie, but we'll see. Both of the contracts had been inked a while ago.
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Jan 11, 2013 02:16
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Makes me think I should write a ''making covers for dummies'' guide.
ravenkult fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Jan 11, 2013 |
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Jan 11, 2013 02:25
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Probably not a bad idea. There are some truly awful ones.
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Jan 11, 2013 02:44
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50 Foot Ant does rule, though. Haters to the left.
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Jan 11, 2013 04:23
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Sundae posted:As a side-note, the first cover you posted (minus the pile of items) immediately made me think of the Dungeons and Dragons hardcover manuals. This made me want to buy it, hard. The excerpts made me want to buy it even harder.
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Jan 11, 2013 05:19
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Writing the final novel to a series you've spent two years on has me feeling legit artistic fulfillment. This is far and away some of my best writing ever.
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Jan 11, 2013 10:02
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So after a long series of rejection letters from agents, I've decided to go the self-publishing route. I stumbled across this thread and it appears you all seem to be having a good time with it. I registered on goonreads and right now I'm working on cover art. Not exactly an artist, though, but hopefully I can throw something together. I will say right off the bat that I'm fairly shy about my writing. I think maybe two people in the world have ever read it, so I have no way of gauging what I've written. Of course the public will do the judging for me. Just putting myself out here as a new comer who wishes he'd found this thread long ago. Anyway, back to working on the cover.
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Jan 14, 2013 10:10
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Did these two people beta-read your book?
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Jan 14, 2013 13:59
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To add to what PsychoPomp said, I'd also encourage you to find a good critique group. I felt a lot of reticence about sharing my own work for quite some time, but it gets easier, and the right critique group can really form a nice bridge to getting used to sharing your work before it's ready to publish. I've reached the point where I won't publish anything without having a group of people look it over; you wouldn't believe the difference it makes. I know it's a hassle, but it's well worth it.
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Jan 14, 2013 15:04
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I couldn't agree more. It's incredibly important to allow your work to be dissected. Or destroyed. And then you can put it back together again as a much, much stronger piece.
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Jan 14, 2013 22:21
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And other peoples' eyes can see glaring errors that perhaps you are incapable of seeing on your own. Maybe that character you think is warm and compassionate actually comes across as a hot-blooded rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 14, 2013 23:21
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It's important to note that the reverse is often true as well. I've written a bunch of scenes that I thought were boring diarrhea only to have them get the strongest response out of my beta readers.
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Jan 14, 2013 23:26
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psychopomp posted:Did these two people beta-read your book? Yeah, both of them gave it a pretty hard one. One of them cut it up a lot and pointed out what didn't make sense, etc. It was actually quite helpful. A lot of things I thought would be interesting, he found boring or obscure, so I worked over that a lot.
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Jan 15, 2013 03:54
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Is it okay if I post about my books as a publisher here?
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Jan 16, 2013 22:06
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It's all right with me. Indie/Small Press is OK for the thread I think ... Unless there are massive objections.
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Jan 16, 2013 22:12
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FingerbangMisfire posted:It's all right with me. Indie/Small Press is OK for the thread I think ... Unless there are massive objections. If any, it would be a semantic one, considering the thread title.
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Jan 16, 2013 22:21
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New book! They say money is a great aphrodisiac, but are there really enough billions in the world to mitigate the many flaws of a man who wears DON’T FRIENDZONE ME t-shirts and thinks all you have to do to acquire old-school, film noir charm is to pop on a fedora and call all women toots? Can enough money exist to take the edge off a man like Crispian Neigh, a doughy internet billionaire of uncertain provenance and even less certain weight? Is he doomed to be Forever Alone, or is there a woman in the world who can see the man behind the billions, and forgive his habit of drawing busty dwarf erotica based on World of Warcraft characters? Step forward Hanna Squeal – literature student and insurance risk, a self-proclaimed intellectual so alarmingly dim that she thinks Camus is a chickpea-based dip flavoured with garlic. When Hanna stumbles, glissades and finally faceplants in front of him, Crispian Neigh is enraptured by her beauty, her implausible innocence and her shatteringly low self-esteem. Cue several hundred pages of poorly-written, repetitive ‘kinky’ sex. Flogging, whipping, fisting, anal intercourse and things that would give even James Joyce cause to pause – none of these things happen in this book. Due to a sheltered girlhood (I’m not kidding – she’s never even leaned up against the washing machine on the spin cycle.) Hanna doesn’t even know the difference between an orgasm and a sneeze. Also he’s got that thing that hasn’t quite cleared up yet. But when Crispian makes Hanna an offer she can’t refuse (Severed horse heads a very real possibility.) she is determined to forge on with the relationship in spite of the objections of her stoner friend Kate, her polyamorous Etsy addict mother and the rude retorts of her spiteful Inner Goddess. Can Hanna change him? (No) Can she turn him into the kind of boyfriend she’s always wanted? (Nope.) And can she get over his deepest, darkest, pinkest secret and bring herself to love and tolerate My Little Brony? (Probably not – not if we want to wring a sequel out of this thing.) ____________________________________________________________________________ It's very silly and you should definitely buy it here.
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Jan 17, 2013 21:02
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Couple of physical copies of my first book on their way to me from CreateSpace. If anyone needs help with the formatting on their project I've basically got this poo poo on lock and have run into every imaginable stupid rear end problem. I'm glad I didn't jump at the chance to order a paperback proof because the first time, the goddamn pages were in backwards.
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Jan 21, 2013 04:19
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Haha, backwards? I would've thought CreateSpace would have their poo poo together by now.
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Jan 21, 2013 05:03
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After I uploaded a word document instead of a pdf file it worked; since of course the recommended file format never, ever works with these things.
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Jan 21, 2013 06:07
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FauxCyclops posted:Couple of physical copies of my first book on their way to me from CreateSpace. If anyone needs help with the formatting on their project I've basically got this poo poo on lock and have run into every imaginable stupid rear end problem. I'm glad I didn't jump at the chance to order a paperback proof because the first time, the goddamn pages were in backwards. I think that beats my "rectangles replacing apostrophes" issue. Yeesh. Edit: Of course, in my case, this was after they handled designing the interior, and only showed up in the physical proof, so...yeah, it was a pain in the rear end. CreateSpace isn't terrible, but they're not exactly brilliant, either. I was happy with most of what I ordered from them, but there were bumbs in the road - and when I had them write "promotional text" for me, it was downright awful.
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Jan 21, 2013 16:24
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Yeah, I think Createspace is great if you pretty much handle EVERYTHING yourself. Don't rely on them for much more than printing and distro. Like FauxCyclops, I've managed to get this down to an art (it will never be a science), but it took a lot of banging my head against the wall and every book still presents new challenges.
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Jan 21, 2013 18:49
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I got my proof and everything looks good, so my first book's up on sale at Createspace now. https://www.createspace.com/3941811 This was basically me all day when I got it: 
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Jan 27, 2013 07:15
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Just a FYI, but your back cover has some typos according to the Amazon preview at least. Need to capitalize the O, and you've got a verb/noun agreement thing going on there too.quote:One in fifty paranormal happenings are aggressive in nature... "One Just to ask: Is this intended to be a commercial project, or is this a project you're publishing so you can see it in a store and get a copy in your hand? (Nothing wrong with the latter - I completely agree about the awesomeness of receiving a copy of your own book. )The reason I ask is because, if you contact AuthorCentral directly, they'll link your createspace version to your Kindle version so that they show up as being by the same author / as alternative versions. (This has the advantage of making the Kindle version look like it's on sale, too. You'll get that lovely red strike-out / digital mark-down.) Sundae fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 27, 2013 |
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Jan 27, 2013 15:52
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gently caress, good catch, what a pain in the rear end. I'll get that fixed. I'm waiting on Createspace to get the Amazon page together, they said it should be ready sometime this week. How do you mean commercial project?  I am taking it seriously as a professional venture if that's what you mean.
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Jan 27, 2013 23:02
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quote:How do you mean commercial project? I asked because I had a bunch of other things I was thinking about the book at the time that I was considering posting. Plenty of people just use CreateSpace to make personal copies just for posterity's sake, though, so I wanted to find out before I made any other comments about blurbs, Amazon keyword selection, etc. (I've got a few hobby books on my shelf that really only exist for nostalgia / embarrassment's sake. ) I didn't want to churn out some big effort post for a hobby book. That's all I meant. I wasn't trying to insinuate anything.
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Jan 28, 2013 00:56
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I getcha. I'd love tips on making the physical product look more professional.
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Jan 28, 2013 01:23
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Yeah, I just published my third book recently and getting that finished product still hasn't gotten old. Nothing like it. Congrats!
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Jan 28, 2013 01:59
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I've dabbled in screenplays and short stories, and it's an organizational nightmare once these things reach a certain size. Kudos to you Goons with the perseverance to complete a novel.
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Jan 28, 2013 02:38
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