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Two of them are still at £3, and I definitely changed one of them last night. Time to shoot an email to support!
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Nov 21, 2014 22:08
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Two of them are still at £3, and I definitely changed one of them last night. Time to shoot an email to support! I guarantee support will be no help, can you post a screenshot of yoyr "rights and royalties" page for one of them (obscure any personal data)
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Nov 21, 2014 22:19
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moana posted:Tough but worth it! I'm no longer wearing pants to work. It's basically the awesomest. Oh yeah I'm definitely keeping at it. It's good to work towards dreams. Maybe one day! Are there any genres that are too dominated by trad publisher authors to bother going at them self-pub? I might just look into one of those self-pub'ing half way houses where they market you for a percentage. I actually work in marketing, for a (video game) publisher, and I used to intern for a literary agent. But for some reason when I try and market myself it's a whole other ball game and I fall apart.
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Nov 21, 2014 22:26
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Is this true? I heard a rumour that $2.99 was basically the perfect price for Kindle ebooks re sales, because if it's cheaper, people assume it's lower quality and avoid it. $2.99 is apparently the magical "normal" price that most people in the store will accept without looking too deeply into it. I.e., I had lowered the price of my book and sales dropped. Raised the price and sales rose. Put it in between and it dropped. I did this up and down, back and forth and would get different results even within the same months. I did data mining for a decade or so and I had all kinds of spreadsheets and I was like, "if there's a correlation here, it's beyond me." I have all my novels sitting at $5.99. My newest one isn't in Select because I'm annoyed at the precipitous drop in royalties. Maybe in the new year I'll put it in.
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Nov 21, 2014 23:03
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Anybody have experience with covers? I'm working on one now using free stock photos that I'm going to muck around with in Photoshop. Anybody got an example for how to credit Creative Commons photos properly, and how to specify the edits made and how to make clear that the copyright owner doesn't endorse or sponsor its use? Do you provide credit on the inside cover, before/after/below the title page, or what? At the end of the book? The FAQ on CC isn't helping me a lot because it's so vague, and all the self-pub resources I've seen don't actually provide details on using the stock photos, just how to find them. Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 15:50
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As far as I know, if you are buying them from a stock photo site you shouldn't really have to do anything. Each site should have a breakdown of the licensing agreements if you want to be absolutely sure, but you basically have free reign with a photo you purchase outside of reselling the file or something obviously unethical. Then you have to buy an unlimited usage license if you end up selling like half a million copies or something insane, but if you are at that point then you are probably hiring a team of professionals to handcraft every detail of your cover so eh. Technically there are clauses that state you shouldn't use photos for things that might be objectionable (politics, religion, sex, violence) and I think maaaaybe you could argue that if you are writing erotica and a model finds it and freaks out, but I've never heard of that happening. Maybe someone that publishes erotica could clarify. I don't know if there are any major differences when you are talking about free photos, but so long as they say free for commercial use, I can't imagine the terms would be all that different. Thought honestly if you are worried, I'd just recommend buying a photo. Most stock photos are like $3-5, any paying that one time to get a photo with a very clearcut license agreement is worth some peace of mind imo. Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 16:39
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Speaking from a romance and definitely not erotica standpoint, I've never had a whisper of a problem with covers. That being said I'm far from a big dog so ymmv.
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Nov 23, 2014 16:56
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Unless you're super ace pro and graphic design and layout, I would strongly suggest buying a premade cover or commissioning a custom cover. You're going to drop $40 to a few hundred bucks (Ravenkult is having a sale I think), but if you don't have the confidence that your book is going to make that $40 back, why are you self-publishing it?
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Nov 23, 2014 17:12
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psychopomp posted:why are you self-publishing it? Because you've had a couple drinks and find dinosaur sodomy too hilarious to not share with the world? I assumed this was the default reason.
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Nov 23, 2014 22:10
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Yeah, go buy my poo poo. I just finished this card game project and now it's finally back to writing and editing. Pretty soon I'll have enough stories for a collection, but self publishing a horror collection feels like the most futile of endeavors.
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Nov 23, 2014 22:38
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ravenkult posted:Yeah, go buy my poo poo. You think so? I don't know much about the short story market but horror short stories is probably the short story genre I buy the most of. Something about it just fits that format I think.
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Nov 23, 2014 23:06
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PoshAlligator posted:You think so? I don't know much about the short story market but horror short stories is probably the short story genre I buy the most of. Something about it just fits that format I think. They are notorious for selling badly, except maybe if your audience is used to it (Lovecraftian stuff is usually short form so Laird Barron for example, does okay). It's not easy to market a single author collection because the reader doesn't know what he's buying. Unless you're well known (Barron, again) and people know what to expect, nobody has any idea what your themes are, what kind of stories you're writing. That's my take anyway.
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Nov 23, 2014 23:21
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ravenkult posted:They are notorious for selling badly, except maybe if your audience is used to it (Lovecraftian stuff is usually short form so Laird Barron for example, does okay). It's not easy to market a single author collection because the reader doesn't know what he's buying. Unless you're well known (Barron, again) and people know what to expect, nobody has any idea what your themes are, what kind of stories you're writing. It's true that most anthologies I buy are not single author collections. But I'll check yours out!
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Nov 23, 2014 23:24
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Yo! Big December Creative Convention Fiction Contest going on here with  FABULOUS PRIZES . I'm also looking for one more judge and I'd rather it be one of you guys, since we've already got two Thunderdome regulars and I don't want it to just be a Thunderdome circlejerk.
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Nov 24, 2014 08:09
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Hey self pub goons. I'm not much of a writer aside from the occasional short story and I've never really put it out in the public eye, it's more just to get ideas out of my head and on to paper. I just read through this entire thread. I wasn't aware of how much easier self publishing seems, compared to publisher hunting, after reading all the advice you guys gave each other. This was the most interesting thread I have read in a while. I've started digging up some old ideas and creating a couple of storyboards to try my hand at this gig. I stumbled across a self publishing platform called Tablo. Have any of you used it? Does it look worthwhile? Seems to me like it could be a good way to get feedback prior to publishing an idea for a nobody like me who hasn't done so before. For those of you who are already well established probably not a great money maker though: quote:"Publish your masterpiece to the iBooks Store and Amazon with a single click. That's 20% commission after Amazon/iBooks takes their cut. So it would essentially be charging you 20% for something you guys already do yourself.
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Nov 26, 2014 01:01
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What do they do for you to take that 20%? Do you have to give up any rights to use their service?
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Nov 26, 2014 02:44
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EngineerSean posted:What do they do for you to take that 20%? Do you have to give up any rights to use their service? You retain the full rights according to their website. https://tablo.io/terms quote:When publishing to Tablo, you retain all rights to your work an can add or remove content from Tablo at your own discretion. Publishing with Tablo is a non-exclusive agreement. You can also publish with alternative services without requiring any permission from Tablo. I think it's just the added benefit of posting preview chapters/full book before going to live publishing. Looks like people are giving some good feedback to each other. That said you can probably do the same thing here on the forums. I figure it would only be good for unpublished/unknown people to get a bit of exposure before putting the finished product on the market. Ol Sweepy fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 03:16
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You only answered half my questions.
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Nov 26, 2014 03:45
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EngineerSean posted:You only answered half my questions. Looks like they do the formatting and the uploading to Amazon and iBooks for you, I can't see any evidence of additional promoting that they do at their end though. Like I said before, it seems to me that it's probably not much use for someone like yourself who's made a name for themselves and would have no added value. More for aspiring self publishers to get feedback and exposure on their first couple of books (on the Tablo site itself). Beyond that probably better off just cutting out the bullshit middle man as there would be no extra value at all. edit: Assuming that you had built a small fanbase/got the exposure you wanted. edit 2: unless you think that is a terrible idea. I just stumbled across it and thought it was interesting enough to share and wanted your opinions on it Ol Sweepy fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 04:01
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Well it's just that KDP will do the formatting and uploading to Amazon for you for 0% (or rather, about 40%, and Tablo is taking 20% on top of that), so it seems silly to give 20% for someone to do that for you in exchange for, what? A forum full of authors to give you feedback? I guess that's where you're posting right now. Sounds like you answered your own question really.
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Nov 26, 2014 05:26
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EngineerSean posted:Well it's just that KDP will do the formatting and uploading to Amazon for you for 0% (or rather, about 40%, and Tablo is taking 20% on top of that), so it seems silly to give 20% for someone to do that for you in exchange for, what? A forum full of authors to give you feedback? I guess that's where you're posting right now. Fair enough on the feedback respect. I was more curious about it as an avenue of self promotion. However, I just spent a bit of time looking through it. Looks like there are about 300 books up there at the moment anyway so I imagine the difference that would make in people actually seeing a book would be pretty negligible anyway. So It's probably not worth while at all. Just out of curiosity, how hard have some of you found it to get your work seen among the thousands of free and 99c books when you are starting (assuming you follow the Blurb/cover rule that gets re-posted every other page)? Not that I'm ready to put anything up. I just found the thread really interesting, what you all do seems pretty cool and you seem to enjoy it. Ol Sweepy fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 05:50
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Any non-US self-publishers who can share their experiences with tax stuff on Amazon? This blog post http://catherineryanhoward.com/2012/02/24/non-us-self-publisher-tax-issues-dont-need-to-be-taxing/ says: quote:From the Amazon KDP Tax Interview guide, October 2014: Which suggests that all I need to do is supply my existing Aussie Tax File Number and I should automatically get the reduction from 30% to 5% for the tax agreement between the US and AUS. Edit: Yep, just put in my TFN and all the details and it automatically figured out the 5% taxation rate. Cool. Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 15:31
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I entered my tax ID number and now it says Amazon's the cut from US etc. marketplaces will be 0%, is that correct? Or did I gently caress up somewhere.
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Nov 26, 2014 16:10
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chthonic bell posted:I entered my tax ID number and now it says Amazon's the cut from US etc. marketplaces will be 0%, is that correct? Or did I gently caress up somewhere. I think you might be misreading that. The % I was talking about is the taxation that the IRS takes from the gross payments from Amazon, which is after Amazon take their 30% (or 70% depending on your title's price bracket) cut. And for you to get a 0% effective tax rate on payouts, I imagine you're in the UK? edit: For clarity, here's a rough breakdown of the situation. For non-US publishers, the IRS claims a standard 30% taxation rate on all payments. So Amazon takes their 30% or 70% from your various titles, and then the IRS takes a 30% cut of that, unless you have a W-8 form which means something like you're registered to pay tax in the US and thus claim deductions (or get taxed at the not-maximum rate). If you live in certain countries that have tax agreements with the US (agreements to stop citizens/organisations getting taxed twice on the same trade/service/income), you can now put in your own country's tax number and Amazon will figure out your effective tax rate. For me, as an Australian, the IRS will tax me at 5% of what Amazon pays me, and then it's up to me to declare that income to the Australian Taxation Office so they can tax me. So if I've understood it correctly, if I sell $100,000 worth of books, I'd ordinarily be looking at: 1. $100,000 minus (30% or 70% that is Amazon's cut). 2. Then the IRS takes 30% of that for US tax. 3. Then I have to declare that money left over from step 2 to the Australian government, and pay taxes on that if need be. But now that I can factor in tax agreements between the US and Australia, step 2 has been reduced from 30% to 5%. Now there's some further complication in that if the book is sold in other countries (Brazil, India, UK, etc) they have different host-country taxation systems as well, so you're looking at further taxation payments on that. But that's too complicated for me to look into right now so I'm leaving that. Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 16:18
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Germany, actually. EDIT: I misread, 0% is the withholding rate. I'm just trying to figure out if I did this right, since trying to find out what my German tax ID number was difficult and I'm still not sure I got it right.
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Nov 26, 2014 16:21
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Ah okay. Yeah that could still be right, I just remember seeing that the UK has a 0% taxation withholding rate, but the blog post didn't specify any other countries. You'd need to check the tax agreements between the US and Germany, which sounds like a barrel of laughs. Here's the page they link to for further information: http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/International-Businesses/United-States-Income-Tax-Treaties---A-to-Z Which is just.. well, good luck. I took a brief look and couldn't find any actual figures for mine so you're better off using google. I'd trust Amazon if your tax number is correct. I also edited my last post to provide a brief summary of what I'm talking about here.
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Nov 26, 2014 16:26
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I did the EIN thing last year and that worked easily enough. This new stuff looks complicated.
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Nov 26, 2014 16:29
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Here's an example of the process that a lot of self-pub blogs are linking to: http://catherineryanhoward.com/taxinterview/ And it was pretty faithful to my experience. I don't know if this process existed a year or two ago, but if it's new it looks like Amazon now automatically generates an electronic W-8BEN form for you and then sends it in on your behalf.
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Nov 26, 2014 16:31
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I'm going to self-publish my book on Amazon.com and want to create download codes for the Kindle version, one code will be included with each physical copy. Do any goons here have experience of this? Is this a hassle? I'm only just starting getting familiar with the whole self-publishing on Amazon thing and I've not had much luck tracking down information on this.
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Nov 28, 2014 12:29
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Doesn't matchbook do that, or is it just a discounted physical copy when you buy the eBook?
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Nov 28, 2014 12:34
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Doesn't matchbook do that, or is it just a discounted physical copy when you buy the eBook? Book won't be sold on Amazon physically, I just want to give people a free code that they can claim on Amazon for the ebook.
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Nov 28, 2014 13:41
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Bolverkur posted:Book won't be sold on Amazon physically, I just want to give people a free code that they can claim on Amazon for the ebook. There is no way for us little fish to do this. Amazon doesn't have a system for us to generate book download codes (and certainly not for free).
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Nov 28, 2014 16:08
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:There is no way for us little fish to do this. Amazon doesn't have a system for us to generate book download codes (and certainly not for free). 'Bout the only place that does that is Smashwords.
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Nov 28, 2014 17:01
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I'd like to self-publish. Do I need to buy an e-book reader to test out my creation, or is there a good-enough simulator available so that I can see how well it works? I'd be doing all the layout and formatting myself.
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Nov 28, 2014 18:33
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No Gravitas posted:I'd like to self-publish. Amazon and B&N load up an in browser virtual kindle where you can thumb through it.
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Nov 28, 2014 18:43
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As someone who spent the better part of an hour yesterday trying to get Scrivener to output an ebook with italic formatting retained, and then Scrivener -> Word -> Calibre -> ebook loving up the table of contents a whole bunch, I'd recommend you start the way I finished: Save it as a word document the way you want it and upload it to Amazon KDP directly. They have a pretty good preview thing and you can just edit the Word document and upload again and again until it looks right. I think you can also download their computer ebook reader.
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Nov 28, 2014 18:44
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For anyone that doesn't sperg out and make their epubs by hand like me I'd suggest they use D2D's converter. It's generally more intelligent than the other options. And if you still have trouble with fancy formatting you can go into the settings of your D2D account and that'll give you a bit more control than the other easy options.
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Nov 28, 2014 19:14
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My first book went live this morning on Amazon (can't link, let's just say it's 10k words) and I got my first sale this evening! In theory I'm now a professional author, except: 1. It's $2.99 minus Amazon's fee minus IRS tax minus my government's tax 2. The customer was from the UK which means I have like 99.95% chance of it being a return 3. I feel like I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning with a news crew at my door demanding how I could dare try to rip off the general public by selling tripe like that Good times
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Nov 29, 2014 02:37
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:My first book went live this morning on Amazon (can't link, let's just say it's 10k words) and I got my first sale this evening! In theory I'm now a professional author, except: Congrats. It's easy to post about writing, it's something else entirely to do actually publish. Try not to be neurotic about refreshing your KDP chart. Just set a certain time of day and check it at that time.
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Nov 29, 2014 04:02
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:Try not to be neurotic about refreshing your KDP chart. Just set a certain time of day and check it at that time. Uhhh but then how would I know whether or not I am worth a drat at any given moment?!
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Nov 29, 2014 16:17
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