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Blue Scream posted:Curious to see what experienced self-pubbers here think of this model.
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Jan 21, 2015 22:11
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Just put that poo poo up on NetGalley for god's sake. Join a collective and you can put your book up for 20$ a month.
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Jan 21, 2015 22:37
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ravenkult posted:Just put that poo poo up on NetGalley for god's sake. Join a collective and you can put your book up for 20$ a month.
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Jan 22, 2015 01:17
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I don't even think Netgalley is that effective of a service but better than spending 25% of your revenue for sure.
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Jan 22, 2015 02:35
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How do you guys distribute ARCs? I've been messaging people on Goodreads but that's a slow process.
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Jan 22, 2015 04:03
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I ask my mailing list.
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Jan 22, 2015 04:58
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psychopomp posted:I ask my mailing list. Do you just say "Hey who wants a free copy if you give me a review?" or what?
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Jan 22, 2015 06:19
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If there's a GR group about your genre, usually they have a thread where they allow authors to give out ARCs. Also post on FB groups in your genre to giveaway ARCs. Your street team/ fan base will also be a good source. I normally expect about a half/third ARCs to convert to reviews.
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Jan 22, 2015 06:41
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Yeah, not even NetGalley can save you in certain genres. I tried with my small press's horror/noir novel and I think we got 2 reviews out of 100 ARCs. Goodreads groups were even worse, for me anyway.
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Jan 22, 2015 07:10
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Goodreads also has some "read-for-review" groups in which people request your book and are supposed to review it, but the reviews haven't always been forthcoming. The group's owners say writers should reach out and nudge readers who haven't reviewed, but I'm not about to do that (Goodreads members can get very weird about any kind of author interaction). I've gotten good reviews from book bloggers. It can take time, as most of them are swamped with requests, but over the long haul I've built some excellent relationships with bloggers. This makes getting reviews for subsequent books easier, as you can say, "Hey, blogger! A while back you read my novel Finite Laughter. My new book, A Peach Is Not A Peach Without A Pit, is out. May I send you a copy?" Never hurts to participate in bloggers' contests and rafflecopter giveaways either.
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Jan 22, 2015 15:57
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I know erotica chat is verboten, but I hope I can ask a question from the business side of things: A year or so back I wrote some stories and ended up burning out, mostly due to trying to keep up with all the different platforms. It sounds like nowadays everyone is using Amazon exclusively for the KU program, which certainly sounds like less of a hassle. I've got about ten titles just stagnating (they still make me like $5 a month, I guess) and I've been kicking around the idea of a total overhaul - unpublishing them from everywhere, cleaning up covers, backmatter, blurbs, etc. and putting them all up through KU. My questions are: Is this a good idea? I was never really tapped in to all the market details when I was writing, and it seems a lot has changed since then. Are there any reasons not to do this? How much of a pain in the rear end is it going to be to get my stories taken down from all the other platforms? I've heard horror stories about people trying to remove works from Smashwords and such. Am I going to be waiting days / weeks / months before things get taken down and I'm free to republish through Amazon, or is relatively painless? Finally, if everything does work out smoothly, am I better off re-releasing everything all at once, or staggering them? I know KU lets you run 5 free days. My gut instinct would be publishing them all at once to make sure I have a catalog up in case someone wants to buy something else I've written, but I don't know if it's better to run the promotion one at a time.
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Jan 22, 2015 16:36
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Hijinks Ensue posted:I've gotten good reviews from book bloggers. It can take time, as most of them are swamped with requests, but over the long haul I've built some excellent relationships with bloggers. This makes getting reviews for subsequent books easier, as you can say, "Hey, blogger! A while back you read my novel Finite Laughter. My new book, A Peach Is Not A Peach Without A Pit, is out. May I send you a copy?" Never hurts to participate in bloggers' contests and rafflecopter giveaways either.
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Jan 22, 2015 18:17
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Just remember to read and respect each blogger's review policy. Don't send them your vampire Western if they've stated they only review literary fiction. If the blogger is swamped and says he or she can't take any new review requests for two months, then check back in two months.
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Jan 22, 2015 19:15
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ExtraNoise posted:Do you just say "Hey who wants a free copy if you give me a review?" or what? Yeah, I just tell them that the book will be out in a month, and ask if anyone wants a super secret sneak peak in exchange for a fair review that ideally goes live on release day.
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Jan 22, 2015 21:14
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Hijinks Ensue posted:Just remember to read and respect each blogger's review policy. Don't send them your vampire Western if they've stated they only review literary fiction. If the blogger is swamped and says he or she can't take any new review requests for two months, then check back in two months. The vast majority of them doesn't take self-pubbed books, though. At least that's how it seemed to me.
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Jan 23, 2015 10:08
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Depends on the genre, probably. I've never had a blogger turn down any of mine, but I also hardly use them anymore since all I care about are Amazon reviews and bloggers with highly active reader bases. I feel like a good 2/3 of them just run their blogs to get free books.
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Jan 23, 2015 16:47
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Yooper posted:Here's the new cover. It's by our esteemed ravenkult. Seriously, go buy his poo poo and don't make your own lovely cover unless you really know what you're doing. Thanks for posting it, man. I'll be writing a series of articles for LitReactor on how to do your own covers on the cheap, with some actual tips and how-tos. They'll be up in March, I'll make sure to link them.
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Jan 23, 2015 19:24
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ravenkult posted:Thanks for posting it, man. Also I love your goddamn covers. I think the American Nightmare one is my favourite.
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Jan 23, 2015 20:05
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ravenkult posted:Thanks for posting it, man. I'd absolutely love to know how much of that cover is stock photo and how much of it is your work. I think that would be fascinating. Also the process of finding the right stock photo too, do you search tags for objects/people or for feel/mood/theme?
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Jan 23, 2015 21:06
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Thanks man. I'm not sure what the hell I'm gonna write, but we'll see how it goes. Mostly I was thinking of trying to teach people to consider some more abstract stock images and how they can be more evocative than going ''My book is about a blond woman in her 30s, so I'm gonna google that.'' It's fairly easy IMO to ''fake'' good design in a way that will make a book stand out to customers. Those premade cover websites have been doing that for ages.
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Jan 23, 2015 21:30
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I'm legit upset that I have to wait until March to read that. I'm having to whip up three covers a week for my publishing schedule, and even tiny improvements would be really beneficial. The abstract cover idea sounds really cool: worked for Fifty Shades.
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Jan 23, 2015 22:19
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I'm tossing myself into ACX as a narrator for some sweat equity on the side as I bolster my freelancing endeavors outside of my standard radio work. If any of you self-publishers have a book out there that you have or will dump into ACX, I've got some surplus hours to put into voicing/producing a good narration of your stuff. Reach out to me if interested; I've got contact info and reels here. I'd love to help another goon while I help myself.
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Jan 23, 2015 22:39
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ravenkult posted:Thanks for posting it, man. Chalk me up as someone else who's really looking forward to this. I feel like I've really hit my stride with romance covers, but I'm definitely not where I want to be design-wise to be able to cobble together a sweet cover for a fantasy YA project I'm working on. Some tips and tricks from the master would be rad.
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Jan 24, 2015 14:34
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I might have oversold it, my own work is really involved and I don't usually do covers with a single stock image, so I might end up giving bunk advice, but I guess I'm about to find out! Writing the first part today.
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Jan 24, 2015 16:26
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I'm really curious about your process, because you do pretty amazing cover work and I've been wondering how much of it is stock images and how much of it is your own art.
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Jan 24, 2015 16:43
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Just finished my fifth story's first draft, so I'm going to take a break from writing for a few days and do some cover design for it.  I love this part.
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Jan 24, 2015 23:10
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Just a quick vent: I would take critical reviews more seriously if the reviewer could get my characters' names right.
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Jan 25, 2015 02:07
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God, isn't that great? I'd swear some reviewers are reading completely different books from the plot summaries they posted - either that or my books are way more ambiguous than I thought! I think my best is still the old lady who e-mailed me complaining about my use of the lord's name in vain. Lady, you're reading a book with explicit sex and someone getting murdered, and you're complaining about that?
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Jan 25, 2015 02:14
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There's this blogger that just absolutely loathes authors for some bizarre reason. He writes these rants on his facebook about how authors are all lovely and lazy and entitled. He claims his site gets 200k hits a month. I checked it out of curiosity and Alexa says his website gets 80% of it's traffic from India, which is pretty suspicious. Doesn't help that he straight up gets the title of the book wrong. I don't know why he even has a website if he hates us all so much.
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Jan 25, 2015 02:38
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I can't complain too much, as for the most part my reviews have been good. But criminy, the character's name is "Sean." That's not so hard to remember, is it?
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Jan 25, 2015 02:47
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Hijinks Ensue posted:Just a quick vent: I would take critical reviews more seriously if the reviewer could get my characters' names right. Great. My 30% done novel has the names of the two main characters as "The Chief" and "Blue". I cannot wait to see what will those get represented as...
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Jan 25, 2015 02:48
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Hijinks Ensue posted:I can't complain too much, as for the most part my reviews have been good. But criminy, the character's name is "Sean." That's not so hard to remember, is it? I've had my name misspelled and changed to "Steve" or "Shane" more times than I could count, sorry about your book.
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Jan 25, 2015 06:52
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I've been interested in self publishing for a while. I am not interested in fiction, but I have a ton of ideas for non-fiction/informational/self-help books related to the field I work in (Teaching/Science). I've been stalling a little bit, because I feel like I need an ebook template to type my book into. After reading a little bit of information here and other websites listed in the resources, I'm beginning to believe that this might not be true. Is it? Should I just start typing my books, and when I finish I can just export a google doc? I had come extremely close once to buying an ebook template. Should I still buy one? Or should I just start typing and worry about formatting later?
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Jan 25, 2015 16:52
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If you're putting it on Amazon you literally just need a word .doc file. It used to be a complete poo poo, and some of the pages describing the clusterfuck it used to be are still fairly prominently placed in search results. The cover is the difficult part nowadays.
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Jan 25, 2015 17:57
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I ask Dan why the game was such a fiasco. He uses a sports term I don't understand. I ask him what it means and our paths are split by a pillar. By the time we converge his explanation's half over and I'm not listening. I tell him I've got to go change. Inside the bathroom as I lift my shirt up in front of a mirror I see grid marks all over my torso, like I've been laying on a net. A girl looks at me with horror. This was the men's bathroom last time. I go to the men's bathroom to change instead. Someone's jacking off into one of the urinals. I pretend he's just shaking the droplets off really hard to make things less awkward. I start to change but he corners me. His eyes are too close together and he's got a tattoo like Mike Tyson. He says he feels like punching me. I beg him not to. Mentally handicapped people lose interest fast, and he says he's going to hide and I had to find him. I say sure. I've changed my clothes but I don't remember it. That means something's wrong. I have to tell her. I find her in a line of people. All of them are listening to Jeff Skylark's neurotic misgivings about Mormonism. Some of them are saying he should stick it out. Others, that he should try taking them down from the inside. I've got no patience for it. I have to tell her. I beckon her over. Her face is worried and curious. But it's not her face. I was right. There's no curse word for how I feel. not anymore. Everyone disappears and I bang on a table like a Slav because nothing matters anymore. I get a dirty look from someone I haven't seen in seven years. Skip back. I'm in an old bed and mother figure says I'm supposed to get three rings. The first one has a fire red jewel and gold beetle legs that hug my finger too tight. The next one's silver with a dark blue-purple gem like something a ghost would wear. The third's hypothetical. At the top of the falls I realize I'm afraid of heights and water. I try to look for the third ring and find out it's the part of a fireworks display that sets everything else off, symbolically. I've never been so disappointed. Skip forward. In Las Vegas, there's an art gallery called Jack Dempsey's The Yikes Place. It's like the Yikes Guy, and it says so on a plaque above the door. I can't tell if the reception desk is one of the exhibits, if the other attendees are exhibits. Across the street there's a security agency. One of the employees looks out at me, paranoid, from behind the glass door. I check the job titles, hours, and names of personnel painted on the window. I can't believe it when I see her name. It says she gets into the office at 7:08 a.m. I thought she never woke up that early. I try the door and it's unlocked. There's no sign of the wide-eyed employee from earlier. I try to figure out if one of the desks is hers. The one on the right is tidy except for the beer cans on the floor around it. One of them is covered in an image of a bald eagle. She wouldn't drink that unless she was being ironic. I try reading a note on the desk, but I won't be able to remember the words, and it's too late anyway. A Major Fucker fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 19:06
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A Major Fucker posted:I ask Dan why the game was such a fiasco. He uses a sports term I don't understand. I ask him what it means and our paths are split by a pillar. By the time we converge his explanation's half over and I'm not listening. I tell him I've got to go change. Inside the bathroom as I lift my shirt up in front of a mirror I see grid marks all over my torso, like I've been laying on a net. A girl looks at me with horror. This was the men's bathroom last time. same
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Jan 25, 2015 19:38
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Why are you posting excerpts from my autobiography?
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Jan 25, 2015 20:02
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I type a post on an internet forum. The thread is about self-publishing, or something, I don't remember. There is irony. The words come furiously, the pantomime of an impressionist artist putting paint to canvas to share an experience now since forgotten. A man is sitting next to me, the sort of man that's indebted to the government. You can smell it on him like the ghost of a bottle of Jack's on a ten-dollar whore. He smiles at me and we touch hands, only briefly. It's a public library with the name Tristen, the same name a former mistress once had before she changed it to Trixie. The new name suits her better, in the end. I hit post.
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Jan 25, 2015 20:11
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ExtraNoise posted:the ghost of a bottle of Jack's on a ten-dollar whore stealin this
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Jan 25, 2015 20:59
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So I signed up for BookBub, to see what it's like as an interested reader, and I'm surprised this works so well to drive customers. I get like 5 books per day, so I'm usually just deleting the email without reading. Am I just doing it wrong, or is it just not for me, or what? I guess there are readers who rip through a book or two a do and this is just their jam?
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Jan 25, 2015 21:42
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