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Bobby Deluxe posted:Punctuation should always be inside the quotes, I was taught. This is one of those things that drives me a little batty, because I was always taught to put punctuation inside the quotes as well - but would frequently find it to be unclear or misleading. I've come to terms with placing punctuation outside of quotation marks when it is necessary to separate the quote and the sentence in which it's couched. So for example: Did you ever blah blah whatever and just think, "Chumps"? On a technical level that may violate American style guides, but I think it preserves the actual tone of the sentence and avoids ambiguity, unlike this: Did you ever blah blah whatever and just think, "Chumps?" v-- Yeah basically everything down there, read that post Toaster Beef fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Feb 20, 2015 10:58
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Don't worry about what's "correct" or not unless you're writing a PhD or something. Every time a prescriptivist tries to tell me that I need to rewrite a well-flowing and unambiguous sentence into something worse in order to maintain the linguistic and grammatical purity of English I point out how the mere fact that I can understand him when he speaks means he's a hypocritical idiot. English didn't just appear out of thin air fifty years ago and what's most important is that what you write is comprehensible and digestible. Grammar describes and aids functional communication, it doesn't dictate it, and when it begins to impede understanding or ease of communication 'proper' grammar can gently caress right off. So don't ask "Is this grammatically correct" but ask "Is this potentially ambiguous or am I being inconsistent in its use?"
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Feb 20, 2015 11:33
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Has anybody bought Kindle Samurai? Is it worth the $USD 19 it's currently on sale for (13h left)? Does anybody have any other tools that are less expensive that can do similar things?
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Feb 20, 2015 12:09
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:Has anybody bought Kindle Samurai? Is it worth the $USD 19 it's currently on sale for (13h left)? Does anybody have any other tools that are less expensive that can do similar things? Looks like complete bullshit to me for four reasons: #1 - Unless I missed it, their sales speech completely neglects the popularity factor of the algorithm. There's more to it than just keywords. #2 - Look at the testimonials: They're all from other IMers #3 - This lovely image from their site does not inspire confidence in the buyer:  527 Sales - 5 Refunds does not equal 527 net sales. and #4 - Oh come on already. Too good to be true is too good to be true. 
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Feb 20, 2015 15:00
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The sales pitch is pretty broken but the program itself seems like a reasonably streamlined way of getting metrics on keyword use. You have to know what you're doing regardless but it seems faster than doing everything by hand. I've seen a bunch of other people use it, but I don't know what the real professionals use. Whether people like EngineerSean etc are actively using it or if they have their own manual system.
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Feb 20, 2015 15:19
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I've purchased kindle samurai, kindle spy, and the kdsuite of products. They're all a sampling of 80% scammy bullshit/20% possibly useful stuff. Kindle samurai is useful for quickly judging the competition of a group of keywords or category. So if your keyword is "British spy thriller sabotage germ warfare" then it will throw that at Amazon and come back with results that indicate how much competition there is for that set of keywords. It will also provide other metrics of questionable value. KindleSpy is a more useful tool for me because I bring up a top 100 list, author page, or my own search query on Amazon and it will bring up a little window. That window will parse the information and give me the one thing I need to know and don't want to click hundreds of times to find out: page length. Are these books selling well novels, novellas or shorts? I get that at a glance. Unfortunately it also times out more often than it works, and the estimated earnings column is hilariously wrong. Kindle suite I have barely touched. On the one hand I don't like supporting scammy warriorforums stuff, but $19 is a worthwhile experiment for me if it can give me any insight whatsoever. So far I've gotten my money's worth out of these products, but I'm sure that most people don't. At best they're conveniences that might save you time. None of them have secret Amazon api access or anything.
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Feb 20, 2015 15:57
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I am instantly angry at it for having an auto-starting video when my headphones were already cranked up from something else. Why the gently caress do people do that? It's as bad as the loving embedded midis from the internet a la fifteen years ago. goddamn i'm old
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Feb 20, 2015 15:58
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A few years back, I got into producing massive amounts (like, thirty stories in a little over a month) of the genre that shall not be named. Made a good enough profit and had some fun, but definitely burned out on it — which makes sense, given the idiotic pace. Tried getting back into it again last year and ultimately couldn't bring myself to do it anymore. No big deal, really, but the experience was enough to push me in a different direction. I'm looking to transition more into romance (new adult, mostly), since I think it's more up my alley and could, potentially, give me a product I wouldn't feel weird about showing to family and friends. Not at all trying to get ahead of myself and start worrying about where/how I'll be publishing my stuff, but this is a matter of curiosity: Is it more viable than ever to publish solely on Amazon? Obviously stuff like Draft2Digital has made the matter of selling in different marketplaces nearly trivial, but it seems like the opportunities afforded to you by exclusivity within the Amazon marketplace are pretty sweet.
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Feb 20, 2015 16:08
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This is clearly the Prior Six Weeks Royalty Report due to the 35% and 70% on the last column there but, with the repeat ASINs, there is no way that I can see to order your titles like that such that the ASIN with CSSC shows up all those times and the ASIN with A50E only shows up that one time, unless A50E is a new book I guess. Also, anyone who has those kinds of numbers knows that you never get 70% and 35% in the same week like CSSC does. It's always 90%+ of 70% if you are eligible or 100% of 35% if you are not. An exception would obviously be if you switch the price halfway through the week. I'd be more comfortable just calling this screenshot bullshit though. Also I don't really share keyword advice but I do everything manually and by my gut, just like everything I do. When I used to play online poker a lot of players were addicted to HUDs, and while they are very useful in some situations, you learn to rely on them and in situations where they aren't able to be used (tournaments where you move around a lot or games with total anonymity) the players who typically used them didn't have the instincts to play correctly. As several people have said, if there was one that was considered 100% reliable, I would probably find time to learn it, but I've never heard of one that is.
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Feb 20, 2015 16:19
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I'm getting into a whole new area now, as I've just published my first nonfiction book. It's a collection of movie reviews, and getting it noticed will definitely require an adjustment in tactics from what I'm used to with fiction. The good news is that now I'm ready to jump into a new fiction project.
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Feb 20, 2015 17:00
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EngineerSean posted:I do everything manually and by my gut, just like everything I do I'd just like to comment that you've got one hell of a gut. No, I'm not telling you to get your rear end to the gym.
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Feb 20, 2015 17:57
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you should though, this job makes me too sedentary
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Feb 20, 2015 18:01
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 I'm wanting to plan another push for this novella (3 months old) and bringing some things in order based on what I've read from this thread. Right now, I feel like I might have to revise the typeset of the cover? Also, anyone have experience making your book free as part of a promotion for a new book? I can average 1 novella per year (hobbyist here) and value the exposure more than cash, to be honest, so I wouldn't mind the idea if I know it's given people results.
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Feb 20, 2015 20:15
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Did D2D resolve the reporting issue? Haven't heard anything myself. I have some new covers for sale.  I'm also on Patreon now, making non-exclusive premades. https://www.patreon.com/ravenkult
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Feb 22, 2015 02:54
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Hey guys, I'm working on book two, and I'm at the blurb stage. Any advice/help would be really appreciated. edit: redacted brotherly fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jul 7, 2015 |
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Feb 22, 2015 15:26
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the brotherly phl posted:Hey guys, I'm working on book two, and I'm at the blurb stage. Any advice/help would be really appreciated. Maybe some other people have ideas about stuff you could add, but I struck out the stuff I thought you could take away.
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Feb 22, 2015 16:32
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Blue Scream posted:Maybe some other people have ideas about stuff you could add, but I struck out the stuff I thought you could take away. Thanks man, those are good cuts, I appreciate it.
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Feb 22, 2015 17:11
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I've been reading a bunch of stuff lately about how you can make a bit of money by cranking out what is, I take it, the Verboten Genre. Are these stories about people making five figures a month in royalties true, or are they exceptions and the vast majority of stuff wallows at the bottom of the trough with nobody ever buying it? (Although, God, if I could make even a few hundred bucks a month off a 100-page novella that would be like manna from heaven.) Or is it extremely arrogant to think that just because I'm a somewhat talented semi-published writer, I could pump out something in a genre I instinctively disdain, without knowing anything about its conventions? I mean, I think I can guess, but again that feels like arrogance. I think I know the answer but will give it a shot anyway because a) it would be a lark, and b) I intend to self-publish some stuff that I actually care about down the track, and this would be a good practice run to see how the whole system works.
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Feb 23, 2015 12:17
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I can tell you that it's very possible to make very little money doing it. You might look at the big sellers and go "ugh that writing is terrible, I could do way better than that", but it's fundamentally a business and the people making big bucks know their market - that's why they're successful. There's a reason why 50 shades of gray is making millions and it's not because nobody with better writing ability has tried to compete. It's like looking at Iggy Azalea or Kesha or something and saying "Oh they'll go broke as soon as literally anybody else with musical talent picks up a guitar". So in that sense, your previous writing ability doesn't really enter into it. Your ability to research and construct titles based on that research is more important than your ability to turn a pretty phrase. And if you don't live and breathe the market, you won't be able to corner it. You don't have to be a huge fanboy and put posters up on your wall, but if you're still talking about "disdaining" the genre, you'll never be able to write it. People can tell when writers don't care about (or don't understand) what they're writing, and they'll just go elsewhere. This goes for romance as well, which is probably what we should centre the discussion around. It's like trying to write an action sci-fi novel to pick up "that dumb wh40k crowd who have more dollars than sense" - unless you have an innate, sociopathic talent for faking interest, you'll never make it. You gotta have the ability to interest yourself in what you're researching and what you're writing. edit: A good way to think about it is, having the talent for something doesn't mean you'll be successful at it. Are you good at debating? You should be a barrister, you'd make millions! Are you good with numbers? Oh man you'll be the world's richest accountant! Having a talent for writing isn't enough, you have to care about what you're doing. Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 12:36
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:I can tell you that it's very possible to make very little money doing it. How very little is very little, though? I get what you're saying about researching and knowing the genre, but as I said, a stipend a month sounds good to me.
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Feb 23, 2015 12:53
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freebooter posted:How very little is very little, though? I get what you're saying about researching and knowing the genre, but as I said, a stipend a month sounds good to me. Only Amazon would know. I'd say there are plenty of people who never got the first $100 payout from Amazon even with a few 5k stories under their belt, and a bunch more will build up to and hover around the couple-hundred buck a month mark and then give up after no signs of improvement. It's easy enough to write books that never earn more than $15/mo (and obviously start dropping off the radar as each month passes) and realise that the hourly rate just doesn't cut it. But it's up to you. Give it a shot, do your research (that includes getting KU and reading a lot of best sellers and zero sellers) and see how you go. It's a good experience in writing but the research/business side of things is more complicated than you think. At least from my perspective, as someone who hasn't done well at all but is actively learning from my mistakes.
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Feb 23, 2015 13:00
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Petition to rename erotica "super-romance" so we can stop dancing around the genre title Tia
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Feb 23, 2015 14:01
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freebooter posted:Or is it extremely arrogant to think that just because I'm a somewhat talented semi-published writer, I could pump out something in a genre I instinctively disdain, without knowing anything about its conventions? I mean, I think I can guess, but again that feels like arrogance. Yes, because of the bold-texted part. Super-Romance relies heavily on knowing what your audience wants, delivering it, and delivering it consistently. The people making five-digits are the people who found an audience and churn a story a week or more. They also have a good handle on keywords, cover design (in spite of how bad those super-romance covers look, there's a reason they look that way), and blurb design. For all the mockery of the genre as a whole, the people who make bank in it are skilled at the whole business thing, and they tend to have have a good understanding of story structure and of delivering what readers want (which is why so many of the high-earners also make bank in other genres as well). You are going to have to either be extremely lucky or write your rear end off to get into the high earner categories. A few hundred a month should be pretty easy after 2-3 months of consistent writing. I am all in favor of people trying out Super-Romance because it is a great income at best and a good learning experience at worst. It teaches you to deliver exactly the stories your readers want with as little excess bullshit as possible, which is a nice skill to drag over into other genres once you get bored or burn out. quote:I think I know the answer but will give it a shot anyway because a) it would be a lark, and b) I intend to self-publish some stuff that I actually care about down the track, and this would be a good practice run to see how the whole system works. This is basically how I got started. I saw the original Super-Romance thread in BFC, laughed my rear end off at it, and then gave it a shot because I was between jobs anyway. Dicked around, wasted a year writing bullshit, and then the 50SOG explosion came along and suddenly someone in the thread had an $87K month. That was my wake-up call that I should stop wasting time and do it seriously, and then BAM - earnings started skyrocketing. I'm only a high-four / low-five author each month (usually high-four) from Super-Romance, but I'll definitely say it was worth every second of the writing. =) After that, I made the transition into normal romance when New Adult Romance took off as a named genre, and here we are now.
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Feb 23, 2015 15:09
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Sundae posted:This is basically how I got started. I saw the original Super-Romance thread in BFC, laughed my rear end off at it, and then gave it a shot because I was between jobs anyway. Dicked around, wasted a year writing bullshit, and then the 50SOG explosion came along and suddenly someone in the thread had an $87K month. That was my wake-up call that I should stop wasting time and do it seriously, and then BAM - earnings started skyrocketing. What, to you, is the difference between "wasting a year writing bullshit" and "doing it seriously"? Is it just a matter of research and reading what the competition is doing, or is it something beyond that? This is something that has perplexed me all the way back to when I was writing super-romance regularly: There was obviously a difference between what people like me — people earning a few hundred a month, okay but not great for the amount they were churning out — and people like you, Talks to Cats, etc., who seemingly flipped a switch and experienced a ton of success, but whenever the nature of that difference was discussed it never seemed to go anywhere productive. The typical answer (covers, blurbs, keywords, knowing the field, work ethic) may very well be the only one, and you may feel as if I'm asking a question that has been answered hundreds of times already in this very thread, but I feel like if that typical answer is truly all there was to it then there would be many, many more success stories. This is totally not sour grapes, by the by — I'm happy with where I'm at and looking forward to getting into writing romance, and obviously you've earned every ounce of success you've experienced. I'm just curious as to how a successful author in these fields boils their success down. Toaster Beef fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 15:44
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Anyone having trouble downloading a mobi from D2D? I keep getting an error. I've tried deleting and reuploading, but nothing.
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Feb 23, 2015 16:23
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the brotherly phl posted:Anyone having trouble downloading a mobi from D2D? I keep getting an error. I've tried deleting and reuploading, but nothing. I did it just the other day and had no issues.
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Feb 23, 2015 17:01
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Toaster Beef posted:What, to you, is the difference between "wasting a year writing bullshit" and "doing it seriously"? Is it just a matter of research and reading what the competition is doing, or is it something beyond that? This is something that has perplexed me all the way back to when I was writing super-romance regularly: There was obviously a difference between what people like me — people earning a few hundred a month, okay but not great for the amount they were churning out — and people like you, Talks to Cats, etc., who seemingly flipped a switch and experienced a ton of success, but whenever the nature of that difference was discussed it never seemed to go anywhere productive. There are several factors, and unfortunately one of them is luck. Excluding that one, though, here are the differences to me between bullshit and serious: #1 - Target a subgenre that people like. You can be the world's best writer of children's romantic fridge fiction (alas, the star-crossed onion and potato will never be together!) and it won't matter if your total reader-base is three people. #2 - Write what THOSE people like, not what YOU like. This is a common mistake people make, which is to write things that they think would be cool/sexy/romantic/whatever, rather than what their readers want to see in their books. To give an example, I have a billionaire romance novel that centers around themes of racial tension and class inequality. Guess what nobody wants to think about in their wealth and prestige fantasies? Exactly. Write what the readers want to read and match their expected conventions. My Super-Romance had the same problem in year one - hopping from topic to topic, writing things with no regard to what readers wanted, making bad internet puns in my story titles, etc. #3 - Consistently deliver #1 and #2 at a rapid pace. You want to make them keep coming back to you for more. You want to always have a new release coming, a new book that brings other readers to your back catalog, a portal to the rest of your books through your newer works. Strategy for this varies depending on the current publishing landscape, but step one of it is almost always WRITE MORE. That's basically it. Your readers know what they want and they're only going to buy that one thing. Look at how specific Harlequin titles are and how there are entire lines dedicated to certain concepts; the same readers come back for more and more of that same concept. Serve the readers. Let's make a convoluted example here: You start up a hot dog stand on Monday, and everyone who tried your hot dogs loved them. Is your response "Gee, I should bring more hot dogs tomorrow and maybe advertise them somehow," or is your response "Man, if people loved my hot dogs, imagine how much they'll love my pierogi?" You're going to lose all your hot dog customers on Tuesday, when they come back and see that you don't sell hot dogs anymore. The lunch crowd doesn't want pierogi, it wants hot dogs.
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Feb 23, 2015 17:40
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Toaster Beef posted:I'm just curious as to how a successful author in these fields boils their success down. Work hard and work smart. You listed the things you need to understand. That's all there is to it. I putz'd around at this for three months and made a grand total of $50 off of 3 stories totaling 20k words. But I didn't quit. I decided to work hard and work smart and I'm happy to report my earnings are better these days.
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Feb 23, 2015 17:55
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Yeah, I think if I were to go back and do it all again I'd have stuck with one very specific niche. No idea if it would've worked out any better, but I wouldn't have wasted so much time on topics I had no interest in and probably wouldn't have burnt out so heavily. Thanks for spelling it out like that, I know it seems like common sense but I'm fascinated with how authors are getting to where they're at.
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Feb 23, 2015 18:43
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Roar posted:Petition to rename erotica "super-romance" so we can stop dancing around the genre title "Hard-romance"? 
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Feb 23, 2015 19:37
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freebooter posted:Are these stories about people making five figures a month in royalties true, or are they exceptions and the vast majority of stuff wallows at the bottom of the trough with nobody ever buying it? There exists people who make five figures a month writing it (I'm one of them) but they are very few and far between. It won't happen to you if you write a one-off.
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Feb 23, 2015 20:28
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I have an idea for a nonfiction book targeted toward yuppie parents who are interested in child development. It would include original research of my own, not just reporting on what others have to say. Do any of y'all write non-fiction? Will I make a dime? edit: yep, planned to do a blog of at least the writing process, if not also the data collection and some pre-planning Mortley fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 20:44
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I don't write it, but if I were to do something like that, I would be building up a blog beforehand to grow an audience and mailing list, and focusing on getting promo on relevant big blogs. I think blog tours are worthless for genre fiction but they might help for NF.
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Feb 23, 2015 20:56
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Thanks for the replies; I suspected it takes more work than people let on, but it still sounds worth attempting. I'll go ahead and take a crack it it, largely because...Sundae posted:I'm only a high-four / low-five author each month (usually high-four) from Super-Romance, but I'll definitely say it was worth every second of the writing. =) ...to me, that is insane. To be clear here: you're talking about making $60,000 a year from this? Have you quit your day job? I wouldn't even begin to dream of that kind of cash. If I could make a few hundred dollars a month I'd be happy.
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Feb 24, 2015 01:29
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Sundae would quit his day job but he is the only Millenial I know that has a six figure day job on top of his free-lance work.
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Feb 24, 2015 01:33
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freebooter posted:...to me, that is insane. To be clear here: you're talking about making $60,000 a year from this? Have you quit your day job? I've only been doing this seriously for a bit over 2 years now, but yeah, I'd say I'm averaging $60K a year. I'm hoping for $90K+ this year now that I'm healthy(ish) again. Sean's right on the evil day job thing. I hate the job, but it's hard to ditch the golden handcuffs when they're bringing in $100K+ a year and give you benefits. Plus, it lets my wife pursue her own self-employed career in the arts instead of having to work at Target or something. Once my wife's student loans are paid off, I'm going full-time writer.
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Feb 24, 2015 01:50
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Toaster Beef posted:What, to you, is the difference between "wasting a year writing bullshit" and "doing it seriously"? If you want to take it seriously, you write until you are finished, commission a cover on fiverr, then schedule a kindle promo over the next holiday weekend. Then you write another. And another. And you don't stop until you wake up one morning with money coming out of your ears and a woman in new mexico accusing you of identity fraud. It's difficult to clarify explicitly though because the mods have said a definite no to erotica discussion. Making mention of the business side of it for a few posts seems to be grudgingly accepted as long as it doesn't overtake self pub discussion, but any discussion of content or what sort of subjects to approach is straying towards what got the erotica thread closed down (people apparently kept justifying the weird stuff, drama ensued and leaked into other threads). Reddit has a decent sub for it, but as with all reddit, take it with a pinch of salt. freebooter posted:Thanks for the replies; I suspected it takes more work than people let on, but it still sounds worth attempting. I'll go ahead and take a crack it it If you're just looking for quick cash now, sell 'readers letters' to grot mags, they still pay reasonably well in the UK at least. You will initially be putting in a lot of work for a return you won't see for a long time, which is not a situation a lot of people can persevere through. And even in the long term it's better than a mcjob, but not by much. Luckily for me though I'm on zero income anyway, so have nothing to lose! 
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Feb 24, 2015 12:28
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Bobby Deluxe posted:And you don't stop until you wake up one morning with money coming out of your ears and a woman in new mexico accusing you of identity fraud. Wait, what? Is this a thing that happened to you? That sounds like a story.
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Feb 24, 2015 14:29
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Just a reminder: You can talk about the biz side of things if it relates to other genres as well, but please no content talk in this thread re: Super-Romance. On a different genre note, I finally have a new full-length release coming up. It's been months and months since I released anything major, and it's finally (almost) finished! 
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Feb 24, 2015 15:10
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e: ^^^ more details on your new book!RedTonic posted:Wait, what? Is this a thing that happened to you? That sounds like a story. Amazon took the reviews down, but she's since registered a tumblr page and changed a bunch of her social media stuff to state that she is not me and vice versa. She messaged me on tumblr to say she thought I must have known who she was and did it deliberately to discredit her. I tried to message her to say as nicely as possible that it was not deliberate, and the world is too big for any name to be unique, but haven't heard anything since. I think she's only mad because I registered forenamesurname.com, so even if she points her clients to forename-surname.com or some other variant, half of them will probably mistype it and get forwarded to my page instead. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 15:24
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