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I have seen it in do think it makes sense for authors who already have a following with novel length books who release a short and want their core readers to know that.
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Apr 1, 2015 19:19
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moana posted:Jesus loving christ, stop posting empty pretentious bullshit in this thread, you could have been done with your first story by now. r u a millionaire yet
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Apr 10, 2015 15:04
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Stop making me feel pathetic, you two.  Speaking of pathetic, it's time for QUARTERLY TAXES! WOOO. 
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Apr 10, 2015 15:09
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Amazon sent me the mail telling me my book was available at 3 AM on Friday, April 10. The bookshelf has it as published on the 9th. The shop page lists it as published on the 8th. Give it to me straight guys: Can books travel backwards in time?
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Apr 10, 2015 16:30
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The answer is pretty much what you'd expect.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:44
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EngineerSean posted:r u a millionaire yet 
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Apr 10, 2015 17:10
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Sundae posted:The answer is pretty much what you'd expect.
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Apr 10, 2015 17:11
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moana posted:noooooooooooo, thanks for reminding me what a failure I am. Recent mathematical projections coming out of my butt have me at a half million this year. If Amazon doubles KU payouts, I might get there You are totally buying the first round if I ever make it to one of the conventions.
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Apr 10, 2015 17:35
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moana posted:mathematical projections talk nerdy to me
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Apr 10, 2015 17:39
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RWA San Diego 2016!! Sean said he would bring the champagne if I rent the yacht 
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Apr 10, 2015 17:41
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moana posted:RWA San Diego 2016!! Sean said he would bring the champagne if I rent the yacht I wanted to come to NYC this year but that wasn't happening with my day-job's bullshit. If I'm self-employed by 2016 SD, I will totally take a few days and come out to San Diego. 
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Apr 10, 2015 19:03
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I've been out of the loop for a couple years now, but suddenly find myself with a bunch of savings and no regular day job. Back in 2012 I was selling a good ~100 copies a day of various speed romances and enjoying myself, but now I'd like to write some longer romance works under a new penname. Besides looking at the amazon top sales lists, does anyone have a good list of books that have come out in the last year I can read to get up to speed on where the genre has gone, what sub genres are hot, tropes to avoid, etc etc? Basically, are there any recommendations for bestselling or well-written romances? I'd like a survey of what's out there.
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Apr 11, 2015 21:01
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Stella Hayne posted:I've been out of the loop for a couple years now, but suddenly find myself with a bunch of savings and no regular day job. I could give you a list now but "looking at the amazon top sales list" is literally what I do to get that list.
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Apr 11, 2015 21:06
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I don't know if this is the right place for this, but: I'm looking to self-publish a book on my grandmother's artwork. She's established enough to need something to pass out to potential clients, friends, and such. What are the best places for such a thing for someone not an expert at it? 90% of it would just be photographs of her paintings, with a few pages for an artist statement and some other text. She had a previous book made and it was horrible and overpriced. I just made a website with a template and it turned out nicely, i was hoping for something like that. Cost is important, because i'd be needing over a hundred for sure. I looked at one site but it was about $25 a book, is that normal? Erostratus fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Apr 12, 2015 |
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Apr 12, 2015 00:11
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I don't know if Createspace would be right for this, you can get in contact with them but I'd think you'd want glossy, maybe full color pages? Not sure how good that would be through CS. Lulu has been the other big one for a while, I think. $25 seems high to me but if you want it super nice, then it might be reasonable.
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Apr 12, 2015 00:33
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I wouldn't know either but if you're talking full colour photographs taking up almost the whole book then yeah, that's going to be quite expensive regardless and $25 sounds expected considering it's only a self-pub limited run thing. Depends on how many pages you're talking too.
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Apr 12, 2015 00:46
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Phone round local print shops? If you're willing to do the distribution yourself sometimes they'll do a deal on bulk printing if you can provide them with a template. My uncle-in-law is a pro photographer and he makes and binds his books at his workshop - time consuming, but a shitload cheaper apparently. e: apparently (asking the wife) he prints the sheets himself then sends them off to get them bound. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Apr 12, 2015 |
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Apr 12, 2015 10:04
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Yeah, my price estimations were way off. Bare-bones it's like $15 (for a 20 page softcover) each for bulk, but probably will be closer to $30 or more. It's also a lot harder than i figured for someone dumb like me, but blurb seemed to have a better interface to work with than lulu so i'm playing with that one for now. But still, the idea of self-publishing a book so easily is really cool, the future rocks. I just want something easy that can spit out a couple hundred books of decent quality.
Erostratus fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Apr 12, 2015 |
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Apr 12, 2015 15:39
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The type of binding will also probably affect printing costs. If you want proper hardcover book that's going to be expensive, if you want a magazine-style (or yearbook-style) that should be less, same with a spiral bound run. Especially if you do the actual collation + binding yourself, if that makes sense - they print and cut the holes and give you the materials, you spend a few hours watching tv while you put the pages in order and slip the spiral on. It depends if she's looking for an actual coffee table book to give out to people, which will definitely run at a premium per copy, or if she just wants a not-lovely physical medium for showing her work. There are ways to do it cheaper if you're willing to be creative.
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Apr 12, 2015 16:57
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So, I had a couple questions after reading the thread, hope no one minds. Let me preface with this: I was one of those burnouts in 2012 riding the big waves of super-romance publications. I was fairly prolific, with 21 titles currently sitting in the bookshelf, and fairly popular -- my first month in self pubbing between Smashwords, ARe, BN and Amazon netted me over $1200. (I might've cried when I realized.) I want back in, but I see some things have changed (for one, Kindle Unlimited). I want a piece of that. I'm going to gear up and rework that pen name for shorts, work on the blurbs, covers, etc, and repub everything under Kindle only. 1) How hard is it to get your stuff removed from Smashwords? I've heard some horror stories. Is it just "pull stuff down and wait X number of days" before it's unavailable in the marketplace? 2) What do you guys do for back matter? I usually post a snippet of a related story with a referral link to Amazon, but would I be better suited putting in a blurb and a link instead? 3) Speaking of backmatter, would it be a good idea to have a website link and maybe an attachment to a twitter account? I know it's popular, but I don't have much experience with Twitter and the like. Does it really help/matter?
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Apr 12, 2015 21:31
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1. It's not that bad. 2. Yes, list of other works, blurb and link is what I do normally. 3. Mailing list beats all.
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Apr 13, 2015 02:17
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For number 2 a good idea is to use bitly to create the links they click, and each book gets a #bookname anchor tag at the end of the url so that you can track which books are encouraging people to read more of your stuff and which aren't. The more books and backmatter you have the more links you'll get but it's a decent way of keeping track of stuff. Also does anybody know how to get a list of all the books you've borrowed on KU? I can't find it for the life of me and it's just occurred to me that I've published a few titles I haven't borrowed yet.
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Apr 13, 2015 08:54
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Silvyfox posted:So, I had a couple questions after reading the thread, hope no one minds. Come back in a month and let me know how KU worked out for you, because I'm considering doing it too.
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Apr 13, 2015 08:57
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:Also does anybody know how to get a list of all the books you've borrowed on KU? I can't find it for the life of me and it's just occurred to me that I've published a few titles I haven't borrowed yet. I don't know if you can find a list but I think on the product page it will say something like "You borrowed this book on X date" even if you've returned it.
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Apr 13, 2015 12:43
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Go into your "Manage My Kindle" page and you can tell which ones are KU. There's no easy way to get a list otherwise.
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Apr 13, 2015 14:13
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Neither of those two work for me but my kindle is paired to a separate amazon account in a weird way so maybe the problem is on my end. It's okay, I'll just keep track of what I've borrowed in future. Incidentally this showed up on the relevant subreddit and it seems really cool: https://www.getbookreport.com/install.html It's free for a year and then >$1000/mo are asked to pay and it is just data porn for your Amazon sales/borrows. You can set borrow rate estimates etc. Not sure if it's as powerful as some of the upfront paid tools but it's pretty fun to click around with.
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Apr 13, 2015 19:21
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Man, that seems like a great way for someone to gather some data on what books sell and how much. Maybe I'm just being cynical.
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Apr 13, 2015 20:11
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https://www.getbookreport.com/scripts/report.js All the source code is available and the author welcomes you to review it. (Not saying it's safe - just saying it's available.) Edit: quote:Our Privacy Policy
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Apr 13, 2015 20:16
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ravenkult posted:Man, that seems like a great way for someone to gather some data on what books sell and how much. Maybe I'm just being cynical. I don't have the expertise to comment authoritatively but I looked at the privacy and FAQ and they seem pretty reasonable, and the ajax calls in the JS seem like they're doing innocent things as well - retrieving book data via ASIN rather than uploading sales data, etc. You can try it here for The Time Machine: https://app.getbookreport.com/api/checkASIN/B00VAOUGR2 returns {"B00VAOUGR2":{"error":false,"author":"H.G. Wells","pubDate":"2015-03-30","pageCount":"106"}} And the rest is just pulling from your KDP data locally and then checking user subscription level. Also there's a stripe API use. Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Apr 13, 2015 |
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Apr 13, 2015 20:30
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Fair enough, fellas!
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Apr 13, 2015 20:31
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ravenkult posted:Fair enough, fellas! No it's a very fair point and just because it doesn't seem to be doing anything nasty (and they promise not to) doesn't mean they can't/won't. Look at all those smartphone apps or browser addons that start out simple and useful and free and build a userbase and then after a certain amount of time they start injecting nasty poo poo into it to make money. A bit of suspicion never hurt, so it depends how worried you are.
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Apr 13, 2015 20:37
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I'm creeping towards self-publication of my first novel, which is a dark comedy/crime thriller. How does this cover strike you for something in the neighborhood of Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey? I'm still trying to nail down an appropriate blurb as well. Blurb version 1. Stealing the tricked-out sports car was the easy part. Enjoying his date afterward was another story. For a neurotic projectionist afraid to jaywalk, Marty’s night just keeps getting more complicated. Dodging the police and his girlfriend, he tries to seduce his new coworker with a late-night joyride through the streets of South Miami. Had he known what was in the trunk, or what the car’s terrifying owner would do to get it back, he probably would have picked a different day to start his life of crime. Blurb version 2. Marty didn’t mean to steal the car, but there was something about the concession stand girl’s eyes. He wasn’t going to let the mounting paranoia, hallucinations of his girlfriend, or the Miami-Dade Police spoil their late-night joyride and impromptu date. So what if the trunk was filled with gruesome baggage, or if the car’s rightful owner started calling Marty’s phone? A few minor setbacks, but nothing he couldn’t handle with the help of a street-pharmacist with a penchant for pigtails and kimonos. Who knew crime had such a steep learning curve?
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Apr 13, 2015 20:40
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Author name is bigger than the title. Also do the name in a different font. e: I like it otherwise! ravenkult fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Apr 13, 2015 |
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Apr 13, 2015 20:55
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TheForgotton, blurb 2 was too long and explicit. Ya lost me at "street pharmacist with a penchant  "And "neurotic" and "afraid to jaywalk" could be seen as redundant in the context of a blurb. Pick one, probably the more descriptive one. Basically use blurb 1 but change "tricked-out sports car" to something like "Ferrari" or "6 and a half figgies of detroit muscle" or just anything that sounds like something someone would actually say. Otherwise, great cover and blurbing.
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Apr 13, 2015 21:19
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TheForgotton posted:I'm creeping towards self-publication of my first novel, which is a dark comedy/crime thriller. How does this cover strike you for something in the neighborhood of Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey? I'm still trying to nail down an appropriate blurb as well. I remember this one showing up a few months ago. The cover is much better now (agree with Raven, though). Blurb still needs some work.
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Apr 13, 2015 21:31
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Sundae posted:https://www.getbookreport.com/scripts/report.js I installed it because I love graphs and no problems yet. e: Actually I'll go ahead and endorse it, especially if you love wasting time looking at numbers. EngineerSean fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Apr 13, 2015 |
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Apr 13, 2015 22:06
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I also have been using that book report (I was a tester) and it works great. Also, the app dev. Is doing it on his own and is also an author, totally worth checking out.
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Apr 14, 2015 04:05
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Any idea how much subscription will cost? I know it scales according to your monthly income (i.e. changes each month) and if you're under $1000 it's free but I'd like to know what sort of figure he's looking at.
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Apr 14, 2015 14:06
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There are two tiers. Free < $1000, and $10.00 a month > $1000.
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Apr 14, 2015 14:24
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March KU rate = $1.34, down 7 cents.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:45
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