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Thanks, stock photos are quite awesome so I think I'll start there and see how badly I can futz it up.  I'm starting to plot out a short romance novel to test the waters and I feel incredibly stupid even asking this, but from a marketing perspective is setting important? I'm pretty rigorously following jami gold's beat sheet (http://jamigold.com/2012/11/write-romance-get-your-beat-sheet-here/), so the character arcs will remain roughly the same no matter what: girl meets boy, boy meets girl, they hate, then somewhat like, then really hate, then really like each other, prompt happy ending. That having been said, there are some very obvious recurring themes among bestsellers (mostly modern in setting, white collar prince empowering Cinderella fantasy to name one at random). Given that, does a familiar theme ("I like billionaire stories, this story has the words "billionaire playboy" in the blurb and a tie on the cover, I will buy this book") win out over an original setting (she is a Bolshevik, he is a Tsarist enforcer, can their love weather the February Revolution)?
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Jun 4, 2015 03:02
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I don't think we're really even allowed to discuss these details in this thread, but the biggest mistake I see everyone making their first month is trying to be too creative and do something unique. Figure out what sells really well and do that. If you see a bunch of Bolshevik romances selling, do it. If not, don't do it. edit: okay to be a bit more clear, if you saw a bunch of french and american revolution romance selling, doing bolshevik revolution would be fine. You don't want to do EXACTLY the same thing, but you don't want to take a risk and do some random thing that no one has done. angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 03:15
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That's what I was asking about, thank you! I just wanted to be sure that I wasn't wasting time getting really, really good at writing modern business-themed stories if I was able to get away with writing incredibly obscure settings that were fun to research while retaining the same character beats.
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Jun 4, 2015 03:21
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Thanks for the advice guys. I am gonna do a few romance shorts just to go through the entire publishing process a couple times before I decide what to do with something longer.
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Jun 4, 2015 05:42
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Metropolis posted:Thanks for the advice guys. I am gonna do a few romance shorts just to go through the entire publishing process a couple times before I decide what to do with something longer. You're doing it wrong. You're supposed to argue with the thread while humble bragging about your innate talent. Throw the combined knowledge of our bestselling authors back in their face and poo poo all over their recommendations about "genre". Buy a brand new retina MacBook Pro, install Scrivener and Vellum, then never write a word and never come back to the thread. That's how we do in CC.
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Jun 4, 2015 13:59
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:You're doing it wrong. You're supposed to argue with the thread while humble bragging about your innate talent. Throw the combined knowledge of our bestselling authors back in their face and poo poo all over their recommendations about "genre". Buy a brand new retina MacBook Pro, install Scrivener and Vellum, then never write a word and never come back to the thread. actually the book I'm writing is going to challenge the notion of "romance" as such, featuring only a single character who never interacts with anyone else. I've looked over the rest of the so-called "bestseller"-list on amazon and i think my book will really stand out
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Jun 4, 2015 14:12
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:You're doing it wrong. You're supposed to argue with the thread while humble bragging about your innate talent. Throw the combined knowledge of our bestselling authors back in their face and poo poo all over their recommendations about "genre". Buy a brand new retina MacBook Pro, install Scrivener and Vellum, then never write a word and never come back to the thread. Oh I see how it is. I mean -- sure. You're right. But... that's not my point.
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Jun 4, 2015 15:04
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Omi no Kami posted:
I think the prevailing wisdom is, read a few of the books on the bestsellers lists. Where are they set? Those places work. Make sure they work for your story, of course. For your subgenre, specifically, where are they set? Do you see many billionaire romances set in the deep south? What about shifter? MC romances? I mean, I think a lot of it is common sense--you wouldn't set a MC (motorcycle club) romance in New York, just because that's weird ('We rode our hogs, our leathers flying free, thru Times Square. Big Billy had to break for a tourist. It was wild.'). Conversely, you wouldn't set a mafia romance in the deep rural south (or maybe you would? they're selling meth and our heroine is a busty yet naive waitress at a dive bar where the scary russians love to drink too much cheap vodka and look suddenly she's pulled into a dangerous world of violence and excitement and just loves his scary accent and how free he is with a bowie knife). Anyway, yeah, that's been my experience at least. Emulate what works in the bestsellers.
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Jun 4, 2015 15:06
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the brotherly phl posted:Conversely, you wouldn't set a mafia romance in the deep rural south (or maybe you would? they're selling meth and our heroine is a busty yet naive waitress at a dive bar where the scary russians love to drink too much cheap vodka and look suddenly she's pulled into a dangerous world of violence and excitement and just loves his scary accent and how free he is with a bowie knife). I'd read that.
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Jun 4, 2015 16:09
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ArchangeI posted:actually the book I'm writing is going to challenge the notion of "romance" as such, featuring only a single character who never interacts with anyone else. I've looked over the rest of the so-called "bestseller"-list on amazon and i think my book will really stand out
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Jun 4, 2015 16:19
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moana posted:I think you can get some inspiration from this thread, there are a lot of people here who seem to have fallen in love with themselves. 
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Jun 4, 2015 16:26
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I love that I try.
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Jun 5, 2015 03:23
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Statistics question: looking at amazon breakdown of romance novels by themes and heroes I see that the most-published hero is a Wealthy love interest with Secret Baby as the most-published primary theme, but does the kindle store have an equivalent functionality for popularity? I'm trying to figure out if there's any way to get the same breakdown by ranking, e.g. "What Theme and Hero occurs most frequently in the top 1,000, top 100, top 20" and so forth. I'm assuming they don't make that public, but it'd be a pretty useful measure.
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Jun 5, 2015 09:26
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Brent Spiner: Computer, run a di-spectral analysis of themes within 21st century literature. Restrict to books which ranked within the top 1000 of all books at the time. Majel Barret-Roddenberry: Processing...
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Jun 5, 2015 16:31
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EngineerSean posted:Brent Spiner: Computer, run a di-spectral analysis of themes within 21st century literature. Restrict to books which ranked within the top 1000 of all books at the time. The top results involve busty women who are ravaged by packs of werewolves. Riker: Computer, route some examples to holodeck 2.
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Jun 5, 2015 16:53
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The Fuzzy Hulk posted:The top results involve busty women who are ravaged by packs of werewolves. There's a book/series that always seems to be in the top 10-20 of the fantasy list (sigh) that has something to do with werebear(s) ordering up a mail-order bride. I could not write this book, because 2/3 of it would end up being the very confused conversation where the poor girl, probably in recently-learned English, is informed that there are such things as werebears.
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Jun 5, 2015 19:17
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Pinky Artichoke posted:There's a book/series that always seems to be in the top 10-20 of the fantasy list (sigh) that has something to do with werebear(s) ordering up a mail-order bride. I could not write this book, because 2/3 of it would end up being the very confused conversation where the poor girl, probably in recently-learned English, is informed that there are such things as werebears. Goldilocks? e: Err sorry for the ribald forbidden topic discussion
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Jun 5, 2015 20:01
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syscall girl posted:Goldilocks? I haven't read them, but the titles make it clear they are in that vein. The whole thing where people put their books into genres where they really don't belong (paranormal erom in fantasy or scifi being the big ones I see) really bugs me as a reader/consumer. I somehow suspect people who want the paranormal romance know where to find it without making it so difficult to find the best-selling fantasy-as-it-would-be-classified-by-any-sane-bookseller/library.
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Jun 5, 2015 20:40
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Well, wish me luck. I've got a BookBub free promo next week. Never done a free promo with 'Bub before. Interested to see how it will shake out.
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Jun 5, 2015 21:01
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Hijinks Ensue posted:Well, wish me luck. I've got a BookBub free promo next week. Never done a free promo with 'Bub before. Interested to see how it will shake out. Congrats!
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Jun 5, 2015 21:13
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Hijinks Ensue posted:Well, wish me luck. I've got a BookBub free promo next week. Never done a free promo with 'Bub before. Interested to see how it will shake out. That's awesome dude. I hope you've got a nice back catalog because it's about sell better than it did when it was new.
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Jun 5, 2015 22:49
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I've got four other books in my back catalog, one of which is a sequel to the book being promo'd. So at the very least I'll see some sales for that one. Now I'm just getting antsy waiting for Amazon to price match. Thank God I switched to Draft2Digital for my non-Zon books.
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Jun 5, 2015 23:26
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I'd be so nervous on relying on a price match for my Bookbub.
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Jun 5, 2015 23:47
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That's why I'm doing it way ahead of time.
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Jun 6, 2015 00:53
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Hijinks Ensue posted:Well, wish me luck. I've got a BookBub free promo next week. Never done a free promo with 'Bub before. Interested to see how it will shake out. Let us know how it goes. I've been praying to the bookbub gods to no avail so far. Been hoping going for free promos will help them decide to rain the sweet sweet sales upon me.
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Jun 6, 2015 02:32
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Yeah, I'd been having no luck getting paid Bub promos for some months now.
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Jun 6, 2015 02:48
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I started following the good advice that is out there and am seeing immediate results. My first pen name: I did my unique spin on stuff and released four stories. In one month I made $75-$80. I had days with zero borrows or sales, an average day with sales was around $4, and my all time record sale day was $11. Two newsletter signups. My second pen name: I researched a lot and did exactly what people said to do. I'm writing faster, and a few days into the month I have four stories: three are published and one is reserved as a giveaway for newsletter subscribers. I advertised the hell out of the free book in my front and back matter (e.g. this free book is ONLY available to subscribers, you can't buy it on Amazon!) I bold grabby parts of my blurbs, I research my keywords, etc. etc. I've made over $15 per day the last two days, and I've had four newsletter signups. The month is just starting, so I'm hoping to make over $300 this month and have over ten newsletter subscribers by the end of that time. I'm also aiming to release three 6k-word shorts per week rather than one 10k-word short per week. The mailchimp template I used for the newsletter looks really cool and professional, and I'm probably just going to mail everyone once per week with the covers and blurbs for the two newest books, and then mention when my next free promo is. The other really big difference between pen names so far has been that people are buying my new stuff immediately when I release it rather than only after I do a free promo. It seems that targeting niches and having strong keywords really makes a huge difference. The hardest thing for me so far has been getting a good workflow with publishing. I do most of the formatting in googledocs, and then I export it as Word, put it into Direct2Digital so that it formats for ebook, then I have to do tweaks in Calibre to remove all the dumb poo poo Direct2Digital puts in there. I've tried Sigil and it didn't work for me, and I've tried saving as HTML from Google Docs, but it did weird stuff like cutting my images in half, and it had various goofy formatting errors. Since I haven't figured out a good workflow for this, it can really take a long time just to publish something. angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Jun 6, 2015 |
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Jun 6, 2015 05:13
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angel opportunity posted:I have to do tweaks in Calibre to remove all the dumb poo poo Direct2Digital puts in there. Like what?
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Jun 6, 2015 13:39
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angel opportunity posted:The hardest thing for me so far has been getting a good workflow with publishing. Type words into Scrivener. Import your cover. Hit compile. Upload to KDP.
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Jun 6, 2015 13:47
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I just use openoffice with draft2digital. What images are you even inserting?
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Jun 6, 2015 14:13
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Man, I'm jealous of your success, angel. I feel like I'm not doing too bad of a job over here - not the best, mind you, but I have decent keywords and decent covers, and I think each book targets a kink or niche decently - but I'm not even seeing half the success you are. Keep it up. And as for workflow, my current speedy workflow is write in FocusWriter, open that .rtf in LibreOffice for formatting and whatnot (adding links and poo poo) and then firing up Calibre to convert that .rtf to .epub and upload. Now that I have the repeatable stuff in a file to copy-paste from (things like frontmatter, pre-selected excerpts from other books for the backmatter, etc) then presuming I have the cover made it's about a 10 minute process to get a book from complete to uploaded. The only buttons I push in Calibre are 'remove spacing between paragraphs' and 'no default cover' and I leave everything else default, and it looks just as good as everything else out there. Jalumibnkrayal posted:Type words into Scrivener. Import your cover. Hit compile. Upload to KDP. Scrivener seems like it'd work perfectly for longer works, but for the turbo romances I spent days trying to get it to just stop making a TOC and chapter inserts for something I wanted as a flat file (Windows version, which has all sorts of features and options missing from the Mac one) for just a single short story.
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Jun 6, 2015 14:15
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Here's the cover for my newest novel, done by our esteemed ravenkult. What do you guys think of the blurb? quote:Colonel Cole Clarke, Armored Cavalry Commander, and his battalion of convicts are sent to the Kalivostok Front to reinforce a system controlled by an incompetent Duke. Only Cole understands what his tanks can do… if he can get them.
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Jun 6, 2015 15:20
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Last paragraph doesn't work for me. quote:Their only defense is an armored assault with a bunch of convicts in the lead all inside of untested tanks based on Vasilov tractors. The sentence simply drags on too long. Consider splitting it up into several sentences ("Their only option is an all-out attack. All they have are a bunch of convicts and untested tanks based on tractors. Failure means an alien invasion of all of human space."). Also, what is a Vasilov tractor? Does your average reader know what it is?
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Jun 6, 2015 16:06
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ArchangeI posted:Last paragraph doesn't work for me. Good point on the tractor. I'd be better just leaving it as untested I think.
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Jun 6, 2015 16:38
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So I had a pricey promo week, mostly interested in seeing how low of a rank I could get for my story. It's a three month old PNR short, the first in a series of four. It had 10 reviews averaging 4 stars. 6/2 - 334 downloads. $10 on a Bknights Fiverr gig. 6/3 - 122 downloads. I'd tried for a MyRomanceReads promo on this day but they turned it down, so no promos were run. This is also a Wednesday, the worst day of the week for my products. 6/4 - 679 downloads. Ran a free ExciteSpice promo. 6/5 - 1,889 downloads. $100 for a Freebooksy ad. The story peaked at #82 free on all of Amazon, which is a new record for me. I'll wait a week to see whether it's been profitable.
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Jun 6, 2015 17:52
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Yooper posted:Here's the cover for my newest novel, done by our esteemed ravenkult. That's going to sell you some books. (awesome job ravenkult)
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Jun 6, 2015 18:35
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Yooper posted:Colonel Cole Clarke, Armored Cavalry Commander, and his battalion of convicts are sent to the Kalivostok Front to reinforce a system controlled by an incompetent Duke. Only Cole understands what his tanks can do… if he can get them. Awesome cover. Take my blurb crit with a pinch of salt, im no literary genius but I do like reading good sci-fi! Also formatting bold tags on a phone is a bitch remind me to never to that again. [Edit] Just wanted to add that it may be a personal thing I havent researched the genre or its expectations or anything but when I read your blurb the first thought I had was that you're an author proud of the world you've created. Which is good. But worries me as a reader because that either means im getting a well thought out universe that adds to the story or 200 pages of dull as poo poo world wanking. As im reading a blurb for an author I haven't read before on a book that a trusted person hasn't said is awesome, I don't give a poo poo. The job of the blurb is to make me give a poo poo. It has about ten seconds to do this before I click on the next book. The stuff about insect robot monsters and myserty outposts where everyones dead for no reason does that. Add in some sort of outsider/rough and ready/kick rear end space captain and his crew/buddies/squad on a no hope mission against the odds and hell yeah lets do this. Start waffling on about back story and context here and you lose me, being harsh it would make me question how good the writing in the book is, am I going to get an awesome space marine vs robot insects with hi tech overlords space adventure or 50 pages on how to to file form 53b with the space housing board on planet viatulon III. Give me conflict, give me obstacles and give me hope they might solve it. Everything else can probably get out. Also again, first time I've ever offered any advice around writing and just my uniformed reading opinion so I might be totally wrong. Cast_No_Shadow fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jun 6, 2015 |
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Jun 6, 2015 18:36
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Keep in mind this is book 2 of a series.
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Jun 6, 2015 18:56
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ravenkult posted:Keep in mind this is book 2 of a series. I dunno, I feel like the second book needs to be pretty "If you're just joining us, here is what is going on" instead of "this book will literally not make any sense unless you read the first one". You don't want to restrict the readership of book two to only the people who liked book one. Ideally, you'd want to funnel people to buy book one and join the series.
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Jun 6, 2015 19:11
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ArchangeI posted:I dunno, I feel like the second book needs to be pretty "If you're just joining us, here is what is going on" instead of "this book will literally not make any sense unless you read the first one". You don't want to restrict the readership of book two to only the people who liked book one. Ideally, you'd want to funnel people to buy book one and join the series. Yeah I had no idea it was a part two. Can it be read stand alone?
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Jun 6, 2015 19:30
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