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After going back to the drawing board a dozen times, and then giving up, and then coming back again, I've redone my cover, thanks to a lot of great feedback in here. I also just saw ravenkult's two articles on book design - extremely helpful stuff, thanks for that. Should I block out "POLAROID" since that's a brand? 
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Jul 1, 2015 18:54
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 11:12 |
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That looks WAY better dude
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Jul 1, 2015 18:55
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Yeah that's much much better. I'd block out polaroid (get rid of the black bar as well, if you can). The blood looks a little fake, like pixellated 90s video game style. The fingerprint also looks weird, is it supposed to be on the camera or the book cover itself? But the style and presentation is good. Except the author name doesn't stand out, it fades into the background
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Jul 1, 2015 18:59
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poo poo, that's a beautiful cover.
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Jul 1, 2015 19:13
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Well apparently my one book is 1 KENPC long. Trying not to freak since I'm sure they're squashing these bugs right now but I hope I'm not losing out on income. Sent an email earlier. Anyone else having issues?
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Jul 1, 2015 19:19
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the brotherly phl posted:Well apparently my one book is 1 KENPC long. Trying not to freak since I'm sure they're squashing these bugs right now but I hope I'm not losing out on income. Sent an email earlier. Anyone else having issues? "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
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Jul 1, 2015 19:20
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Thanks for the feedback. I'm still wrestling with the author name. And trying to ignore the fake-as-hell blood. I know I've got to resolve it somehow.
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Jul 1, 2015 19:32
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Popular Human posted:"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." I thought the same thing lol, it's definitely a bug unless your book is less than 300 words long.
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Jul 1, 2015 19:32
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magnificent7 posted:Thanks for the feedback. I'm still wrestling with the author name. Anything that is uniquely searchable/googleable is good. There's only 66k Google hits for "Beau Hall", and some of those are for a dorm, so it's not a bad start.
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Jul 1, 2015 19:35
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Beau is also not the easiest name to spell so maybe consider making it Bo instead
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Jul 1, 2015 19:36
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EngineerSean posted:Beau is also not the easiest name to spell so maybe consider making it Bo instead no, make it Beaux
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Jul 1, 2015 19:36
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Ironic Twist posted:no, make it Bheaujx Fixed that for you. Even before any remaining criticisms (I agree - get rid of Polaroid), that is a WAY better cover than your earlier ones, Magnificent. Well done. Should I know who Steven Kang is, or am I seeing an attempt at humor on a horror cover?
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Jul 1, 2015 20:01
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Hey @#$% you people I meant struggling with how big to make my name. and yes, Steven Kang is a placeholder/stab at humor. Still waiting to see if the humor registers, and/or desperately seeking a real person named Steven Kang to say "Incredible Horror" about my book. Although I'd settle for Edgar Alan Po or Clive Barken. magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Jul 1, 2015 |
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Jul 1, 2015 20:21
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magnificent7 posted:and yes, Steven Kang is a placeholder/stab at humor. Reconsider. 'Steven Kang' is some Sideways Stories from Wayside School poo poo on an otherwise fantastic cover.
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Jul 1, 2015 20:38
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HP Minecraft
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Jul 1, 2015 20:40
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My name is Neil Gayman and I approve of this discussion.
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Jul 1, 2015 20:48
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Toaster Beef posted:Reconsider. 'Steven Kang' is some Sideways Stories from Wayside School poo poo on an otherwise fantastic cover. I'm wrestling with the blood splatters. I hate it when I get an idea SO drat close to what I imagine, then want to re-do it even better, and can't even come close.
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Jul 1, 2015 20:58
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magnificent7 posted:Ah gently caress you're right. They're fine, man. They stand out in exactly the way they should if you're looking to grab someone's attention.
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Jul 1, 2015 21:12
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Mr. Pumroy posted:HP Minecraft ahahahaha
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Jul 1, 2015 21:13
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I updated stuffs. Author name pops, removed my sophomoric inside joke. Accepted that cheeze blood spatter works. 
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Jul 1, 2015 22:54
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Looks much better, but push the title down and the author name up by 50% of their height each, if that makes sense. They should be further away from the edges at the top and bottom. e: I should specify, I'm not a professional. Try it and see how it looks Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jul 1, 2015 |
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Jul 1, 2015 23:00
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The name is too low - if you look at 'snapshot' and 'beau hall' they're about the same width, and they both have about the same padding around the text, except at the bottom. E: just looking at it, try making the top / bottom margins about double the size of the side margins. I think you'd have it then. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Jul 1, 2015 |
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Jul 1, 2015 23:37
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Bobby Deluxe posted:E: just looking at it, try making the top / bottom margins about double the size of the side margins. I think you'd have it then.
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Jul 2, 2015 00:08
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What do you all do for review copies? I want to send my book to some folks to review. Do I just export it to a .pdf? Is there more to it than that? I have no clue.
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Jul 2, 2015 02:35
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With the day coming to a close, I needed about 20,000 pages read to maintain my current level of earnings on a slow day like today. I'm sitting at 3,700 pages read. Time to pull out everything and go wide. KU1.0, I knew I had it good but I didn't know how good I had it. Mr. Pumroy posted:What do you all do for review copies? I want to send my book to some folks to review. Do I just export it to a .pdf? Is there more to it than that? I have no clue. There's a website called instafreebie.com which lets the user download it in the format of their choice. Might be useful. Edit: cancelled my KU sub, emailed Jeff Bezos to yell at him, removed 111 products from KDP Select. Mixing wine and business decisions. Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Jul 2, 2015 |
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Jul 2, 2015 03:29
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Yep... rethought my "wait until Monday" plan already. Dropping out tomorrow.
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Jul 2, 2015 03:54
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So I know it'll probably be fixed, but one of my novellas (84 pages) is apparently clocking in at 500 pages under the new KENPC. My page count is beastly right now. Pulling everything out tomorrow except for that book. I hope they never catch it.
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Jul 2, 2015 05:30
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Does anyone else feel like this new system disincentivizes longer works, too? I'm in the middle of my second new adult romance novel under a brand new pen name, and I was counting on writing one 300-page novel a month, with each book being a decently-selling foundational piece at worst as I built a mailing list/audience. I've been holding out hope that my books would be gripping enough that I could still publish them through KU, but after seeing basically everybody in this thread report staggering losses, it's pretty hard to commit to three weeks of polishing/editing something that could make me zero dollars on release if it's anything but a runaway success. I have about 50 old shorts that I'm going to pull out and publish wide, but I'm really not sure whether I want to continue with these novels at all now that I can't rely on the Kindle Unlimited sales rank boost to give me a crack at high-level visibility without taking a huge risk. On the other hand, I'm not sure how wise it is to change my whole strategy after only one day under the new system. Do you all find yourselves more drawn towards shorts when you're publishing wide? I know the quicker feedback would make the next month much easier on me. Maybe I'll split the difference and try and write novellas?
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Jul 2, 2015 09:49
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So, not yet being an expert on pricing (I only just found out I made $40 last month and not the $15 I thought) I'm wondering how to work out how much I make per page? I found my KENP numbers, but have no idea what to multiply them by or where to find it.
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Jul 2, 2015 10:12
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We're basing the estimates off of last months KU payout fund, $11 million, and the word count for last month that Amazon mentioned, 1.9 billion words. $11,000,000 / 1,900,000,000 = $0.0057 per page (yes, that is 1/2 of a penny. Not a nickel for the decimal point challenged) I'm curious if Amazon has a target price. If KU authors drop by 10%, then the word pool drops as well, and if the payout fund remains the same then the rate per word would go up. For the 10% drop in words read @ $11M, the payout would change to $0.0067. But this is all poo poo if the fund floats and they just retain goal for a certain page price. I haven't pulled out yet, my page count is pretty close to the borrow rate for the day before.
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Jul 2, 2015 12:30
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That means your rate of borrows (assuming full read) must have like quintupled overnight, if you're equalising what you could expect under the old pay rate...? Are you sure those numbers add up?
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Jul 2, 2015 12:55
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My income is like totally decimated
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Jul 2, 2015 13:01
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Yup, just double checked it. The KENP count for the day times $0.0057 is within 13% of the previous days borrows * $1.34.
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Jul 2, 2015 13:02
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I don't self pub but I find this whole pricing this super interesting. Let me get this straight- there is a set pool of money that is paid out to KU authors each month, right? And I understand that the amount has stayed the same or increased slightly. So for every dollar lost by one writer there must be one being gained by another. Am I correct in thinking that or is that not how it works at all?
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Jul 2, 2015 13:02
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Yooper posted:Yup, just double checked it. The KENP count for the day times $0.0057 is within 13% of the previous days borrows * $1.34. What lengths did you write? 30 page or 300 page? If it's 30 page I'd check your sales ranking because that'd be an interesting jump. The maths is: 30-page titles @ 100%: 30 * 0.0057 = $0.171 per read. $1.34 / $0.171 = 7.836 (rounded). Which means that to earn the same amount of money your full-readthroughs must have multiplied almost 8-fold overnight. 300-page titles @ 100%: 300 * 0.0057 = $1.71 per read. Which, to bring your average readthrough payout to 13% of $1.34 ($1.34 * 0.87 = $1.1658) would mean that on average (assuming no change in borrow numbers) people are reading your books 68% of the way through ($1.1658 / $1.71 = 0.681754 rounded), which is probably on par with some of the top authors out there, who hit 80% at the very very high end. Double check my maths on that though, I have a BA in arts not counting fings. newtestleper posted:I don't self pub but I find this whole pricing this super interesting. Let me get this straight- there is a set pool of money that is paid out to KU authors each month, right? And I understand that the amount has stayed the same or increased slightly. So for every dollar lost by one writer there must be one being gained by another. The money all gets divvied up at the end of the day, yes, so somebody gets the money. What it's doing is restructuring the payout so that big players get a larger portion of the money and smaller players (or people with well-marketed books that get borrowed BUT NOT READ) get nothing. This means that, as mentioned, cookbooks, children's stories, non-fiction and other well-researched novels, novellas, and short form erotica all get decimated. Remember that there is an inherent obstacle in selling something to someone, such that you're better off selling something twice as big to one person than a half-sized something to four people. If your options are selling one person something worth $100 or selling a hundred people something worth $1 you'd be an absolute fool to try to convince 100 people to whip out their wallets. The same principle now applies to books - the value of a single sale on Amazon KU now dropped for a large number of people such that it's no longer worth the effort - you're expended far too much money and energy per sale for it to be financially sustainable. While these payout changes don't affect reader behaviour directly, it could have a profound effect upon the market by way of authors removing catalogues from KU. Some erotica authors will make more money in the short tem as they find themselves operating in a comparative vacuum, however the question is what percentage of Amazon's $10/month customers are reading erotica (and how many read other genres as well, such as romance or general fiction). So you may find an insigificant or a significant number of customers backing away from KU as they decide that the range on offer is no longer worth their $10/month. Time will tell, because Jeff sure as poo poo won't.
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Jul 2, 2015 13:17
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Also it is inevitable that the style of book will change (at least for some of the catalogues) to accommodate these changes. Cliffhangers will become more commonplace, shorter books will get padded to make them financially viable (what's the point of fighting an uphill battle and finally converting a potential customer into an actual customer only to get $0.50 off him for something you spent 2 months making?) and editing quality will drop. To what extent, we can't say, but changes will occur as people try to figure out a way to live in the new environment.
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Jul 2, 2015 13:24
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The historical data from Book Report is stupid useful for me, it's telling me exactly how much I've earned to date (not a lot) and it's going to be interesting comparing that to future sales. I hope so, anyway. I'd be a little disappointed if the numbers went down. After the lovely debacle with my cover artist disappearing without trace, I now have a new artist doing a new cover which is looking pretty sweet right now. As soon as I get the colour version I'll be proudly posting it here.
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Jul 2, 2015 13:26
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Any non-Americans filled out the tax info for Amazon and know how to get a copy of the electronic form they sent in? I want to sign up to D2D and smashwords etc but I'd like to use my existing.. tax.. numbers or whatever. Can't find it on KDP.
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Jul 2, 2015 13:46
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:What lengths did you write? 30 page or 300 page? If it's 30 page I'd check your sales ranking because that'd be an interesting jump. The maths is: They're all full length novels. My average KENP page count is about 525. 525 * $0.0057 = $2.85 per read. Which shows a read through rate of about 45%. ($1.16 / $2.85). Hmm, that's a pretty drat interesting number.
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Jul 2, 2015 13:59
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Just a heads-up: Everyone who is staying in KU should check their KENPC numbers for sanity. Prior to pulling all of mine, I discovered that a bunch of my novels had impossible KENPC values. Book 1, 67,000 words: 398 KENPC pages. Book 2 73,000 words: 432 Boxed Set of 1+2 141,000 words: 630 KENPC Book 3 85,000 words: 51 KENPC. I have super-romance shorts longer than what they're saying that 85,000-word novel is, and the boxed set is somehow smaller than the sum of its parts. Make sure you don't have bugs impacting your meager earnings! Also - Yooper, I'm glad at least someone here isn't getting murdered by the new royalty structure. I'm down about 90% on earnings as a result, so all my stuff is yanked. I'll have a busy July 4th weekend re-pubbing with a wide net again.
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Jul 2, 2015 14:17
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