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That's the thing, i'd have given mine for free because I was dicking around in gimp and it's not professional quality. If Ravenkult had taken a crack at it, I would have expected it to have looked magnitudes better and also have come with a charge. Fuego's is up there with the pros, but I guess it's up to him how he wants to reflect his effort / expertise / time invested in terms of value. It can be a tough thing to put a number on.
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Aug 19, 2015 17:06
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Wow, ok, I did not expect to be offered money for this. Nor to have someone compare me to a professional, oh my. But, considering how long I took on it, and how long I took doing this new version that I'm much happier with? I'd say, all things considered, maybe something like... thirty bucks? Maybe thirty-five? Since I was just working off the image provided, I think that's reasonably fair. edit: for the love of God let's not haggle in a public thread though
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Aug 19, 2015 18:10
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No, let's open this up to the public. I'm willing to sell you his cover for 25 bucks. Give me thirty bucks and I'll throw in a picture I drew of a cat giving himself a colonoscopy e: On a serious note, I feel like having text that comes up almost right to the edges feels a bit off for a book cover - or any image at all. Is there a term/explanation for this? Am I wrong? It feels like it is throwing off the framing of the piece Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 18:37
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I believe an even 50$ is fair (by selfpub scrub standards). Let's do community voting.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:40
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I'll personally pay Fuego the tthirty bucks for the cover, its nothing for me and I've enjoyed watching the process. I'll also buy a book from anyone who posted a ccover that didn't make the cut, post it in the thread or send me a link.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:09
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ravenkult posted:I believe an even 50$ is fair (by selfpub scrub standards). EngineerSean posted:I'll personally pay Fuego the tthirty bucks for the cover, its nothing for me and I've enjoyed watching the process. I'll also buy a book from anyone who posted a ccover that didn't make the cut, post it in the thread or send me a link.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:52
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:e: On a serious note, I feel like having text that comes up almost right to the edges feels a bit off for a book cover - or any image at all. Is there a term/explanation for this? Am I wrong? It feels like it is throwing off the framing of the piece Margins (and gutters) are an important part of the visual distinction that lets humans know they are seeing the whole of an image. By having blank or otherwise unimportant space between the physical edge of the image and the edge of the content, you can be sure that you're not missing anything. I was pretty sure I had enough space that, considering the edges of the Kindle adding to it, the text wouldn't seem too much while also being as large as possible. But now I'm not sure anymore! Thanks a lot. EngineerSean posted:I'll personally pay Fuego the tthirty bucks for the cover, its nothing for me and I've enjoyed watching the process. I'll also buy a book from anyone who posted a ccover that didn't make the cut, post it in the thread or send me a link. Now I'm torn between asking for the cash and asking you to buy my book, because unlike some people in this thread, I crack open the champagne when I hit double digits. Do not ask me how many times I've hit triple digits. (It's zero.) Maybe I should start using a pen name to write super-romance, but I can't help but feel that's too crowded a marketplace to jump in on as a side endeavour. Bobby Deluxe posted:Really? I gotta start doing selfpub scrub covers. I am legitimately considering offering my services to this thread, at least part-time, if people actually like what I can do. Although I might need to splash out on some sort of stock photo season pass, or however that poo poo works.
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Aug 19, 2015 20:37
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Fuego Fish posted:I am legitimately considering offering my services to this thread, at least part-time, if people actually like what I can do. Although I might need to splash out on some sort of stock photo season pass, or however that poo poo works. I was thinking of doing something similar through fiverr (though obviously charging more than £5 for anything more than a basic gradient + title job), I just don't want to end up inundated or in over my head with a workload I can't keep up with. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 20:44
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Fuego Fish posted:Margins (and gutters) are an important part of the visual distinction that lets humans know they are seeing the whole of an image. By having blank or otherwise unimportant space between the physical edge of the image and the edge of the content, you can be sure that you're not missing anything. Okay that's what I was thinking re: framing the content, but I hadn't accounted for the thick border on the Kindle itself, I was thinking of the cover as just an image in a forum or on a physical paperback. I think within the frame of a physical e-reader it'd look fine, you're right.
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Aug 19, 2015 20:51
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:Uhh as a discerning Amazon shopper I would immediately pass on both and head directly to the dinosaur pseudo-incest aisle Conveniently it's already in the scifi section with Mega's book, so it should be easy to find.
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Aug 19, 2015 20:53
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Paleonclitology is as real a science as any other, thank you very much.
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Aug 19, 2015 20:54
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Fuego Fish posted:edit: for the love of God let's not haggle in a public thread though I vote for $300! Pay him $300!
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Aug 19, 2015 21:29
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Fuego Fish posted:Now I'm torn between asking for the cash and asking you to buy my book, because unlike some people in this thread, I crack open the champagne when I hit double digits. Do not ask me how many times I've hit triple digits. Post a link to a book you want purchased. Your cover work is sweet enough that I'm gonna buy one anyway whether payment occurs or not. 
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Aug 20, 2015 00:50
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Sundae posted:Post a link to a book you want purchased. Your cover work is sweet enough that I'm gonna buy one anyway whether payment occurs or not. I already did! Sort of. Fuego Fish posted:I used broadly the same principle for the text as I did on the cover to my new book, I snuck it in all sneaky-like earlier in the thread, because I'm still new to this whole "marketing" thing. I'm a bit self-effacing by nature, when I should be hooting up a storm about how it's a great book. (It's a great book.) (If you like unconventional fantasy featuring interesting systems of magic and/or you really love the palaeolithic, I guess.)
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Aug 20, 2015 01:44
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I just had my first short published in a multi-author bundle. It was pretty fun because we decided on a theme ahead of time, then we all wrote our stories taking place on the same cruise ship. We had some characters that were shared between stories, so I used the main character in one of the other stories as a side character in mine. Someone business person who does this (or something) published the actual bundle and is doing the marketing for us for 10% of the total income, then pays us all separately after three months. The newsletter link to each author is after each story, so it seems like a pretty cool way to get much higher exposure with a pretty minimal entry fee. Now...if only erotica made real money still 
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Aug 20, 2015 01:45
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Fuego if you'd like I can give you thirty minutes of phone consultation about your catalog instead. If you were in romance that's a $200 value but its prolly worth it for whatever you write anyway.
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Aug 20, 2015 02:18
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EngineerSean posted:Fuego if you'd like I can give you thirty minutes of phone consultation about your catalog instead. If you were in romance that's a $200 value but its prolly worth it for whatever you write anyway. I have no idea what you mean by "consultation about your catalog" but it the "phone" part tells me it's 2:30am and I should have been in bed hours ago holy poo poo But for serious I'd probably be interested in learning more about how to market myself beyond spending money I don't have on advertising, except for that 2:30am thing. I'll get back to you when it's no longer 2:30am and I've had some sleep.
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Aug 20, 2015 02:28
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if you're across the pond I can just take a look any time, or I could just send you thirty dollars like I said I would do lol
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Aug 20, 2015 04:00
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I'm tentatively trying to kick up the Amazon again and I'm writing an erom now, what word counts do you guys find work? I was thinking of just adding a few extra scenes and a bunch of dialogue, build the characters more and tease out the final consummation and the happily ever after, and just take it a bit slower, get it up to 15-20k words. Is that going to be a waste of time? The 10k words on top is going to inform and substantiate the plot and characters, but is there room for erom at that word count or is the real goal to move into full on books?
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Aug 20, 2015 09:15
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I read some math on another forum that seemed to prove under the new rate, you'd need to be writing 40k to make the same per borrow as you were under the old system. The post was criticised for not taking into account that you can write and promote 9 5k shorts in the time it takes to write 1 40k erom, but the idea that longer works = more KU $ definitely seems backed up by how much people are getting paid. In short, nobody knows for sure but yes, it certainly seems to be the case that longer = more money.
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Aug 20, 2015 10:49
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That's assuming 100% read-through, and read-through will drop down sharply from 100% as the length of the book increases. Otherwise you could just write a 200k book and make bank. Also if it flops then you're completely hosed. But then with shorter titles you have a higher read-through BUT the admin per item increases as you need to do whatever extra covers, formatting, blurbs, marketing etc. I figure most people will find a slightly different sweet spot and it won't just be "This many thousand words is perfect". So I'm not asking about the money so much as the reader's expectations... is 20k words an uncomfortable compromise between shorter super romance and longer erom, or do reader appetites also have room for works of that length? e: In short, I basically want to take the short stories (5-10k) I've been doing already and beefing it up with more character development between the key scenes. I'm wondering if that is feasible or whether I'm just pissing off both potential markets: the porn-hounds who want a super tight done in 20 minutes page turner (who then have to skip through a bunch of dialogue they dont care about) and also the e-rom people who are looking for a serious story and plot and character development but find out the story ends after 20k words. Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Aug 20, 2015 |
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Aug 20, 2015 11:01
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All right, I'm uploading the book as we speak. Is $5.99 too much to ask for a first book of around 100K words? EDIT: And should I sign up for KDP Select?
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Aug 20, 2015 11:09
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CommissarMega posted:EDIT: And should I sign up for KDP Select?
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Aug 20, 2015 11:17
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Thing is, KDP Select/Unlimited seem to make the book exclusive, including websites and blogs. And how do I make the book free for a weekend?
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Aug 20, 2015 11:23
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Yes KU is exclusive, he means go submit the link to the Amazon page onto 'free ebook' sites and blogs. They would still be buying/borrowing from Amazon. After the 3 month KU period is up you can choose not to renew it (if you do this be sure to deselect 'auto-renew' at some point prior) and then you can submit it to other places while it is still on Amazon - but not on KU. When you create the book and it is confirmed and ready, there is a button 'promote/advertise' that lets you choose to set the book free for a period of time.
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Aug 20, 2015 11:25
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Oooh, okay. I was looking for a 'free weekend' link all over the pricing page 
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Aug 20, 2015 11:36
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CommissarMega posted:All right, I'm uploading the book as we speak. Is $5.99 too much to ask for a first book of around 100K words? You're Scifi right? Check out the top 100 in your category and price accordingly. First novel too? Don't price yourself out of an impulse buy. I've got 6 Scifi novels out and I've never priced them at $5.99. $3.99 is a good spot to start at. If it starts selling like a bastard then you can always up the price.
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Aug 20, 2015 13:31
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I've priced both my books so far at the bare minimum for the 70% royalty rate. I know that going cheaper still might get me more sales, but three bucks is about the limit of how little I'm willing to value my work. Plus I can always do a free weekend.
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Aug 20, 2015 13:47
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Fuego Fish posted:I've priced both my books so far at the bare minimum for the 70% royalty rate. I know that going cheaper still might get me more sales, but three bucks is about the limit of how little I'm willing to value my work. I don't have experience self-publishing in sci-fi, but I do see a lot of sci-fi authors go for the higher price point. In erotica and romance, it's all about leveraging the volume of people who want to read those hot-selling genres by selling as low as you feasibly can. People have taken it to an extreme by sacrificing their actual income for higher ranking. This strategy means you just eat the loss on the 99 cent sale to make more money on KU and get more exposure and rank stickiness. People are often doing free, then 99 cents, and waiting for the 99 cent to hit a peak rank, then switching to $2.99 and hoping it sticks there longer. Switching to $2.99 often means your rank starts to fall, but you bring in more money while you're still at that good ranking at the 70% royalty rate. Even if you stay at 99 cents, your rank will fall as well, just not as fast. This has has an overall negative effect though, as many authors just stay at 99 cents, and you get readers leaving 1-star reviews saying stuff like: "$2.99 for a book that is only 200 pages? I won't pay more than 99 cents unless it's at least 300 pages!" In sci-fi, there are just way fewer people out there who will buy your stuff, so that's why people are doing okay with $3.99, $4.99, and higher. You have a limited pool of people who will buy your stuff, and they are used to paying more, so setting the higher price can maximize your earnings. If I ever self-pub sci-fi, I would still probably do free --> $2.99 to try to maximize my ranking as a new author in the genre. If you can categorize yourself into certain sub-genres, it could help a lot too, because you may be able to hit top-10 ranking in certain smaller sub-genres.
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Aug 20, 2015 14:16
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Yeah, I sell my books at $3.99 and they do okay. Not in Select, but back in the glory days of yore I was doing almost as well on BN as on Amazon. 2012 was a good year. I'm constantly on the fence about exclusivity. I just don't know if the increase from borrows would make up for the lost income from iBooks and... well, these days just iBooks. I'm barely scraping a hundred out of Kobo and BN in a good month.
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Aug 20, 2015 14:45
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I might release one of my upcoming books for free, just so people can read it and go "wow this is great, I feel like buying everything else this author has done" like they do in my dreams 
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Aug 20, 2015 14:53
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CommissarMega posted:Oooh, okay. I was looking for a 'free weekend' link all over the pricing page After you enroll in KDP Select you click the Promote and Advertise button on the bookshelf and you can then arrange either a time limited reduced price sale or five days of being free (you can space them out or run them concurrently). You get to do one of these for every KDP Select enrollment period (90 days).
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Aug 20, 2015 15:08
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Yooper posted:I've got 6 Scifi novels out and I've never priced them at $5.99. $3.99 is a good spot to start at. If it starts selling like a bastard then you can always up the price. Righto; I'll start at $2.99 and price the later books (god willing, there'll be a market for them) at $3.99. Jalumibnkrayal posted:After you enroll in KDP Select you click the Promote and Advertise button on the bookshelf and you can then arrange either a time limited reduced price sale or five days of being free (you can space them out or run them concurrently). You get to do one of these for every KDP Select enrollment period (90 days). So I can either do a free weekend or a price reduction, not both? That's a bugger. EDIT: I've also finished setting up the promo period (22-23 August); I'm guessing I should only start spamming ebook sites tomorrow then? CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Aug 20, 2015 |
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Aug 20, 2015 23:31
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Depends. A lot of them, you need to schedule over a week in advance they're so busy. You might do well on r/wroteabook. i think there are a few kindle unlimited and kindle freebie subreddits as well.
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Aug 20, 2015 23:48
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CommissarMega posted:Righto; I'll start at $2.99 and price the later books (god willing, there'll be a market for them) at $3.99. If you don't have any promos lined up yet I would cancel your free weekend (if that's what you're doing) and get those promos established first. Ideally it would've been before the book went live but you can't put that genie back in the bottle.
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Aug 21, 2015 01:37
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:If you don't have any promos lined up yet I would cancel your free weekend (if that's what you're doing) and get those promos established first. Ideally it would've been before the book went live but you can't put that genie back in the bottle. Sure you can, if you haven't done any promo and it's a brand new release. You unpublish it, duplicate it all under a new entry on your dashboard, and relaunch without hurting anyone at all.
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Aug 21, 2015 02:13
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On a related note, can someone post a summary of good things to do before you publish the first book on a new penname? KU in/out, promos to use, free days all at once to start, etc. This is assuming you have no pre-built list, following, etc.
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Aug 21, 2015 04:35
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:If you don't have any promos lined up yet I would cancel your free weekend (if that's what you're doing) and get those promos established first. Ideally it would've been before the book went live but you can't put that genie back in the bottle. Okay, so I'll cancel the 22/23 August free weekend and start emailing free ebook sites, and hold the free weekend next week, then? Sundae posted:Sure you can, if you haven't done any promo and it's a brand new release. You unpublish it, duplicate it all under a new entry on your dashboard, and relaunch without hurting anyone at all. Aw man, and after I've got it uploaded and all  Meh, I guess I can use the time for some last-minute edits. That's also something else I'd like to ask- if a book is up and I make some edits, will it update the copies bought by earlier buyers? I doubt it would, but if customers have complaints I'd like to remedy them (you know, customer service).
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Aug 21, 2015 04:52
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CommissarMega posted:Okay, so I'll cancel the 22/23 August free weekend and start emailing free ebook sites, and hold the free weekend next week, then? Also, a lot of the better promo sites will have webforms you can fill in. Google free ebook mailing lists / sites / facebook pages / goodreads groups, and look for an 'authors / promotion' link. CommissarMega posted:That's also something else I'd like to ask- if a book is up and I make some edits, will it update the copies bought by earlier buyers? I doubt it would, but if customers have complaints I'd like to remedy them (you know, customer service).
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Aug 21, 2015 08:50
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Bobby Deluxe posted:The wife discovered this the other night - a few of the books on her kindle said they had 'updates pending' or something, and gave her the option of downloading updates for them. I think there's a setting somewhere that lets it autoupdate when you're on wifi, but i'm not sure. It's actually a lot more complicated than that, you have to actually email Amazon and request that your books be able to be updated, and you have to make a case for it. "Significant edits" is the magic word, though. Everyone who had bought the book gets an email that there's an update, in this form: quote:Hello Sean,
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Aug 21, 2015 09:08
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