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So... if I somehow get people to buy my book and just have them flip through the pages, I still get paid, right? How does KENP work, exactly? Because my free weekend didn't work as well as I thought it would (around 100 free books, 6 sold  ), and I'm planning to get the word out this weekend at a family gathering. Basically I'll be astroturfing, is what I'll be doing.
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Sep 3, 2015 23:54
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angel opportunity posted:Specifically state what genre you are interested in. In this thread there is like one guy who is making a living off military sci-fi, and almost anyone else making significant income is romance and/or erotica. I am in neither of these genre camps but I'm not making a significant income off anything so I guess it's kind of academic.
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Sep 3, 2015 23:55
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CommissarMega posted:So... if I somehow get people to buy my book and just have them flip through the pages, I still get paid, right? How does KENP work, exactly? Because my free weekend didn't work as well as I thought it would (around 100 free books, 6 sold That is totally what you'd expect from a free giveaway with zero promotion. Fuego Fish posted:I am in neither of these genre camps but I'm not making a significant income off anything so I guess it's kind of academic. Yeah lol, I was basically only mentioning people who actually make money doing this. The military sci-fi guy (Yooper) is who I would look to for any fantasy/sci-fi/genre thing. I'd copy what he is doing as closely as possible and badger him with questions!
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Sep 4, 2015 00:39
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I wrote a long letter to jon joe and I'll share it here. quote:Hi dude,
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Sep 4, 2015 03:19
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CommissarMega posted:So... if I somehow get people to buy my book and just have them flip through the pages, I still get paid, right? How does KENP work, exactly? You've got the long and short of it. I don't think it's too clear on whether the page has to render on the device to be counted or if you can skip to a certain part and have everything leading up to that part count as being read. Probably the former.
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Sep 4, 2015 03:58
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Boiler plate: For the record I'm writing an adult fantasy series, 3 books. It could probably be construed as young adult as it doesn't feature anything overtly sexual or graphic, but it deals with heavy themes that you don't normally see in young adult works. So if for a short work, 10k words, that took you 15 hours to write would take 600 some odd copies at $0.99 and 200 or so at $2.99 to make the equivalent of $15/hour, and that is considered to be alot (varies by genre, I understand). How can I possibly recoup the 150 hours it would take to write a 100k word piece? That's assuming it's just 10x the amount of time, though if I had to guess I'd say editing would take proportionately longer on a full novel than a 10k short story/serial. Don't get me wrong, I'm a first time author, I write because I enjoy it and I feel I'm good at it. If I didn't enjoy it then I'd never finish my book anyway, it's simply too much work if you're only doing it for a paycheck that might not even exist if it bombs. I've submitted short works to different contests and things and received rave reviews for all of them, getting recognition or questions about whether I had actual published works for people to buy, which is incredibly motivating for sure, but I'm still curious how I could actually make money doing this if 600 is considered to be relatively successful. Especially without published works. Yooper's post was incredibly helpful, especially the bit about how he didn't feel he was actually doing well until the 5th or 6th book, with his back catalog sales continuing to increase as he produced new quality work. It tells me that even if I write something good, and it doesn't sell well, hope isn't lost because people might just pick up on it later. Yet I'd really love to make a living being a writer, even if it was just an incredibly modest one. Working for a modest wage on my own terms doing something I loved would still be worlds better than pulling a lever at a factory, I'm just not sure how the numbers all work out unless you are skilled (lucky?) and become middlingly popular. Agent355 fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Sep 4, 2015 |
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Sep 4, 2015 05:03
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Agent355 posted:How can I possibly recoup the 150 hours it would take to write a 100k word piece? Last time I checked the figures -- which was _before_ Amazogeddon -- less than 1 professional author in 13 was able to make a liveable wage off their writing, and either worked a second job, or was supported by a tolerant spouse/parent. I'm mainly non-fic, and primarily trad-pub. Have been for 20+ years, and I have over 100 trad-pub books under my belt. Last year, I made about $15k between writing and editing (and couldn't scrounge up any work for three months or so). That was a pretty good year. If you want to make a living wage from your writing, forget your inclinations, accept that this is a business, and write romance. Yes, Really. If you desperately want to write adult fantasy, for God's sake don't do shorts or serials, and accept that you probably won't get to make a living wage off it. To see what it usually takes to make a living in SFF/genre, go look at Chuck Wendig. Dude is tireless, with a strong, unique website updated daily, very active twitter and facebook, and four or file novels out a year. I don't know for sure, but I believe he's up somewhere around $40k/$50k a year income -- in return for working every hour God sends, most of it being entertaining and sociable rather than mining words. It primarily took him several years of building his website to get to the point where he was moving above "hobby money".
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Sep 4, 2015 12:10
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Yah, it's worth pointing out that I don't do this full time. My day job is as an engineer, I write in the mornings before work, during break, lunch, and after work. In the two years or so doing it I've made enough that I could have survived on my writing. Instead I've taken some nice vacations, made some investments, and am looking at the Mr. Mustache Method. As far as distilling how much every word is worth : Don't. It's not a quantifiable number. You can write a 100k book and it might never sell. You can write a dozen 100k books that never sell. People do it all the time. But if you don't write all of those books you won't run the risk of actually succeeding. My first three did OK, then my fourth was a flop. A big time flop. Fat guy in a pool of mayonnaise belly flop. Instead I looked at what I did wrong and wrote my 5th novel that peaked at like #180. My 6th (sequel to the 5th) did better than my first 4. You just gotta keep at it. Just write. Get better at writing. Learn why you failed. Learn the craft.
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Sep 4, 2015 12:43
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Agent355 posted:Yooper's post was incredibly helpful, especially the bit about how he didn't feel he was actually doing well until the 5th or 6th book, with his back catalog sales continuing to increase as he produced new quality work. It tells me that even if I write something good, and it doesn't sell well, hope isn't lost because people might just pick up on it later. Yooper's post is absolutely fantastic and all of his advice applies to every single genre. I write in Romance, the biggest of the big, and am working on putting out book 7 this month. It wasn't until book 5 that I started doing well. I made 5 figures last month, and I'm on track to do the same this month. It's all about cover, blurb, and story. My early books are absolute poo poo because I frankly didn't know what I was doing. Now, seven books later, I feel a lot more confident in my ability to craft a story my audience wants to read. Plus, my covers are better, because I'm paying more for them, and my blurbs are better (tho still need work), becuase I've had practice. The first book in my series continues to hover around the 3k ranking range, which brings me in something like 60-70 bucks a day. That's not a lot, but it's consistent, and it's acting as a funnel for the other books in the series. Three months ago, that same book barely sold at all. So I guess my point is, success is possible, but not guaranteed. It'll take work, research, and perseverance, and may never pay off. But chances are decent that if you write good books, buy good covers, and craft good blurbs, eventually you'll make some money. Ghostwoods posted:If you want to make a living wage from your writing, forget your inclinations, accept that this is a business, and write romance. Yeah but really, what he said.
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Sep 4, 2015 15:29
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Honestly I wouldn't be particularly opposed to writing romance stories. Though I guess I'd probably need to start by reading a whole lot of them. I could probably just write the fantasy novels I want to write under my real name in my spare time and romance works under a pen name to actually make money.
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Sep 4, 2015 15:48
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Agent355 posted:Though I guess I'd probably need to start by reading a whole lot of them. Do this. My biggest mistake was not doing enough research and jumping into this thing unprepared. Learn the tropes, figure out what readers want, etc etc.
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Sep 4, 2015 15:54
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After my free promo launched yesterday, with a push by BKnights I'm already sliding back down the free lists. It reached the top 20 Free Paranormal and Urban Fantasy books in the Free Kindle Store (US) and top 300 of the overall Free Kindle store. And top 20 contemporary fantasy in the UK. Now I just have to hope this converts into sales when the promo ends Monday some time. There's no new reviews, and nothing on Good Reads, but I have had two people read the story via Kindle Unlimted (Exactly the page count came up on two consecutive days.) I imagine a large proportion of the people who downloaded it are just hoarders, who collect free books and might never get around to reading them. But if even 10% of the free downloads result in a sale in the future I'll have done well.
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Sep 4, 2015 15:55
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Yesterday my movie review book made it to #1 in its (admittedly, very niche) nonfiction category. I am happy.
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Sep 4, 2015 16:08
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Are you referring to "So Bad, It's Good" ? If so, I enjoyed it quite a bit last year. 
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Sep 4, 2015 16:12
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Nope, mine is "A Nerd Girl's Guide To Cinema." It was #1 in "Video Guides and Reviews". 
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Sep 4, 2015 16:40
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Hijinks Ensue posted:Nope, mine is "A Nerd Girl's Guide To Cinema." It was #1 in "Video Guides and Reviews". Sweet. Consider this another sale.  I'm always game for oddball movies.
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Sep 4, 2015 16:56
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Sundae posted:Sweet. Consider this another sale. Thank you! There's plenty of oddball stuff in there (like Death Bed: The Bed That Eats), so enjoy!
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Sep 4, 2015 17:08
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the brotherly phl posted:Do this. My biggest mistake was not doing enough research and jumping into this thing unprepared. Learn the tropes, figure out what readers want, etc etc. Okay so let's be completely honest here so I can get the best advice. I like reading erotica/romance. There I said it. I've read it for years, but the stuff I read is niche, I have my own preferences and I read stories based on them. In the past month or so I've written 2 parts of a romance/erotica story, each about 15,000 words. So a serial of sorts. In the communities I've posted it in it's incredibly popular. More views/likes/favorites/watches/subscribers/whatever than any other new writer in 6 months. Less than the people who have 600 published submissions, but more than any of the other unknowns. It's made me think that maybe I might have some talent towards this, whether that is specifically romance writing or if it's just all writing in general. Today I went and looked up popular main stream erotica, which isn't what I read myself, to see if it was something I could emulate, and really it just isn't my thing. I don't hate it, by any stretch, but given the opportunity I would just choose whatever niche I enjoyed over it. So now I'm stuck with this decision. The way I see it I have three possible options and I don't know what I really want to do. I'm in college getting a degree in biochemistry so this is all back up/side-plan sort of stuff unless it turns out fantastically. I can: A. Continue to do what I'm doing, which is write my fantasy novels, make my peanuts, and release anything else I write, like erotica, just on whatever small communities I use for free or do commission work and just treat it like a side project I do for fun. B. Try and publish the niche erotica/romance that I enjoy writing, knowing full well that it doesn't have the mass appeal of the main stream stuff. Make what money i can and enjoy writing as a hobby/second job. Assuming niche erotica isn't going to make enough money to do anything resembling a living. C. Suck it up and write more main stream stuff, stuff I don't enjoy writing as much but is more marketable. Continue to write novel/niche erotica under different pen names as a hobby. I've been mulling this over in my head and I just can't come to any sort of satisfactory answer on my own. Anybody have any sort of input? I'm really just looking for some opinions to help me decide. Maybe there is a better thread for this, but as it's mostly concerning income, publishing, and writing what you like it seemed most appropriate here.
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Sep 4, 2015 19:09
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If you're a hobbyist, options A and B are best for you. If you're looking for a job, option C is the best.
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Sep 4, 2015 19:16
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I am admittedly awful at business, but from a life satisfaction POV, I would say write what you love writing and you might be surprised that other people end up getting into what you do. In some ways it may be easier if you are niche because you already have the communities that you mentioned where people would buy and recommend.
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Sep 4, 2015 20:28
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If you already have a day job that you like, then yeah sure, write what you love. If you're living in your parents' basement, writing what you don't love is probably still a better job than McDonald's or working oil fields.
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Sep 4, 2015 20:59
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Well like I said I'm in college for biochemistry, which I do love, so at least for the moment I probably have the luxury of being able to write what I love. I'm leaning towards option B, I may even try and officially publish the 2 serials I already have finished and see how they float. Though I'll need to rework them a bit as there are parts I'm not happy with. Then I just have to figure out how to make a cover/blurb, which will honestly probably be the hardest part for me.
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Sep 4, 2015 21:19
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Never really post, lurk way more than I should. Last week I put out a novel, first time doing this but I broke the whole thing down into a project over a year, and after 6 days it's been pretty heartening. Getting just over 1200 pages a day read on Unlimited with it going up each time, and I've sold fifty copies. That will dip a lot to nothingness but I'm cool with it as I didn't expect it to really get anything at all for a while. It went into the 30k ranking on US and 8k on the UK which people told me was decent. Totally new to this gig and doing it alongside a pretty comfortable real job, this is for fun and a longterm personal project. Figured I'd share as I've always valued opinions here and I've been riding the whirlwind rather than studying up on anything except 'make it look clean'. The Sane King It's old school heroic fantasy with dark trimmings. Basically, using the batshit to make the heroic stuff come out harder. With a lot of momentum in the narrative (which is what likely accounts for most of the page views). Blurb drove me mad, cover I went all in on because I figured why not start out looking professional, and the author side I went honest because there's no point in looking classy for something like this. Basically if anyone is down for taking a look at the package from the sale page to the sample and seeing what could be done better on the presentation front I'd appreciate it. Critiques on the work itself is cool, but I've been getting a lot on that from people already. It's been a rad year, looking forward to the next one.
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Sep 5, 2015 01:37
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Agent355 posted:
It's awesome that you already like/enjoy romance. Honestly, all the people on this thread that write romance enjoy it, including the bloodthirsty sellouts. I didn't come into romance liking it, but I am definitely a convert. Obviously not all of it (I don't love all sci-fi, either) but there are some genuinely good/funny/smart stories out there. Romance gets a bad rep, undeservedly. Anyway, it seems like you're not dying for an income, being a student and all. If you want to make maximum money, do option C. Or, you can do option B, learn a bit about the business, see how your stories work in the marketplace, and go from there. Maybe have one pen name with more mainstream stuff and one with your more enjoyable niche. In the end, I think you should just write poo poo and try to sell it. That's the best thing you can do.
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Sep 5, 2015 02:32
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Will, your cover looks great! Congrats on your project. It's encouraging and inspiring to me to see people doing what they love.
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Sep 5, 2015 02:42
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I am looking to self-publish something minor, and would like to use a pen-name/pseudonym. Amazon's policies are woefully unclear on this (as far as I have found). If I were to use a pseudonym, would it be possible to see the "account" that published the story (I.E., my real name)? Is it safe to use the Amazon account I use for buying things from Amazon, or should I make an entirely new account?
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Sep 5, 2015 04:01
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Halbey posted:Will, your cover looks great! Congrats on your project. It's encouraging and inspiring to me to see people doing what they love. Thanks a lot! I decided to get a professional cover because I wanted it to look and feel professional. I considered it might work against me being an Indie and raise expectations, but that just meant I had to have more faith in what was inside. Not high art by any means, but it was a blast to do.
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Sep 5, 2015 04:38
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They'll need to know your Conspiracy street name for giving you money transfers and so forth, but I have seen no evidence of that showing up in the forward-facing system. Lots of people publish under tons of pseudonyms and I imagine even Amazon realizes that if they gently caress that up they actually would perhaps hurt themselves substantially.
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Sep 5, 2015 04:39
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AbrahamLincolnLog posted:If I were to use a pseudonym, would it be possible to see the "account" that published the story (I.E., my real name)? When you put a project into Kindle Direct Publishing, you fill out all the customer-facing fields (author, editor, publisher, etc). Unless you type your real name in there somewhere, no one will ever know it. quote:Is it safe to use the Amazon account I use for buying things from Amazon, or should I make an entirely new account? I use my regular Amazon account *shrug*.
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Sep 5, 2015 04:43
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the brotherly phl posted:It's awesome that you already like/enjoy romance. Honestly, all the people on this thread that write romance enjoy it, including the bloodthirsty sellouts. I didn't come into romance liking it, but I am definitely a convert. Obviously not all of it (I don't love all sci-fi, either) but there are some genuinely good/funny/smart stories out there. Romance gets a bad rep, undeservedly. Yah, I think right now what I want to do is turn the relatively rough around the edges stories that I already have complete into something more polished. Take a few weeks to do it, then come back here when I have something finished and get help on cover/blurb, and what sort of promotions things I would need to do. As that's all greek to me at the moment, having never published anything yet. I'll work on it, see what I can come back with. I'll keep working on my novel as well, even if it never really sells well enough to be anything more than a side project I love the story and characters.
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Sep 5, 2015 05:39
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Is the erotica genre filled with great titles like porn film titles? Beverly Hills Cocks, Missionary Impossible, Purple Taint, poo poo like that? Because I think I could make bank based on the titles alone.
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Sep 5, 2015 07:42
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magnificent7 posted:Is the erotica genre filled with great titles like porn film titles? Beverly Hills Cocks, Missionary Impossible, Purple Taint, poo poo like that? Because I think I could make bank based on the titles alone.
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Sep 5, 2015 07:47
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Presentation is all nicely strong. The cover is awesome, the blurb is decent, the title is great. I'm pushed for time, so only had a quick glance inside, but was glad to see that you didn't weigh things down with an obvious prologue, and that you dumped us straight in media res. There were a lot of adjectives, slowing the first few paragraphs down unnecessarily, but otherwise the writing seemed decent. Based on what I read, if I'd received the manuscript as a submission, it would have gone on my "read the whole drat thing" pile, which is the top 8% or so. So great work! If you don't do it already, it would be worth your time hanging out on Reddit's /fantasy board for a while, and getting to know them there (as a participant, obviously, not as a book marketer). They're a supportive community, and they've made the careers of worse books than this appears to be. Worst, you'll make some pals.
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Sep 5, 2015 11:41
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Ghostwoods posted:Presentation is all nicely strong. The cover is awesome, the blurb is decent, the title is great. I'm pushed for time, so only had a quick glance inside, but was glad to see that you didn't weigh things down with an obvious prologue, and that you dumped us straight in media res. There were a lot of adjectives, slowing the first few paragraphs down unnecessarily, but otherwise the writing seemed decent. Based on what I read, if I'd received the manuscript as a submission, it would have gone on my "read the whole drat thing" pile, which is the top 8% or so. Cheers! that's cool feedback and spot-on advice. I've been on r/fantasy for the past week. My best route is making connections across the board and engaging with folks over trying go for quick fixes. Book 3, likely in a couple of years is where I plan for it all to really come together. Strategy is not to market, but engage and avoid trying to copy the two kids and a dog author image. I'm a giant, bearded gay man, I should embrace that because it fits the style of the books. Keepin' it real. That's really heartening. I was worried treating this like any other project would kill my soul, but all it did was make every aspect of it smoother. It feels ludicrous one week after putting out a single book to say anything with authority, but my advice to anyone else doing the same thing is get a basic understanding of modern project processes. It takes out so much stress.
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Sep 5, 2015 12:10
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Will of the Emperor posted:It feels ludicrous one week after putting out a single book to say anything with authority, but my advice to anyone else doing the same thing is get a basic understanding of modern project processes. It takes out so much stress. Absolutely. Personally, trying to sit down and begin writing something I'm visualising as a physical book being purchased from a book store is a great way to make sure I get lots of cleaning, tidying, and net-surfing done. It's not a monolith you carve from a block of mind. When I'm working, I'm working on one of a bunch of almost unrelated phases -- concept, rough outline, detailed outline, messy draft, second draft, cover brief, edit, synopsis, blurb, strap-line, launch prep, format, ebook conversion, market, launch, post-launch. Sure, they all happen to be related to the same overall product, but at no point am I actually trying to force a finished book out of nothingness. Makes it so much more acceptable.
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Sep 5, 2015 12:24
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Perfect timing that you bring up r/fantasy, because I was just coming in here to ask a question about networking. I spend a lot of time lurking this thread (sometimes the facts and data are fascinating) but I haven't found a good reason to post until now. Basically I was wondering how much networking pays off when publishing your first through, I don't know, fourth or fifth books as you begin to build a catalog. Does it actually bring in a significant readership or potential reviewers to be worth spending the time it takes to go from site to site building a minor presence and getting familiar with a few people? Would that time be better spent writing, reading, and advertising the traditional way? There's really no way not to sound goony as hell asking this, but... Are friends worth it?
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Sep 5, 2015 14:54
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Plankhandles posted:Perfect timing that you bring up r/fantasy, because I was just coming in here to ask a question about networking. With the caveat that I haven't networked for the specific purpose of self-publishing, my response is you should be on these sites anyway, because they're where you learn a bit about what's popular, what's not, what sorts of things people complain about, and so on. Spending a few weeks even lurking will help your writing process. While you're there, hey, why not get engaged in discussion and pitch out ideas, too? Oh, hey, you're suddenly a community member, now it doesn't look like hocking when you talk about that book you just published. It's a process. If you go in with the mindset "friends = money", then you're not going to get very far, but if you don't go at all you'll be worse off for it.
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Sep 5, 2015 15:09
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Plankhandles posted:Are friends worth it? Short answer: Not really. Longer answer: Eh. If you want to make money from your writing, what you really want, more than anything else, is (a) a serious release schedule, and (b) fans signing up to your 'new releases' mailing list. Blogs, podcasts, review sites, even newspapers and radio, not many people take much notice of the content. Everyone's too inundated. So don't waste much time on supposed "promotion opportunities". Hanging out in a community -- like /r/Fantasy -- and being a mensch rather than a spammer is better. It's a decent, if slow way of getting some people to think you're OK, and then they'll hopefully look at your work and move towards becoming a mailing list member. But if you want to make a living off this, you're much better off sinking that time into working up to a new book every 4-6 weeks, and focussing on building up your mailing list.
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Sep 5, 2015 15:16
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Being a student is probably the best time to start doing this, honestly. It takes a while to build up to career money, so if you can do it on top of a course, especially if you have accommodation and living expenses sorted, you could be in the relatively unique position of leaving college with a job already sorted.
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Sep 5, 2015 15:41
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Ghostwoods posted:But if you want to make a living off this, you're much better off sinking that time into working up to a new book every 4-6 weeks, and focussing on building up your mailing list. I want to ask about mailing lists, actually. As I understand it, an essential part of self-publishing is having your website and mailing list to announce new books. Else, how will you maintain fans? But what methods are you using to build that list? Only politely asking anyone who visits your site, which you presumably linked to from amazon?
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Sep 5, 2015 16:07
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