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Bardeh
Dec 2, 2004

Fun Shoe

Sundae posted:

56, I think? I left it 50 on the sales page and called it a day.


Edit: 175,125 pages now... 314 more! COME ON, 314 MORE!

Edit 2: DONE! $1,000 DAY! :tviv:

:pusheen:

Did you do much paid promo for it? I've got dozens of old stories that I've been too lazy to bundle up, I think I'll get on that poo poo today.

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Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

Bardeh posted:

:pusheen:

Did you do much paid promo for it? I've got dozens of old stories that I've been too lazy to bundle up, I think I'll get on that poo poo today.

I spent about $215 total on promo. We're about to break $1000 again for today and it's only 9:40AM.

I'm just going to keep posting this smiley over and over again until my head stops spinning. :tviv:

Bardeh
Dec 2, 2004

Fun Shoe

Sundae posted:

I spent about $215 total on promo. We're about to break $1000 again for today and it's only 9:40AM.

I'm just going to keep posting this smiley over and over again until my head stops spinning. :tviv:

Would you mind sharing which sites you used? I've booked TheNaughtyList, Bknights and Excite Spice, but I'm struggling to find others that will take pure erotica and aren't just some shady person on Fiverr. I've had good results with Facebook with non-erotica, but I don't know if they'd even accept this bundle.

Hijinks Ensue
Jul 24, 2007
Had my first-ever Kindle sale in Japan! The only countries I still have to infiltrate are Italy, The Netherlands, Brazil, and Mexico.

Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it

Hijinks Ensue posted:

Had my first-ever Kindle sale in Japan! The only countries I still have to infiltrate are Italy, The Netherlands, Brazil, and Mexico.

Way to go! Enjoy being in the top 10 of whatever genre you're in for the next couple of days :)

Mrenda
Mar 14, 2012
Has anyone noticed Amazon being incredibly slow these past few weeks?

I've had a sale listed in the excel sheet, "Generate Report" document for at least two hours and it's still not showing up as a sale on the report page graph. Then the royalty listed at the bottom takes ages to update. And this all seems to be effecting the Book Report app thingy because that takes even longer to update with sales and reads.

I know I shouldn't be obsessing over hour-to-hour type stuff, but it's nice to see some actual movement for once. (I've had the equivalent of five people read my book in KU today, which is my best day ever by far, and one sale.)

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
It's been playing pretty well for me lately. Sales are updating about every 5 min or so. That being said, it's almost certainly spread across multiple servers given the size of the KDP system, so maybe you're getting bugged.


Also...



My brain is just completely not working now. I said gently caress it and went out for a beer.

quote:

Would you mind sharing which sites you used? I've booked TheNaughtyList, Bknights and Excite Spice, but I'm struggling to find others that will take pure erotica and aren't just some shady person on Fiverr. I've had good results with Facebook with non-erotica, but I don't know if they'd even accept this bundle.

I PM'd you.

Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it
Stuck the ~25 stories on my original pen name together into a bundle and pulled the trigger. Hoping this turns my opinion on KENPC around.

Halbey
Dec 9, 2009

Hijinks Ensue posted:

As for merchandise, I make bookmarks featuring my covers, and give those to the indie bookstore that stocks my books. I also include some with giveaways, review copies, etc. PrintRunner is my vendor of choice. They have lots of templates to use (I am design-challenged) and the prices seem reasonable.

Thanks for the PrintRunner rec, I will check it out!

ravenkult
Feb 3, 2011


So, could big bundles be a solution to the whole KU problem? Keep your singles out of KU, bundle them together later, put it on KU, make bank?

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
I think the way to do it is probably to release in KU, make money right away, and once you have ~ten books that can be removed from KU, remove them and release the bundle. There's no real reason to not try to make money on release still, and I found out the hard way that non-KU releases make no money. My Book Report data is totally hosed up, but it seems like my individual releases are getting like ~$200-300 still. My ten-book bundle is down from ~$100/day to $50-$60/day, but it's still pulling in money. It's pretty good, but when you look at how many books that is, it's more like a last cash grab for 'dead' books. If this bundle makes $2,000, it's adding $200 of profit onto each book...meaning like half of a book's income is generated on the bundle release. ~$400 after like 3-5 months for about 4-5 hours of work is pretty good...like $100/hour.

Keep in mind that Sundae's insane income is basically his entire catalog thrown into a bundle. You can't really bank on a 50-book bundle being released with regularity, but it's nice to know that they can pull in serious income spikes when needed.

I don't see a lot of people doubling down on erotica in this market though. I have been going SO SLOW on my supernatural romance novella, but I'm hoping that once I have three or four of those published that they will simply make more money than erotica does. Amazon still hates erotica, and there's always risk they will do even more than they already have to gut it.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
Yeah, this doesn't change anything for me. I'm dropping erotica and going fully back into romance. The boxed set is just a surprise going-away party. :)

Bobby Deluxe
May 9, 2004

Sundae posted:

The boxed set is just a surprise going-away party. :)
I thought we weren't allowed to discuss content. :ironicat:

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

Bobby Deluxe posted:

I thought we weren't allowed to discuss content. :ironicat:

:downsrim:

ravenkult
Feb 3, 2011


I'm still making the same money as ever on B&N, like 100$ a month, every month since 2012. Bizarre. If I was less lazy I'd write more.

Roar
Jul 7, 2007

I got 30 points!

I GOT 30 POINTS!

ravenkult posted:

I'm still making the same money as ever on B&N, like 100$ a month, every month since 2012. Bizarre. If I was less lazy I'd write more.

I have the opposite problem, B&N went from a pretty standard $85-100 for me to $30-40 and even less this month. It corresponded with the KU bomb which has been just swell.

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot

Bobby Deluxe posted:

I thought we weren't allowed to discuss content. :ironicat:

good. good.

ArchangeI
Jul 15, 2010

ravenkult posted:

So, could big bundles be a solution to the whole KU problem? Keep your singles out of KU, bundle them together later, put it on KU, make bank?

I thought you couldn't put content that was in KU up anywhere else? So the singles would still be restricted to amazon despite not being in KU, which means you get all the drawbacks for none of the benefits.

Toaster Beef
Jan 23, 2007

that's not nature's way

Sundae posted:

(regarding promo stuff)

I PM'd you.

Could you PM me as well? I'm going to do a mega-bundle sometime soon as a bridge to the novel I'm poking at, and I'd love to make sure it gets out there.

Thanks!

Fate Accomplice
Nov 30, 2006




Apparently August is .00514, down .00064 from July.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

Malloreon posted:

Apparently August is .00514, down .00064 from July.

Or worded differently: A 9.8% reduction in royalties for a given volume.

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot
Borrows went up by a monthly 10% again but pot remained the same, gee it's almost as if I'm reading from the Amazon playbook.

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

EngineerSean posted:

Borrows went up by a monthly 10% again but pot remained the same, gee it's almost as if I'm reading from the Amazon playbook.

Yep. Gearing myself for $0.004 in December. Did you have your sitdowns at the other distributors yet?

moana
Jun 18, 2005

one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web
boo.
booooooooooooooooooooo.

Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it
That makes me feel less bad that my KU bundle went over like a lead balloon.

Talas
Aug 27, 2005

Hi, I need a critique of my first book's cover. I still think there's something a little off with it but the artist says it's fine and well, I hate to keep revisiting small things until I see what I want and the editor says it's fine like that too. They are a small local publisher so I don't want to push them too much after been rejected by the biggest publishers in Spanish... they don't do sci-fi, apparently. What do you guys think?



Blurb goes like this:

quote:

In the year 2044, the daughter of a Mexican millionaire, María Pérez-Castillo, is kidnapped in the middle of her quinceañera party. The main suspect is her “arti” nanny, a constructed superhuman being created to serve.

Eloy “Exjed” Layer, a Texan Secession War veteran, is hired to travel deep into Mexico to find the girl. The cybernetic implant in his brain makes him the right person to do the job, even if most people around him fear the metal X sticking out the back of his head. The investigation puts him in the direct path of Galatea, a self-styled heroine who is also in the search for María.

Among cartels, bands of vigilantes, strange cults and corrupt police, both of them find themselves in the center of a conspiracy tied to the same international conglomerate involved in the Texan War. All of them linked by a 15-year old girl.

Thanks in advance.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Meh. I'm just not feeling the original.

The goal isn't to explain the story in a nutshell but to make someone buy the book. Hit em in the gut, make it visceral, drop the details, they'll find those out soon enough.

yooper posted:

It's 2044. Maria Perez-Castillo, the daughter of a Mexican millionaire, is brutally kidnapped in the middle of her 16th birthday party. The only suspect: an artificial nanny, a superhuman constructed to serve.

Eloy Layer, a veteran of the Texas Secession War, is the only man that can find her deep in Mexico. All he has is his cybernetic implant, a giant metal X grafted onto the back of his skull, and his steely will. Then his investigation collides with the beautiful Galatea, also searching for the girl.

Now they must find her among the cartels, criminals, cults, and corruption. But is it just a kidnapping, or a conspiracy to ignite another war that would make Texas burn?

Is this book strictly in Spanish? You should do a translated version too.

The cover lacks depth, this is a good place for man walking into the distance kind of cover.

Yooper fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Sep 16, 2015

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot

Jalumibnkrayal posted:

Yep. Gearing myself for $0.004 in December. Did you have your sitdowns at the other distributors yet?

We're chatting. I've been keeping with the negotiation strategy of "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, can you guarantee me a bird? (Half or some fraction of what a new release novel makes in its first three months on amazon)" and so far, no bites.

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

EngineerSean posted:

We're chatting. I've been keeping with the negotiation strategy of "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, can you guarantee me a bird? (Half or some fraction of what a new release novel makes in its first three months on amazon)" and so far, no bites.

Hopefully they come around to your line of thinking.

Talas
Aug 27, 2005

Yooper posted:

Meh. I'm just not feeling the original.

The goal isn't to explain the story in a nutshell but to make someone buy the book. Hit em in the gut, make it visceral, drop the details, they'll find those out soon enough.
Thank you, that looks much better.

Yooper posted:

Is this book strictly in Spanish? You should do a translated version too.
Yes, it is. I'm kind of torn between translating it or making a new book, I have a bunch of new ideas I just have to get out. I guess I'll start looking into professional translators online.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

Toaster Beef posted:

Could you PM me as well? I'm going to do a mega-bundle sometime soon as a bridge to the novel I'm poking at, and I'd love to make sure it gets out there.

Thanks!

The stuff I sent was super-romance specific, so not sure it'll help you much.


Recalculating for the 9.8% royalty reduction per page, the new boxed set finally dipped under $1000 yesterday as it fell out of the Top 100. Oh well! Now to see if it stabilizes for a while or if it just starts plummeting.

Toaster Beef
Jan 23, 2007

that's not nature's way

Sundae posted:

The stuff I sent was super-romance specific, so not sure it'll help you much.


Recalculating for the 9.8% royalty reduction per page, the new boxed set finally dipped under $1000 yesterday as it fell out of the Top 100. Oh well! Now to see if it stabilizes for a while or if it just starts plummeting.

The bundle is almost exclusively within that super-romance realm, so it'd definitely help — but no biggie if you'd rather not. Glad to hear you've had such a great run with shorts in this now-broken system, here's hoping it's a good launchpad for longer stuff :)

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

Toaster Beef posted:

The bundle is almost exclusively within that super-romance realm, so it'd definitely help — but no biggie if you'd rather not. Glad to hear you've had such a great run with shorts in this now-broken system, here's hoping it's a good launchpad for longer stuff :)

Sure- sending you a pile of stuff then!

Toaster Beef
Jan 23, 2007

that's not nature's way

Sundae posted:

Sure- sending you a pile of stuff then!

You are a champion and I love you deeply

The Fuzzy Hulk
Nov 22, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT CROSSING THE STREAMS


Sundae posted:

Sure- sending you a pile of stuff then!

I hate to be a Johnny-jump-on but can I get this too? I have a 220,000 word mega-collection of my romance shorts that I'm in the process of publishing soon and would do anything to bump its sales/page reads up. I don't have the PMs but my email is my username at yahoo.com

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
Can anyone recommend some good recent sci-fi? I want to read something that isn't romance, and I'm kinda sick of Asimov right now.

grenada
Apr 20, 2013
Relax.

Sundae posted:

Can anyone recommend some good recent sci-fi? I want to read something that isn't romance, and I'm kinda sick of Asimov right now.

Dan Simmons - Hyperion Cantos

Fuego Fish
Dec 5, 2004

By tooth and claw!

Sundae posted:

Can anyone recommend some good recent sci-fi? I want to read something that isn't romance, and I'm kinda sick of Asimov right now.

Damnit, my latest book is fantasy, guess I messed up there :v:

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

laxbro posted:

Dan Simmons - Hyperion Cantos

Thanks! To the library I go! :D

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Fate Accomplice
Nov 30, 2006




laxbro posted:

Dan Simmons - Hyperion Cantos

I wouldn't call that recent. I think I remember reading Hyperion 20 years ago.

If you want something that'll break your mind, read Hannu Rajaniemi's Le Flambeur series: The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince, and The Causal Angel.

Book 1 opens with the main character stuck in a prison in which he's forced to play prisoner's dilemma games with real guns against the other inmates all day long. When you die, they bring you back to life to play again.

It only gets more and more complicated from there. The author is a PhD in mathematical physics, and the first chapter of book 1 alone got him a three book deal. Also, unlike lots of scifi, there are zero info-dumps, zero explanations of how anything works. You pick it up as the story goes.

Fate Accomplice fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Sep 16, 2015

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