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freebooter posted:Wait, so you'll not release anything under 50K? It's that hard and fast a rule? Not a lot is hard-and-fast in digital publishing but a general mantra in today's publishing reality is "the longer the better". I'm sure out-of-work editors all over the world are bristling at how much content is not being cut. More general mantras are "have a good cover" and "as an indie, don't price too high" but every time you trot these out, people will find exceptions to the rule.
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Nov 26, 2015 05:49
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People expect about 50k from a novel (more like 100k from fantasy). The only reason it should come in under that is if several professional editors have told you the pacing is perfect and not to touch it.
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Nov 26, 2015 12:03
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OK. The reason I ask (and why I mostly lurk here) is because I wrote a long post-apocalyptic zombie story when I was younger which I'm shortly looking to self-publish. It's written in journal format and takes place clean across a year, so I was figuring I would release twelve books, one for each month (particularly since most months end on some sort of climax or cliffhanger). But I'm editing it now - actually rewriting the first three months flat, because I was quite young and bad when I wrote them - and they come in sort of short. January is 20,000 words and February will be around 30,000. The final word count for the whole shebang is 610,000, so I must have got wordier as it went on. Since there's 12 I was thinking of setting their price as low as possible and also probably making January free. But is 20,000 still too short? Will people hate that, even if they got it for free and can read the next instalment for 99c or whatever? And to be clear I am 100% doing this for the money so I have no objections to doing what the market demands.
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Nov 27, 2015 13:17
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freebooter posted:OK. The reason I ask (and why I mostly lurk here) is because I wrote a long post-apocalyptic zombie story when I was younger which I'm shortly looking to self-publish. It's written in journal format and takes place clean across a year, so I was figuring I would release twelve books, one for each month (particularly since most months end on some sort of climax or cliffhanger). I'm just gonna kick around an idea here, someone with way more experience in the game than me can say if it's good or bad and I have zero idea how long a zombie/post-apoc story should be, but if you're coming up way short on what people expect you could court the idea of releasing them as seasons (Spring, summer, fall, winter, ~152k words each) instead of months and probably safely charge more per pop as well.
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Nov 27, 2015 13:23
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Shima Honnou posted:I'm just gonna kick around an idea here, someone with way more experience in the game than me can say if it's good or bad and I have zero idea how long a zombie/post-apoc story should be, but if you're coming up way short on what people expect you could court the idea of releasing them as seasons (Spring, summer, fall, winter, ~152k words each) instead of months and probably safely charge more per pop as well. This. Alternatively, deliberately market them as serials and price accordingly.
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Nov 27, 2015 13:33
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I think if I lumped them into four books the final one would be absolutely gargantuan. Although looking at some popular book series at the moment maybe that's not an issue... If I was to stick with 12, or maybe put them into 6 books of 2 months each, would releasing the first book free be a good idea or not? Is that generally a done thing? I can see the appeal of hooking people on a free book, but then also think that maybe readers assume free books are worthless.
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Nov 27, 2015 13:37
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freebooter posted:Since there's 12 I was thinking of setting their price as low as possible and also probably making January free. But is 20,000 still too short? Will people hate that, even if they got it for free and can read the next instalment for 99c or whatever? I don't know much about that genre, but I think making January free is the right move. It's fine if it's on the short side. After that I'd price at .99c and put them in KU (the first one won't be in KU to get that permafree status). Also make sure January has a really awesome hook. I personally like the idea of releasing each month as a separate entity; it'll give you more room to mess around with promos. 20k seems low, which is why I think it would be a good free opener, and 30k is on the low end but still fine for .99c or KU. I wouldn't price over .99c unless you're dead set on going wide, at which point I guess 2.99, although I can't imagine you'll get much traction at that price point. People say 1.99 is a dead zone of no sales, so keep that in mind. Invest in good covers and have reasonable expectations. I don't know how well horror sells.
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Nov 27, 2015 16:26
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I've seen some zombie books with terrible covers ranked pretty high. Try to find those and emulate their length, blurb, and price point, but get better covers. Has today been a totally awful sales day for anyone else? Seems like no one buying or reading on Black Friday. Or maybe my book just died...
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Nov 28, 2015 03:54
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angel opportunity posted:Has today been a totally awful sales day for anyone else? Seems like no one buying or reading on Black Friday. Or maybe my book just died... People might still be out of town, recovering from turkey comas or in the ER from BestBuy tramplings. It's really not a great weekend for ebooks, but it is the calm before the storm of Kindlemas!
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Nov 28, 2015 04:24
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I am ready for Kindlemas! Have free promos booked with BookBub, ENT, Booksends, and OHFB, and 99-cent ones with KBT.
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Nov 28, 2015 15:08
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Hijinks Ensue posted:I am ready for Kindlemas! Have free promos booked with BookBub, ENT, Booksends, and OHFB, and 99-cent ones with KBT. You in four weeks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWMw4vE3J8s
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Nov 28, 2015 16:21
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I just got a 1 star review for 1 'cheesy' line in a 100k word compilation that the reviewer admits they didn't read to completion. 
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Nov 28, 2015 20:55
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Bardeh posted:I just got a 1 star review for 1 'cheesy' line in a 100k word compilation that the reviewer admits they didn't read to completion. you should be ashamed
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Nov 28, 2015 21:31
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I'm running into a problem with a book I'm self-publishing on CreateSpace, and I can't find any info when googling about it, so hopefully one of you has experienced something similar and knows what to do. I'm using Apple Pages, and everything is perfect, except for the fact the text isn't justifying properly when a line ends up ending on a space: As you can see, the word 'lost' isn't flush with the right hand side. I have to hit an extra spacebar after the word lost in order for it to decide to be. And it's not just this word in the document of course, this happens every couple pages or so, sometimes a few times on a page, and it looks unprofessional. I don't want to print it like that. Right now my only option is to go through the whole book and hit the spacebar after certain words so it lines up. But maybe there's some sort of button I need to hit in order for it not to behave this way? I don't know. Have any of you experienced this? I'd really appreciate some help.
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Nov 29, 2015 20:41
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I've been chewing on the idea of writing a book or two for the past few years. The one that sticks in my head is based off of my experienced events in regards to this girl that I met in high school. It was as if we had this magnetic bond that had us find each other in times of trouble and despair. Multiple times this happened, where we would be doing something and BAM! We run into each other, rekindle the tryst and then continue on with our lives. Id modify it so that it has a happy ending, but I was curious on the amount I would have to focus on the set up to those moments as opposed to actually living in that moment. I did read that blog in the OP so I have little questions answered already. How well do a collection of stories, aka toilet reading, do? I have an idea that grabs experiences from a large and varied group of people and it would be a collaboration of those. Non-fiction experiences. Kind of like "I hope they serve beer in hell." But a little more family friendly.
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Nov 30, 2015 08:55
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I think that the overwhelming advice from the thread is always 'don't plan on making money unless your short story collection involves graphic sex every thousand words, and one of you is a homeless billionaire bear carpenter'. Write it how you want to do it, but if you want to make it a sellable product, write it as a novel.
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Nov 30, 2015 11:51
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Another good tip is that if you want people to read it, and especially if you want people to buy it - write what people are buying. So a semi autobiographical novel or series probably won't go down too well unless you're Brian Blessed, especially if it's a romance. It all comes down to how you write it, in which case why make it autobiographical or inspired by true events? You're better off just coming up with something more interesting as the "based on a true story" line won't help you in 99/100 cases unless your life has been seriously interesting. Which, if it had, you'd probably have mentioned that already rather than just saying "this girl and I like each other but didn't wind up together", which doesn't fill me with the burning desire to pay to find out more
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Nov 30, 2015 12:52
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I guess I'm trying to say that unless you have Ian McEwan's talent for making the reader care about everyday people in everyday-ish scenarios, you better have a drat good story to sell. Like, falling in love during the fall of Saigon. So unless you're an established celebrity that people want to stalk for every mundane little morsel of information, I'd consider leaving the autobiography out and focus on the story and the writing rather than the true events of some dude they don't know or care about
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Nov 30, 2015 12:59
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Soulex posted:The one that sticks in my head is based off of my experienced events in regards to this girl that I met in high school. It was as if we had this magnetic bond that had us find each other in times of trouble and despair. Multiple times this happened, where we would be doing something and BAM! We run into each other, rekindle the tryst and then continue on with our lives. Id modify it so that it has a happy ending, but I was curious on the amount I would have to focus on the set up to those moments as opposed to actually living in that moment. I did read that blog in the OP so I have little questions answered already. I think it's possible that something like this could do well if you embellish details. Look up "second chance romance" or just some similar romantic comedies. quote:How well do a collection of stories, aka toilet reading, do? I have an idea that grabs experiences from a large and varied group of people and it would be a collaboration of those. Non-fiction experiences. Kind of like "I hope they serve beer in hell." But a little more family friendly. This will make you no money. "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" had an author who already had a following on his website, and actually had some really outlandish stories. You're not a celebrity so nobody wants to hear about your boring life. What you might consider doing is writing about your military experience, particularly your time overseas, even if it's mostly just the day-to-day bullshit. If you're married to the short story form, check out "The Things They Carried".
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Nov 30, 2015 13:06
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EngineerSean posted:I think it's possible that something like this could do well if you embellish details. Look up "second chance romance" or just some similar romantic comedies. Thanks everyone. I'm just quoting you because you're the last one. Making money is always nice, don't get me wrong, but it's not a huge drive at it. MY main satisfaction would be from people actually reading it. The cliffsnotes version is this girl and I fell in love in high school. She dissappeared and came back one night to shove me against a wall, and tell me that if I thought of hurting myself she would kill me. Gone. Few years later I see her at a friend's family reunion, and we actually start dating. She has a kid, already divorced once. I run the gauntlet of going from friend of the family to now a person of interest and the third degree. I survive, our relationship does not (as I come to understand later, but was given the reasoning of I moved too fast.). I joined the military, come back to my town to see friends before I deploy. Went to a strip club and there she is. She's got another kid, off another failed marriage, and working two jobs while taking care of her mother in between. We spend the night together, I deploy, I disappear. Deployement to Haiti, I finally get on facebook. See her, talk to her, and I buy a plane ticket out to see her. Third kid, engaged to someone she is questionable about (later went on to try to kill her daughter) and we do it again. She works at a strip club still because she's hot and it's easy money, but whatever. I can sub something different. I'm there every day for my week vacation just so I can spend time with her within reason at her job. To the point where the other girls know I'm not a creep and come around me to bullshit or play pool. The "false failed ending" would be the text I got when we got found out by her fiancee and was told that we couldn't talk anymore. Que downward spiral. As fate would have it, I've been married for almost five years now. My wife knows the story, and I just got an email from the high school sweetheart with an update on her life. I'd tweak the end so that it has a happy ending with "us" or the characters, but the basis of the story is largely off of my experience. We still talk occasionally, she filled in a lot of the gaps of that time, and basically it boiled down to anger. She was blinded by the anger that she had for the ways that she felt she was treated by other guys that she didn't see me, where I was willing to drop everything just to make her happy. If it doesn't sound feasible, like someone wouldn't read it, gently caress it. It's not worth the time writing. Again, not so much money as a motivator as it is wanting to tell the story. The actual book would be weird experiences in the workplace. My 'autobiography' thing I know is niche, and probably better as small short articles written for companies or whatever. My dick has gotten me in some weird positions and situations and netted me my first avatar here on the forums. I like to make people laugh, the people I tell my weird stories to laugh, and it feels good. I know Tucker Max had a following before hand, and I'm not trying to compete with it by any means. I just thought a book of people talking about how they were a doctor and the list of things they had to pull out of rectums, or the time an cop I know had to chase a naked man in February through snow for almost no reason other than the guy was drunk and afraid, and trying to go to the bathroom outside would be humorous for others to read. My military experience could be an option, but to be honest, there are some things that are either difficult to talk about or just flat out not interesting. It's a very routine based thing. I'm not married to any type of form. The second book would be for dough, the first would be for show. I don't think this would be something I could see myself doing long term.
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Nov 30, 2015 16:31
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Soulex posted:Making money is always nice, don't get me wrong, but it's not a huge drive at it. MY main satisfaction would be from people actually reading it. If it doesn't sound feasible, like someone wouldn't read it, gently caress it. It's not worth the time writing. Again, not so much money as a motivator as it is wanting to tell the story. You're unable to decouple these two things, sorry. There's no way your book will be widely read if it's not widely sold first. quote:I just thought a book of people talking about how they were a doctor and the list of things they had to pull out of rectums, or the time an cop I know had to chase a naked man in February through snow for almost no reason other than the guy was drunk and afraid, and trying to go to the bathroom outside would be humorous for others to read. The problem with these is that there are a million trillion free versions of these stories, and even has four to eight pages worth in every issue of Reader's Digest if people are into that. I haven't looked, but try to find an example of a similar book that has a decent sales rank (let's say lower than 25k) before you invest any significant time to writing it.
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Nov 30, 2015 17:21
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Honestly, I wasn't even able to make it through that entire paragraph the first try. I doubt a book like that, especially one predicated on the "this really happened to me!" trope would sell at all, unless like Sean said you've got a gift for turning relationship drama into readable prose. But if you're just interested in "telling the story" and don't care about making money, I say go for it. It can only help you get better as a writer by practicing, and if you make $50 in the process, all the better! My first (non-erotica) book was a lovely, Crichton-meets-Lovecraft horror novel, and I think I made about $150 from it when everything was said and done. At the same time, it helped me get way better at plotting and writing longer works, so it was far from wasted time even if I didn't make a lot of money off it. Popular Human fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Nov 30, 2015 |
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Nov 30, 2015 17:34
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Thanks guys. Guess it's just a venture not worth pursuing then.
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Nov 30, 2015 17:50
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Maybe start a blog, and if the blog builds an audience, make a book out of it?
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Nov 30, 2015 23:32
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brotherly posted:I don't know much about that genre, but I think making January free is the right move. It's fine if it's on the short side. After that I'd price at .99c and put them in KU (the first one won't be in KU to get that permafree status). Also make sure January has a really awesome hook. OK, thanks. This is all pretty theoretical at the moment because I'm still a ways off finishing the editing process, but it's interesting to see what established writers advise. I'd have no issue pricing at 0.99 because that's still several dollars even for people who don't bother to read more than a few books in (and $11 for people who read the whole way) and in fact it's more like $1.40 for me since the Aussie dollar continues to tumble. It's just the same as with pricing the first one free - the concern that maybe people think a 0.99 book isn't worth anything.
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Nov 30, 2015 23:49
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I'm pretty exhausted and about to crash but it looks like you haven't factored in what royalty you actually receive from that price point
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Dec 1, 2015 00:01
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freebooter posted:OK, thanks. This is all pretty theoretical at the moment because I'm still a ways off finishing the editing process, but it's interesting to see what established writers advise. You will only get 33 cents per sale at a 99 cent price point. However, what you really want is for people to borrow each installment with their KU subscription, because it'll end up making you much more money. 99 cents helps with this because you'll get more sales which will increase your ranking and visibility, ideally attracting more borrows. If you price higher than 99 cents, you'll be passing up most of that extra visibility which is so crucial.
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Dec 1, 2015 10:50
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Is it even possible for other stores to start a pay-per-read scheme? Or is that something Amazon have the market on? I was just thinking because of the 99c price point. On other stores you don't get quite so roundly hosed on royalties at that price point, but you don't get the KU pages read bonus either. I get the impression though that other stores couldn't access the pages read stat, and don't have the heft to encourage readers into a subscription model.
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Dec 1, 2015 11:32
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Is it even possible for other stores to start a pay-per-read scheme? Or is that something Amazon have the market on? What you're asking is probably a software question rather than a hardware question, so any company should be able to do it. Additionally, both Barnes&Noble and Apple use their own eReaders, so there's no reason why they couldn't collect that data and I suspect that they probably both do.
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Dec 1, 2015 11:53
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Bardeh posted:You will only get 33 cents per sale at a 99 cent price point. However, what you really want is for people to borrow each installment with their KU subscription, because it'll end up making you much more money. 99 cents helps with this because you'll get more sales which will increase your ranking and visibility, ideally attracting more borrows. If you price higher than 99 cents, you'll be passing up most of that extra visibility which is so crucial. Ah I see. This is all great stuff. I think even after the book is ready to go I'm still going to have to spend quite some time posting and learning. I still don't even know what the base options are, like - does going with Amazon mean you can't publish with anyone else? That seems like the kind of thing they'd do.
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Dec 1, 2015 12:20
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If you just publish with Amazon, you can also publish it anywhere else you like. However, if you enrol the book in Kindle Select (Amazon's pay-per-read scheme), it has to be exclusive to Amazon. I think the current consensus is that for a decent length novel that you advertise right, it's worth it. I may end up getting corrected on that last point because it's changed a lot.
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Dec 1, 2015 14:16
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freebooter posted:Ah I see. This is all great stuff. I think even after the book is ready to go I'm still going to have to spend quite some time posting and learning. I still don't even know what the base options are, like - does going with Amazon mean you can't publish with anyone else? That seems like the kind of thing they'd do. To allow customers to borrow with their Kindle Unlimited subscription, the book has to be exclusive to Amazon for 90 days. This sucks, but they're the biggest game in town and the best place to make money and find readers. However, once those 90 days are up, you can look at how the book is doing, and make the decision to remove it from the program and publish it elsewhere. People can still buy a copy on Amazon, they just can't borrow it for free anymore. This is probably what you want to do to maximise your earnings and potential readership.
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Dec 1, 2015 17:25
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Is free just free, or do you get a little kick from Amazon when someone borrows your book?
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Dec 1, 2015 23:42
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You get somewhere between $0.004-$.0055 per page that they read. It varies from month to month, and it may even go lower at some point if Amazon decides to gently caress everyone again. If you get to around rank 1,000 in the paid store it will end up being a bit under $100/day. Go up to rank 15,000 - 20,000 and you're down to about $15/day. Rank 100,000+ and you're at like $1 per day or less. I think at rank ~400-500 it's around $150-$200/day. Once you get into really high ranks though, the income really begins to skyrocket (I've never been above rank 450 so I don't know numbers for that). The difference between rank 200 and 50 is really huge, while the difference between 15,000 and 20,000 is negligible. The income above is JUST for KU income. If you can manage to hit those higher ranks, your $0.99 sales will probably be between 10-15% of your total income. If you can hit a high rank at $2.99, you will make way more of a total percentage of income from sales, but likely you will not hold a high rank for as long as you would at $0.99. This is why so many people set their book at $0.99. Each sale, regardless of cost, has an equal effect on rank. A sale at $12.99 will give you a similar amount of money as like 35 sales at 99 cents, BUT those 35 sales will give you a huge ranking boost, whereas the one sale at $12.99 will not. When you set at $0.99, you're making more people buy your book than if it were $2.99, and while you are getting like 30 cents per sale instead of $2.00, the loss of income from sales is being more than offset by the ranking boost and accompanying payment you get for pages read in KU. The KU pages read also boost the ranking, so it feeds off each other. The thing people start getting bummed out about is when you look at how it's pretty scummy from Amazon and fucks authors over. Amazon keeps 70% of the profit from sales at 99 cents, and you give that up to them for a ranking boost and the accompanying KU income. You want the ranking boost so you can make more money through Kindle Unlimited, which makes it so you're forced into being Amazon exclusive. Once they have you and everyone else dependent on this system, they can do stuff like reduce the payment per page to $.003 over the next three months, and what are you going to do about it? Pull out of KU and start charging $2.99? Good luck making money when Amazon has no real competition and when your sales rank (and thus visibility) will be poo poo compared to everyone else. angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Dec 2, 2015 |
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Dec 2, 2015 00:07
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angel opportunity posted:The thing people start getting bummed out about is when you look at how it's pretty scummy from Amazon and fucks authors over. Amazon keeps 70% of the profit from sales at 99 cents, and you give that up to them for a ranking boost and the accompanying KU income. That does sound scummy, but it's still better than what authors would make with traditional publishing, isn't it? Even putting aside how much harder traditional publishing is to get into? edit - that comes off as defending Amazon but I'm genuinely unsure how much traditional publishers make. I remember it being very low, I know when I worked in a bookstore the store alone gets something like 70% of the sale price.
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Dec 2, 2015 00:25
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angel opportunity posted:The thing people start getting bummed out about is when you look at how it's pretty scummy from Amazon and fucks authors over. Amazon keeps 70% of the profit from sales at 99 cents, and you give that up to them for a ranking boost and the accompanying KU income. As a producer of content, I approve of the hard and soft price floors. If the $0.99 paid full royalty, we'd quickly see a shift to everything being priced at that, because then you'd only need 3x sales to equal a $2.99 sale instead of 6x. I think this is one of the few larger Amazon policies which benefit authors. Naturally, look for it to change in the near future!
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Dec 2, 2015 04:55
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The next big thing I'm hoping doesn't happen is varied payouts depending on KU reader subscription pricing within individual markets. They're already doing this based on international pricing differences for KU subscriptions, but now that they've introduced discount KU plans for longer-term subscriptions (12 months at discount, 3 months, etc), I'm a teeny bit nervous that we may see pro-rated reads of some form based on subscriber payment degree. Not sure how they'd implement it, but when you have a billion bucks of programmers at your disposal, it could happen pretty easily I bet.
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Dec 2, 2015 05:37
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:As a producer of content, I approve of the hard and soft price floors. If the $0.99 paid full royalty, we'd quickly see a shift to everything being priced at that, because then you'd only need 3x sales to equal a $2.99 sale instead of 6x. I think this is one of the few larger Amazon policies which benefit authors. Naturally, look for it to change in the near future! lol if you'd actually bitch if Amazon paid more royalties for lower priced books
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Dec 2, 2015 07:22
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EngineerSean posted:lol if you'd actually bitch if Amazon paid more royalties for lower priced books I'd be upset that the market price for everything was a third of what it used to be. Sure there would still be high quality products that demand higher prices, but for the flotsam and jetsam books (like mine) everything would drop to 99c.
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Dec 2, 2015 13:25
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:I'd be upset that the market price for everything was a third of what it used to be. Sure there would still be high quality products that demand higher prices, but for the flotsam and jetsam books (like mine) everything would drop to 99c. You would blame Amazon For other authors dropping their prices Because Amazon was paying more.
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Dec 2, 2015 17:07
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