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Roar
Jul 7, 2007

I got 30 points!

I GOT 30 POINTS!
People have tried to do kickstarters for books but (and correct me if I'm wrong) they have failed pretty much every single time.

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magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Jalumibnkrayal posted:

You're just spinning your wheels. Amazon isn't ideal, but it's the best way to play this game. Close your browser and go write. You know that's the real answer.
BUT IF I CLOSE THE BROWSER I'LL MISS EVERYTHING.

But hey - speaking of.

You're all familiar with the story of David Wong's first book - he posted the entire novel online as a serial of sorts, the thing became incredibly popular, to the point that (correct me if I'm wrong) a publisher approached HIM. Do you think that's a realistic strategy? How did he cheat the system?

quote:

John Dies at the End is a comic horror novel written by David Wong that was first published online as a webserial beginning in 2001, then as an edited manuscript in 2004, and a printed paperback in 2007, published by Permuted Press. An estimated 70,000 people read the free online versions before they were removed in September 2008. Thomas Dunne Books published the story with additional material as a hardcover on September 29, 200

magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Jan 22, 2016

vseslav.botkin
Feb 18, 2007
Professor

magnificent7 posted:

BUT IF I CLOSE THE BROWSER I'LL MISS EVERYTHING.

But hey - speaking of.

You're all familiar with the story of David Wong's first book - he posted the entire novel online as a serial of sorts, the thing became incredibly popular, to the point that (correct me if I'm wrong) a publisher approached HIM. Do you think that's a realistic strategy? How did he cheat the system?

Wong didn't just post a novel online; he posted a novel online on his comedy website, which he had been running for years and had already developed a large, dedicated following. If Seanbaby or David Thorne or Pewdiepie decided to put a novel online, yes, it would probably get a lot of attention and possibly attract the attention of a publisher.

That said, I think Bacon should try the Patreon just to see what happens. Report back!

EDIT: or Lowtax. That dude could probably sell a few books.

vseslav.botkin fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jan 22, 2016

Aaronicon
Oct 2, 2010

A BLOO BLOO ANYONE I DISAGREE WITH IS A "BAD PERSON" WHO DESERVES TO DIE PLEEEASE DONT FALL ALL OVER YOURSELF WHITEWASHING THEM A BLOO BLOO

Roar posted:

People have tried to do kickstarters for books but (and correct me if I'm wrong) they have failed pretty much every single time.

Obviously it varies from author to author, but most of them are successful - all the ones I've seen involve raising some funds to pay for final editing and a cover, for instance, and the total for those isn't usually huge. Although arguably the authors popular enough to raise the money through Kickstarter are probably successful enough to pay for those things themselves regardless. It's more about using Kickstarter as a publicity platform rather than a 'pay for me to sit in a room for a couple months' thing.

psychopomp
Jan 28, 2011
I've done a few successful cover art kickstarters (funding to 300% and 1000%, and have gotten a handful of new readers that way.

Tips:
1. Low goals. A cheap cover comp can cost $30-50. Obviously you want something better, but setting the goal low at least gives you something.
2. Stretch goals for better covers.
3. Signed copies as rewards are a pain. Ship dozens of copies to yourself then to the reader? Ugh. And the shipping costs are not insignificant.
4. "My entire ebook library thusfar" has gotten me more than a few random new readers even at high cost, but most of your donors will be people who are already fans. This is why a later book in a successful series will get a lot more donations than, say, a new book from an unknown author.

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme
It Came From Reddit:

quote:

"They say never shop on an empty stomach, should you never write on a full ball sack?"

Trustworthy
Dec 28, 2004

with catte-like thread
upon our prey we steal
Yes, go jerk off now, you'll TOTALLY come back and hunker down (for real) and write a couple thousand words as soon as you're done.

Mr. Belding
May 19, 2006
^
|
<- IS LAME-O PHOBE ->
|
V
One hand on the keyboard, one on my crank.

Cum in a sock, and money in the bank.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
God, I hate all of you.

Also, happy snow day. Now go write some poo poo since you can't do anything else on the east coast. :)

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot
I don't care what shoppers do. Do chefs gorge themselves before cooking?

Bobby Deluxe
May 9, 2004

I used to work in IT, and regularly ate laptops. That advice makes absolutely no sense.

Aaronicon
Oct 2, 2010

A BLOO BLOO ANYONE I DISAGREE WITH IS A "BAD PERSON" WHO DESERVES TO DIE PLEEEASE DONT FALL ALL OVER YOURSELF WHITEWASHING THEM A BLOO BLOO
I'd say that the vast majority of classical literature comes from a combination of the author not getting any action in the first place, and then eventually dying of a venereal disease, so yeah not great advice.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug

Aaronicon posted:

I'd say that the vast majority of classical literature comes from a combination of the author not getting any action in the first place, and then eventually dying of a venereal disease, so yeah not great advice.

Stop sharing my plans with CC.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


I put in for a Bookbub a week ago. A few days later I received a survey from Bookbub that wanted to know how my previous release did. Sales in the first day, first week, first month, etc. I filled it out and about an hour later got my rejection notice.

The survey could have been a coincidence, but man, that timing sure is suspect.

Roar
Jul 7, 2007

I got 30 points!

I GOT 30 POINTS!
I love how I resubmit to smashwords the exact same way every time and half of them are accepted and the other half are not because of nitpicky bullshit literally no consumer in their right mind would care about~

Unbelievably Fat Man
Jun 1, 2000

Innocent people. I could never hurt innocent people.


It doesn't really matter unless you want to use their extended distribution and frankly you should go with Draft2Digital for that.

Lywinis
Nov 5, 2007

I can bench more than you.
Does anyone have a recommended mailing list they use?

I hear good things about mail chimp, but I'm not ready (and am unable) to drop the $10 a month just for email automation. All I want is the ability to send a welcome letter upon signup with a link to a freebie story to build the mailing list.

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot

Silvyfox posted:

Does anyone have a recommended mailing list they use?

I hear good things about mail chimp, but I'm not ready (and am unable) to drop the $10 a month just for email automation. All I want is the ability to send a welcome letter upon signup with a link to a freebie story to build the mailing list.

I don't know if there's another service that provides email automation for free, but you can customize Mailchimp's "Thanks for signing up" page to include any links you want, including to free books that you host.

Lywinis
Nov 5, 2007

I can bench more than you.

EngineerSean posted:

I don't know if there's another service that provides email automation for free, but you can customize Mailchimp's "Thanks for signing up" page to include any links you want, including to free books that you host.

Oh, it does, huh? I will look into that, then. Thank you for the tip!

That will get me by for now, until I decide to make the jump to automation.

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme
It begins.

quote:

Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC v2.0)
To determine a book's page count in a way that works across genres and devices, we developed the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC). KENPC is calculated using standard formatting settings (font, line height, line spacing, etc.). We use KENPC to measure the number of pages customers read in your book, starting with the Start Reading Location (SRL) to the end of your book. Amazon typically sets SRL at chapter 1 so readers can start reading the core content of your book as soon as they open it. Non-text elements within books including images, charts and graphs will count toward a book’s KENPC.

We released KENPC v2.0 to improve the way we measure the length of each book. KENPC v2.0 makes a number of improvements to how we standardize font, line height, and spacing used to normalize the length of each book relative to one another. This change will impact the KENPC of some titles while others will remain unchanged. The average KENPC will change less than 5%, although individual books’ changes may be larger or smaller. The new KENPC approach will be applied uniformly to all KDP Select books and all versions of those books. Regardless of which version a customer may be reading, all future royalties will be paid using KENPC v2.0. If a customer previously borrowed your book and is still reading it, any new pages read will be based on KENPC v2.0.

KENPC v2.0 also introduces a change to how we handle extremely long books like dictionaries and long reference books. Under KENPC v2.0, authors will be able to earn a maximum of 3,000 Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENPs) read per title per customer. While this change impacts a fraction of a percent of KDP Select books, we believe it will result in a more equitable distribution of the KDP Select Global Fund. Each time your book is borrowed and read, you will receive credit for up to 3,000 pages.

You can see your book's KENPC v2.0 listed on the "Promote and Advertise" page in your Bookshelf, and you can also see total pages read on your Sales Dashboard report. Because it's based on default settings, KENPC v2.0 may vary from page counts listed on your Amazon detail page, which are derived from other sources.

Our total payout from the KDP Select Global Fund will be unaffected by the transition to KENPC v2.0, and the amount you earn from the global fund will continue to be determined based on your share of total pages read by Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Kindle Owners' Lending Library (KOLL) customers. The new KENPC version will be applied uniformly to all KDP Select books and used to measure all pages read.

Edit: One of the prominent smutlords on Reddit is reporting that many authors are seeing KENPC reductions of 10-60% on their titles. I didn't see mine drop alarmingly or at all.

Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Feb 1, 2016

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
Welp, so much for boxed sets raking it in.

Edit: In fairness, that'd be a huge boxed set. :)

Sundae fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Feb 1, 2016

ArchangeI
Jul 15, 2010

Sundae posted:

Welp, so much for boxed sets raking it in.

Edit: In fairness, that'd be a huge boxed set. :)

Funny, I checked on some of my boxed sets, and the KENPC count is actually higher than the one shown on the store page, by about 50%. Not complaining.

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

ArchangeI posted:

Funny, I checked on some of my boxed sets, and the KENPC count is actually higher than the one shown on the store page, by about 50%. Not complaining.

That's expected. KENPC length is often much higher than store page length.

Fate Accomplice
Nov 30, 2006




ArchangeI posted:

Funny, I checked on some of my boxed sets, and the KENPC count is actually higher than the one shown on the store page, by about 50%. Not complaining.

Yeah, what you need to know is what your KENPC (NOT print length) was yesterday and what it was today. My guess is today's number is 20% lower.

LionArcher
Mar 29, 2010


Jalumibnkrayal posted:

It begins.


Edit: One of the prominent smutlords on Reddit is reporting that many authors are seeing KENPC reductions of 10-60% on their titles. I didn't see mine drop alarmingly or at all.

You're talking about Throwie aren't you. That dude is awesome.

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

LionArcher posted:

You're talking about Throwie aren't you. That dude is awesome.

I am and he seems like a cool dude.

Bobby Deluxe
May 9, 2004

Jalumibnkrayal posted:

It begins.


Edit: One of the prominent smutlords on Reddit is reporting that many authors are seeing KENPC reductions of 10-60% on their titles. I didn't see mine drop alarmingly or at all.
To be fair though, a lot of them were selecting particular font & paragraph layout choices specifically to game KENPC, the figures they're seeing now are just Amazon getting round the tricks.

Roar
Jul 7, 2007

I got 30 points!

I GOT 30 POINTS!
Tbh the 10,000 word thing I put out recently doesn't feel like 54 pages so shrug.

Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it
Yeah, I'm guessing this is just a suite of 'fixes' for all the ridiculous things people have been doing to their formatting to try and maximize their KENPC.

I only have one bundle on KDP that's also part of Kindle Unlimited (as a sampler of sorts), and it looks like it's gone from 210 to 204 KENPC. Not a big change, but it'll be interesting to see how it affects other people and their KU subs.

Popular Human fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Feb 2, 2016

Mr. Pumroy
May 20, 2001

Is there any good way to get the word out that I'm doing a free book promotion on Amazon? Like, I got twitter and a post on my goodreads blog (I got very excited when I saw that someone had left a 5-star rating back in December. I am neglecting my social media, yes).

I found a website that offers to promote e-book deals, but I filled everything out only to learn they were going to charge $290. Eff that.

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

Mr. Pumroy posted:

I found a website that offers to promote e-book deals, but I filled everything out only to learn they were going to charge $290. Eff that.

Hahaha! Here https://www.fiverr.com/bknights . Do the base $5 option, no frills. Depending on your genre it's good for 50-1000 free downloads.

Roar
Jul 7, 2007

I got 30 points!

I GOT 30 POINTS!

Jalumibnkrayal posted:

Hahaha! Here https://www.fiverr.com/bknights . Do the base $5 option, no frills. Depending on your genre it's good for 50-1000 free downloads.

Interesting.

Do they handle super-romance?

thewhitehand
Sep 11, 2008
Do you guys promote your book launches on here? Or work with other goons for them?

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot

thewhitehand posted:

Do you guys promote your book launches on here? Or work with other goons for them?

You're welcome to post your book here and I will tell you (at least) one thing wrong with it.

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

Roar posted:

Interesting.

Do they handle super-romance?

I think as long as the cover meets Amazon's standards, yeah.

EngineerSean posted:

You're welcome to post your book here and I will tell you (at least) one thing wrong with it.

http://www.amazon.com/Cruzn-Trump-Presidential-Candidate-Romance-ebook/dp/B01B57SIUA/

thewhitehand
Sep 11, 2008

That's the gayest thing I've ever read.

moana
Jun 18, 2005

one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web
Blurb is perfect, excellent use of a pixellated dildo on the cover. 5 stars, change nothing.

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot

fingers too stubby imo

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot
Sorry didn't mean to kinkshame

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EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot
Alright Kindle, you win this round

quote:

Kindle Location: 1841 ; Description: "the bra claps" should be "the bra clasp"

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