Self-Publishing Goons: Yep, people buy it!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Self-Publishing Goons: Yep, people buy it!

SurreptitiousMuffin: Mar 21, 2010

Anybody know if Ravenkult is still around and/or if anybody else is taking commissions for cover art? I want to see if I can self-pub a collection of short stories but I'm garbage at visual design.

# ? Nov 26, 2016 11:03

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 21:32

Chokes McGee: Aug 7, 2008; This is Urotsuki.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Anybody know if Ravenkult is still around and/or if anybody else is taking commissions for cover art? I want to see if I can self-pub a collection of short stories but I'm garbage at visual design.

I don't have it handy but he has a website with all his stuff and rates. Just search around for "ravenkult," it'll be under his real name but it'll be within the first few results and be super obvious who it is when you click.

Poke around deviantart with Google's help, too. (Yeah, I know, but there's some really good cover artists there.)

# ? Nov 26, 2016 18:38

SurreptitiousMuffin: Mar 21, 2010

That worked, thanks.

Link to his site (mildly NWS).
My experience is mostly selling tiny individual pieces to magazines etc, so forgive me if these questions are dumb/played out:

1) what's a good length (in words) for a collection of short stories?
2) assuming 20-30k words, what's a good price point? Would $3 be too much? Too little?
3) in terms of "PICK A THEME", how loose is that theme allowed to be? Multi-author collections seem to be more strict than single-author ones, but I imagine there's still not a huge amount of room to move. I've been experimenting with different genres over the last year or so and my output has been all over the show.

# ? Nov 26, 2016 23:54

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

TheForgotton posted:

How is the survival for the King twins going to be different from any of the hundred thousand zombie books, movies, and comics out now?

It's not, I'm sort of banking on the idea that people want pretty much more of the same. From wading through all the stuff on Amazon I'd say the difference is that it is (or is an attempt at) a more "realistic" survival situation which relies on a lot of luck rather than the protagonists being ex-Army survivalists with a fully stocked stronghold in Montana. But I find it difficult to emphasise that in a blurb. Actually I find it difficult to doa blurb full stop - I was quite surprised by how hard it is to distil everything into a couple of paragraphs.

TheForgotton posted:

Also, your title is about as bland as it gets.

Is bland not good, though, for genre novels? I picked RISE OF THE UNDEAD literally because it does what it says on the tin and hadn't been used by anything before (except a straight to video movie from 2005). I could definitely try to come up with something more imaginative but I feel like it's important to emphasise that it's a zombie book, especially getting either the word "zombie" or "undead" in there. That's just an assumption though - is SEO particularly important for Amazon or not?

# ? Nov 27, 2016 10:56

angel opportunity: Sep 7, 2004; Total Eclipse of the Heart

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

That worked, thanks. Link to his site (mildly NWS).
My experience is mostly selling tiny individual pieces to magazines etc, so forgive me if these questions are dumb/played out:

1) what's a good length (in words) for a collection of short stories?
2) assuming 20-30k words, what's a good price point? Would $3 be too much? Too little?
3) in terms of "PICK A THEME", how loose is that theme allowed to be? Multi-author collections seem to be more strict than single-author ones, but I imagine there's still not a huge amount of room to move. I've been experimenting with different genres over the last year or so and my output has been all over the show.

I'll preface everything by saying I don't think single-author short story collections are very easy to sell on Amazon self-pubbed. I'm too lazy to really research hard into this, and it will depend a lot on what your goals are, but look for any self-pubbed short story collections with ranks above 1,000 in the overall store. I kind of doubt you will find anything at that rank, but at least try to find something around rank 3,000.

If you can't find anything that is self-pubbed, look at traditional publishing as well. If you find ANYTHING promising really look at it and see how it is branded. Is it leaning on the author's name recognition? Is it name dropping trad pub credits? Or is it focusing really hard on what the stories are about or the style?

Here is a rough "tier list" of Amazon paid rank, assuming you release a book every other month that hits the rank listed and is priced at $0.99 in KU:

Rank 1-10: You're loving rich. You are making over $1,000 per day.

Rank 10-30: You're still rich.

Rank 30-100: Easily six figures per year (so...still rich.)

Rank 200-500: You could definitely make a living off your writing.

Rank 500-1000: Significant "extra income," and you could still make a living off of your writing but things might be tight depending on your circumstances. If you could pump a book every month instead of every other month this would be definite livable/comfortable wage.

Rank 1,000-3,000: You'd really struggle to make a living. If you are single and lived frugally you MIGHT be able to live off your writing. If you have a big back catalog it could help a lot too.

3,000-10,000: This is pretty much the "event horizon." After you pass 3,000 rank (and even after you pass 1,000 it starts getting much worse) your book becomes close to invisible. If this were a brick and mortar store, your book gets moved from the shelves to the warehouse and can only be bought if someone special orders it. At the higher 1k+ ranks, Amazon's algorithms and advertising engine are actively pushing your books to readers. You are visible in many sub-categories, and Amazon is even emailing people to tell them to check out your book. Once you hit 3k-10k, income becomes very negligible. At this range your writing income might cover your lunch for the day. I generally recommend changing from $0.99 to $2.99 after slipping out of top 1,000, but DEFINITELY after rank 3,000 $0.99 is lovely and makes little sense anymore.

Before you really dump a lot of time and work into this, just look at the store as it is and find as many examples that look like what you want to do and look at their rank. Really old stuff's rank will be sort of irrelevant, but do keep in mind that after a few months that's where your rank will be. If you see rank 30,000-50,000 and think "Well...that's pretty good rank out of millions," keep in mind that 30-50k rank is somewhere between 10-30 sales per WEEK. I have a book that is several months old at 42,000 rank. In the past seven days it sold 9 copies at $2.99 and had 4,000 pages read in KU. It made me $34.78 in the past 7 days. That's less than $200/month.

Also remember that this collection probably represents more than a year's work for you, so all my figures assuming you publish "every other month" will be off. If you publish only once per year, hitting a mediocre rank is probably just going to be a few hundred bucks for you in the first few months, and then less than $100 per year for the rest of the time the book sits on the store.

Once you drop below 100,000 rank, it's basically "no money at all." Some year-old books I have between 300k-400k rank made around $2.00 each in the past 7 days. You want to find stuff out there that came out within the last month and check out its rank.

Think really hard about why you want to publish this and if you care about the money much at all. Decide if hitting a peak rank of 20,000 and making a few hundred dollars would be satisfying to you, or if you'd just be mad at yourself for wasting the first publishing on these stories for that amount of money. If your main goal is just to have people read and enjoy your stories, pushing a few copies per week might be satisfying and fulfilling for you regardless of what the income is. If you are just thinking, "These stories won't get trad published anyway and I just want SOMEONE to read them," then pubbing without worrying too much about rank or income is probably smart.

If you do find something similar to what you want to do at a rank you consider good, try to copy what it is doing in answer to all of your questions. Aim for a similar length, cover, blurb, pricing model, etc.

I would 100% want to put your collection into KU though, which means that the more people actually read, the more money you make. If the total length of the collection is around 50,000 words, you'll get around $1.30 or so for a full read through. If you go much shorter than that, you'll get much crappier income from KU reads.

$0.99 vs. $2.99 or higher is your main question. $0.99 is likely going to be a special launch price or you. If you can find some way to actually advertise the book (even with a free promo) that is effective, doing an advertising push at $0.99 can jack up your rank much higher than anything else. If doing $0.99 puts you at rank 3k or better, it's good and was worth doing. Say your book is $0.99 and you hit 2,500 rank, just know that a $2.99 price point would have not hit you that rank. Any rank you hit at $0.99 would have been much worse if you were at $2.99.

$0.99 is a failure if you do it and still don't break 3k rank. You hugely cut into your potential profit hoping for a better rank but failed to hit it. You would have been better off just doing $2.99 and hoping those few people who are buying the book would have bought it at $2.99 anyway. Remember you get 33 cents for a 99 cent sale and $2 for a $2.99 sale.

The last thing to remember--and I'm saying it last because so many people ITT don't think about it and realize it too late--is that your first month and first few DAYS of release are loving critical. If you do actually want this book to do well and you do care about hitting the best rank you can (even if it's just so more people read your book and you don't care about money) then you need to plan all advertising in advance of launch. You should have all your advertising hit immediately with launch, staggered ideally over 3-4 days if you have enough stuff planned to sustain advertising for 3-4 days. The worst thing you can do is to publish and hope it will do well on its own without any advertising, then see after ten days that it isn't selling any copies at all, and panic/rush to advertise it. If you do this, by the time your advertising kicks in the book will be close to a month old and any advertising that does manage to hit will have a hugely diminished effect.

# ? Nov 27, 2016 19:41

simplefish: Mar 28, 2011; So long, and thanks for all the ~~fish~~ gallbladdΣrs!

angel opportunity posted:

I'll preface everything by saying I don't think single-author short story collections are very easy to sell on Amazon self-pubbed. I'm too lazy to really research hard into this, and it will depend a lot on what your goals are, but look for any self-pubbed short story collections with ranks above 1,000 in the overall store. I kind of doubt you will find anything at that rank, but at least try to find something around rank 3,000.

If you can't find anything that is self-pubbed, look at traditional publishing as well. If you find ANYTHING promising really look at it and see how it is branded. Is it leaning on the author's name recognition? Is it name dropping trad pub credits? Or is it focusing really hard on what the stories are about or the style?

Here is a rough "tier list" of Amazon paid rank, assuming you release a book every other month that hits the rank listed and is priced at $0.99 in KU:

Rank 1-10: You're loving rich. You are making over $1,000 per day.

Rank 10-30: You're still rich.

Rank 30-100: Easily six figures per year (so...still rich.)

Rank 200-500: You could definitely make a living off your writing.

Rank 500-1000: Significant "extra income," and you could still make a living off of your writing but things might be tight depending on your circumstances. If you could pump a book every month instead of every other month this would be definite livable/comfortable wage.

Rank 1,000-3,000: You'd really struggle to make a living. If you are single and lived frugally you MIGHT be able to live off your writing. If you have a big back catalog it could help a lot too.

3,000-10,000: This is pretty much the "event horizon." After you pass 3,000 rank (and even after you pass 1,000 it starts getting much worse) your book becomes close to invisible. If this were a brick and mortar store, your book gets moved from the shelves to the warehouse and can only be bought if someone special orders it. At the higher 1k+ ranks, Amazon's algorithms and advertising engine are actively pushing your books to readers. You are visible in many sub-categories, and Amazon is even emailing people to tell them to check out your book. Once you hit 3k-10k, income becomes very negligible. At this range your writing income might cover your lunch for the day. I generally recommend changing from $0.99 to $2.99 after slipping out of top 1,000, but DEFINITELY after rank 3,000 $0.99 is lovely and makes little sense anymore.

Before you really dump a lot of time and work into this, just look at the store as it is and find as many examples that look like what you want to do and look at their rank. Really old stuff's rank will be sort of irrelevant, but do keep in mind that after a few months that's where your rank will be. If you see rank 30,000-50,000 and think "Well...that's pretty good rank out of millions," keep in mind that 30-50k rank is somewhere between 10-30 sales per WEEK. I have a book that is several months old at 42,000 rank. In the past seven days it sold 9 copies at $2.99 and had 4,000 pages read in KU. It made me $34.78 in the past 7 days. That's less than $200/month.

Also remember that this collection probably represents more than a year's work for you, so all my figures assuming you publish "every other month" will be off. If you publish only once per year, hitting a mediocre rank is probably just going to be a few hundred bucks for you in the first few months, and then less than $100 per year for the rest of the time the book sits on the store.

Once you drop below 100,000 rank, it's basically "no money at all." Some year-old books I have between 300k-400k rank made around $2.00 each in the past 7 days. You want to find stuff out there that came out within the last month and check out its rank.

Think really hard about why you want to publish this and if you care about the money much at all. Decide if hitting a peak rank of 20,000 and making a few hundred dollars would be satisfying to you, or if you'd just be mad at yourself for wasting the first publishing on these stories for that amount of money. If your main goal is just to have people read and enjoy your stories, pushing a few copies per week might be satisfying and fulfilling for you regardless of what the income is. If you are just thinking, "These stories won't get trad published anyway and I just want SOMEONE to read them," then pubbing without worrying too much about rank or income is probably smart.

If you do find something similar to what you want to do at a rank you consider good, try to copy what it is doing in answer to all of your questions. Aim for a similar length, cover, blurb, pricing model, etc.

I would 100% want to put your collection into KU though, which means that the more people actually read, the more money you make. If the total length of the collection is around 50,000 words, you'll get around $1.30 or so for a full read through. If you go much shorter than that, you'll get much crappier income from KU reads.

$0.99 vs. $2.99 or higher is your main question. $0.99 is likely going to be a special launch price or you. If you can find some way to actually advertise the book (even with a free promo) that is effective, doing an advertising push at $0.99 can jack up your rank much higher than anything else. If doing $0.99 puts you at rank 3k or better, it's good and was worth doing. Say your book is $0.99 and you hit 2,500 rank, just know that a $2.99 price point would have not hit you that rank. Any rank you hit at $0.99 would have been much worse if you were at $2.99.

$0.99 is a failure if you do it and still don't break 3k rank. You hugely cut into your potential profit hoping for a better rank but failed to hit it. You would have been better off just doing $2.99 and hoping those few people who are buying the book would have bought it at $2.99 anyway. Remember you get 33 cents for a 99 cent sale and $2 for a $2.99 sale.

The last thing to remember--and I'm saying it last because so many people ITT don't think about it and realize it too late--is that your first month and first few DAYS of release are loving critical. If you do actually want this book to do well and you do care about hitting the best rank you can (even if it's just so more people read your book and you don't care about money) then you need to plan all advertising in advance of launch. You should have all your advertising hit immediately with launch, staggered ideally over 3-4 days if you have enough stuff planned to sustain advertising for 3-4 days. The worst thing you can do is to publish and hope it will do well on its own without any advertising, then see after ten days that it isn't selling any copies at all, and panic/rush to advertise it. If you do this, by the time your advertising kicks in the book will be close to a month old and any advertising that does manage to hit will have a hugely diminished effect.

As I said before, 2017 is the year where I try writing, so I really value your posts AO

# ? Nov 28, 2016 04:10

newtestleper: Oct 30, 2003

I think for many people amazon is an easy to use e-store, rather than a marketing tool in its own right. Readers you attract through other means will be able to go there to buy it, but no-one who's randomly shopping for stuff on amazon will buy it. Basically there's a huge difference between what AO does and what mag7 does - they're completely different activities that just happen to share a platform.

The trick is in making sure you're not disappointed by getting these things confused.

# ? Nov 28, 2016 08:37

BBQ Dave: Jun 17, 2012; Well, that's easy for you to say. You have a bad imagination. It's stupid. I live in a fantasy world.

Hoping to get feedback on my blurb:

�I�m a local historian, I don�t really need magical powers.�

There is a saying in the tiny mountain town of Wyrdenville: �If you weren�t born here, you must be on the run from something.� The town is a two thousand person hamlet in the middle of Carcosa County, State of Jefferson (established 1960 CE). Blink and you�ll miss it. Milo Edgewood was finally getting a hold of his new life. As the manager of the local museum and sole member of the historical society, he�s a bit of a curiosity to his new neighbors. He wears suits, rarely drinks, and hasn�t had a serious relationship in the five years he�s been there.

But five years is not really enough time to really understand a place. Something old and powerful is stirring in the woods just beyond the lights of town, and it begins reaching out for Milo when a beautiful woman steps out of his past, forcing him to choose between his new home and old obligations. People who used be friendly are suddenly turning on him. Lines are being drawn and sides are being chosen in Wyrdenville and Milo is finding himself in the middle of a conflict many strange eons in the making.

I know it's a guy in a fedora fighting a cthulu. Any advice on the blurb would be appreciated. It's a little comedic too, but I can't figure out how to fit that in.

# ? Nov 29, 2016 01:33

simplefish: Mar 28, 2011; So long, and thanks for all the ~~fish~~ gallbladdΣrs!

It doesn't flow. I might have a bash at a more detailed feedback post if I have time later

# ? Nov 29, 2016 04:00

AbrahamLincolnLog: Oct 1, 2014; Note to self: This one's the shitty one

freebooter posted:

It's not, I'm sort of banking on the idea that people want pretty much more of the same. From wading through all the stuff on Amazon I'd say the difference is that it is (or is an attempt at) a more "realistic" survival situation which relies on a lot of luck rather than the protagonists being ex-Army survivalists with a fully stocked stronghold in Montana. But I find it difficult to emphasise that in a blurb. Actually I find it difficult to doa blurb full stop - I was quite surprised by how hard it is to distil everything into a couple of paragraphs.

For what it's worth, I'm very interested in this. I read a lot of post-apocalypse fiction and "true" survival stories are rare. It's always something ridiculous like a heavily trained/armed squad of super soliders, or someone with special powers who is able to survive things that a normal person would die from, or someone who due to a circumstance is immune to the virus/infection/bad thing, or is conveniently somewhere that's heavily fortified and supplied when things get bad... you get the idea.

An apocalypse story that features average people trying to survive would be a sale from me, at least!

# ? Nov 29, 2016 04:06

jazzyjay: Sep 11, 2003; PULL OVER

AbrahamLincolnLog posted:

An apocalypse story that features average people trying to survive would be a sale from me, at least!

You might be interested in my current project. My day job is a yacht skipper - I'm currently delivering a yacht from Philippines to New Zealand. To kill time in between watches, I thought I'd do Nanowrimo, posting the chapters to a wordpress blog as they are written, so other sailing friends could check them out. I'll post the link below, but basically its a zombie virus post apocalypse, the angle being the protag is a 19 year old woman doing yachtie stuff to survive.

The story is almost done and its taking off (as I'm getting demands for a ebook version, mailing list sign ups etc) so I'll be publishing it on Amazon in December.

Thanks to this thread and the incredible advice and guidance contained herein, I'm lining up ARCS, the promotion and marketing before publishing, so I can go hard from day one.

As far as audience goes, I've got a ready made one as pretty much every yachtie I know is a bit of a prepper and loves their kindles. I'll be doing Bknights and also Facebook ads targeting sailing groups and I'll also be pushing it to sailing blogs and the like, but want to hit up postapoc readers looking for a different angle. Can anyone recommend any good newsletter services for postapoc? Has anyone used booksends.com?

And here's the link if you want to check it out: https://jasekovacs.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/ebb-tide-the-synopsis/

# ? Nov 29, 2016 06:14

Bardeh: Dec 2, 2004; Fun Shoe

BBQ Dave posted:

Hoping to get feedback on my blurb:

�I�m a local historian, I don�t really need magical powers.�

There is a saying in the tiny mountain town of Wyrdenville: �If you weren�t born here, you must be on the run from something.� The town is a two thousand person hamlet in the middle of Carcosa County, State of Jefferson (established 1960 CE). Blink and you�ll miss it. Milo Edgewood was finally getting a hold of his new life. As the manager of the local museum and sole member of the historical society, he�s a bit of a curiosity to his new neighbors. He wears suits, rarely drinks, and hasn�t had a serious relationship in the five years he�s been there.

But five years is not really enough time to really understand a place. Something old and powerful is stirring in the woods just beyond the lights of town, and it begins reaching out for Milo when a beautiful woman steps out of his past, forcing him to choose between his new home and old obligations. People who used be friendly are suddenly turning on him. Lines are being drawn and sides are being chosen in Wyrdenville and Milo is finding himself in the middle of a conflict many strange eons in the making.

I know it's a guy in a fedora fighting a cthulu. Any advice on the blurb would be appreciated. It's a little comedic too, but I can't figure out how to fit that in.

Start with the 'something old and powerful is stirring in the woods' part because it's a far more interesting hook than describing the town. We don't need so much pointless detail on the town either - get the point across that it's your typical small rural town and then move on.

quote:

"I'm a historian for Christ's sake - what do I need magical powers for?"

Something old and powerful is stirring in the woods outside Wyrdenville - and somehow Milo Edgewood finds himself in the middle of a strange conflict eons in the making.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Wyrdenville (pop. 2000) was meant to be a quiet, unassuming place where Milo could start over. Boring town, boring job, boring life - perfect.

Somehow it never ends up being that simple though, does it?

A beautiful woman from his past steps out of the shadows to make him choose between his new home and old obligations. People who used be friendly are suddenly turning on him.

Lines are being drawn and sides are being chosen in Wyrdenville - and one humble local historian is all that stands between the town and oblivion...

Obviously I've taken a few liberties with this because I don't know exactly what happens in the book, but it's a lot punchier, still gets all the relevant information across, and flows a lot better.

Bardeh fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Nov 29, 2016

# ? Nov 29, 2016 06:33

BBQ Dave: Jun 17, 2012; Well, that's easy for you to say. You have a bad imagination. It's stupid. I live in a fantasy world.

Bardeh posted:

Start with the 'something old and powerful is stirring in the woods' part because it's a far more interesting hook than describing the town. We don't need so much pointless detail on the town either - get the point across that it's your typical small rural town and then move on.

quote:
"I'm a historian for Christ's sake - what do I need magical powers for?"

Something old and powerful is stirring in the woods outside Wyrdenville - and somehow Milo Edgewood finds himself in the middle of a strange conflict eons in the making.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Wyrdenville (pop. 2000) was meant to be a quiet, unassuming place where Milo could start over. Boring town, boring job, boring life - perfect.

Somehow it never ends up being that simple though, does it?

A beautiful woman from his past steps out of the shadows to make him choose between his new home and old obligations. People who used be friendly are suddenly turning on him.

Lines are being drawn and sides are being chosen in Wyrdenville - and one humble local historian is all that stands between the town and oblivion...

Obviously I've taken a few liberties with this because I don't know exactly what happens in the book, but it's a lot punchier, still gets all the relevant information across, and flows a lot better.

This is amazing, invaluable feedback. Thank you.

# ? Nov 29, 2016 07:32

newtestleper: Oct 30, 2003

jazzyjay posted:

My day job is a yacht skipper - I'm currently delivering a yacht from Philippines to New Zealand.

This is good. We need skilled sailors to sail the floating chunks of our island as it breaks apart.

# ? Nov 29, 2016 07:58

Chokes McGee: Aug 7, 2008; This is Urotsuki.

newtestleper posted:

This is good. We need skilled sailors to sail the floating chunks of our island as it breaks apart.

...soooo you're not going to need programmers in the near future, then. :eng99:

# ? Nov 29, 2016 20:54

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

AbrahamLincolnLog posted:

For what it's worth, I'm very interested in this. I read a lot of post-apocalypse fiction and "true" survival stories are rare. It's always something ridiculous like a heavily trained/armed squad of super soliders, or someone with special powers who is able to survive things that a normal person would die from, or someone who due to a circumstance is immune to the virus/infection/bad thing, or is conveniently somewhere that's heavily fortified and supplied when things get bad... you get the idea.

An apocalypse story that features average people trying to survive would be a sale from me, at least!

Cool, I'll send you an ARC if you like... once I figure out exactly how to do all that stuff!

# ? Nov 30, 2016 00:11

jazzyjay: Sep 11, 2003; PULL OVER

newtestleper posted:

This is good. We need skilled sailors to sail the floating chunks of our island as it breaks apart.

From the photos I've seen of Kaikoura, where the seabed has risen above the surface, it looks like NZ is getting bigger, not breaking apart!

# ? Nov 30, 2016 12:26

Chokes McGee: Aug 7, 2008; This is Urotsuki.

jazzyjay posted:

From the photos I've seen of Kaikoura, where the seabed has risen above the surface, it looks like NZ is getting bigger, not breaking apart!

soon we will all be kiwis

# ? Nov 30, 2016 17:51

psychopomp: Jan 28, 2011

My current book is aaaaalll about climate refugees in the next decade or so.

Also my Amazon sales have tanked but my Apple sales are way up.

Sales on Kobo remain a fond memory.

# ? Dec 1, 2016 05:49

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

What does everyone use for mailing lists? I signed up for Mailchimp but apparently if you're sending from a free email address (I use gmail) it can have issues.

# ? Dec 1, 2016 12:21

Bardeh: Dec 2, 2004; Fun Shoe

freebooter posted:

What does everyone use for mailing lists? I signed up for Mailchimp but apparently if you're sending from a free email address (I use gmail) it can have issues.

I just switched from Mail chimp to Mailerlite because Mailerlite allows automated emails without a premium subscription, but I never seemed to have any issues using Gmail on MC.

# ? Dec 1, 2016 12:30

Chokes McGee: Aug 7, 2008; This is Urotsuki.

freebooter posted:

What does everyone use for mailing lists? I signed up for Mailchimp but apparently if you're sending from a free email address (I use gmail) it can have issues.

If you're rocking your own domain,I *think* there's a particular DNS record you can set up to keep mailers from thinking you're some random schmo off the street. It may help.

Or maybe it won't! :iiam:

# ? Dec 1, 2016 15:28

Sundae: Dec 1, 2005

Bardeh posted:

I just switched from Mail chimp to Mailerlite because Mailerlite allows automated emails without a premium subscription, but I never seemed to have any issues using Gmail on MC.

Honestly, I think Mailerlite is better than Mailchimp now. The only reason I'm still on Mailchimp is that I don't want to rebuild all my templates (can't directly import them) and deal with importing all the names again.

# ? Dec 1, 2016 17:51

LionArcher: Mar 29, 2010

Sundae posted:

Honestly, I think Mailerlite is better than Mailchimp now. The only reason I'm still on Mailchimp is that I don't want to rebuild all my templates (can't directly import them) and deal with importing all the names again.

So if I'm staring a new list or too (yay romance mirrors!) I should probably start with Mailer?

# ? Dec 1, 2016 19:38

Sundae: Dec 1, 2005

I would, based on the pricing benefits as you scale up. That's just my opinion though.

I have about 4,700 people on my lists right now and I cringe every time I see the monthly Mailchimp bill.

# ? Dec 1, 2016 21:13

LionArcher: Mar 29, 2010

Sundae posted:

I would, based on the pricing benefits as you scale up. That's just my opinion though.

I have about 4,700 people on my lists right now and I cringe every time I see the monthly Mailchimp bill.

Good to know. There's also nothing stopping me from having multiple mailing lists (like four or five) for different pen names that would all be free from them right? As long as I have under 1,000 subs. The joys of different romance kinks

and also writing Mystery/Thrillers.

# ? Dec 2, 2016 01:02

Cast_No_Shadow: Jun 8, 2010; The Republic of Luna Equestria is a huge, socially progressive nation, notable for its punitive income tax rates. Its compassionate, cynical population of 714m are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich.

Does follow autor do anything in amazon? Posting from a reader point of view but I just want to tell amzon "hey I like these guys tell me when they release new stuff" but can't seem to find any way of doing that beside subscribing to a bajillion individual mailing lists.

# ? Dec 2, 2016 10:24

Bardeh: Dec 2, 2004; Fun Shoe

Cast_No_Shadow posted:

Does follow autor do anything in amazon? Posting from a reader point of view but I just want to tell amzon "hey I like these guys tell me when they release new stuff" but can't seem to find any way of doing that beside subscribing to a bajillion individual mailing lists.

It does let you know whenever that author releases a new book, but in my experience it's really slow and can often take a couple of weeks to let you know.

# ? Dec 2, 2016 15:52

Space Taxi: Oct 31, 2016

What is the best promotion and pricing strategy for someone publishing their first book (90k word satire)? I�m not sure what places are best to promote my first book and how much I should spend doing it.

# ? Dec 3, 2016 03:48

Bardeh: Dec 2, 2004; Fun Shoe

Space Taxi posted:

What is the best promotion and pricing strategy for someone publishing their first book (90k word satire)? I�m not sure what places are best to promote my first book and how much I should spend doing it.

You'll probably need to be a bit more specific than 'satire' before we can give you advice about where to promote it.

Social media is the best way to promote a first book like that, and it's free. Get started on that ASAP - post teasers, a cover reveal, try and get it into the hands of bloggers, stuff like that. Just make sure you temper your expectations - a first book, and one that's not in one of the big fiction genres, likely won't set the world on fire. Don't be afraid to spend a little bit of money on paid promo, but don't go overboard. If you tell us a little bit more about the book people here can give you some more specific advice.

# ? Dec 3, 2016 06:22

Space Taxi: Oct 31, 2016

Bardeh posted:

If you tell us a little bit more about the book people here can give you some more specific advice.

The blurb is:
Strain 5 is poison. Everyone eats it. Only the designers of this genetically modified food know the danger. And those guys are jerks.
Orchestrated at the highest levels of society, the nation�s food supply has been hijacked and contaminated in the first step of a global plot.
George Miles, a scientist, discovers something is wrong and joins grocery delivery driver Dustin Fowler on the trail through a world turning insane: terrorist wristware, inflatable farm equipment, a woman following her dream to become the world�s fattest person and Tolkien-themed Pyramid schemes all stand in their path to save everyone from a monstrous fate.
They�ll do whatever it takes to stop the conspiracy, even if they have to slap the lunch out of everyone�s hand, one sandwich at a time.

Space Taxi fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Dec 12, 2016

# ? Dec 3, 2016 07:22

Sundae: Dec 1, 2005

LionArcher posted:

Good to know. There's also nothing stopping me from having multiple mailing lists (like four or five) for different pen names that would all be free from them right? As long as I have under 1,000 subs. The joys of different romance kinks and also writing Mystery/Thrillers.

I don't know about Mailerlite, but MailChimp adds them all together to charge you the sum. You can't split them to get around it.

# ? Dec 3, 2016 07:59

Chokes McGee: Aug 7, 2008; This is Urotsuki.

Here's a quick question: so, let's say you get your ARCs into a bunch of people's hands and, miracle of miracles, 40 people leave reviews on your first day and you jump up massively in visibility. What are the chances Amazon looks at all those reviews, sees they're not verified purchases, and goes "lol no"? I've heard some horror stories about Amazon reviews disappearing even with the standard "reviewed in exchange for free copy" disclaimer, plus there's a chance people won't or don't know to do that.

# ? Dec 4, 2016 04:15

angel opportunity: Sep 7, 2004; Total Eclipse of the Heart

Sometimes they will remove reviews, yes. They recently changed their policy and--in theory--reviews that say "received in exchange for an honest review" should be removed. You now have to get people to know that the review is not required, and they should write "I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of this story."

In recent memory none of my reviews have been removed though, and I've published close to ten books in the past six months. This could very well change in the future; you really have to keep up with Amazon's policies and selective enforcement.

# ? Dec 4, 2016 07:19

Chokes McGee: Aug 7, 2008; This is Urotsuki.

angel opportunity posted:

Sometimes they will remove reviews, yes. They recently changed their policy and--in theory--reviews that say "received in exchange for an honest review" should be removed. You now have to get people to know that the review is not required, and they should write "I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of this story."

In recent memory none of my reviews have been removed though, and I've published close to ten books in the past six months. This could very well change in the future; you really have to keep up with Amazon's policies and selective enforcement.

Thanks, I had suspected that was the answer but it's heartening that others haven't had this poo poo happen to them.

# ? Dec 4, 2016 19:08

jazzyjay: Sep 11, 2003; PULL OVER

I've found that Amazon free giveaways count as Verified Purchases. I had ARC reviewers going to post a review, noticing that I was running a free giveaway for the book, downloading the book and then posting the review so it came up as a Verified Purchase. Needless to say, those people went on my favourite reviewers lists.

I've just had "Create Paperback" appear on my dashboard and a paperback column appear in my sales reports. Is this just new Createspace integration or is something else going on?

# ? Dec 5, 2016 01:47

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Mailerlite doesn't appear to want to let you sign up unless you have your own website.

edit - All I'm using this at the moment for is to send out an email to the dozen odd people who gave me their email addresses back when I was serialising online what I'm now about to publish, so I suppose I can just send them a normal joint email now. But in the long run is it basically necessary to have a website if you're trying to build up a reader base?

# ? Dec 5, 2016 02:36

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

freebooter posted:

Mailerlite doesn't appear to want to let you sign up unless you have your own website.

edit - All I'm using this at the moment for is to send out an email to the dozen odd people who gave me their email addresses back when I was serialising online what I'm now about to publish, so I suppose I can just send them a normal joint email now. But in the long run is it basically necessary to have a website if you're trying to build up a reader base?

A domain name combined with a bare-bones goon hosting deal you can find in SAMart is like $25AUD a year at most. You'll probably never use it, or post to it, but that level of expense is negligible in the long run and at the very least makes you stand out as more 'professional' than a lot of other business owners out there. i use Namecheap for the domain and Lithium Hosting for a basic Wordpress install.

One handy thing is that if you do use a website, there are plugins for wordpress that let you do poo poo like special URL forwards for stat-tracking. Like, 3 links that all go to the same place, but with different upfront addresses so you can see which links are more effective where. Nerdy data poo poo like that.

# ? Dec 5, 2016 05:44

Sundae: Dec 1, 2005

Fuckin Trump Riot posted:

Here's a quick question: so, let's say you get your ARCs into a bunch of people's hands and, miracle of miracles, 40 people leave reviews on your first day and you jump up massively in visibility. What are the chances Amazon looks at all those reviews, sees they're not verified purchases, and goes "lol no"? I've heard some horror stories about Amazon reviews disappearing even with the standard "reviewed in exchange for free copy" disclaimer, plus there's a chance people won't or don't know to do that.

I think (based on nothing but hunch, anecdote, and N=1) that Amazon is specifically searching for either reviewers linked with pay-for-review services or major review mailing lists, not people with their own fan bases. For disclosure, I shut down a side business I was running where authors would provide romance ARCs to me and I'd distribute them to readers who were interested in the books, along with managing all the review reminders / release date reminders, etc etc. Too may of the reviews were getting deleted by Amazon, so I couldn't justify charging authors (and thus couldn't justify running the program). The big distinction here is that I had a few hundred super-active subscribers who would review tons of things across varieties of romance sub-genres, always getting the books for free, and not really showing much of a purchase pattern beyond "it's romance," versus a set of readers who say they're your fans and regularly review your books (and review less often at that). I also don't know how often the deletion really occurs, either. Every author is a hysterical lunatic on the internet, so who the heck knows how bad it really is. If you believe some of the posts on the various off-site forums, the sky is falling all the time and Amazon is actively eating our firstborn daughters every time we hit 'publish.'

But either way, I don't think it's worth worrying about. Like AO said, it can happen, but the alternative is not having any reviews from the start.

Your gamble is on whether you'll have your reviews deleted or not. If you win the bet, you have reviews. If you lose, you have some quantity of your reviews deleted. I've never heard of it ever going further than that (e.g., nobody has ever had account issues, books suspended, etc etc for ARCs). If you lose the bet, you're (at worst) back to the exact same state as if you'd never distributed an ARC at all. Seems like a good gamble to me.

# ? Dec 5, 2016 08:02

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 21:32

Chokes McGee: Aug 7, 2008; This is Urotsuki.

Sundae posted:

Every author is a hysterical lunatic on the internet

WHAT THE gently caress IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ME!!!

This is good stuff to know. Thanks!

# ? Dec 5, 2016 17:48

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Self-Publishing Goons: Yep, people buy it!

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