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I've spent the last two hours wading through ebook cover design sites and... arghhhh. Actually spending money on this is what makes it "real" and I guess that's why I keep putting it off. Is goonwrite.com still okay? Another poster a while back knocked up a quick cover of my book just as an example and I'm tempted to just use it, but I've also been lurking in this thread long enough to feel like that's cheating, or something, to not pay good money for a cover since it's the most important part.
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Dec 7, 2016 12:06
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I'd like some other people to weigh in on goonwrite.com. I feel like if you use a cover from there, you are removing the chance that your cover is AWFUL. None of those covers look bad aesthetically, so by using one you are already way ahead of anyone who stubbornly does their own cover in GIMP or gets their uncle's friend who's good at Photoshop to do it for free. With that said, I also feel like the pre-mades are just kind of pumped out based on stock images the guy finds, which is fine if you can happen to find one that fits your market very very well. The risk is likely that you find one that looks nice and buy it, and while it looks nice, it doesn't actually fit the market you are targeting much at all. Look up "Hard Luck Hank," on Amazon. This guy came into this thread a few years ago with his big idea of hiring his favorite artist who did metal album covers or something for like $2,000. I personally thought his book looked lovely and was sure he was going to fail. His book did super well and sold amazingly well, and I really don't think it would have done that if he hadn't taken the risk on that cover. Try to browse through Go On Write and find a cover he could have used for Hard Luck Hank. Maybe doing a custom one would be smart, but I haven't seen any of that artist's custom work. I'm considering trying to write and self-pub a fantasy novel to see how I could do, and there are a few covers on the pre-,made store I'd almost consider using. Ultimately though I'd probably want to hire an artist who specializes in the genre I am doing that has done other covers for other successful books in the genre. The price between that and Go On Write could be insanely different though, but I know how important a cover is for the book to do well so I'd likely pay the difference.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:24
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Go On Write gave me a good memorable cover but I had to tweak it. My Photoshop skills are nothing special, but I learned enough from my LPs to spruce it up pretty well. Biggest thing I did was use a high pass filter and mild oil painting effects to take the uncanny valley out of the 3D model and make it look more like an illustration. Font choice and positioning was next. This, after some really horrible first attempts on my own that I'm super embarrassed about.  So, if you're willing to put in a little elbow grease and dig, you can find some pretty sweet deals. You may want to pay the extra money to have someone do it for you, though. Covers are hard 
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Dec 8, 2016 00:19
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I've bought both pre-mades and custom covers from Go On Write and have been very happy. Then again, marketing is not my strength so I may well have missed the mark for my covers, but my sales for my literary/contemporary book doubled after it got a Go On Write cover.
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Dec 8, 2016 00:38
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Hijinks Ensue posted:I've bought both pre-mades and custom covers from Go On Write and have been very happy. Then again, marketing is not my strength so I may well have missed the mark for my covers, but my sales for my literary/contemporary book doubled after it got a Go On Write cover. The biggest thing about Goon Write is that they're all spitballs to see what works and it's first come first serve. The good ones get snapped up pretty quick, so you have to dig sometimes. There's a lot of good premade covers if you're willing to play with the fonts yourself. Plus the titles make me bust a goddamn gut every time I check the list. ("NIGHTMARE EX-GIRLFRIEND: SHE'S A PAIN IN THE COCK")
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Dec 8, 2016 07:36
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OK goonwrite wasn't available until January so I found somebody else to do one who was also cheaper (although nothing is bloody cheap with the Australian dollar plummeting, sigh). What do you reckon? It looks fine to me but I get revisions which I may as well use.
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Dec 12, 2016 01:42
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Is the book's title End Times or Rise of the Undead as it looks like you've got two titles at the moment.
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Dec 12, 2016 05:45
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jazzyjay posted:Is the book's title End Times or Rise of the Undead as it looks like you've got two titles at the moment. I'm going to guess there's a colon in there somewhere. End Times: Rise of the Undead
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Dec 12, 2016 06:36
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end rise times of the undead
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Dec 12, 2016 06:50
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Sundae posted:I'm going to guess there's a colon in there somewhere. End Times: Rise of the Undead Yep, that was where I was going.
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Dec 12, 2016 09:30
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Sundae posted:I'm going to guess there's a colon in there somewhere. End Times: Rise of the Undead Yeah. Also I'm not sure if I should actually make it Vol I: or Part I: or something like that to make it overly clear it's the first part of a series.
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Dec 12, 2016 11:53
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freebooter posted:Yeah. Also I'm not sure if I should actually make it Vol I: or Part I: or something like that to make it overly clear it's the first part of a series. Is the series name End Times or Rise of the Undead? Either way, recommend: End Times Book 1: Rise of the Undead Rise of the Undead Book 1: End Times You'd probably put in extra commas or parentheses or something when you list it on Amazon. For cover purposes, maybe put "Book 1" in the red line below End Times, in the same font and color as "A Zombie Apocalypse Series" at the bottom?
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Dec 12, 2016 19:06
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Actually, what are people's thoughts on whether to highlight it is a series? I ask as it seems to me that many readers are hesitant to buy series that are in progress - they want to wait until everything is out before bingeing on the whole thing. I guess its a reaction to writers using too many cliff hanger endings as a method of getting readers to buy their next book. My next book is the first in a series - but it works as a standalone. I'm not going to be promoting it as Book 1 in X, rather I'll work on the second book as a sequel and then go from there.
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Dec 12, 2016 23:08
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jazzyjay posted:Actually, what are people's thoughts on whether to highlight it is a series? As a reader, I'm a little suspicious of things titled "book 1" when no other books in the series exist yet. It tells me the story is incomplete, and I may be waiting years to find out how things end. Okay, maybe not years for epub books, but still. And if it's a new author I'm unfamiliar with, there's a chance he'll flake out and never finish the series because writing is harder or less fabulous than he expected. It's more a red flag than an inducement for me.
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Dec 12, 2016 23:28
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Blue Scream posted:Is the series name End Times or Rise of the Undead? Either way, recommend: Take two: 
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Dec 13, 2016 03:52
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freebooter posted:Take two: I like it. I was initially thinking "Book One" should be in the same color as "Zombie Apocalypse," but next to "Rise of the Undead" I think it would be too much. The orange color is better. Not weighing in on whether or not you should label it as a series because I don't know much about your genre, but I think the cover looks good  In romance, I do know that new authors sometimes wait until they have two or three books in a series written before they begin to publish. Makes readers more comfortable about taking a chance on an unknown.
Blue Scream fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 04:01
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I like the abstract artwork and colours etc but I think there was too much text up top and it was distracting from the title of the book. I did a quick and dirty remix to show you what I mean. I think it makes the title clearer and still gets across that its a zombie apocalypse series. 
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Dec 13, 2016 07:47
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Hey dudes. Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but is there a trick to making svg files work in epubs? In calibre's reader, they stretch in a blurred-fashion, not the elegant way they should; in the calibre book editor's preview, however, they scale properly. On phone apps like moon+, they don't show at all. On Kobo, they work as expected. Any ideas? I looked through my epub library for examples, and even the ones that include figures that would be appropriate for SVG use use jpegs instead... or if I'm really lucky, png. No help.
Dominoes fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Dec 17, 2016 |
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Dec 17, 2016 10:44
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I've started work on a horror novel that I'm going to self-pub and I'm wondering if anyone here has had success selling work done in a present active tense. I'm worried that no one will buy the book as soon as they see what tense it's written in, even though I'm mostly happy with the product. Thinking I might start over before it's too late...
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Dec 17, 2016 20:02
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I write romance in first-person present. I think for some people present tense is like an immediate turn-off, and you definitely risk having some people view the "look inside" and think "ugh gently caress this is jarring" and just not read it. If you have a good reason for doing present tense it can be good though, and most readers will stop noticing it after a few pages provided you don't execute it really awkwardly.
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Dec 17, 2016 20:09
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Thanks! I'm thinking that as long as I keep the style terse or avoid being too stylish, it could work. I'm using this style because there are a few nightmare sequences in the book that are key to the main plot and that feels like a good way to immobilize the reader while they witness the action as it unfolds. (I'm also going back to prose after writing a stack of screenplays all done in that active tense, which is another reason I was getting some anxiety over the style)
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Dec 17, 2016 20:29
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What's the best mailing list site?
Space Taxi fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Dec 18, 2016 |
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Dec 18, 2016 00:27
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Dominoes posted:Hey dudes. Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but is there a trick to making svg files work in epubs? In calibre's reader, they stretch in a blurred-fashion, not the elegant way they should; in the calibre book editor's preview, however, they scale properly. On phone apps like moon+, they don't show at all. On Kobo, they work as expected. Any ideas? I looked through my epub library for examples, and even the ones that include figures that would be appropriate for SVG use use jpegs instead... or if I'm really lucky, png. No help. Don't trust Calibre's representation of images, its reader is... yeah. Usually the Kindle Previewer is pretty good for it. It's been my experience SVGs in general are hit or miss anyway. Apple uses them iirc but I have no idea why, jpegs aren't vector art so there's not much of a point. Not everyone supports them fully, if at all. Is there any particular reason you don't want to use jpeg? If you start with a big enough (high quality) file, there shouldn't be any noticeable loss when resizing. In fact, I'm pretty sure Amazon won't accept anything but jpeg for images, although I'm pulling that answer straight out of my rear end.
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Dec 19, 2016 07:44
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Space Taxi posted:What's the best mailing list site? It depends on what your list size is, your budget, and what features you want. The three biggies most people use are Mailchimp, Mailerlite and ConstantContact. You could also manage your own, if you're a masochistic freak who also hates himself. Mailchimp is the basic one most people start with. Free below 2000 names, but gets pricey once you grow bigger. Lots of decent template features, etc etc. Pros: Great for small lists, easy to use. Cons: Expensive for big lists, templates don't transfer to other sites well once you decide to switch platforms. Mailerlite is free below 1,000 names before it starts to charge you. However, it costs less for larger lists than Mailchimp. Otherwise, pretty much the same feature lists. ConstantContact is the most expensive and has no free options except for a 60-day trial. You almost certainly don't need it. For larger lists, the price is comparable to Mailchimp. It does, however, have a lot of easy feature integrations from their marketplace and other oddball things that the other list providers either don't have or don't easily implement. As an example, they have SMS mailing / SMS list signups to enable you to text people when your book comes out or for people to text you to sign up. You probably don't need this feature either, but a few authors claim it worked wonders for them. (Also, ConstantContact's support is supposedly great, but seriously now... how much support do you need to run a goddamned mailing list?) My opinion: Start with MailChimp. If you get up around 3,000 names on your list, switch to MailerLite and bite the bullet on remaking your mailer templates.
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Dec 19, 2016 07:54
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Chokes McGee posted:Don't trust Calibre's representation of images, its reader is... yeah. Usually the Kindle Previewer is pretty good for it. It's been my experience SVGs in general are hit or miss anyway. Apple uses them iirc but I have no idea why, jpegs aren't vector art so there's not much of a point. Not everyone supports them fully, if at all.
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Dec 19, 2016 16:58
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Just a reminder for images within books on Amazon. Your cover image is "free" and can be huge with no penalty. At $0.99 price point, you do not get charged for the size of your ebook file. When you are at $2.99 or higher and 70% profit, you are charged for how large your file is. So having even 1MB images in your file will eat heavily into your sales income. I generally try to keep any images within my book at 100kb or smaller even at $0.99, so that I don't have to remember to switch them over when I go to $3.99.
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Dec 19, 2016 17:10
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1520163185 It's... it's a book. It's in paperback. It looks like an actual goddamn book, inside and out. Look, I know people in this thread are making a million dollars on this stuff as a living, but I'm so goddamn irrationally happy to see this final product.
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Dec 22, 2016 16:48
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Congrats! (why no Kindle version?)
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Dec 22, 2016 22:05
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Popular Human posted:Congrats! (why no Kindle version?) There's a kindle version! For a few months now. Amazon's paperback publishing finally hit beta, it doesn't link it back to the ebook version but now I have more market exposure. Their house style template is really good, too. I adapted it a little bit into a template and learned the dark art of LibreOffice page and paragraph styles in the process. That poo poo is magical once it's set up right.
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Dec 23, 2016 01:48
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Chokes McGee posted:There's a kindle version! For a few months now. Amazon's paperback publishing finally hit beta, it doesn't link it back to the ebook version but now I have more market exposure. You should make sure they link the ebook and paperback version. Might need to email them or use the help form.
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Dec 23, 2016 02:08
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This is possibly a dumb question but in what format do you send out advance reading copies? I assumed Amazon would let me, as the author, download an epub or mobi version or whatever it is they use, but I'm sitting here on the publishing dashboard and it doesn't seem like it's going to do that before I hit "publish" (which I obviously don't want to do yet). edit - and correct me if I'm wrong (I've never used Amazon as a customer because they've never deigned to operate in Australia) but don't people have to purchase your book before they review it? So how do ARC readers leave reviews? Also what's the consensus on KDP Select? freebooter fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Dec 24, 2016 |
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Dec 24, 2016 00:08
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I just used Bookfunnel to distribute ARCs and its totally worth the $20. Streamlines the whole process and even techphobic old aunts were able to load it easily. https://bookfunnel.com/
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Dec 24, 2016 00:37
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freebooter posted:
I don't want to be one of those obnoxious people who is like "This was answered twenty pages ago you loving idiot!!!" But the discussion on Select will be found mostly as "Kindle Unlimited," so if you look through some of the big posts I have done where I mention Kindle Unlimited, you'll see that it's more or less non-negotiable as something you should do if you want to make money. There are a lot of downsides to it in general, but NOTHING will make you more money as of right now and as of the past two years.
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Dec 24, 2016 00:45
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angel opportunity posted:I don't want to be one of those obnoxious people who is like "This was answered twenty pages ago you loving idiot!!!" But the discussion on Select will be found mostly as "Kindle Unlimited," so if you look through some of the big posts I have done where I mention Kindle Unlimited, you'll see that it's more or less non-negotiable as something you should do if you want to make money. There are a lot of downsides to it in general, but NOTHING will make you more money as of right now and as of the past two years. Ahhh I thought it was weird that "KDP Select" wasn't turning anything up jazzyjay posted:I just used Bookfunnel to distribute ARCs and its totally worth the $20. Streamlines the whole process and even techphobic old aunts were able to load it easily. Now I'm reading their FAQ and they say technically Amazon doesn't want you to distribute any copies at all? Wtf? Also I'm grappling with Mailchimp again and when I tested the sign-up sheet, it gives the applicant my home address... presumably because I put that as my business address, but what the hell, I don't want everyone on the internet knowing where I live.
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Dec 24, 2016 01:04
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Yeah the whole Amazon vs ARCs thing is another that has been covered already, so I'll just go with my own experience as everything I know I learned from this thread. I published on 20th Dec and, when sending out the review link to readers who had had the ARC for two weeks, I said "its on sale for 99c so if you want to buy a copy, your review would be as a Verified Purchase" or whatever the term is. Of the six reviewers up, four bought a copy and are verified and so more prominent. I've had no problem with the two that aren't. I use tinyletter.com for mail outs; they let me put 1 Main St, Sydney as my address so no home delivered hate email for me.
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Dec 24, 2016 02:23
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This is a wonderfully informative thread! I'm curious about pen names and anonymity. Do you guys make Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for all your different pen names? Different websites for different pen names? Your pen name is like your brand, right? How many of you publish stuff without your friends and family knowing about it? I find the idea of keeping my real name/personal life separate from a writer persona to be very sensible.
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Dec 27, 2016 07:14
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freebooter posted:Ahhh I thought it was weird that "KDP Select" wasn't turning anything up MailChimp does that, yeah. Go to viabox.com and set yourself up with a fake mailing address for free. Amazon's review policies change with the wind. It used to be the accepted convention that ARC readers would say "free copy received in exchange for an honest review." Now it's "I received a free copy of this book and voluntarily chose to leave a review." Who knows what it will be next week? A few of my reviewers just don't mention it at all.
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Dec 27, 2016 16:35
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Escape Addict posted:This is a wonderfully informative thread! I'm curious about pen names and anonymity. Do you guys make Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for all your different pen names? Different websites for different pen names? Your pen name is like your brand, right? I used different pen names for different genres as a marketing thing back in 2011, but the questionable benefit doesn't really justify the massive time investment in maintaining multiple platforms. I really don't bother trying to separate my writer persona and real life, because man, all I do is write anyway. Now I just use variations on my name and funnel everything through the same mailing list/website/twitter/facebook. I think that if I were to try and edge into romance I'd use a pen name for that, because I'm insecure about my ability to write romance as anything other than a subplot, and would not want whatever clumsy trash that resulted associated with the clumsy trash I write on purpose.
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Dec 27, 2016 21:35
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Even if you don't care about anonymity, having a new pen for a new genre you do is really good for branding. You really really don't want your erotica, your shifter romance, and your motorcycle guy romance on the same pen
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Dec 28, 2016 03:50
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ARE is closing at the end of the year. I had a best seller there for a while. We will be unable to remit Q4 2016 commissions in full and are proposing a settlement of 10 cents on the dollar (USD) for payments received through 27 December 2016. We also request the following conditions: 1. That you consider this negotiated settlement to be “paid in full”. 2. That no further legal action be taken with regards to the above referenced commissions owed. If you are willing to accept the offered amount and the terms proposed, please hit the reply on this email keeping the history intact. Change the subject to “Publisher Settlement Acceptance” and copy/paste the acceptance statement below into your email, filling in the fields. Upon receipt of the signed agreement, I will authorize payment of the settlement amount in full by 28 February 2016 via the method stipulated in your publisher account. It is my sincere hope that we will be able to settle this account and avoid filing for bankruptcy, which would undoubtedly be a prolonged and costl y process.
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Dec 28, 2016 20:12
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