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In terms of providing some hard data, I had a countdown deal this week and decided to run a $38 (found a $2 off coupon) bargainbooksy on the Fantasy list for my one, completely dead book. At 99cent/pence I was thrilled to move another 50 units and pretty much make my ad money money back.
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Feb 11, 2017 09:44
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HOLY poo poo, Book Report is even better now.
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Feb 16, 2017 19:05
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The Fuzzy Hulk posted:HOLY poo poo, Book Report is even better now. I've been in the beta since last week, and it's basically flawless. Logged in on four devices too (laptop, IMac, phone and iPad) and it just works. Just like macs really.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:36
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Huh. I bothered to check my monthly report for January (my first month) and my KU royalties outstripped my actual sales royalties by 3 to 1. Is that typical?
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Feb 17, 2017 00:24
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freebooter posted:Huh. I bothered to check my monthly report for January (my first month) and my KU royalties outstripped my actual sales royalties by 3 to 1. Is that typical? I'd say about that, yeah. 
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Feb 17, 2017 00:37
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Weird, you'd think they'd play that up more when asking whether you want to put your book in KU.
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Feb 17, 2017 02:21
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freebooter posted:Weird, you'd think they'd play that up more when asking whether you want to put your book in KU. The history of KU is pretty checkered. For a while (when it first started) it was BANK, then it went to poo poo a few times and got changed a few times. The draw is still there, but if you think about it, you lose several storefronts. So if it doesn't earn in KU what it would earn with Kobo, B&N, Smash, Fiction4all, iBooks AND Lulu all combined... I just put all my poo poo in KU because I was lazy.
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Feb 17, 2017 02:43
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holy poo poo new book report owns owns owns
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Feb 17, 2017 08:45
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So what are people reading right now? Anything interesting to share? Welcome to Nightvale tried too hard and fell horribly flat as a result. It had its moments of hilarity, but the amount of effort required to sustain the style of humor really just didn't work outside of a podcast/radio format. I'd recommend reading the first 1/4 of the book or so just to get an example of the style, but don't try quite so hard if comedic (insert genre here) is your cup of tea. The Girl With All The Gifts was a different take on zombie post-apoc stuff. It has five different viewpoints, each narrated competently with enough distinction to feel like they're different voices. The ending was a bit of a letdown in terms of "wait... seriously? That's it?" but the rest of the book up until that point was pretty great. 1Q84 was very enjoyable for the portion of it I got through (50% or so) before I ran out of time and had to return the 900-page monstrosity to the library. My biggest problem with Murakami is that he takes anything that could be said in three paragraphs and instead makes it three chapters. It's like that section in the middle of the Hunchback of Notre Dame where Hugo decides that yes, he will spend over one hundred pages describing the history and construction of the cathedral, except instead it's his breakfast and what he thought of the morning newspaper. There's a really neat story in the back behind it, but oof, it's a slog to get through it. I actually haven't ready any romance lately. I'm getting lazy or something. 
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Feb 25, 2017 00:48
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I finished reading Girl With All The Gifts yesterday and had the exact same feeling of "What? Really? You want to end it how?" Without spoiling it, it seems like the author came up with his "clever" ending well into the writing of the book. Another similar "wait, what?" ending was another postapoc, the Passage trilogy by Justin Cronin. The first two books were mostly compelling, if overly stuffed with lengthy asides. But I spent most of the last book going "why am I supposed to care about this?" before an ending that was... well, lets it felt far from earned. I've been bingeing James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux southern detective thrillers - mostly because they're interesting, if schlocky, genre pieces with some lovely evocative scene setting. I started reading Burke with his best book, Rain Gods. Nothing else I've read of his has lived up to that, but they're still enjoyable and occasionally beautiful.
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Feb 25, 2017 13:41
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I read The Screaming Mimi by Frederic Brown, a noir mystery that has some nice "meta" narration and a fairly freaky resolution. The title refers to a statuette of a nude, screaming, terrified woman. I think the book is out of print; I got my copy at a vintage paperback show.
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Feb 25, 2017 15:56
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Picked up a few "best of 2016" short fiction collections. Trying to write more saleable shorts this year, so decided to do some market research.
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Feb 25, 2017 22:43
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I'm almost finished my sequel to Ebb Tide  it seems like anyone with spell check and a thesaurus is offering editing services these days. Can anyone recommend an copy editor that they've worked with? I want to find someone I can have a good ongoing relationship with on this and future books. I've queried booksidemanner, who has been recommended elsewhere in this thread. jazzyjay fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Mar 3, 2017 |
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Mar 3, 2017 02:00
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I'm just going to recommend Bookside Manner over and over again.
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Mar 3, 2017 02:35
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Sundae posted:I'm just going to recommend Bookside Manner over and over again. Not empty quoting.
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Mar 3, 2017 02:37
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Haha well hope she can fit me in then!
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Mar 3, 2017 02:51
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Am I the only one who thinks that a 0.007 rate for simple proofing is pretty  ?
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Mar 3, 2017 04:46
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It's a little more than half what you'd pay on the low end of the price spectrum for "professional" basic copy-editing according to EFA, and that lines up with quotes I've had from other editors. Also, she does great, fast work and has always given me back more than I've paid for (as if she can't help but comment on things beyond the pricing scope ). I think the reliability and general trust that she'll do a good job is worth more than hunting for someone who will cut $0.002 off the price per word.
Sundae fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Mar 4, 2017 |
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Mar 4, 2017 08:19
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Don't get me wrong, she sounds amazing. I just can't imagine a scenario where I'd ever pay that much for proofing. I'm either writing a Big Important Thing where I'll happily shell out the big bucks for proper line/copy editing like a big boy, or I'm churning pulp where one of the kajillion .003/word proofers I trust would do a perfectly adequate job. I just don't see a middle ground where premium proofing like that would ever pay off...? Somebody's gotta be into it, though, I guess, or she wouldn't offer the service.
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Mar 4, 2017 16:12
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Trustworthy posted:Don't get me wrong, she sounds amazing. I've gone both sides of the board. The cheaper one was OK but not quite what I wanted. The more expensive ones were very much more expensive and didn't offer anything more than I got Bookside. Bookside has been a pleasure to work with and will definitely do my next book once I finally get done with the draft review.
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Mar 4, 2017 20:47
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Top dog nomination has closed and top dog subforum voting has started! Go there and vote, then go out and vote up all the other dogs in the other forums, but make sure to only vote for the bad ones (tactical dog voting)
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Mar 4, 2017 22:28
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Released the second book in my series a few days ago and somebody on Goodreads who didn't even rate the first has given it one star, which somehow breaks the space-time continuum and gives you a -2 rating.... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34447188-end-times?ac=1&from_search=true edit - My mistake, they also gave the first book a meh rating. I'm just bemused by how it's actually possible to get a sub-zero rating. edit 2 - Goodreads is really fascinating. I never would have thought the vast majority of readers of a zombie series would be women. freebooter fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 5, 2017 07:27
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freebooter posted:Released the second book in my series a few days ago and somebody on Goodreads who didn't even rate the first has given it one star, which somehow breaks the space-time continuum and gives you a -2 rating.... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34447188-end-times?ac=1&from_search=true If she didn't like the first book, why go and read the second? People are weird.
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Mar 5, 2017 09:59
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Facebook Aunt posted:If she didn't like the first book, why go and read the second? People are weird. Two possibilities; 1) The genre has readers with more money than discerning options to spend it on, meaning that it's definitely a good genre to be putting out a buttload of content in or 2) People are weird.
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Mar 5, 2017 10:46
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freebooter posted:edit 2 - Goodreads is really fascinating. I never would have thought the vast majority of readers of a zombie series would be women.
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Mar 5, 2017 16:49
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freebooter posted:Released the second book in my series a few days ago and somebody on Goodreads who didn't even rate the first has given it one star, which somehow breaks the space-time continuum and gives you a -2 rating.... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34447188-end-times?ac=1&from_search=true Thank you for posting this. I never looked up my mystery on Goodreads, and even with my lovely cover I have a 4 star rating.  My romance series (different name) has 2 stars 
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Mar 5, 2017 22:35
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Oh yeah, my reviews on Goodreads are TERRIBLE - way worse than my Amazon reviews for some reason. Anybody else not able to get into KDP currently? Keeps throwing an error message at me.
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Mar 6, 2017 21:22
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moana posted:Goodreads has twice as many female users as male, though, so you're going to get a skewed perspective if you rely on those reviews to figure out your audience. Ah, that hadn't occurred to me - cognitive bias I guess, since I'm male and a heavy user of Goodreads. Whatever happened to LibraryThing, do people still use that?
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Mar 7, 2017 01:41
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I released the second part of my series on March 1, and made the first part free for a week to promote it. I guess people love free stuff: http://i63.tinypic.com/2afc4cl.jpg (SA doesn't seem to show images for me anymore?) Anyway, pretty pleased with that obviously, especially cracking the top 10 free horror downloads. But I'll wait to see if it flows through to actual ratings, reviews and subsequent purchases. I think a lot of people probably just harvest the free lists to add to their TBR pile and maybe never get around to actually reading what they download.
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Mar 11, 2017 10:14
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freebooter posted:I released the second part of my series on March 1, and made the first part free for a week to promote it. I guess people love free stuff: Linking in-line images requires a host that uses https instead of http, so try imgur.  Anyway, good job!
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Mar 11, 2017 17:26
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Are any other romance authors struggling to get decent traction these days? It seems like the market is so ridiculously saturated right now that I'm really finding it difficult to get my new releases to stick. I am writing in probably the most competitive genre (Bad Boy) so maybe it's time to switch things up a little and try another niche.
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Mar 12, 2017 07:56
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Bardeh posted:Are any other romance authors struggling to get decent traction these days? It seems like the market is so ridiculously saturated right now that I'm really finding it difficult to get my new releases to stick. I am writing in probably the most competitive genre (Bad Boy) so maybe it's time to switch things up a little and try another niche. Try M/M.
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Mar 13, 2017 09:18
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freebooter posted:edit 2 - Goodreads is really fascinating. I never would have thought the vast majority of readers of a zombie series would be women. It's frustratingly difficult to find decent studies on this, but from the ones I've found it seems like women read more than men do in general.
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Mar 13, 2017 19:47
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psychopomp posted:Picked up a few "best of 2016" short fiction collections. Trying to write more saleable shorts this year, so decided to do some market research. Do you publish short stories individually, or in collections?
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Mar 13, 2017 19:51
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I tried both in the days of yore, 2011-2012. Sales were weak either way, at least compared to novels. These days I'd rather just submit them to magazines, then later collect them and sell an anthology almost as an afterthought, without expectation of much in the way of sales.
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Mar 14, 2017 04:05
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The Fuzzy Hulk posted:HOLY poo poo, Book Report is even better now. Wow, I didn't know about this and it's amazing. My royalty statements have so far been a pleasant surprise because (as far as I know) there's no way to track what you're earning with Kindle Select before the statement is generated, unless you feel like cracking out the calculator yourself. But it's now 4x what I make from actual sales. I've also cracked over $1,000 AUD in less than three months of sales, which I realise is chump change compared to what some of you make, but I'm honestly stoked about that. Way more than I ever would have imagined making from this. On a less e/n note, it's really fascinating to see how heavily concentrated sales are in the US: quote:Earnings by Store Just taking those four countries, all of which speak English (and I'm an Australian author writing a book set in Australia), Australia/UK/Canada make up 25% of the combined population but only 3% of the sales. Goes to show just how much new technology like ereaders and Amazon is invented and propagated in the US, and only slowly trickles out to the rest of the world. Certainly I know very few Australians with an ereader, and none at all who would buy from Amazon.
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Mar 17, 2017 01:12
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Yeah Book Report is fantastic. Now instead of refreshing my KDP Reports page every 10 minutes to see if someone's bought a copy, I can just have it running in the background, ready to ruin my writing flow when I forget about it and it suddenly goes KA-CHING.
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Mar 18, 2017 12:26
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freebooter posted:Wow, I didn't know about this and it's amazing. My royalty statements have so far been a pleasant surprise because (as far as I know) there's no way to track what you're earning with Kindle Select before the statement is generated, unless you feel like cracking out the calculator yourself. But it's now 4x what I make from actual sales. Some of those US sales may be lying about their nationality though. I'm in Canada, but I have an Amazon.com account as well as an amazon.ca account. I do Mechanical Turk tasks sometimes and those pay out in amazon.com (not .ca) credits, so if I buy anything but e-books and apps I have to pay international shipping and customs charges. I've bought a few e-books from the US site, but never from the Canadian.
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Mar 18, 2017 15:36
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Just published a cyberpunk/mystery novella. First in the series. Anyone know any paid newsletters that are good for scifi?quote:
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Mar 20, 2017 19:10
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monkfoot posted:Just published a cyberpunk/mystery novella. First in the series. Anyone know any paid newsletters that are good for scifi? http://www.readersintheknow.com/list-of-book-promotion-sites
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Mar 20, 2017 23:54
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