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Very excited to get the first copy of my book from CreateSpace. Everything is extremely well put together and nice quality. I would completely recommend it. 
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Sep 13, 2017 23:25
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.00419 for August.
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Sep 15, 2017 18:47
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Here's a couple of questions! 1. Both Kindle and CreateSpace should be paying me at the end of this month. How good are each of these at being on time with payments? 2. My Bitcoin pundit career is going great guns! (I got to go on BBC Newsnight and call cryptocurrency garbage. Don't ever buy into cryptos, btw, they're a car crash. Trust me, I'm an expert.) Soooo I just got a note inviting me to speak at a seminar, to a small number of people who have money. I'm gonna charge for my time of course, but I can sell books there. Which means physical paperbacks I bring in a box. Now, one of the great things about this self-publishing racket in TYOOL 2017 is 0 capital expenditure. Has anyone here done this, or anything like it? Was it worth it? Did you end up with a box of books under your bed forever? The books are $3.03 each to print, but all author copies come from America (because Createspace is dumb), at some ruinous shipping rate to the UK. Obviously I'll have a pile of money on September 30 assuming the answer to my first question is good, but I sorta don't right now. Does anyone have suggestions as to how to approach this? Doing a talk with a box of nonfiction books - good idea, bad idea, no idea? (I'll no doubt do a pile of flyers for people who haven't got cash on them right there. Who carries cash in the UK these days? Less people than you might think.)
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Sep 18, 2017 22:35
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divabot posted:Soooo I just got a note inviting me to speak at a seminar, to a small number of people who have money. I'm gonna charge for my time of course, but I can sell books there. Which means physical paperbacks I bring in a box. Now, one of the great things about this self-publishing racket in TYOOL 2017 is 0 capital expenditure. Has anyone here done this, or anything like it? Was it worth it? Did you end up with a box of books under your bed forever? The books are $3.03 each to print, but all author copies come from America (because Createspace is dumb), at some ruinous shipping rate to the UK. Obviously I'll have a pile of money on September 30 assuming the answer to my first question is good, but I sorta don't right now. I came over from the bitcoin thread, I'm not familiar with publishing, but I figure this thread is better for replying about this. I would say the first step is making sure that you're gonna get paid from any events that invite you. This is general to all freelance and contractor gigs. Make sure you have enough documentation before agreeing to the gig that you can use in a legal dispute if they don't pay you. I'm not saying you need to prepare yourself for actually going to court, just that you have yourself covered in case of any shenanigans. For having physical books available, again I don't know lots about self-publishing, but if it's possible to simultaneously work with a local self-publishing place or printer, maybe look into that. For non-cash payments, you can accept cards by signing up for a service like Square that has DIY card reader hardware. One pitfall here is to make sure that the event organizers and venue are OK with you selling books: MY GIRLFRIEND recently went to a book signing and she had to buy the book to-be-signed at a different location beforehand because the venue for the signing/Q&A didn't allow merchandise sales. A final tip here would be to find a friend or family member who is willing to be your "merch person" for cheap or free, until you get big enough that you can pay someone to help out. If you're sitting there trying to sign books and talk to buyers/attendees, having to also work the Square reader and fiddle with cash is going to make the line go slower, make you more stressed out, and possibly discourage people from buying/talking to you.
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Sep 19, 2017 00:16
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divabot posted:Here's a couple of questions! 1. They pay on time. Within a couple of days of when they should if not right on the date. 2. That's awesome man. Timely advice, I had someone pitching me on Etherium the other day. I've ordered my own paperbacks but not to sell, just shelf queens. But I've been to many seminars/conferences where people are selling the book and I never saw people buying the gently caress out of them. I'd bring a dozen, make a pretty stack on the table, but spend your time networking and consulting rather than trying to peddle paper.
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Sep 19, 2017 03:35
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I'm about to order a box. I'm planning on selling some at my church's holiday market, and I'm trying to book a table at a local convention in January. Just trying to figure out how many I need right now.
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Sep 19, 2017 03:43
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Asked on my FB too. Consensus (including from some authors, though not self-publishers) is: 1. get de goddam honorarium at least, "for exposure" is worthless. Even if cheap, pricing one's time is important. All of this is an exercise to make money. 2. bring about 20 physical books. Even if 0 sell, it waves the flag. If all 20 sell, hand out flyers and business cards. 2a. PayPal on the spot might substitute ok for cash. Or bring a tablet with the Amazon or CreateSpace page open on it. 3. bring an assistant so they can sell books while you schmooze, video the talk, etc. (The video is vastly useful for promo.) oh, and 0. work out a good frickin talk with slides etc. Oh God. I have done one talk with slides ever and it was mediocre. If it was a bookstore signing they'd be expected to have got the books in, but the book won't physically exist until I order them, so. Basically this is all blocked on nailing down 1. I have happily been doing what's effectively free consulting on the phone, 'cos it turns out to be very useful getting people's legit beginner questions and turning them into blog fodder. I might stop at some point though. The blog has been super-effective. I posted a quick thing that took 30 mins at most, about the Mt. Gox bitcoin heist in 2013. It went viral and got me 20k hits and at least 30 ebook sales, and more than a few paperbacks. So feeding it material is good. Anyone else here doing self-published non-fiction? Strikes me as a completely different field than fiction. edit: oh God, translation requests. What's a good deal for a translator when it's all self-published? I have no clue here. (Not to mention no ability to tell if the translation is any good, but I can ask someone of course.) divabot fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Sep 19, 2017 |
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Sep 19, 2017 11:20
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If you have an audience that are actively interested in what you have to say, you should also consider what's next for you. What's your next book? Will you continue to write on crypto, or was this a one-off for you? Being able to peddle your current book is great, but doing that AND teasing your next book is the pro move.
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Sep 19, 2017 16:49
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divabot posted:Here's a couple of questions! The shipping Amazon charges for ordering your own createspace books and sending it to the UK is stunningly cheap compared to what it would cost me to send it USPS. I just selected a random book on our list and did a 50 book order and shipping was only $50. So I'm guessing you'd only be into each book $4-$5. What is your retail price for the book? I would contend that self publishers of non-fiction niche books tend to underprice them (I'm guilty of it). A combination of speaking and in person book sales can end up being result in nice income depending on what sort of fees you can command. Have a shortened URL for your book that links to your book to Amazon through your affiliate code. Some people might want to just buy from Amazon instead of dealing with an in person purchase - so promote that as well. You're dealing with a pretty techy audience so that might be enough vs. a print book. We've had a booth at conferences in the past, and a good speaker can be the difference between virtually no sales and 50-100 copies of a title (these are 500+ person conferences). If you're speaking to <100 person groups, I'd probably not gently caress with it and just do a tinyurl sort of link that does Amazon + affiliate.
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Sep 19, 2017 20:16
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:If you have an audience that are actively interested in what you have to say, you should also consider what's next for you. What's your next book? Will you continue to write on crypto, or was this a one-off for you? Being able to peddle your current book is great, but doing that AND teasing your next book is the pro move. Well, my next planned book has the working title "Roko's Basilisk", so that's a subject I know way too much about that has 0 quick audience ... so fail on that one ;-) I considered writing a catalogue of Bitcoin scams, but there are not so many that have an actual conviction attached ... stuff like that. n8r posted:The shipping Amazon charges for ordering your own createspace books and sending it to the UK is stunningly cheap compared to what it would cost me to send it USPS. I just selected a random book on our list and did a 50 book order and shipping was only $50. So I'm guessing you'd only be into each book $4-$5. What is your retail price for the book? I would contend that self publishers of non-fiction niche books tend to underprice them (I'm guilty of it). A combination of speaking and in person book sales can end up being result in nice income depending on what sort of fees you can command. I always pictured the paperback as a sort of vanity souvenir, not something people would actually prefer, on which I was of course wrong. So I priced it at £13 UK, $17 US. Which is not outlandish compared to lots of other blockchain books through Createspace. (I think they're working on the theory "overprice the paperback so the ebook looks cheap.") As it happens, I'm getting a lot of paperback sales! (280 as of today.) So I'm glad I spent the time to typeset it beautifully, and the time and money to get a beautiful cover. (Yes, the artist and her mother got copies. Yes, she wanted to show proper book work off to her mother.) n8r posted:Have a shortened URL for your book that links to your book to Amazon through your affiliate code. ... do you know, Amazon affiliate codes had completely not occurred to me. The audience I really want with the paperback are business/finance types, 'cos they have money and spend it :-D But techies are delighting in it (and tend to hit Smashwords, which also pays better than Kindle even if it's 5% of the readers).
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Sep 20, 2017 00:25
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divabot posted:Well, my next planned book has the working title "Roko's Basilisk", so that's a subject I know way too much about that has 0 quick audience ... so fail on that one ;-) I considered writing a catalogue of Bitcoin scams, but there are not so many that have an actual conviction attached ... stuff like that. Well, while that particular thought experiment is pretty niche and out there, AI and its rise is a topic that's trending quite a lot in the media recently, and I think there's definitely scope to write a broader book about that and maybe just include chapters on quirky/interesting stuff like Roko's Basilisk. Written in the same sort of style as your Bitcoin book I think you could do quite well with a book like that right now. Plus there's probably a decent amount of crossover between people interested in both Cryptocurrencies and AI, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to market it to your existing audience. Bardeh fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 05:19
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Bardeh posted:Well, while that particular thought experiment is pretty niche and out there, AI and its rise is a topic that's trending quite a lot in the media recently, and I think there's definitely scope to write a broader book about that and maybe just include chapters on quirky/interesting stuff like Roko's Basilisk. Written in the same sort of style as your Bitcoin book I think you could do quite well with a book like that right now. Plus there's probably a decent amount of crossover between people interested in both Cryptocurrencies and AI, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to market it to your existing audience. Also, Hillary Clinton's book quotes Elon Musk regurgitating Yudkowsky, so these ideas are in the air. (And I'm betaing a novel, to be a self-pub, by Andrew Hickey covering more than a few of the themes, sooooo maybe it's time? we shall seeeee)
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Sep 20, 2017 08:58
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13# (on phone) and $17 are dumb prices. Crank those up to 14.95# and $19.95. Threshold pricing my friend.
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Sep 21, 2017 05:26
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I have had two friends offer to copy edit my book (which is, in my opinion, one of the ares where my book is lacking) and they both have copy editing experience. Going to update my book as soon as they finish and I can combine their ideas. I donated books to a few local libraries and they have offered to do a local author book signing a night or two in November (which is National Write a Novel month). My fellow co-teachers convinced me to create Language Arts lesson plans for my book which will help teachers be willing to purchase the book for their classroom. I am going to create that before I begin on the second book in the series. Someone mentioned business cards with a shortened url for the book. I created a QR code for my book and added it to a card stock "book card" that I can hand out if people ask about the book. The card has a shortened blurb of the book on one side with the QR code and my book cover on the other side. divabot, after I finish this book series (or between books), I have a nonfiction book idea about media and politics (yep, none of those out there) that I would like to write.
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Sep 22, 2017 06:09
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So I'm finally going to push myself to start writing for profit instead of fun, and I was wondering: what are the three biggest genres that make you all a steady profit? I'm going to assume romance is number one, but I'm drawing a blank on what else.
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Sep 22, 2017 22:31
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So I sent back "I would be delighted to do a talk for £300" and haven't heard back. Oh well! (a price calculated on spending proper preparation time, slides, practice for timing, etc. Really it should be about £500 all up, but hey.) I'm getting more curious about book printing. SO! Anyone here in the UK got your own short run of books printed? Who did you use? What did it cost? Would they cope with PDFs for CreateSpace or mangle them? Experiences welcomed!
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Sep 22, 2017 22:34
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Galick posted:So I'm finally going to push myself to start writing for profit instead of fun, and I was wondering: what are the three biggest genres that make you all a steady profit? I'm going to assume romance is number one, but I'm drawing a blank on what else. Young adult.
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Sep 22, 2017 23:19
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The Fuzzy Hulk posted:Young adult. And mystery thrillers
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Sep 22, 2017 23:26
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divabot posted:So I sent back "I would be delighted to do a talk for £300" and haven't heard back. Oh well! Typically the pdfs for creatspace should basically work. Our offset printer spine widths are slightly different than cs so we have to adjust those. Given the cost I've seen to have cs ship to even the U.K. I would not be surprised if that is a economical option. We've moved everything that had potential for short run over to using cs and buying our own copies. We now either do 1500+ runs or buy from creatspace. Do you have a plan where you would sell these? I don't really know the U.K. wholesale market so maybe you can get into that. Selling to the US wholesalers have some pretty big hurdles.
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Sep 23, 2017 07:59
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n8r posted:Do you have a plan where you would sell these? I don't really know the U.K. wholesale market so maybe you can get into that. Selling to the US wholesalers have some pretty big hurdles. nah, this is in case I do talks etc and need a pile of books to sell in person. CreateSpace charges $3.03 per book plus shipping, which is eminently reasonable. Trouble is finding a UK POD printer who even do 140x216mm (5.5x8.5"). Also, one I got an online quote for offered to charge me £77 for the first copy ... yeah, you're not doing POD. Dude finally came back with "sorry, we don't pay speakers" yeah, no. I thanked him for thinking of me! edit: 20 copies via CreateSpace is $60.60 plus $55.99 for fast shipping, so $5.83 each. WHY CAN I NOT BUY FROM THE UK YOU PRINT HERE AAAAAAAA divabot fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Sep 23, 2017 |
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Sep 23, 2017 09:28
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LionArcher posted:And mystery thrillers And your title needs some combination of the words "Girl" and "Lost" with spooky forest background.
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Sep 25, 2017 17:46
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divabot posted:nah, this is in case I do talks etc and need a pile of books to sell in person. CreateSpace charges $3.03 per book plus shipping, which is eminently reasonable. Trouble is finding a UK POD printer who even do 140x216mm (5.5x8.5"). Also, one I got an online quote for offered to charge me £77 for the first copy ... yeah, you're not doing POD. Agreed! I was thrilled that my local book store reached out to me the other day to ask for half a dozen copies of my novels, but then my author copies had to come from the U.S. and would take weeks? This makes no sense.
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Sep 29, 2017 07:00
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gerg_861 posted:Agreed! I was thrilled that my local book store reached out to me the other day to ask for half a dozen copies of my novels, but then my author copies had to come from the U.S. and would take weeks? This makes no sense. I looked at Lightning Source, who print in the UK and a friend said their POD was really nice. Prices look good, rejigged the cover to fit their template (paper is slightly thinner), go to create a login aaaaaand they'll get back to me in a couple of days to see if they really want me as a customer! ... what? I want you to print stuff from PDFs I upload. So, erm, waiting ...
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Sep 29, 2017 08:26
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Hi creative goons! I wrote and published my first book! I just figured I'd drop a post about it here because this seems to be the most appropriate place! Thrillstravaganza Volume 1: No Ring Roland https://www.amazon.com/dp/1549855522/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_zSSZzbB4VTSEB It's about a freelance assassin who drinks a lot and everybody hates him. A lot of people ought to be able to relate with that imo. Read it if you want and try not to notice how amateur hour the whole presentation is! Thanks!
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Sep 29, 2017 23:40
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You might have been well served by reading this thread's OP beforehand.
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Sep 29, 2017 23:57
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I actually did??
reignofevil fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 02:10
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You know what says deadly assassin thriller to me? Morning glories.
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Sep 30, 2017 03:03
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Wow, your first sentence isn't punctuated properly. Oh, my god, I can't believe what I'm loving reading. This is absolutely insane. This is what people think about when they think about self-publishers. "Well get a load of this; dog." "Rest in piece" "An hour later 'Sunbeam' as she peppily identified herself arrived and; at his stumbling direction that she keep it down, she began making calls" Good christ if you just deleted every semicolon in this entire mess of a manuscript you would probably not be wrong in a single instance. This is impressively bad writing, and I used to teach high school.
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Sep 30, 2017 03:15
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The cover and blurb could use some work. And the very first sentence is a cliche and missing a period.
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Sep 30, 2017 03:16
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I'm going to make a cover, time me. ;
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Sep 30, 2017 04:21
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Sep 30, 2017 04:39
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First GIS result for "running secret agent", alienskin electrify, free robotech font from dafont, red brushed metal filter, just under 10 minutes.
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Sep 30, 2017 04:44
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The Fuzzy Hulk posted:First GIS result for "running secret agent", alienskin electrify, free robotech font from dafont, red brushed metal filter, just under 10 minutes. You da man.
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Sep 30, 2017 04:58
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I refuse to believe that this is anything except an extremely elaborate troll.  
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Sep 30, 2017 08:26
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reignofevil posted:I actually did?? You can be self-deprecating about amateur hour or whatever, and if you don't care then fine, you don't care - but it baffles me why of all the clip art available to you, you picked a close-up of some flowers?
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Sep 30, 2017 11:25
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Bardeh posted:I refuse to believe that this is anything except an extremely elaborate troll. I'm sorry I'm bad 
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Sep 30, 2017 12:11
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reignofevil posted:I'm sorry I'm bad I mean...dude. Why is the cover of your action thriller novel some generic flowers? Why didn't you take the time to even proofread your book before attempting to get people to pay for it? Literally the first line in the book has a grammatical error. Why aren't you offering an e-book version of your book? I will leave my opinion of your writing out of this for now because I don't wanna kick a man when he's down, and it's mostly irrelevant anyway because nobody is ever gonna read it in its current state. Fix the cover and edit your book, then come back to us and we might have some more constructive criticism. E: http://www.goonwrite.com/book-covers-mystery_thriller_pre-made.htm Go On Write actually has some very decent premades for thrillers. Bardeh fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 15:01
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"Well get a load of this; dog." is only good sentence structure if that person produces a dog in the next sentence. Preferably by dramatically whisking away a sheet covering a dog that's been sitting patiently through the whole scene.
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Sep 30, 2017 17:49
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This is a hell of a lot of effort to go through for a troll.
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Sep 30, 2017 21:24
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Popular Human posted:This is a hell of a lot of effort to go through for a troll. Lots of people write at this level. That's better writing (and editing) than Handbook for Mortals, or half the other stuff in PYF Terrible Book. reignofevil has done the most important thing, which is to finish something. The sample and cover didn't hook me either, but let's give the first-time author credit where it's due. of course I'm in a fantastic mood because i just got MONEY from Amazon. Witness my joy:  the "AMAZON" entries are Kindle sales from July, and the "ON-DEMAND" entry is CreateSpace from August. I expect next month's take to be on a similar level. Month after,, ehh, we'll see. Either I'll have got this drat thing to take off, or that'll be its lot I think. So far I observably suck at promotion, and pretty much all the sales have been word of mouth from people who loved it ... Here in TYOOL 2017, I can do this stuff with zero capital expenditure. And that makes all the difference. I think my first actual spending on the book was £2.70 for a copy of the Financial Times ... So, this is what you can do if you're writing in a niche that suddenly gets popular attention! (I have a business PayPal, so the money from SmashWords went straight from that into my bank account also. About £41.) divabot fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 21:48
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