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Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Congrats man! Are all those separate amounts that get added together or are they listed multiple times because the numbers are updating? Either way, good job!

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The Fuzzy Hulk
Nov 22, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT CROSSING THE STREAMS


reignofevil posted:

I'm sorry I'm bad :smith:


Reignofevil - please listen to the advice of people in this thread. If this book is just a novelty to you (like you are using being a published author as a pick up line or whatever) then you are just fine.

However, if you want to have the work you put into your book earn you the most income possible for it, you need some assistance.

You have two very important things to do; the cover and the editing of the book and blurb.

The cover might have some meaning to you personally or be an inside joke from the book, but it doesn't convey to the reader what it needs to. Readers looking for book about an assassin will pass right over it.

When the cover is better and gets the reader to the blurb, that is your 15 seconds to convince them to pay for it. iT must be perfect. People spend days on their blurbs making them perfect.

See how I didn't capitalize "it" up there right? See how that stands out? Would you want to buy and read a book with eRrors like that's? Get someone to edit the book and blurb, use Ginger, read it aloud, whatever you can do.

Again, this is advice if you are honestly wanting to become a successful author. People here are earning life-changing income by doing exactly what you are doing except for a couple easy to do tweaks...

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Ccs posted:

Congrats man! Are all those separate amounts that get added together or are they listed multiple times because the numbers are updating? Either way, good job!

That's from each territory. Basically you get a flurry of emails about 10 days in advance, then you get all the payments. It's useful here that the UK and US have a tax treaty, so I don't have US withholding (Amazon just tells HMRC, so the next thing is to put half of this into an account where I can't touch it, to be handed over to Her Majesty early next year).

I must stress again that I'm amazed it's done this well, I'm going HOLY CRAP at everything about this, and that I originally thought 100 sales would be good. So far: 1195 Kindle, 338 paperback, 50-ish Smashwords/Draft2Digital.

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
Do you use Createspace for the paperbacks?

What genre do you write also, if you don't mind me asking

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Burkion posted:

Do you use Createspace for the paperbacks?

What genre do you write also, if you don't mind me asking

yeah, all the paperbacks are CreateSpace. Quality is good, I've had no complaints at all, even slight ones. Really annoyed I'm in the UK and can only buy author copies from the US, even though they print in the UK ...

The book is nonfiction about Bitcoin and so on. (There's samples on that page, and now I'm doing a blog on Bitcoin basically to promote the book.) I hang out on the Bitcoin thread, who were fabulously helpful. I expected not many readers - this is actually all ridiculous garbage no normal person should go near - then the 2017 bitcoin bubble started and suddenly this was a topic of popular interest.

Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it

divabot posted:

The sample and cover didn't hook me either, but let's give the first-time author credit where it's due.

Fair enough. As penance, I'll post the latest draft of my DIY horror cover and let it get savaged. I'm rereleasing the novel I published a couple years ago with a new cover, some edits and a sample chapter of the pseudo-sequel - since I've finally stored up enough time from cranking out soulless erotica to write it. It's nice to be working on something for "me" for a change.




edit: by the way, CONGRATS on the payday! That's an absurd amount of success for a single book - I hope it springboards you into a career as a TV pundit telling people (rightfully) that Bitcoin is crap.

Popular Human fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Oct 1, 2017

n8r
Jul 3, 2003

I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar

divabot posted:

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 ...

Have you looked and ingram spark? The platform is easier to use and the same stuff. I believe the pricing is virtually the same. We have an LS account but the book setup stuff was a royal pain in the rear end. I am under the impression that LS is really for larger publishers.

It's on our list of things to do. Fun fact - at least in some markets create space is the Ingram program.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

n8r posted:

Have you looked and ingram spark? The platform is easier to use and the same stuff. I believe the pricing is virtually the same. We have an LS account but the book setup stuff was a royal pain in the rear end. I am under the impression that LS is really for larger publishers.

It's on our list of things to do. Fun fact - at least in some markets create space is the Ingram program.

Ingram bought LightningSource, and this appears to be another version of that. I must admit, I'm balking at the bit where their price list has a $50 "setup fee" per book and they demand my credit card before I can finish account setup.

Yeah, I strongly suspect Amazon actually use Ingram to do the printing in the UK.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

divabot posted:

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.)

Well done! Did you really do basically no promotion? I guess given all the media interest you probably have had a massive amount of hits from people simply typing "bitcoin" into amazon.

ExtraNoise
Apr 11, 2007

So I'm thinking about posting to Wattpad as a writing exercise (a writing exercise in hating money) and I've quickly realized that the only things that get clicks are covers with women on them. It doesn't matter what the story is about as long as there's a woman on the cover.

Do you guys have any resources for stock photography versus just using any generic stock photo site?

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

freebooter posted:

Well done! Did you really do basically no promotion? I guess given all the media interest you probably have had a massive amount of hits from people simply typing "bitcoin" into amazon.

I tried, but I was really ineffective at it! I got a HUGE list of bitcoin and business journalists and book review sections and bitcoin podcasts and fired off press releases and ebooks ... the Financial Times loved it and I did a podcast with the FT which was enormously good promotion, one Bitcoin podcaster did a piece which came out really well ... and it's been uphill grinding since then. That's why I'm writing the blog, to keep my name and the book around. I think the ICO for synthetic rhino horn dick pills sold me 20 copies. (Now that's a viral headline.) It's ticked along at about 10 ebooks a day and 5 or so paperbacks.

So! HOW THE HELL do I get reviews of nonfiction? You'd think the specialist press would go for it, but the Bitcoin "press" is entirely boosterism and don't want to hear from anyone who isn't a believer. And "self-published" says "crank", especially in anything to do with economics. (I know, 'cos these people email me now.) Gah.

edit: btw, the only mainstream press with decent Bitcoin coverage is the Financial Times, and particularly Izabella Kaminska.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

divabot posted:

I tried, but I was really ineffective at it! I got a HUGE list of bitcoin and business journalists and book review sections and bitcoin podcasts and fired off press releases and ebooks ... the Financial Times loved it and I did a podcast with the FT which was enormously good promotion, one Bitcoin podcaster did a piece which came out really well ... and it's been uphill grinding since then.

Oh. That actually sounds like quite good promotion!

If you're looking for more reviews I guess you could go a step down and send out free copies to less prestigious venues, like blogs and lesser-known websites? If you want Amazon reviews you could try setting up a promotional slot where the ebook is free for a few days and then just carpet-bomb all the mailing lists etc promoting it, and get yourself bumped up the free book chain. Looking at your rankings now you're already at the top 10 in most of your sub-niches; I'm not doing remotely as well as you and I think I still got to about #3 Free Horror when I did my first big free promo (which had a lot of subsequent flow-on sales), I wouldn't be surprised if you could crack the Top Free 100 overall for non-fiction. Or, alternatively, just do a price drop and make it 99c for a weekend or something. Then (others correct me if I'm wrong) these all still contribute towards your sales and your paid ranking.

Also, lol, this from your only 1 star review:

quote:

On Aug 1 Bitcoin will fork into 2 coins. The value will temporarily go down. This is a once in a decade opportunity to buy into an asset that will then skyrocket in value.

Fiat currency is near obsolete. Don't be the last person on Earth to figure that out.

I adore the boosters who seem to believe cryptocurrency can be both a viable currency AND a speculative investment.

n8r
Jul 3, 2003

I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar

divabot posted:

Ingram bought LightningSource, and this appears to be another version of that. I must admit, I'm balking at the bit where their price list has a $50 "setup fee" per book and they demand my credit card before I can finish account setup.

Yeah, I strongly suspect Amazon actually use Ingram to do the printing in the UK.

Are you doing spark or source? You want to do spark unless you've got some specific reason. The spark platform is easier to use and everything else is the same.

Most of the people that are successful with creatspace should do spark/ls. At least that's what the publishing consulting industry says.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

n8r posted:

Are you doing spark or source? You want to do spark unless you've got some specific reason. The spark platform is easier to use and everything else is the same.

Most of the people that are successful with creatspace should do spark/ls. At least that's what the publishing consulting industry says.

Tried signing up for both. Source is "we'll get back to you if we want you as a customer", Spark is "$50 setup fee and we want your credit card and authorisation on it before you can finish creating an account. Refundable if you buy 50!!"

It's the bit where they take $50 before I can even get a proof copy that has me going "what".

freebooter posted:

Also, lol, this from your only 1 star review:

That is actually the best review I've had of anything I've done ever. One person said they bought it specifically because of that review, 'cos it had attracted the right sort of objector.

divabot fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Oct 2, 2017

n8r
Jul 3, 2003

I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar
You pay title setup fees for LS as well - I think they're the same or nearly the same. Just do Spark.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
Today I happened to idly look at all my Kindle pages and noticed the Canadian site was running a promo, selling it for C$3.20 instead of C$8.61. I did previously tick the box saying "yep, put me in promos", but I figured they'd warn me so I could tell everyone ...

Is there a way to find out when Amazon's put you into a Kindle promo, other than looking at all your Kindle book pages for all countries?

(I was wondering why my sales took a sudden uptick from Oct 1st ... BLAME CANADA)

PogGnostic
Sep 29, 2017
I self-published a bunch of books, plus two that were picked up by small publishers.

I have no idea how to market.

BUT I always get good responses when I go to comic conventions to hawk my wares! I strongly suggest going to these conventions and engaging the audience. They like it!

BUT in order to do that properly you need to have drat PRETTY COVERS. So I either hire a legit artist (sometimes like $400) or I make my own pretty designs.

Here's one where I hired an artist:



Here's one I did myself:



People see those pretty things on the table and they come talk to me and buy the books. I had some girls buy a couple books on the first day of the convention, read one that night and came back for more the next day.

EDIT: For some reason the images show up sometimes but not other times? My apologies... don't know why.

sweet

PogGnostic fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Oct 6, 2017

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

This might be a dumb question but why do sales map so closely to Kindle Select? It's not perfectly matched - I sometimes have no sales but still get Select page reads - but every time I have a spike in sales there's a spike on the same day in Select page reads. I thought they were entirely separate things. No idea how to upload images these days but here's what I mean: https://ibb.co/emvg6G

The Fuzzy Hulk
Nov 22, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT CROSSING THE STREAMS


The blue line is pushed up by the red one, because the total earnings are higher that day?

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

The blue line is just Select earnings, unless the key is wrong?

Icon-Cat
Aug 18, 2005

Meow!
Put out another one of my little stories. YA romantic comedy, FREE through Sunday.

-----


Halloween is just around the corner and spunky sophomore Darian's ready to rock her pirate costume at a party. But when she gets stuck taking her little brother out trick-or-treating instead, she looks on the bright side: at least she won't have to spend the whole night avoiding Shane.

See, Darian's been ghosting her ex ever since their awkward breakup. But Halloween is a night for ghosts—and when fate brings the babysitting buccaneer face-to-face with the dude she dumped, both Darian and Shane find they've got a lot of growing up to do… although hopefully not too much.

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Adam Bertocci has been praised by Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The New Republic, GQ, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Back Stage, Broadway World, E!, Maxim, IGN, Wired, Film Threat and more. In this sweet, silly, sometimes-spooky romantic comedy, he traces a teenager caught between bewildering adolescence and the joys of being young on the greatest night of the year.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B07643QWT5/
-----

I love Halloween :3:

I've been working on a novel since forever and am finally hiring a freelance editor to help me out as I worry I have sort of disappeared up my own rear end with it. (It isn't one of my cute little comedies, it's more in that Donnie Darko sort of vein.) In a strange way I was proud of myself to hire a pro and write the deposit check, it didn't feel like admitting defeat, it felt like making an investment in something I care about, just like when I start putting money into making a film. I'm the kind of person who hates to ask for help on anything in life, so this feeling was a pleasant surprise for me.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
CreateSpace eStores being absorbed into Amazon! Your eStore page will redirect to your Amazon page as of October 31st!

https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp?orgId=00D300000001Sh9&id=50139000000oxUN

tbf, the eStore pages sucked and the Amazon page is what any sane human wants. The only attraction of the CreateSpace page is I get paid more.

Bizarro Kanyon
Jan 3, 2007

Something Awful, so easy even a spaceman can do it!


I wonder if I will be able to still buy author copies for extremely cheap.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Bizarro Kanyon posted:

I wonder if I will be able to still buy author copies for extremely cheap.

... gently caress, that'll be annoying.

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Apparently it's not an issue:

"No, you buy author copies through your Dashboard for production cost plus shipping, the same as a proof copy. The end of the eStore function has no effect on this."

CassandraZara
Oct 21, 2012

by Nyc_Tattoo
Divabot if you think that the price of your book should really be $8.23 or whatever oddball figure and Amazon is only paying royalties on the $3.20 that is being charged (this can be checked via the kdp reports), you need to contact them. I don't know where you got the idea that Amazon runs multi week long promotions on random self published books but they do not.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

CassandraZara posted:

Divabot if you think that the price of your book should really be $8.23 or whatever oddball figure and Amazon is only paying royalties on the $3.20 that is being charged (this can be checked via the kdp reports), you need to contact them. I don't know where you got the idea that Amazon runs multi week long promotions on random self published books but they do not.

Mostly cos they said they would run promotions on it. I might ping them and see what's up. (The oddball figure is £4.99 translated into C$.) I don't actually mind, it seems to be getting sales => delighted readers in, so ...

CassandraZara
Oct 21, 2012

by Nyc_Tattoo
If you're cool with it, that's cool. Amazon is selling your book for less than half what you want and that's something I'd want taken care of.

Bacon Terrorist
May 7, 2010

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022
Just logged into Smashwords after receiving an email from them, I only ever published one admittedly poor erotic story with them. Somehow through 9 purchases and 158 downloads it made $25 :)

As a non US resident I am subject to a 30% tax rate on that :britain:

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Bacon Terrorist posted:

Just logged into Smashwords after receiving an email from them, I only ever published one admittedly poor erotic story with them. Somehow through 9 purchases and 158 downloads it made $25 :)

As a non US resident I am subject to a 30% tax rate on that :britain:

The UK and US have a tax treaty, so if you go through a tedious form you can get it all and it's your job to tell HMRC. You may want to hop to it.

Bardeh
Dec 2, 2004

Fun Shoe

Bacon Terrorist posted:

Just logged into Smashwords after receiving an email from them, I only ever published one admittedly poor erotic story with them. Somehow through 9 purchases and 158 downloads it made $25 :)

As a non US resident I am subject to a 30% tax rate on that :britain:

All of the sites have an easy tax interview thing you can do nowadays. You might need your national insurance number that's it. Back in the day we had to call some person in America and give them all our details and get a US tax number and the person was usually a middle-aged lady who couldn't spell my town's name and was utterly baffled/intrigued that you could write books on the computer and sell them.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Bardeh posted:

All of the sites have an easy tax interview thing you can do nowadays. You might need your national insurance number that's it. Back in the day we had to call some person in America and give them all our details and get a US tax number and the person was usually a middle-aged lady who couldn't spell my town's name and was utterly baffled/intrigued that you could write books on the computer and sell them.

Smashwords apparently used to suck at this until quite recently.

Bacon Terrorist
May 7, 2010

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022
Thanks for the feedback, I shall investigate further. Is it worth writing further poor erotic stories or has that bubble burst? I wrote the aforementioned one when a forum’s poster who’s name escapes me (Delilah Fawkes?) had a goldmined thread about how they quit their job to write smut full time.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

I don't remember even having to fill out a form, I just checked a box or whatever when I was first signing up to Amazon (or first publishing, I forget) and I just get my royalties dumped straight into my bank account and tell the ATO.

But also, on that note, I used an accountant for the first time ever this year and was amazed by how much stuff I could write off because publishing from home basically means you're running a small business. Home internet, utilities, my new laptop, Microsoft Office, etc. It was great.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

freebooter posted:

But also, on that note, I used an accountant for the first time ever this year and was amazed by how much stuff I could write off because publishing from home basically means you're running a small business. Home internet, utilities, my new laptop, Microsoft Office, etc. It was great.

Australia is particularly awesome for that, yes. I'm in the UK, but I plan to deduct every breath I've taken this year.

Paramemetic
Sep 29, 2003

Area 51. You heard of it, right?





Fallen Rib
I'm in the US using Kindle Direct and createspace. I'm staying on top of my reports and such but this will be my first year coming up so should I expect a 1099 MISC (Royalties) from both of those or is it up to me to report like a contractor?

Bizarro Kanyon
Jan 3, 2007

Something Awful, so easy even a spaceman can do it!


It looks, at least in the US, like the IRS is very strict on what it takes to claim "professional author" so that you can claim deductions.

https://www.thebalance.com/hobbyist-vs-pro-tax-guidelines-for-book-authors-2799859

Keromaru5
Dec 28, 2012

Pictured: The Wolf Of Gubbio (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
I'm doing a weekend giveaway for my novel, Thresholds of the Grand Dream. The Kindle version's free through Halloween. And in a few weeks, I'll be selling physical copies at my church's holiday market/bake sale!

moana
Jun 18, 2005

one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web

Paramemetic posted:

I'm in the US using Kindle Direct and createspace. I'm staying on top of my reports and such but this will be my first year coming up so should I expect a 1099 MISC (Royalties) from both of those or is it up to me to report like a contractor?
You should expect them to send it a month late, and then it will be wrong, and they will send you a new one a month after that, and that one might be wrong too, and none of them take into account the actual currency conversion fees from other marketplaces, they're all estimated and they're all off.

gently caress Amazon's 1099s, make sure you double check them when you get them.

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Paramemetic
Sep 29, 2003

Area 51. You heard of it, right?





Fallen Rib
Gotcha. What I'm hearing is "report based off my own calculations and revise later if necessary."

As for the professional author thing, I'm technically for these purposes a single owner LLC, so I don't have to explain much at all in terms of income but I do have to acknowledge what income comes from the LLC and which comes from me personally despite federally both being the same.

Long story short I have an accountant for the details but I usually do taxes in January so I'm just trying to know what to expect. Thanks for the heads up all.

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