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I've started getting daily "organic" sales. Is that the right term for it? It's a pretty good feeling. I made my books free for a weekend when I did a horror convention and since then they've got into the Amazon "system". Thanks for all the help, thread.
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Oct 30, 2017 12:14
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Is Scrivener mobile worth it? I currently have a 90 minute round trip commute every day and was thinking about using my phone for something more productive than watching X Files re-runs and poo poo posting.
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Oct 30, 2017 14:54
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In my experience, the iPad version is great and now drives most of my scrivening needs, whereas the phone version of the app feels claustrophobic even on a large phone. You’ll be fine though so long as you never look at an iPad again.
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Oct 30, 2017 17:12
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Success time! I got my second monthly pile of money from Amazon, about £2200 this time - that'll be Kindle from August and CreateSpace from September. On present form, I've a few more months of this.   (Then I have to start actually writing my second book instead of just talking about it. Working title: "Roko's Basilisk". Nobody will want to read it, unless there's a fortuitous Bogus Artificial Intelligence bubble just at the right time, which is what happened this time with Bitcoins.) Nice review in the LSE Business Review today. This is the precise readership I want, i.e. people with ActualMoney. just to emphasise that first paragraph, i am still boggling that I wrote a successful self-published book. I seriously expected 100-200 sales, to people I probably knew. holy crap.
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Oct 30, 2017 18:05
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Yah any book that has sub 100k sales rank generates a nice little bit of revenue. You should consider finding a literary agent if you think you've got another good marketable idea.
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Oct 30, 2017 23:35
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n8r posted:Yah any book that has sub 100k sales rank generates a nice little bit of revenue. You should consider finding a literary agent if you think you've got another good marketable idea. I'm actually surprised I have had zero bites from actual agents, let alone publishers. (I have of course had offers from clearly scammy translators ... also from sincere translators. What sort of deal is appropriate to a friendly translator on a self-pub?) Actually, this is a good question: self-published books are the quintessential long tail product, where 99% nobody is going to care about. I've sold maybe 2500 pushing 3000 of mine. This strikes me as a possible story! Who in the press is interested in self-pub success? I really should approach my local paper ...
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Oct 31, 2017 00:20
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Curious if y'all have an opinion about marketability vs. truth-in-advertising. I'm writing a YA mystery novel with a female lead and a romance subplot and a supernatural element. From what I've read this is a bit of an (accidental) home-run in terms of large potential readership base. Slap a beautiful-but-approachable scared girl on the cover, put her in front of a forest, throw some scary-but-alluring monster eyes in the background, you've got yourself a marketable cover that technically all relates to the content inside. However, tonally the actual content of the book is much more old-school Nancy Drew; sweet, more than a bit nostalgic, the supernatural element ends up being a hoax, and the romance is all very innocent. The cover I have in my head is much closer to an Archie cover than a Twilight cover. How important is it to have a cover that conveys the right tone vs. having something that will reach the most sets of eyes? Would potential reviews reflect poorly if the reader felt like their expectations were in a different place? Would fewer readers bother finishing the book if they felt misled vs. a if I were to focus in on my smaller target readership? Would it be a bad idea to do the more marketable cover for the eBook and an illustrated, bubblegum cover for the print edition? e: This is all very premature since I've only written half a first draft, but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and I want to make sure my own expectations are in the right place. But it brings to mind that Twilight-esque Romeo & Juliet cover from a few years back and the debate surrounding its effectiveness. The Nancy Drew crowd is a legit niche and I wonder if it makes sense to hyper-target them as I originally planned or go broad. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Nov 7, 2017 |
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Nov 7, 2017 21:31
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divabot posted:I'm actually surprised I have had zero bites from actual agents, let alone publishers. (I have of course had offers from clearly scammy translators ... also from sincere translators. What sort of deal is appropriate to a friendly translator on a self-pub?) The issue here is that if you have a book somewhere in that 100K sales rank - there are 99,999 other books that people can be talking about. The world of NYC book agents is not something I am very familiar with, but most of the time it's a you come to us sort of deal. If you managed to get yourself onto mainstream media and positioned yourself as the bitcoin guy, then you would definitely be getting approached by legit agents or publishers. This is just a guess, but the mainstream publishing world probably lives and dies on the top 500-1000 books on Amazon. Their business models and costs just don't wash with books that sell only a few thousand copies. Over the years of long tail products, I'm sure brings in some decent income, but seeking titles like that out is not viable at all. I would think within the world of *coins there is room to make a pretty good living writing and speaking on the subject. This is going to be an ongoing full time job of marketing yourself, speaking engagements, writing, and blogging. In addition having a PhD from an ivy league institution will also really help that. The big agents/pubs are always looking for good ideas, but it doesn't mean that you'll end up wealthy and famous if they publish your book. The author is still on the hook for doing lots of the marketing and sales. The author I work with that does self pub and mainstream stuff has pretty mixed feelings on the mainstream publishers. If you don't want to continue to wade through the details of being a publisher, you should consider finding an indy publisher. They won't be able to do massive marketing, but they should bring some strong editorial feedback and refinement to your books. It will let you write, without having to work out all of the details about editing, cover design, and some pieces of marketing. If you want to continue to make money writing, you have to make people want to read *your* books - and all of the self pub advice about email marketing / blogging / social media / etc applies. Edit: Just to add, the mainstream pub world involves the agent pitching finished / edited books to the publishers. Often times it is on the author to get the manuscript to that point - typically spending their own money on good editing services to make it happen. n8r fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Nov 7, 2017 |
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Nov 7, 2017 21:59
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Oh hey, fun fact: The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update includes a full-fledged ebook store built right into Microsoft Edge browser. Another fun fact: Apparently nobody, not even Microsoft techs on their own message boards, seems to know how to publish anything to it yet.
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Nov 9, 2017 18:02
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Currently setting up a Patreon. I'm stuck at our dear old friend, the W8-BEN tax form for non-US citizens. Amazon are super-helpful and fill in all the required magical declaration words, article number etc depending what country you're in! Patreon don't, and leave you to guess. Googling turns up some old guides, which include stuff like links to IRS pages that are now dead links. So I'm not that confident in them. Is there a known-good, current guide to filling in the correct magic words for the W8-BEN for Patreon for UK residents?
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Nov 11, 2017 17:34
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So it turned out selling my book at my church's holiday market was a great idea. Out of twenty copies, I wound up selling eleven over two days!
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Nov 11, 2017 21:18
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divabot posted:Currently setting up a Patreon. I'm stuck at our dear old friend, the W8-BEN tax form for non-US citizens. Amazon are super-helpful and fill in all the required magical declaration words, article number etc depending what country you're in! Patreon don't, and leave you to guess. This link: http://angelasstone.livejournal.com/15902.html is old, but the IRS pages it links to are working and current. I'm not sure if you'll need to call the IRS and get a TIN - Amazon don't require one these days, and all I ever give them is my NI number, so probably not.
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Nov 12, 2017 08:57
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Bardeh posted:This link: http://angelasstone.livejournal.com/15902.html is old, but the IRS pages it links to are working and current. That's the link everyone keeps giving me, so I'll go with that one :-) A couple of the IRS links later in the post are dead, and it's about "royalties" rather than whatever Patreon sponsorship is ... but it's what people go with, so I'll give it a go. For the W8BEN, your NI number is the correct number to use. It's certainly the one I used with Amazon/Smashwords/Draft2Digital. So I assume they will duly forward the info to HMRC who will expect it to appear on my return next year. Must get an actual accountant ... Keromaru5 posted:So it turned out selling my book at my church's holiday market was a great idea. Out of twenty copies, I wound up selling eleven over two days! I really should just bite the bullet and order a printed box of books and take them places with me ...
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Nov 12, 2017 17:28
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Did anyone here use Pronoun as an ebook distributor? They're shutting down. (I found out when Draft2Digital emailed apologising for delay in answering support tickets 'cos they just got flooded with Pronoun refugees.) Why is Pronoun shutting down? They forgot the bit where you're supposed to have a business model, and their tempting offer of FREE distribution left them with no actual, ah, income.
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Nov 13, 2017 16:48
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divabot posted:Did anyone here use Pronoun as an ebook distributor? They're shutting down. I have hundreds of forbidden genre books now in limbo. I should have seen the shutdown coming. Welp.
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Nov 13, 2017 17:19
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monkfoot posted:I have hundreds of forbidden genre books now in limbo. I should have seen the shutdown coming. Welp. Can't you just put them all up on D2D/Smashwords? I have to admit that I never even knew about Pronoun, but I have dozens of naughty books still up on those two sites.
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Nov 14, 2017 14:23
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Bardeh posted:Can't you just put them all up on D2D/Smashwords? I have to admit that I never even knew about Pronoun, but I have dozens of naughty books still up on those two sites. Eh I could but I’ve decided to throw them back on Amazon at least for the next season or so. D2d never was able to sell outside of BN for me(with massive amounts of keyword stuffing). I appreciate the advice though. Hopefully y’all are all prepared for kindlemas!
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Nov 14, 2017 17:44
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So I’ve had a thriller and its sequel bouncing around for a few years, was close to getting it published with a reputable house but it didn’t quite happen for whatever reason. I’ve moved on to other stuff but I’ve still got these books which I’d like to do something with, fairly standard thrillers that I think fans of the genre would enjoy. I have some experiencing self-publishing shorts and know how important a good cover, blurb is, etc. But I haven’t done a novel and I don’t really know how much effort to put into promoting it. I’ve gotten advice like printing a limited run of hard copies to give away for ARC reviews, starting a mailing list, stuff like that. I’ll shell out for a nice cover and maybe make a website and mailing list, but I’m not sure how much more promotion I want to do than that. Not trying to go full time or anything, just want to put it out there and see what the response is like. Any tips?
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Nov 14, 2017 19:53
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Bubble Bobby posted:So I’ve had a thriller and its sequel bouncing around for a few years, was close to getting it published with a reputable house but it didn’t quite happen for whatever reason. I’ve moved on to other stuff but I’ve still got these books which I’d like to do something with, fairly standard thrillers that I think fans of the genre would enjoy. I have some experiencing self-publishing shorts and know how important a good cover, blurb is, etc. But I haven’t done a novel and I don’t really know how much effort to put into promoting it. Physical copies - Nah, unless you want to do book fairs. You can upload your books to print-on-demand services like createspace so anyone can get a physical copy if they want it. ARC readers - they work off ebooks so you won't need physical books for them. Also, if you're just putting out these two books and won't do anything else with this genre or pen name I don't think I would worry about ARC readers. Nice cover - Yes, absolutely. Website - Nah. I've got over 100 works published and my website is just a field to sign up to my mailing list. If you're just publishing these two books, I don't think you need to develop a platform, unless you think you'll be putting out regular blog post content or something. Mailing list - Yes, though it really only matters in the slight chance your book does so well you think you might dip back into thrillers. People are probably only going to join your list after reading one or both of your books, so what are you going to email to them? Additional promo - Just depends on your goal. Right now everyone is selling promo to authors, and very little of it is profitable ROI. If you want thousands of people to download it (and a small portion, read it) book a FreeBooksy and/or BKnights promo. If you want to earn good money off it, then that becomes more complicated. It will depend on things like whether you're in Kindle Unlimited (and thus exclusive to Amazon), your price, etc. Don't half-rear end it.
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Nov 14, 2017 23:01
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Oh no! Draft2Digital has emailed that Inktera is temporarily suspending all eBook distribution! * looks at sales: 0, 0, 0, 0 ... Has anyone here ever sold a book through Inktera?
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Nov 15, 2017 09:54
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Did anybody else get something from ACX about some romance packages thing? When I logged in today to check sales there was this banner telling me I was eligible or it. You are paid by the minute listened to, I guess? Like Kindle Unlimited but for romance audiobooks?
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Nov 15, 2017 22:36
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Bubble Bobby posted:So I’ve had a thriller and its sequel bouncing around for a few years, was close to getting it published with a reputable house but it didn’t quite happen for whatever reason. I’ve moved on to other stuff but I’ve still got these books which I’d like to do something with, fairly standard thrillers that I think fans of the genre would enjoy. I have some experiencing self-publishing shorts and know how important a good cover, blurb is, etc. But I haven’t done a novel and I don’t really know how much effort to put into promoting it. I will second "don't half rear end it." If you were close to getting it out with a publisher, you will almost definitely be able to make plenty off money off Amazon provided you do it properly. Spend at least $100 (ideally several hundred) on a cover, and another $100 or so on ebook newsletter promotion (here you go: https://www.readersintheknow.com/list-of-book-promotion-sites). If in a month's time you've barely shifted any copies, you gave it a shot and didn't lose any more than a speeding ticket. I doubt you will barely shift any copies. I put the same amount of cautious effort into my first book which was a re-edit of a zombie story I wrote as a teenager, and within a month I'd earned my outlay back. A few months down the track I'd earned back 10x that much. So yeah, don't half rear end it.
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Nov 16, 2017 07:06
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The Fuzzy Hulk posted:Did anybody else get something from ACX about some romance packages thing? When I logged in today to check sales there was this banner telling me I was eligible or it. I didn't because I never got around to making audiobooks, but I was cancelling an Audible trial yesterday and noticed a new 'Unlimited Romance Audiobooks' subscription there for I think $8.99 a month. So yeah, I wonder how lucrative that'll be. I guess people read faster than they listen so the payouts might be a bit higher?
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Nov 16, 2017 16:41
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Thanks for the tips! I've got to stop being a little bitch and just go for it I guess
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Nov 16, 2017 17:10
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Bardeh posted:I didn't because I never got around to making audiobooks, but I was cancelling an Audible trial yesterday and noticed a new 'Unlimited Romance Audiobooks' subscription there for I think $8.99 a month. So yeah, I wonder how lucrative that'll be. I guess people read faster than they listen so the payouts might be a bit higher? I have 50 or so, read by various narrators. I went ahead and tossed them all into it, will see if it pays and report back in a few months.
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Nov 16, 2017 17:53
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Keromaru5 posted: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! Just finished reading it. Well written, nice ideas, a bit weird in interesting ways ... looks like a kid/not-quite-YA book - what was your anticipated target audience? e.g. it's the style and ideas I'd throw at my kid (10yo, gobbles up her mum's thousand-page fantasy novels) except for the detailed suicide stuff. (And I really like that the action has multiple peaks. That's good.)
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Nov 17, 2017 00:23
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I was thinking higher middle-grade: older grade-school or middle school-age. I'll admit, I was worried about the darker material, myself, and I tried to keep it as toned-down as possible. If you think it's too much for her, I completely understand. I had to tell a few people at the bake sale basically the same thing.
Keromaru5 fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Nov 17, 2017 |
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Nov 17, 2017 00:56
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The Fuzzy Hulk posted:I have 50 or so, read by various narrators. I went ahead and tossed them all into it, will see if it pays and report back in a few months. What does getting a book read and recorded cost, out of interest?
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Nov 17, 2017 07:26
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simplefish posted:What does getting a book read and recorded cost, out of interest? $50-200 per finished hour of audiobook if you are paying up front. This lets you keep 40% of the money if you exclusively distribute with ACX. The other option with ACX is to do revenue split with your narrator which means you pay $0 for the narrators services but now you only get 20% of the revenue and they get the other 20%. All my 51 audiobooks are revenue split. I do about 10 minutes of work for each of them and it's just beer money each month. I don't see the point in spending thousands to get double beer money.
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Nov 18, 2017 01:50
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:$50-200 per finished hour of audiobook if you are paying up front. This lets you keep 40% of the money if you exclusively distribute with ACX. The other option with ACX is to do revenue split with your narrator which means you pay $0 for the narrators services but now you only get 20% of the revenue and they get the other 20%. Yeah I do royalty 50/50 split too. Now I wonder if I should have asked the narrators first before enrolling...
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Nov 18, 2017 04:24
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Thanks guys. I ask because I do voice acting on the side of my regular job and have never considered audiobooks before. A revenue split sounds very appealing - I'm going to look into this ACX thing
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Nov 18, 2017 07:59
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freebooter posted:I will second "don't half rear end it." If you were close to getting it out with a publisher, you will almost definitely be able to make plenty off money off Amazon provided you do it properly. Spend at least $100 (ideally several hundred) on a cover, and another $100 or so on ebook newsletter promotion (here you go: https://www.readersintheknow.com/list-of-book-promotion-sites). I've seen this link before for promo stuff. And while it's handy to have so many, it can be hard to separate what on there actually provides any sort of meaningful boost. And it sucks to try and type them all into Google to find reviews from places like Reddit or Kboards. Bookbub is of course the best one, but also the hardest to get. I've tried Book Bongo before and it seemed to have little to no impact. BKnights is OK, especially for freebie downloads. Anyone else care to share which of the promo sources on that list is actually worth it and which ones should be avoided?
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Nov 18, 2017 15:45
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simplefish posted:Thanks guys. I ask because I do voice acting on the side of my regular job and have never considered audiobooks before. A revenue split sounds very appealing - I'm going to look into this ACX thing If you can write and do your own audiobooks you will own. I keep getting asked for an audiobook and my desired reader fell through because of some trivial matter of a brain cancer operation affecting his speech - I mean really tch - so I'd have to do it myself. Trouble is getting good and consistent sound quality on potato-quality junkpile equipment. Also my vocal chords are trashed so it hurts to talk for an hour. Most annoying. Any tips for getting good and consistent sound out of potato-quality equipment?
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Nov 18, 2017 17:10
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Spend on a decent mic, sound deadening is your friend (reflections aren't), water down cough syrup with warm water on your off days (just a sugary type syrup with herbs, none of the medicated stuff unless you actually have something wrong with your throat that needs treating), spend time in editing, and generally take good care of your voice
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Nov 18, 2017 17:31
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simplefish posted:and generally take good care of your voice I snort and inhale steroids so I can keep breathing clearly. My vocal chords are not happy organs ...
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Nov 18, 2017 19:03
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simplefish posted:Spend on a decent mic, sound deadening is your friend (reflections aren't), water down cough syrup with warm water on your off days (just a sugary type syrup with herbs, none of the medicated stuff unless you actually have something wrong with your throat that needs treating), spend time in editing, and generally take good care of your voice With regard to sound deadening, if you have a decent sized wardrobe (or closet, if you're not in the UK) with two doors that open outwards, then you can make a fairly effective mini sound booth using towels. Drape one across the top of the clothes that are hanging in the wardrobe, bunching it up by repeated folds over the top of the hanging rail in order to cover off as much of the boxy open bit at the top as you can. Drape two more towels over the open doors so that the inside of the doors are covered, and use another large towel hung across the top of the doors and down to cover the front of the opening. Sit or stand inside there with your mic and you should get some decent deadening, and a reasonable amount of ambient sound exclusion provided you don't live next to a railway or something. It's not perfect but as potato quality stuff goes it's worked for me before when recording vocals. You can even set up your mic stand, if you're using one, inside the wardrobe between the hanging clothes, with the mic just poking out through them. Definitely keep some warm water handy to sip on as you read. Cough syrup optional. Once you've got it recorded you might want to download an audio editor like Reaper or something and google how to EQ for spoken word, just to polish it up a bit.
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Nov 19, 2017 00:15
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Faded Mars posted:I've seen this link before for promo stuff. And while it's handy to have so many, it can be hard to separate what on there actually provides any sort of meaningful boost. And it sucks to try and type them all into Google to find reviews from places like Reddit or Kboards. Yeah, it's hard to tell, I usually just follow a throw it all at the wall and see what sticks approach. I have another book coming out next weekend and this time I went ahead and paid $30 to one of those sites that just submits to a bundle of free ones on your behalf, because I couldn't be bothered, but I'll probably do some paid promos as well. The best results I ever got - which, granted, was also for the third and largest release in a series, in which the promos were all for making book #1 free for a week - I actually spent something like $200 AUD on promotion. Which according to my notes was with: ebookhounds - $89 AUD Ebook Skill - $18 AUD ebook soda - $29 aud Bookraid - depends on clicks Fiverr bknights - $15 AUD Free Discounted Books - $11 AUD Read Freely - $14 AUD Robin Reads - $55 AUD But, again: impossible to tell which of those were the most effective.
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Nov 19, 2017 04:31
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divabot posted:That's the link everyone keeps giving me, so I'll go with that one :-) A couple of the IRS links later in the post are dead, and it's about "royalties" rather than whatever Patreon sponsorship is ... but it's what people go with, so I'll give it a go. ok, so the old LJ link appears out of date compared to what Patreon do now. So! I asked someone else who's in the UK and whose Patreon is to do more or less what I'm doing: sponsorship for ongoing articles/journalism. What he did was: he filled in the actual IRS form (PDF) and sent it in. If you put "United Kingdom" in question 9, you can leave question 10 blank. My wife did the same on her art Patreon. tl;dr if you're in the UK and you really aren't doing business actually in the US, just say "United Kingdom" and then it'll all be between you and HMRC. Patreon going live shortly, I hope ...
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Nov 19, 2017 17:10
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Most of you are Americans so you wouldn't be dumb enough to do this in the first place, but here's some advice: don't do a book launch/free promo combination on Thanksgiving weekend...
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Nov 27, 2017 23:01
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freebooter posted:Most of you are Americans so you wouldn't be dumb enough to do this in the first place, but here's some advice: don't do a book launch/free promo combination on Thanksgiving weekend... Oh I am so sorry
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Nov 27, 2017 23:04
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