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Mirage
Oct 27, 2000

All is for the best, in this, the best of all possible worlds
Actually, that makes me wonder: How is the Christmas season for self-pubbers? Does anyone see an upswing during Cyber Monday Week? Is there a boost after the holidays, when people have their shiny new tablets and need something to read on them? Do people who publish physical copies see more of them getting sold?

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n8r
Jul 3, 2003

I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar
Books are popular gifts. Depends a bit on how gift-able your stuff is.

LionArcher
Mar 29, 2010


Mirage posted:

Actually, that makes me wonder: How is the Christmas season for self-pubbers? Does anyone see an upswing during Cyber Monday Week? Is there a boost after the holidays, when people have their shiny new tablets and need something to read on them? Do people who publish physical copies see more of them getting sold?

It used to be called smutmas for a reason

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Burkion posted:

Oh I am so sorry

It wasn't terrible, but based on results I've had in the past for spending the same amount on promo, I would definitely have avoided the weekend in hindsight.

Or maybe it's just diminishing returns - I've been making the same book free every few months all year, so I figure the same eyeballs are probably glazing past it eventually.

Bizarro Kanyon
Jan 3, 2007

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


I am doing my first book signing tomorrow and I am planning on selling some of my books while I am there. I have set up a square account to sell books (people buy the books, I order through Create Space, sign the books and then get the books to them). I just thought tonight though about sales tax. Should I be adding sales tax to my Square Price? I live in Illinois so I do not know what the best method to handle this is.

n8r
Jul 3, 2003

I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar
You should definitely charge sales tax - and report it and pay it.

You might make your life easier if you set your price so when you charge tax it comes up to a nice round number. Make sure you are able to take cash, you'd be surprised how many people still pay with it.

Keromaru5
Dec 28, 2012

Pictured: The Wolf Of Gubbio (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
Okay, so I managed to get a table for a convention next month to sell my book. I've got a poster, and some business cards. I can whip together some bookmarks. Any suggestions for other stuff I can include?

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

Keromaru5 posted:

Okay, so I managed to get a table for a convention next month to sell my book. I've got a poster, and some business cards. I can whip together some bookmarks. Any suggestions for other stuff I can include?

Information on your next book. "What's next" is something you should always be ready to answer. And by "poster", what do you mean? Are you up against a wall and can put something on it? Also, is it a themed convention or a book convention? Are you advertising your presence there before the event?

Keromaru5
Dec 28, 2012

Pictured: The Wolf Of Gubbio (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Jalumibnkrayal posted:

Information on your next book. "What's next" is something you should always be ready to answer. And by "poster", what do you mean? Are you up against a wall and can put something on it? Also, is it a themed convention or a book convention? Are you advertising your presence there before the event?
-"What's next" is still in the draft stage, but I can answer it. I also have some short stories floating out there. I've been thinking about putting together a collection so I don't just have one book on the table.
-It's a cardboard poster with the cover and prices that I can prop up on the table.
-It's an SF convention I go to every year. My first time as a vendor, though.
-I'm almost certainly going to post about it on Facebook and Twitter.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
Surprisingly enough, Google Play Books got back to me! So I uploaded the book, as ePub and PDF. This means that - when approved - it'll show up in Google Books, and I can sell it.

Hiccups so far:

1. It says "Pricing information is incomplete", which it isn't, but apparently this error message comes up when your payment isn't fully set up. (my bank account hasn't been verified yet.)

2. No W-8BEN or equivalent, quite. There's an automated tax questionnaire that doesn't seem to be the W-8BEN.

For problem 1, it says to wait 24 hours, and if it's still broken contact them. So we'll see ...

Anyone else got the ping back from Google?



also: sales now over 4000, particularly with the stupid Bitcoin price bubble before Christmas. I got onto BBC News at Ten and all. :dance:

Bardeh
Dec 2, 2004

Fun Shoe
I've been publishing on Google for years because I got in before they closed down new registrations. I think the tax interview thing they do counts as a W8-BEN. Other than that, and their weird upload interface that took me a while to get to grips with, I've never had any issues with them.

Bushmaori
Mar 8, 2009
So I'm writing some awful science fiction that I'm both selling and giving out for free, so the reader can decide if it was worth the money. The two I have out there at the moment are a novella (Quintessence) and a novel (Primarius One). These are both under the pen name John Hale. While I have no problem giving these out for free, at least for now, I would still like to keep track of statistics and reviews, and I would like to ensure that people are able to read the most current and error-free versions. I have two questions relating to this.

1: Can anybody recommend a good website which can help in giving away free versions of my ebooks? I am currently trying out Inkitt, but I would like to expand this if possible.
2: What is the deal with websites which already claim to be giving away my work for free? Obviously, the majority of these such as: http://robbvill.info/ebook/76062-Th...orld-Prima.html are scams. It's simple to understand this by the comments and descriptions, which look auto-generated. Are there any out there that are legitimate, though? I would like to get ahead of these if possible to prevent them from being released in places without my permission.

Thanks for the help.

grenada
Apr 20, 2013
Relax.

Bushmaori posted:

1: Can anybody recommend a good website which can help in giving away free versions of my ebooks? I am currently trying out Inkitt, but I would like to expand this if possible.
2: What is the deal with websites which already claim to be giving away my work for free? Obviously, the majority of these such as: http://robbvill.info/ebook/76062-Th...orld-Prima.html are scams. It's simple to understand this by the comments and descriptions, which look auto-generated. Are there any out there that are legitimate, though? I would like to get ahead of these if possible to prevent them from being released in places without my permission.

I would use draft2digital to publish on a variety of platforms. I got a few thousand free downloads that way. If you have a good cover and a decent blurb people will download it - whether they actually read it is another question. If I remember correctly most of the free downloads came from the apple ibook store.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Bushmaori posted:

2: What is the deal with websites which already claim to be giving away my work for free? Obviously, the majority of these such as: http://robbvill.info/ebook/76062-Th...orld-Prima.html are scams. It's simple to understand this by the comments and descriptions, which look auto-generated. Are there any out there that are legitimate, though? I would like to get ahead of these if possible to prevent them from being released in places without my permission.

They're worse than pirates - they're fake pirates. Really, the whole scam is they promise to offer ebooks, but really want people to fill in their surveys, get malwared, etc.

Sometimes they have the goods, for some value of. One had my book as a PDF ... made from JPEGs ... of page scans .... of the epub. :psyboom:

I put my book up on libgen myself, 'cos if you're gonna be pirated be pirated by the best. It finally made it to the torrent sites a week ago, and I;m actually surprised it took that long.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Happy new year, have an effort post!

This thread doesn't see much action these days, but I know there are lurkers and people wondering if they should try self-publishing. 2017 was my first year doing it so I thought I'd share my results.

I published a post-apocalyptic thriller series which I originally wrote and serialised online as a teenager. This doesn't mean I just slapped it up there - a lot of the early stuff was so bad it needed rewriting from scratch - but it definitely meant I had a faster workflow than if I'd been writing something totally new. I released the first book on January 1 and another three at the end of February, June and November. I have another two books which I hope to have both out in the first half of 2018.

Here's my results:



(If you're lurking and unfamiliar with Book Report: red is the actual sale of Kindle copies, while blue is the money I made from the Kindle Select program, where people "borrow" the ebook from the Kindle library and I'm paid a fraction of a cent for each page they read. Enrolling in the library means Amazon does not permit you to publish your book elsewhere, and there are a lot of authors who dislike this and don't think it's worth it. I can only speak for myself, but it plainly makes up about 70% of my income, which I highly doubt I'd make back by also selling on Apple or Kobo or whatever.)

Every time I released a new book I also made book 1 free for a while and promoted it. I never bothered promoting the later books apart from a tweet or two; I was relying on flow-through. Book 1 is normally set at 99 cents, while the rest are $2.99.

Across the year I spent about $300 on promotions, and checking the records it would seem $180 worth of that was on the Book 3 release period alone. Which might explain why that did so well (plus I foolishly launched Book 4 right before Thanksgiving weekend.)

Covers set me back $80 each, so that's $320. I'm a subeditor in my day job, so I don't pay anyone to edit them. So income minus costs means my net profit was about $5,733. (Oh, and under Australian tax law I'm technically running a business from home and was allowed to write off my internet, phone bill, new laptop and some of my electricity and gas.)

I know people get lured to self publishing with stories of massive overnight millionaire success, and I know there were people in this thread who'd quit their day jobs and were earning six figures. But for me to make nearly six grand (or eight grand Australian) in my first year is something I'm very happy with and is way, way more money than I ever thought I'd make off writing at this point in my life.

It's also just a foundation: I intend to keep doing this, and the benefit of Amazon is that while you might drop down the algorithm rankings, you'll never actually be out of print. You can see just from glancing at that chart that sales immediately decline from the point of publication, but if you keep writing stuff and keep promoting your author name, I imagine you'll make much more from passive income in backlist sales than traditionally published authors do. Let's say a few years down the track I'm writing something totally different and this series is only generating about $5 a week - well, that's $260 a year I wouldn't have otherwise and I don't have to lift a finger for it.

So, if you're a writer who happily writes fiction in their spare time anyway, reading this and wondering if self publishing is worth it: yes, I'm just a beginner and I think it was. Read the thread, read other blogs and forums, don't be afraid to fork out money upfront for covers and promotion. Do it properly and it can be great. I wish I'd started years ago.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
This is awesome, and well done!

freebooter posted:

Covers set me back $80 each, so that's $320. I'm a subeditor in my day job, so I don't pay anyone to edit them.

Covers, hell yes. If you are not literally a graphic designer, PAY SOMEONE.

Editing ... I too have long been an editor, and what I did was post literally my whole book to my facebook in chunks. This was non-fiction, so what I was after was "what doesn't make sense", and my querulous nerd friends totally delivered on the querulousness I was after. This was the best idea I ever had in the writing of the book. Probably wouldn't work as well for fiction.

But I would strongly recommend a second set of eyes.

But HOLY poo poo GO YOU.



me, I just got in New York Review of Books :smug: ps: HOLY poo poo

divabot fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jan 2, 2018

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

divabot posted:

This is awesome, and well done!

Covers, hell yes. If you are not literally a graphic designer, PAY SOMEONE.

Editing ... I too have long been an editor, and what I did was post literally my whole book to my facebook in chunks. This was non-fiction, so what I was after was "what doesn't make sense", and my querulous nerd friends totally delivered on the querulousness I was after. This was the best idea I ever had in the writing of the book. Probably wouldn't work as well for fiction.

It's partly because my day job meant I thought I could get away with skipping it, but also partly because I was hesitant to spend too much on a venture that might be a failure. Which is the same reason I went for a cover at the cheaper end of the range (and stayed with the same designer just for consistency throughout the series.) When I eventually wrap this up and then launch a new series in the future, I'll be more bold with outlay costs, I think.

quote:

me, I just got in New York Review of Books :smug: ps: HOLY poo poo

Not as glowing a review but a measure of how wide it's travelling - I've seen people in my mostly-Australian Twitter feed posting screencaps of your book in the past week.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

freebooter posted:

Not as glowing a review but a measure of how wide it's travelling - I've seen people in my mostly-Australian Twitter feed posting screencaps of your book in the past week.

\o/

Oh! I successfully got through everything with Google Play Books, and the PDF has sold a few copies. A surprising number of people seem to want PDFs, but nobody else sells them ...

If you're an unAmerican trying to fill in US tax information on Google Play Books, you get to the W-8BEN by selecting that you are a "Corporation" in the first screen. Then you have our dear old annoying friend, you can put in your UK national insurance number or whatever.

MussoliniB
Aug 22, 2009

freebooter posted:

Happy new year, have an effort post!

I'm so glad to hear about your success. An extra 6k a month would be an absolute dream. I've been self-publishing for about 2 years now, however I never made much money, and it's clear to me why. I thought I would go the "easy" route and try erotica, but it's not what I read, and my heart just isn't in the writing, and I think it shows, especially in an over saturated market with great writers who actually enjoy writing erotica.

Now, I think it's time for me to be true to myself and take some time writing what I enjoy reading.

I have a few questions. What were the length of your books and what advertising did you use? $300 for the whole year seems super cheap for so much exposure. I spent, easily, double that, but it was on all erotica advertisers. The forums mention fiverr advertising, but I've heard that he has gotten too popular, and the people that advertise with him get lost in a sea of advertisements. Aside from that, blogs mention a plethora of advertisers, but it's nearly impossible to find out what works and what doesn't if you begin with no audience.

Any advice would be great!

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

MussoliniB posted:

I'm so glad to hear about your success. An extra 6k a month would be an absolute dream.

A year, not a month - 6k a month would be job-quitting territory!

quote:

I've been self-publishing for about 2 years now, however I never made much money, and it's clear to me why. I thought I would go the "easy" route and try erotica, but it's not what I read, and my heart just isn't in the writing, and I think it shows, especially in an over saturated market with great writers who actually enjoy writing erotica.

Now, I think it's time for me to be true to myself and take some time writing what I enjoy reading.

Yep - a lot of the older advice in this thread was always geared towards that strategy and always urged new writers to "read the market" which to me is putting the cart before the horse. I mean, I don't know, obviously it worked for a lot of people. But anyone who's doing this presumably also has a natural interest in creative writing as a hobby, and I always thought would be better off writing something they're actually passionate about. (On the other hand, maybe a lot of successful self-pubbers did both.)

quote:

I have a few questions. What were the length of your books and what advertising did you use? $300 for the whole year seems super cheap for so much exposure. I spent, easily, double that, but it was on all erotica advertisers. The forums mention fiverr advertising, but I've heard that he has gotten too popular, and the people that advertise with him get lost in a sea of advertisements. Aside from that, blogs mention a plethora of advertisers, but it's nearly impossible to find out what works and what doesn't if you begin with no audience.

My books keep getting longer - my first one was 165 pages, the most recent is 440. That's what Amazon guesses as the "print" length - the length for Kindle Unlimited page counts always ends up being higher.

My promotion is almost purely ebook newsletters. I don't have Facebook, a have a pen name Twitter account I barely use with like 20 followers, I only started using Amazon ads a few months ago and have seen little effect. Based on my limited experience (and of course it's hard to tell what's effective and what isn't) I think splashing out on a few big advertisers that cost around the $50 mark (ebooksoda, ebookhounds, Robin Reads) has more effect than using all the free and cheap ones. For the November release, as well as a few cheap paid ones, I used one of those services where you pay about $30 and it takes care of about 30 free newsletters for you, but as you can see it didn't do much. Though that might have been the Thanksgiving effect, I don't know. I also use askDavid's Twitter service, but it's relatively time consuming and I'm not sure how effective it is.

I wouldn't be surprised if the erotica market is simply too crowded to stand out these days. Every time I use one of these services the price for advertising in the erotica genre is always double or triple my own horror genre.

edit - I should mentioned I have applied for Bookbub every single time I've done a promo, but have been knocked back every time.

freebooter fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jan 3, 2018

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
First week of Google Play Books: quite good for not-Amazon. 23 PDFs sold, 2 ePubs. I link the PDF on my book page.

This suggests to me there's pent-up demand for PDF ebooks, because frickin none of the usual stores offer PDFs. Now I'm wishing I'd started selling a PDF myself when I laid it out in August.

So if you're not doing Amazon exclusivity, I suggest selling your nicely laid-out PDF as an ebook yourself, if you can't get onto Google.

What's a good way to sell this stuff yourself? Someone said Shopify, I've never used them. (I probably won't bother myself, but someone here musta tried selling books piecemeal.)

Noumena
Mar 18, 2008

Hi everybody. I just self-published for the first time. Currently seeking representation for a literary fiction novel, so I decided to self-publish some "fun stuff" (ie dark fantasy / horror) in the meantime.

I'm kicking off a series called the Murmurations Cycle with a few shorts before putting out a trilogy of novels. Here's my first short, BLASPHEME HIS NAME: http://a.co/dyqebAm



"The beautiful commoner Symmonet must abandon everything she knows when she is conscripted by a traveling monk to live the rest of her life in a mysterious cloister. Her sole ally is Yago, a seductive spirit-talker who opens her eyes to the secrets of another world."

I plan to do a giveaway of this first short once I publish the second one in a couple weeks!

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004
Is there any merit to putting out multiple versions of a book, say one standard ebook and one deluxe ebook with illustrations and supplementary material with a slightly higher price? Or is that both presupposing there's an audience in the first place and also splitting that audience if they exist? Or are there additional considerations to not doing that?

Mirage
Oct 27, 2000

All is for the best, in this, the best of all possible worlds

feedmyleg posted:

Is there any merit to putting out multiple versions of a book, say one standard ebook and one deluxe ebook with illustrations and supplementary material with a slightly higher price? Or is that both presupposing there's an audience in the first place and also splitting that audience if they exist? Or are there additional considerations to not doing that?

Just for a general marketing perspective, you're in no danger of "splitting the market" because, well, it's all your market. However, I'm unsure about the reasoning behind giving people the option of a lesser version unless the deluxe version is some gigantic, resource-hogging megafile. From your perspective, you're doing double the work to give people the option to pay you less money.

If you really do think that the size and splendor of your original work will kill people's computers or something, you might consider a different sort of package deal: one with the megafile alone, and a second, slightly more expensive version with the megafile plus the "reader version." Or just pack 'em together with one SKU and walk away.

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004
Gotcha, makes sense. I'd heard some folks talk about getting dinged for larger file sizes, so I was thinking 30+ illustrations might not be great for the standard version of the book.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

feedmyleg posted:

Gotcha, makes sense. I'd heard some folks talk about getting dinged for larger file sizes, so I was thinking 30+ illustrations might not be great for the standard version of the book.

Everyone not-Kindle doesn't penalise for file size, fwiw, unless it's actually outlandish. (I have illustrations in the ePub that aren't in the Kindle version, for instance.)

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Does anybody here self-publish fantasy? Does it do well as a genre?

I'm asking because I recently uploaded some chapters of a fantasy book to critique sites and got this review back from one of the readers, whose profile lists him as a published author:

"To be brutally honest, this genre was already done to death twenty years ago. No agent will take it on, no publisher will take a punt on it because the market has changed and no-one reads this kind of thing anymore; in short, there's no money in it.
I wish you well, but this is not the one that's going to break you out."

Now I assume that a published author would know more about the industry than I do, but I wasn't aware fantasy was in such a slump.

Bardeh
Dec 2, 2004

Fun Shoe

Ccs posted:

Does anybody here self-publish fantasy? Does it do well as a genre?

I'm asking because I recently uploaded some chapters of a fantasy book to critique sites and got this review back from one of the readers, whose profile lists him as a published author:

"To be brutally honest, this genre was already done to death twenty years ago. No agent will take it on, no publisher will take a punt on it because the market has changed and no-one reads this kind of thing anymore; in short, there's no money in it.
I wish you well, but this is not the one that's going to break you out."

Now I assume that a published author would know more about the industry than I do, but I wasn't aware fantasy was in such a slump.

Take a look at the top 100 fantasy on Kindle here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/158576011/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_digital-text_2_4

I see a whole bunch of YA, a whole bunch of big established names, and a few romance novels. There are also a couple of Lit-RPG novels which seem to be getting more and more popular recently, but I don't see much self-published 'traditional' fantasy. Of course, as ever, that isn't to say that you can't make money publishing it, just that the signs point to the market being smaller and the potential profits not as large as if you wrote in a more popular genre.

I went through and looked at all the books I would consider just plain old fantasy - swords and sorcery sort of stuff (and not published by a huge name like Sanderson or Martin etc) It's not a huge number of books, but they've all got decent overall rankings and are making good money for their authors.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EOSI8JE

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078881QQG

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078JTSTVD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077V1NRRF

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9E6MMM

Bardeh fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Jan 14, 2018

Trustworthy
Dec 28, 2004

with catte-like thread
upon our prey we steal

Ccs posted:

Does anybody here self-publish fantasy? Does it do well as a genre?

I'm asking because I recently uploaded some chapters of a fantasy book to critique sites and got this review back from one of the readers, whose profile lists him as a published author:

"To be brutally honest, this genre was already done to death twenty years ago. No agent will take it on, no publisher will take a punt on it because the market has changed and no-one reads this kind of thing anymore; in short, there's no money in it.
I wish you well, but this is not the one that's going to break you out."

Now I assume that a published author would know more about the industry than I do, but I wasn't aware fantasy was in such a slump.

I mean, I'm a "published author" and I'm a loving idiot; I wouldn't put more stock in that guy's opinion (about the industry, at least) than it deserves. And it sounds like he's oozing with sour grapes. Trad pub fantasy is a tough nut to crack and notoriously doesn't pay most of its authors well, but it's pretty obviously it's not dead. Plenty of publishers put out fantasy, agents take on new fantasy authors, etc. IMO you just have to be very very very awesome+persistent+lucky to get noticed.

Bardeh posted:

Take a look at the top 100 fantasy on Kindle here:

Lindsay Buroker's a fukkin' machine, and makes a good fantasy/sci-fi marketing podcast that aspiring self-pub fantasy authors should probably be listening to.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Trustworthy posted:

Plenty of publishers put out fantasy, agents take on new fantasy authors, etc. IMO you just have to be very very very awesome+persistent+lucky to get noticed.

yeah, in general that's the situation across all artistic endeavours.

In 2018, self-publishing with 0 capital outlay is easy. Both the means of production and the means of distribution are within the reach of everyone with a computer. Same applies to music and video, you're likely to have adequate means of production just on hand and you can put a record out on Bandcamp/Distrokid and a video on YouTube/Vimeo.

But the downside is: you are now in direct, face-to-face competition with every other creator in the whole world. And with every creator in history, to boot.

So the hard part is entirely the promotion. Getting yourself noticed.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

"There's no market for this" is a problem trad publishers with huge overheads have to worry about. There is a market for literally anything on Amazon. It may be small but it's there.

I write zombie fiction set in Australia. It would never get trad published in Australia (no market for it) or in the US (not set in the US, publishers assume Americans won't read it). On Amazon it sells just fine as far as my wallet is concerned, but I can still look at my sales and say a trad publisher would have been right not to take it on because it wouldn't have made enough of a net profit to bother.

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit.

Ccs posted:

Does anybody here self-publish fantasy? Does it do well as a genre?

I'm asking because I recently uploaded some chapters of a fantasy book to critique sites and got this review back from one of the readers, whose profile lists him as a published author:

"To be brutally honest, this genre was already done to death twenty years ago. No agent will take it on, no publisher will take a punt on it because the market has changed and no-one reads this kind of thing anymore; in short, there's no money in it.
I wish you well, but this is not the one that's going to break you out."

Now I assume that a published author would know more about the industry than I do, but I wasn't aware fantasy was in such a slump.

I know of a few self-pubbed fantasy authors making four figures a month. That guy sounds like a complete twat. People definitely still buy fantasy novels.

Bardeh posted:

Take a look at the top 100 fantasy on Kindle here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/158576011/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_digital-text_2_4

I see a whole bunch of YA, a whole bunch of big established names, and a few romance novels. There are also a couple of Lit-RPG novels which seem to be getting more and more popular recently, but I don't see much self-published 'traditional' fantasy. Of course, as ever, that isn't to say that you can't make money publishing it, just that the signs point to the market being smaller and the potential profits not as large as if you wrote in a more popular genre.

I went through and looked at all the books I would consider just plain old fantasy - swords and sorcery sort of stuff (and not published by a huge name like Sanderson or Martin etc) It's not a huge number of books, but they've all got decent overall rankings and are making good money for their authors.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EOSI8JE

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078881QQG

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078JTSTVD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077V1NRRF

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9E6MMM

The top 100 of any huge cat (ie, MST, Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction) is always going to look like what you've described because the only books in the Top 100 of huge cats are absolutely killing it. The books you linked are all doing fantastically well. I would die if I had a book stay in the 500 ranks two months after releasing it. Then again, this author could be pouring money into marketing to keep his/her book up that high.

As a self-pubbed author, you (and I mean "you" in the general sense) should be more concerned with good ranks in hotter sub-categories on Amazon and getting on the right books' also-boughts. That's what'll make a book stick, and what'll bring in the best money.

KrunkMcGrunk fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jan 17, 2018

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit.

Actually, Bardeh illustrated my first point already. He linked book by Lindsay Buroker, and I'm positive she's well into the four-figure, if not five-figure, a month gross income.

Incidentally, Lindsay runs a great podcast about fantasy and scifi marketing.

e: ha, yep. KindleSpy estimates Lindsay's gross income at well above $40,000 a month.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
32-minute podcast interview with me, where I bloviate about what a great book I wrote, how I sold lots of copies - encouraging my FB friends list, Reddit /r/buttcoin and the bitcoin thread over on YOSPOS to be my street team, but mostly sheer luck and timing - and some production process.

BTW, I realised why I've had such a hard time getting journalists to bite: "self published in economics" is a phrase meaning "batshit insane and printed in green ink". I didn't know this until I started getting this stuff in my email. No, a monetary system based on warthog nail clippings is unlikely to work well.

Ktb
Feb 24, 2006

divabot posted:

32-minute podcast interview with me, where I bloviate about what a great book I wrote, how I sold lots of copies - encouraging my FB friends list, Reddit /r/buttcoin and the bitcoin thread over on YOSPOS to be my street team, but mostly sheer luck and timing - and some production process.

BTW, I realised why I've had such a hard time getting journalists to bite: "self published in economics" is a phrase meaning "batshit insane and printed in green ink". I didn't know this until I started getting this stuff in my email. No, a monetary system based on warthog nail clippings is unlikely to work well.

Saw you quoted in a top 10 most read BBC news article today too. Good work!

E: to add that I recognised the name of your book which they mentioned in the article. Hopefully you'll see a nice sales boost from that!

Ktb fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Jan 24, 2018

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Ktb posted:

Saw you quoted in a top 10 most read BBC news article today too. Good work!

E: to add that I recognised the name of your book which they mentioned in the article. Hopefully you'll see a nice sales boost from that!

really, punditry is my lifeblood lately. Rory C-J contacted me, I read and decoded the white paper and precised it for him, then we had to work out what my quote would be. Target audience: ordinary football fans, subclass those who like a bet every now and then. How will they feel when they can't get winnings out? Very annoyed. hence use of words "actual pounds".

actual sales are ticking along, 19 today. THIS IS AWESOME! but not remarkable ...

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
Kindle's print versions will now do proof copies and wholesale author copies - from Europe if you live in Europe!

(so of course I bit the bullet and ordered a box of author copies from CreateSpace in the US yesterday ...)

Hopefully as the process of dismantling CreateSpace continues, they'll port over the cover template generator ...

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme
I managed to get my first Bookbub after doing this for 3.5 years. My whole catalog is now wide and they approved a $2.99 BB for a standalone title that is normally $4.99.

I'm excited and grateful but I've got mixed expectations. I've arranged another half million subscribers via newsletter swaps around it, so this should make a pretty big splash. I think I will put in two chapters of the first in my 9 book series at the end of this book, and I might make that first in series permafree too.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
Good luck, man!

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KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit.

Jalumibnkrayal posted:

I managed to get my first Bookbub after doing this for 3.5 years. My whole catalog is now wide and they approved a $2.99 BB for a standalone title that is normally $4.99.

I'm excited and grateful but I've got mixed expectations. I've arranged another half million subscribers via newsletter swaps around it, so this should make a pretty big splash. I think I will put in two chapters of the first in my 9 book series at the end of this book, and I might make that first in series permafree too.

Congrats!

I had a mystery get a Bookbub in November, and I'm just coming off the sales wave this month.

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