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n8r
Jul 3, 2003

I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar
We've had eBooks and print books associated previously. I wonder if we can have a new version associated, I'm guessing we can.

re: createspace - setup an account and upload the book and order a proof. That's the best way to answer the question. I honestly have no idea how anyone makes money with color unless you do massive print runs.

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moana
Jun 18, 2005

one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web

divabot posted:

this is mostly a case of asking customer service to merge them, isn't it?
Yes, but it could be more advantageous not to link them. Amazon really really really likes new books.

n8r
Jul 3, 2003

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

moana posted:

Yes, but it could be more advantageous not to link them. Amazon really really really likes new books.

Within our market, the reviews are probably more important.

Icon-Cat
Aug 18, 2005

Meow!
As the kids say, Lord help me, I'm back on my bullshit: here's another free story. This… this one's an odd one. FREE through Sunday August 26!

-----
David knows his new girlfriend is out of his league—but he didn’t bargain for out of her mind.

When the spirited and stunning Amy Paxton confesses that sometimes she turns into a raccoon, David assumes that she’s joking. She’s not. (She’s really, really not.) To keep their relationship afloat, he plays along, working overtime to figure out what makes Amy tick… or, failing that, how to accept this inexplicable quirk. But when a test of his loyalties arises, David has to choose between his understanding of the world and the woman he adores.

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 and strange story, he explores the mysterious gap between comprehension and love.



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B07GNBYQM7
-----

I had an interesting experience with the blurb and such on this one. It might prove useful to anyone thinking about blurbs, certainly for people who like to play with genre and tone.

The piece plays out as a very normal relationship story for quite a while and only brings in the off-the-wall stuff (y'know, the turning into a raccoon) later on, and so in early passes of the blurb I was trying to preserve that surprise for the audience, or at least not spoil it so directly. You know how it is, you want them to be surprised. But that element is the core of the whole story… it's not some last-minute twist, it's what most of the story is about. As much as I would love to have the reader come in cold and be thrown for a loop, it's not right to sell unsuspecting folks a normal relationship story and then pull the rug out from under them, I suspect more people would resent that than be delighted. To attempt an analogy, you don't need to tell them who the murderer is, but you gotta tell them it's a murder mystery, no matter how hard you worked up front to make your writing pass as just an ordinary gathering at an English country house on a dark night.

Perhaps it would be one thing if this was a story printed in a magazine or an anthology where all the reader was promised up front was the genre. But selling your product to an individual, well, I guess I gotta be honest with them about what they're in for, so they can decide if they would like it or not. So I bit the bullet. Ah well.

The Fuzzy Hulk
Nov 22, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT CROSSING THE STREAMS


I just got a weird email from Acx. Evidently they have been giving my audiobooks away for free for months and just now discovered it and are going to pay me for it?

The Fuzzy Hulk
Nov 22, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT CROSSING THE STREAMS


The Fuzzy Hulk posted:

I just got a weird email from Acx. Evidently they have been giving my audiobooks away for free for months and just now discovered it and are going to pay me for it?

This is the email, did nobody else get this?

We are contacting you today regarding an update to your ACX earnings. We recently found that due to a technical issue, your audiobook(s) were included in the Kindle Unlimited program in error. We have removed your audiobook(s) from Kindle Unlimited and apologize for the mistake.

For each Kindle Unlimited subscriber who downloaded your audiobook, you will earn the same royalty as you would earn for an a la carte (ALC) sale at list price on Audible. Your earnings from the inclusion in Kindle Unlimited and related download data will be provided to you alongside your July Earnings Reports, which you will receive no later than August 31.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Kindly,
The ACX Team


Bardeh
Dec 2, 2004

Fun Shoe
I published a book! Well, I've published dozens of books, but this is the first one I'd actually want to read.



https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FM9QLH8

Please buy multiple copies so my brother and I can write schlocky action adventure sci-fi full time instead of soul-destroying romance. Thanks.

Bardeh fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Aug 29, 2018

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Icon-Cat posted:

As the kids say, Lord help me, I'm back on my bullshit: here's another free story. This… this one's an odd one. FREE through Sunday August 26!
David knows his new girlfriend is out of his league—but he didn’t bargain for out of her mind.

There you go, a nice review on amazon.co.uk for you. Logrolling, it's what writers live on!

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.
Do we do reading exchanges around here? Is that a thing? I desperately need someone to read a chapter or two of my prototypical sequel and tell me if I've actually got something or let me down gently if it's hopeless.

I don't want editing or anything, just a quick read-through followed by :geno:, :rant:, or :waycool:. Willing to do the same in exchange. Also if there's already a thread for this, I'll edit out and take it there. I just need some amount of feedback that someone's going to give a poo poo about this and I'm not howling into the formless void.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Chokes McGee posted:

Do we do reading exchanges around here? Is that a thing? I desperately need someone to read a chapter or two of my prototypical sequel and tell me if I've actually got something or let me down gently if it's hopeless.

I don't want editing or anything, just a quick read-through followed by :geno:, :rant:, or :waycool:. Willing to do the same in exchange. Also if there's already a thread for this, I'll edit out and take it there. I just need some amount of feedback that someone's going to give a poo poo about this and I'm not howling into the formless void.

ehh, put it somewhere and I guess we can read it?

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.

divabot posted:

ehh, put it somewhere and I guess we can read it?

I found a discord of writer goons kicking around that'll probably do the trick, although now the above post will be left in public view to my EVERLASTING SHAME :negative:

Bizarro Kanyon
Jan 3, 2007

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


Chokes McGee posted:

I found a discord of writer goons kicking around that'll probably do the trick, although now the above post will be left in public view to my EVERLASTING SHAME :negative:

Good luck! If you are wanting to make money off of your book, connect with people and let them give you feedback. If you just want to write, just write.

The only person who read my book before I published it was my wife. Did it hurt the book? Possibly. Did it matter when I got that first physical copy in my hands? No. It felt amazing to hold that book and know that it was something I created.

Fuego Fish
Dec 5, 2004

By tooth and claw!
Promotion and marketing is the one part of this whole thing I am no good at, and a lot of the advice I've gotten has been either outdated by about five years or more, not relevant to the actual topic, or a complete tautology.

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.

Bizarro Kanyon posted:

Good luck! If you are wanting to make money off of your book, connect with people and let them give you feedback. If you just want to write, just write.

The only person who read my book before I published it was my wife. Did it hurt the book? Possibly. Did it matter when I got that first physical copy in my hands? No. It felt amazing to hold that book and know that it was something I created.

apparently I can't do either lmao

I just had to toss 30k because it was pretty goddamn bad, and I decided it was time to stop fooling myself. I just hit the reboot button on my sequel and the words are coming way freer, and I'm still pretty sure it all sucks. How the hell are you supposed to ease people into an established world for an action novel? The only thing I've come up with is toss them into a fight off the bat and then promptly lose the readers who weren't here for the first book who have no clue what's happening. :sigh:

Bardeh
Dec 2, 2004

Fun Shoe

Chokes McGee posted:

apparently I can't do either lmao

I just had to toss 30k because it was pretty goddamn bad, and I decided it was time to stop fooling myself. I just hit the reboot button on my sequel and the words are coming way freer, and I'm still pretty sure it all sucks. How the hell are you supposed to ease people into an established world for an action novel? The only thing I've come up with is toss them into a fight off the bat and then promptly lose the readers who weren't here for the first book who have no clue what's happening. :sigh:

Why not have a chapter of setting/staging before the fight that eases people in? This doesn't really seem like an impossible conundrum to solve...

And if the flow of the story doesn't allow for that (first book ended on a major cliffhanger just as the fight started) then just put in a little recap section as a prologue or an author's note before the book starts.

Frame it like a 'Previously on....' in a TV show.

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.

Bardeh posted:

Why not have a chapter of setting/staging before the fight that eases people in? This doesn't really seem like an impossible conundrum to solve...

I tried that. The response I got back was "this is boring, I want action." You know what happens when I do that? The feedback is "this is like cold water, I need something to ease me in." Argh.

quote:

And if the flow of the story doesn't allow for that (first book ended on a major cliffhanger just as the fight started) then just put in a little recap section as a prologue or an author's note before the book starts.

I'm trying to avoid "*record scratch* you're probably wondering how I got here" but I'm thinking a less obvious variation of it is the way to go. :shrug:

Fuego Fish
Dec 5, 2004

By tooth and claw!

Chokes McGee posted:

I'm trying to avoid "*record scratch* you're probably wondering how I got here" but I'm thinking a less obvious variation of it is the way to go. :shrug:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfmqSOr2-NY

BBQ Dave
Jun 17, 2012

Well, that's easy for you to say. You have a bad imagination. It's stupid. I live in a fantasy world.

Ok! Look out world 72 hours.... publishing my first ebook.

Thanks to everyone here for advice and encouragement. Count have done it without y’all.
Edit:
It’s up!

BBQ Dave fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Sep 6, 2018

Icon-Cat
Aug 18, 2005

Meow!

divabot posted:

There you go, a nice review on amazon.co.uk for you. Logrolling, it's what writers live on!

Wow! I appreciate that, boss! (Sorry I'm late to this, was away for our holiday weekend and still catching up on all the Internet I missed.)

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

BBQ Dave posted:

Ok! Look out world 72 hours.... publishing my first ebook.

Thanks to everyone here for advice and encouragement. Count have done it without y’all.

gi's amazon link when it's up, and your keywords to search on - Amazon notices that poo poo

BBQ Dave
Jun 17, 2012

Well, that's easy for you to say. You have a bad imagination. It's stupid. I live in a fantasy world.

divabot posted:

gi's amazon link when it's up, and your keywords to search on - Amazon notices that poo poo

I don't understand! You mean post it here?

Edit:
http://a.co/d/1QJVpBV

5 people bought it already!

BBQ Dave fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Sep 7, 2018

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

BBQ Dave posted:


5 people bought it already!

:dance:

feels good doesn't it

edit: and three reviews!

Bardeh
Dec 2, 2004

Fun Shoe

BBQ Dave posted:

I don't understand! You mean post it here?

Edit:
http://a.co/d/1QJVpBV

5 people bought it already!

Oh sweet, I remember this book! It looks great, glad you finally published it :) Have you booked some promo for it?

Also, your Look Inside section is great - really grabs the attention and makes me want to read more. Buuuut, I spotted a few typos and mistakes just on the first couple of pages. It could be worth finding someone to do a proofread for you.







Sorry if this comes across as me making GBS threads on your book, because I'm absolutely not - I think your book looks awesome. But little mistakes like these at the start of the book can be enough for pickier people to not take a chance on a self-published novel.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Bardeh posted:

Sorry if this comes across as me making GBS threads on your book, because I'm absolutely not - I think your book looks awesome. But little mistakes like these at the start of the book can be enough for pickier people to not take a chance on a self-published novel.

it's nice that you can do stealth-edit typo updates much more easily with ebooks ;-)

(also generally a good idea - Kindle readers do report this stuff as defects, and you get an "alert!" sign on your book page)

BBQ Dave
Jun 17, 2012

Well, that's easy for you to say. You have a bad imagination. It's stupid. I live in a fantasy world.

[

Bardeh posted:

Oh sweet, I remember this book! It looks great, glad you finally published it :) Have you booked some promo for it?

Also, your Look Inside section is great - really grabs the attention and makes me want to read more. Buuuut, I spotted a few typos and mistakes just on the first couple of pages. It could be worth finding someone to do a proofread for you.







Sorry if this comes across as me making GBS threads on your book, because I'm absolutely not - I think your book looks awesome. But little mistakes like these at the start of the book can be enough for pickier people to not take a chance on a self-published novel.

Bardeh posted:

Oh sweet, I remember this book! It looks great, glad you finally published it :) Have you booked some promo for it?

Also, your Look Inside section is great - really grabs the attention and makes me want to read more. Buuuut, I spotted a few typos and mistakes just on the first couple of pages. It could be worth finding someone to do a proofread for you.







Sorry if this comes across as me making GBS threads on your book, because I'm absolutely not - I think your book looks awesome. But little mistakes like these at the start of the book can be enough for pickier people to not take a chance on a self-published novel.

No no no thanks, I need this. Much appreciated.
[/quote]

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004
Speaking of, I've still got another draft to go before I'll need it, but can anyone give me a sense of how much it'll be to hire a decent independent editor for a ~75,000 word book?

Icon-Cat
Aug 18, 2005

Meow!

feedmyleg posted:

Speaking of, I've still got another draft to go before I'll need it, but can anyone give me a sense of how much it'll be to hire a decent independent editor for a ~75,000 word book?

I worked with Andrea at areditorial.com on an 81,000-word novel. For $2K I got a developmental edit letter on the whole thing, little notes throughout the whole thing, a line edit on (I think) 25 pages and a lengthy phone call.

I submit that to you merely as one price point; she comes out of the Big Five publishers with a lot of experience and bestsellers and such under her belt. Someone who hasn't might be cheaper, who knows.

She was a total professional who truly understood my weird work and made it better on its own terms, and I remember working with her very fondly; in fact, I reached out to her to see about hiring her for something further just today. If your book is in her wheelhouse I would highly recommend her; tell her Adam Bertocci sent ya.

Icon-Cat fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Sep 8, 2018

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme
I pay mine $120 to fix up a 50k romance novel, but that's mostly just grammar and clarity.

Axel Serenity
Sep 27, 2002
I would also stress how important a physical copy can be. It doesn't have to be a hardback proof or anything; a printout from FedEx would work just as well. But, seeing words on paper can allow you to see things that your eyes just kind of glaze over on a screen for whatever reason.

My second book comes out next week. I'm pretty excited. But, I've been gung-ho this past week on line-edits because there were a lot of things I noticed in the hardback that I don't remember from the digital editions. Depending on how you write and what programs you use, a lot of poo poo can get messed up during C&P, file transfers, etc. due to fonts and other technical mumbo-jumbo (I had one paragraph, and one paragraph only, in 80k words where all the punctuation had been switched somehow to Arabic, so it had no apostrophes and used arrows instead. I still don't know how this happened and never would have caught it if I was not releasing in hardcover.)

BBQ Dave
Jun 17, 2012

Well, that's easy for you to say. You have a bad imagination. It's stupid. I live in a fantasy world.

Bardeh posted:

I published a book! Well, I've published dozens of books, but this is the first one I'd actually want to read.

I bought a copy and read the first chapter. Nice fight scene and immediate moral conflict! Really establishes character and gets it going.

Anyhoo, I've got fourteen copies sold (whoop!). Working on book 2, it's all outlined, 27 chapters 4 done. Meantime I'd like to do some FB marketing and maybe lower the price to .99 in a couple months as suggested.

I stealth edited the typos mentioned above, thank you. Gonna go through it one more time before marketing.

Any critique on my keywords and categories?
Keywords:
Horror, Lovecraft, Mystery, Action, Comedy, Supernatural, Small town
Categories:
Horror
Action Adventure

Also, what's up with KDP select? Should I get this up in every market I can? How much work is all that?

Thanks again for all the help

BBQ Dave fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Sep 14, 2018

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

BBQ Dave posted:

Any critique on my keywords and categories?
Keywords:
Horror, Lovecraft, Mystery, Action, Comedy, Supernatural, Small town

Think of your seven keyword sections as opportunities to stuff them to the gills with any relevant search terms. It's 50 characters per field, so 350 characters total. How would a customer stumble upon your book or _similar_ books? What tropes are present in your book?

You can also use your keyword field to put in keywords which will slot you into extra categories:

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201216150

(You can also reach out to KDP support directly and ask them to put you into categories you think your book would be appropriate in)

quote:

Categories:
Horror
Action Adventure

If it's a book you want to actively promote, the organic boost of being in the top 20 of your most niche genre is very powerful. It's one of the only ways someone can stumble upon your book by browsing. So you should find the most niche genre category you think readers would like your book and make sure you're in it. You can spend a thousand dollars in a day on ads in one category and not break into the top 20, and in another category you can spend fifty dollars and hit #1. The customers in the former category might be spending a million dollars a day and the latter's might only be spending a thousand, though.

quote:

Also, what's up with KDP select? Should I get this up in every market I can? How much work is all that?

Thanks again for all the help

KDP Select is synonymous with Kindle Unlimited. This means if you enroll in KDP Select, your book is also in the Kindle Unlimited program. Your ebooks in KDP select must be EXCLUSIVE to Amazon for each 90 day term they're enrolled/renewed. You can't have KDP Select ebooks available for sale/download anywhere else on the internet. No iTunes, no B&N, no KOBO, no Google, no Smashwords, etc. Worldwide.

So Kindle Unlimited is the big all-you-can-read program customers can sign pay $10/month for. You get paid every time someone reads a page, and right now the payment rate is $0.0045 or so (yeah, half a penny). It changes every month but usually stays in a 10% range. Plus what Amazon considers a page is more generous than most of our formatting software, so a 200 page book might count as 300 pages, for instance. Some people make zero dollars a month in this system, others make six figures per month. In addition to KU, KDP Select also gives you two promotional opportunities that renew every 90 days. One is five days of free, the other is five days of reduced price.

In the past people used to debut a book in KU for the first 90 days, then put the book "wide" at all the retailers. I don't think this plan is good for long term success, as your wide audience will feel irked that they have to wait 90 days for the book on their marketplace. I've been wide for a year and now charge $5.99 for my novels and $6.99 for my box sets of short stories. This means I can spend significantly more to attract a customer than someone who is depending on a full Kindle Unlimited read payout of $1.08 (for instance).

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Can someone explain to me what exactly the chicken littles at Kboards are panicking about now?

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

freebooter posted:

Can someone explain to me what exactly the chicken littles at Kboards are panicking about now?

Some company bought Kboards and their MO is to fill it full of clickbait ads to squeeze anything they can out of it ASAP. They have a track record of doing this back to 2008 I read. There's also something in the TOS which talks about them having the right to take anything you post (including your book covers) and use them for...something. My first take on it was it was the common boilerplate that let them run ads on Google Adwords and other networks, but everyone is pretty much bailing on the place now.

Bardeh
Dec 2, 2004

Fun Shoe
It looks like the boards got sold to some company, and the ToS got updated to include the following passage:

quote:

You agree to grant to KBOARDS.COM a non exclusive, royalty free, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual license to reproduce, distribute, transmit, sublicense, create derivative works of, publicly display, publish and perform any materials and other information you submit to any public areas, chat rooms, bulletin boards, newsgroups or forums of KBOARDS.COM or which you provide by email or any other means to KBOARDS.COM and in any media now known or hereafter developed. Further, you grant to KBOARDS.COM the right to use your name and or user name in connection with the submitted materials and other information as well as in connection with all advertising, marketing and promotional material related thereto, together with use on any other VerticalScope Inc. web sites. You agree that you shall have no recourse against VerticalScope Inc. for any alleged or actual infringement or misappropriation of any proprietary right in your communications to KBOARDS.COM.

So uh, yeah, yikes I'm not surprised longterm members are leaving in droves.

LionArcher
Mar 29, 2010


Bardeh posted:

It looks like the boards got sold to some company, and the ToS got updated to include the following passage:


So uh, yeah, yikes I'm not surprised longterm members are leaving in droves.

Yeah. The boards get super critical of dumb poo poo (like mirroring and other things plenty of people did) but they were a good hub for info, and talking to some of the bigs about stuff. Everyone’s moving over to another board there, and it seems chill.

Steely Dad
Jul 29, 2006



What other board?

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

Dadliest Worrier posted:

What other board?

Some Kboards users formed writersanctum.com.

Edit: looks like they're having tech difficulties at the moment.

Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Sep 21, 2018

Bizarro Kanyon
Jan 3, 2007

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


I went to my first author/book convention today. My wife was the one going in order for her to meet her favorite authors. She brought me along to 1)network with other people in the literary field and 2) carry her books.

It was interesting but almost all of the books were in the romance, paranormal, sci fi or fantasy so I do not know if my book (young adult drama) would even be noticed there if I put up a table next year.

I did run into some people who offered editing services. One was a two person team where one person edited for content and the other person edits for grammar and syntax. They said that their services ranged in cost from $450-700 PER PERSON! Another lady offered to do it for $140 (2 times however many words you write so 25,000 words would be $50). drat, the first one seems really expensive but the second one seems too cheap.

Also, the whole thing was put on by an Independent Author group called Red Coat Public Relations. They push to help indie authors get connected and promote books (also, the whole convention had several raffles, dances and parties that were specifically to help children with autism so that was a definite benefit for the weekend)

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Does editing for content mean critiquing plot points that don't make sense or places where the story drags, etc? Cause it would make sense to have that done first because it could lead to substantial rewrites that would then need to be edited from grammar and syntax all over again.

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Bizarro Kanyon
Jan 3, 2007

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


Yeah. It deals with plot, pacing and consistency.

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