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freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

feedmyleg posted:

Overall I think it looks really good, it's a nice clean composition that fits with your first cover well. If you went with that I think you'd be golden. But to nitpick since you asked, I don't love how the bottom edge of the moon is fully blown out and blends into the clouds, especially with how clear the subject is in comparison. The moon also appears to be using exact same source as the first book cover, which might link them together in a positive way but feels a touch lazy when looking at them side-by-side. The biggest thing for me, though, is that the werewolf's face is a bit too wolf-like. Maybe in your text that's how werewolves look and you want to stick to it, but when scanning across it I think the face could look more monstrous so it reads more as a supernatural creature on first glance instead of an animal. Right now it's not until I stop and look at the details of the body that I see that. Also, just a thought that may be unnecessary: there's nothing to indicate that this werewolf is, in fact, on the western front. I'm assuming that's referring to World War I, so is there any way you could have some detail from the war make it in there? Is that a trench behind the werewolf? If so, some barbed wire or parados perhaps? Again, just a scannability thing to reinforce what makes your book cool and unique compared to any other werewolf story.


moana posted:

Disagree, white is better on this cover and black will bleed into that border in not a good way. Background just needs to be darkened a bit.

The first cover is perfect, the second one struggles to keep the same legibility with a white background image, black title, and a black border. Consistency in a series is hard to pull off unless the background images match up contrast-wise. If I were the designer, I would move everything down a smootch, move the moon way down so it's half hidden by the wolf, and mimic the first cover with light text.

Thanks guys - this is the specific kind of stuff I have no eye for whatsoever, I'll suggest some of it to her.

Re: the Western Front thing I didn't really emphasise that to her in the brief; the title is much older than what the story grew into, and takes place on a quiet sector in the front for only about the first act before moving on to other places.

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Camo Guitar
Jul 15, 2009
If you're running Amazon ads for your books, you can finally see it any of your ads clicked have earned you any KENDP. One 30 cent ad gave me a full book read last night - new mansion here I come!*

*Not that I have an old mansion currently but you get the point..

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
Finished what I hope is my final draft on Charred. This last draft was just the most rote line editing you could do with very little fun things like additions or twisting stuff.

Hopefully that means that I'm done with it though. It's as done as I can get it, if nothing else. Passed it off to the editor and others

a pale ghost
Dec 31, 2008

I wrote a story in the style of Edward Gorey (kids' style rhyming set to morbid themes) and I want to get it published. I want it to be an illustrated book, should I find an illustrator first or work on the publishing aspect first?

LiterallyATomato
Mar 17, 2009

How do you find ebooks on Amazon that are specifically Amazon (self)-published?

EDIT: I'm curious to see what self-published works are popular.

LiterallyATomato fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Aug 26, 2020

Breath Ray
Nov 19, 2010

a pale ghost posted:

I wrote a story in the style of Edward Gorey (kids' style rhyming set to morbid themes) and I want to get it published. I want it to be an illustrated book, should I find an illustrator first or work on the publishing aspect first?

I'd do both

Gologle
Apr 15, 2013

The Gologle Posting Experience.

<3
Hi everyone, I see it's been a while since a post was made here but hopefully people are still around to help out. After 6 years, I'm gearing up to publish my second short story to KDP (woo, it only took 6 years for my SECOND EVER OFFICIAL STORY). Now, I know as a short story and as an unknown author it likely won't sell all that well, but I still want to give it every chance I can. I'm planning on taking this more seriously than I did 6 years ago, so any advice given now can only help me and others later on. So, I guess I'll go down the list of questions in stream of thought, anyone and everyone feel free to respond to any item below:

1. My current plan of action is to put out a bunch of short stories first, get a good quantity out there for a nice backlog, before trying my hand at an actual novel. Most of my short stories are anywhere between 5k to 15k words. What should I price them as? I remember a year or so ago the advice was to put them all out, regardless of length, at $2.99, is this still true?

2. A few years ago, the advice that I saw in regards to Kindle Select was "don't" because when you publish your stories to KS, Amazon has exclusive rights to the work for a certain period of time and you cannot publish it anywhere else. I was told this can be a problem if the work is somehow reproduced somewhere else, Amazon finds out about it, and decides to ban your account or withhold funds or something. Has that changed?

3. Is Amazon still the main publishing route to go?

4. How can I promote my works? I don't have much of a social media presence because I despise social media, but I'm willing to try if it only involves minimal interaction with those platforms.

5. I worked on the cover myself with a friend's help, because I'm poor and unwilling to pay for even the cheapest covers found on goonwrite.com. I do plan to change this once I get more money going, however many months that takes, because I'm aware that a professionally done cover and editing are both good investments. My question now is the cover we ended up designing is small, very small. The ideal dimensions Amazon recommends is 1600x2560, this cover is like less than 400x250 or something like that. My friend, who does have some expertise publishing on Kindle, assured me size is not that important on a Kindle/ebook reader because of the thumbnail, but I want to check that with others first, because it feels like a big deal, how are people going to notice my book if it's got a small cover? But if I try to resize the image, it of course looks blown out and terrible.

6. Again, I absolutely plan on getting a professional cover artist down the line, but for now, for my first few short stories, are Canva and GIMP good platforms to use? What meager talents I had with Photoshop wasted away years ago, and I wasn't that big on it anyway. Canva sounds nice on paper for my kind of people.

7. The blurb. I have one done, and I'd like a third party to review it and see if it's suitable. To give context to it, I'm just going to copy and paste the description of the story I sent my friend here:

quote:

So this story was created during a time when zombies were all the rage, again, this was like 5 years ago. You had video games and TV shows like The Walking Dead on AMC and crap; you couldn't get away from it. And I just got. SICK. of it. Zombies for me were so played out by then. So I decided to write a story kind of taking the piss of the genre, by trying to play it straight. Instead of ONE apocalypse, here's a world that went through FOUR end-of-the-world scenarios! First, magic invades the real world, then a zombie plague, then aliens attack, then a supervirus hits (surprisingly prophetic, huh?).

This short story is part one of two, the plan at the moment is to get this one uploaded and then start editing the second short story and sell it separate. If I have any interest in coming back to this setting, I could possibly do a whole short story series in it, but I don't know yet and I don't want to think too far ahead. This tale might be a little grim, but again, that's the point, so don't take it too harshly.

So, I am aware that I am mixing genres here, something frowned upon, but I wanted to do it despite that, since again, this story likely won't sell well anyway, and I find things I write just the sake of writing them rather than purely to sell come out better in terms of quality. Here's the actual blurb I have so far:

quote:

The world ended. And then ended again.

Standing on the edge of an alternate Earth, one of the greatest necromancers in this dying world recalls the life of tragedy he has lived, to the only man who can understand him. The man sent to kill him.

A new, grimly fantastical work by up and coming author [Gologle] that takes you through the end of a world, showcasing the spirit of human perseverance...right up to the breaking point.

I understand blurbs shouldn't be too long, but I'm worried that it's too short, honestly. Thoughts?

8. Like I said in the description, I put enough alluded background details and plot into the story that I could make it into a series if I wanted to. And since the two short stories I'm planning on uploaded from this are a sort of package deal that I'm splitting in the name of profit, would it be a good idea to put the books together as a series (like Book 1 of 2, or however many I might make?) But I don't know if series' sell well. Down the line, I do plan to make them a bundle too.

9. My interest is mainly in fantasy fiction, but the only recent fantasy fiction I've read is The Dresden Files, which is urban fantasy. I don't mind doing urban fantasy, of course, but what I want is recommendations on other modern fantasy books to read and research. Most of the material that inspired me, other than Lord of the Rings of course, is from the 80's and 90's, stuff like Moorcock and Zelazny and such. I still love them, I still think of them fondly, but they're dated, and if I want to get a feel for the current trends I need to read modern stuff that isn't garbage.

Sorry if it's tl;dr, but I appreciate any and all help and advice people can give me.

Zaepho
Oct 31, 2013

I can at least help out on a couple of these questions

Gologle posted:

2. A few years ago, the advice that I saw in regards to Kindle Select was "don't" because when you publish your stories to KS, Amazon has exclusive rights to the work for a certain period of time and you cannot publish it anywhere else. I was told this can be a problem if the work is somehow reproduced somewhere else, Amazon finds out about it, and decides to ban your account or withhold funds or something. Has that changed?
When you put your work into Kindle Unlimited, you give Amazon Exclusive Rights to distribute the work in ebook form. You MAY sell paperbacks, hardbacks, or audio books through other means. However, single physical short stories are unlikely to sell beyond the family circle, unless you're already a big name author. Anthologies generally have a chance to break even on production costs, but typically only if it's a group of authors.

Gologle posted:

3. Is Amazon still the main publishing route to go?
The 800 pound gorilla has continued to maintain its weight class. Yes, as your primary focus. But don't discount bigger distributors like Kobo to get your work to a wider audience.

Gologle posted:

4. How can I promote my works? I don't have much of a social media presence because I despise social media, but I'm willing to try if it only involves minimal interaction with those platforms.
Facebook ads, Kindle ads, Blog, Newsletter, Twitch Stream, Twitter maybe. It's moved very quickly over the last few years to a pay-to-play system. In other words, you really need to buy ads if you want your books found by anyone outside of your immediate circle. Social media is powerful as you start to grow fans because they want access to you. A newsletter and an author website are your absolute best bets as you first start out.

Gologle posted:

5. I worked on the cover myself with a friend's help, because I'm poor and unwilling to pay for even the cheapest covers found on goonwrite.com. I do plan to change this once I get more money going, however many months that takes, because I'm aware that a professionally done cover and editing are both good investments. My question now is the cover we ended up designing is small, very small. The ideal dimensions Amazon recommends is 1600x2560, this cover is like less than 400x250 or something like that. My friend, who does have some expertise publishing on Kindle, assured me size is not that important on a Kindle/ebook reader because of the thumbnail, but I want to check that with others first, because it feels like a big deal, how are people going to notice my book if it's got a small cover? But if I try to resize the image, it of course looks blown out and terrible.
The cover is arguably the single most important feature of the book on Amazon. I would find a way to make it Kindle's minimum size requirements. I'm surprised they even accepted it. If it doesn't fit, they'll tell you.

Gologle posted:

6. Again, I absolutely plan on getting a professional cover artist down the line, but for now, for my first few short stories, are Canva and GIMP good platforms to use? What meager talents I had with Photoshop wasted away years ago, and I wasn't that big on it anyway. Canva sounds nice on paper for my kind of people.
Lots of authors who make their own covers use Canva.

Gologle posted:

8. Like I said in the description, I put enough alluded background details and plot into the story that I could make it into a series if I wanted to. And since the two short stories I'm planning on uploaded from this are a sort of package deal that I'm splitting in the name of profit, would it be a good idea to put the books together as a series (like Book 1 of 2, or however many I might make?) But I don't know if series' sell well. Down the line, I do plan to make them a bundle too.
Series are the only way to go if you're self publishing fiction. I would throw the short stories up, because you really don't have anything to lose. But once you have a series ready to go, take the short stories down and offer them as free incentive for joining your newsletter.

Gologle
Apr 15, 2013

The Gologle Posting Experience.

<3
Thanks for the fast response. That's a very good idea about the short story incentive to joining the newsletter, I think once I get more established I will go that route. What should I be using to get a newsletter together? I know nothing about them at the moment.

Zaepho
Oct 31, 2013

Gologle posted:

Thanks for the fast response. That's a very good idea about the short story incentive to joining the newsletter, I think once I get more established I will go that route. What should I be using to get a newsletter together? I know nothing about them at the moment.

Mailchimp is an easy enough option. Make sure you do double opt in and have an easy unsubscribe link in the footer.

Fate Accomplice
Nov 30, 2006




I'm going to answer as many of these as I can but take heed that my answers may be out of date - I haven't been publishing new stuff for a couple years.

Gologle posted:

1. My current plan of action is to put out a bunch of short stories first, get a good quantity out there for a nice backlog, before trying my hand at an actual novel. Most of my short stories are anywhere between 5k to 15k words. What should I price them as? I remember a year or so ago the advice was to put them all out, regardless of length, at $2.99, is this still true?

outside of a very specific niche, erotica, readers don't pay for single short stories. They also don't pay for collections of short stories unless you're Ted Chiang or famous

Gologle posted:

2. A few years ago, the advice that I saw in regards to Kindle Select was "don't" because when you publish your stories to KS, Amazon has exclusive rights to the work for a certain period of time and you cannot publish it anywhere else. I was told this can be a problem if the work is somehow reproduced somewhere else, Amazon finds out about it, and decides to ban your account or withhold funds or something. Has that changed?

it seems unlikely to me that your work will be reproduced somewhere else without you doing so. they don't ban you because people pirate your books - all of my books are available on book download sites.

Gologle posted:

3. Is Amazon still the main publishing route to go?

yes

Gologle posted:

4. How can I promote my works? I don't have much of a social media presence because I despise social media, but I'm willing to try if it only involves minimal interaction with those platforms.

mailing list, paid ads, collaboration with other similar genre authors.

Gologle posted:

5. I worked on the cover myself with a friend's help, because I'm poor and unwilling to pay for even the cheapest covers found on goonwrite.com. I do plan to change this once I get more money going, however many months that takes, because I'm aware that a professionally done cover and editing are both good investments. My question now is the cover we ended up designing is small, very small. The ideal dimensions Amazon recommends is 1600x2560, this cover is like less than 400x250 or something like that. My friend, who does have some expertise publishing on Kindle, assured me size is not that important on a Kindle/ebook reader because of the thumbnail, but I want to check that with others first, because it feels like a big deal, how are people going to notice my book if it's got a small cover? But if I try to resize the image, it of course looks blown out and terrible.

make it the highest definition image you can that fits the 16x25.6 ratio.

a homemade cover remains a huge mistake. you're already behind the 8 ball trying to publish a single short story.

Gologle posted:

6. Again, I absolutely plan on getting a professional cover artist down the line, but for now, for my first few short stories, are Canva and GIMP good platforms to use? What meager talents I had with Photoshop wasted away years ago, and I wasn't that big on it anyway. Canva sounds nice on paper for my kind of people.

I don't have an opinion on platform but unless you are a graphic designer do not make your own cover.

It's been said in this thread before, but unless you are famous for your writing, your cover is more important to your sales than the words in your book.

Gologle posted:

7. The blurb. I have one done, and I'd like a third party to review it and see if it's suitable. To give context to it, I'm just going to copy and paste the description of the story I sent my friend here:

as a reader I'm not going to have access to your context, so it doesn't matter.

Gologle posted:

So, I am aware that I am mixing genres here, something frowned upon, but I wanted to do it despite that, since again, this story likely won't sell well anyway, and I find things I write just the sake of writing them rather than purely to sell come out better in terms of quality. Here's the actual blurb I have so far:

I understand blurbs shouldn't be too long, but I'm worried that it's too short, honestly. Thoughts?

make it more immediate. even if the story is about an old man reminiscing, don't talk about that in your blurb. make it exciting. just cause he's talking to his would-be assassin isn't enough.

Gologle posted:

8. Like I said in the description, I put enough alluded background details and plot into the story that I could make it into a series if I wanted to. And since the two short stories I'm planning on uploaded from this are a sort of package deal that I'm splitting in the name of profit, would it be a good idea to put the books together as a series (like Book 1 of 2, or however many I might make?) But I don't know if series' sell well. Down the line, I do plan to make them a bundle too.

don't do anything with short stories in the name of profit except give them away for free.

Gologle posted:

9. My interest is mainly in fantasy fiction, but the only recent fantasy fiction I've read is The Dresden Files, which is urban fantasy. I don't mind doing urban fantasy, of course, but what I want is recommendations on other modern fantasy books to read and research. Most of the material that inspired me, other than Lord of the Rings of course, is from the 80's and 90's, stuff like Moorcock and Zelazny and such. I still love them, I still think of them fondly, but they're dated, and if I want to get a feel for the current trends I need to read modern stuff that isn't garbage.

Sorry if it's tl;dr, but I appreciate any and all help and advice people can give me.

I got nothing for you here, not my genres

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Short stories are a hard enough sell in anthology format, let alone individually packaged. Just because it's an Amazon ebook doesn't mean people are happy to pay for something 20 pages long. They will not sell. Or they'll sell and you'll get angry 1-star reviews from people who thought it was a novel.

How long are these stories? You talk about maybe spinning them into a series. What is your word count here and can you merge them into something more akin to a short novel?

Re: cover (once you actually have something worth investing and trying to publish) I recommend this designer to you and to anybody else lurking who's wary of shelling out too much money on a venture that may not give return on investment:

https://www.alchemybookcovers.com/clients

This is the service I used for my first series which still sells great.


Gologle posted:

2. A few years ago, the advice that I saw in regards to Kindle Select was "don't" because when you publish your stories to KS, Amazon has exclusive rights to the work for a certain period of time and you cannot publish it anywhere else. I was told this can be a problem if the work is somehow reproduced somewhere else, Amazon finds out about it, and decides to ban your account or withhold funds or something. Has that changed?

That period of time is 90 days which is a hell of a lot more generous than any traditional publisher would ask exclusive rights for. You don't have to worry about your work being published elsewhere - everything gets automatically pirated but Amazon only cares if you're uploading to Kobo or whatever.

The actual decision to make about Select is that it prevents you from publishing at Kobo, Apple etc, and you have to decide whether getting money from readers using Select (which pays something like half a cent per page read) is enough to offset that. It also eats into your own sales from Amazon users, though this can sometimes be a good thing. For example my first series has a box set which is $9.99, from which I get $7 of each sale. But it's so long that if somebody reads it all the way through on Select, I make $12. So that's actually better for me. On the other hand I have two books out in a new series, both of which are rather short, and I make significantly less money if people read them on Select. (And if an Amazon user has Select, they have no incentive not to us it, since they're already paying for it). So I'm considering taking those out of Select, and honestly the only reason I haven't done so yet is because I'm too lazy to learn how to publish to a whole slew of extra sites.

tl;dr - Select is a better bet for longer works, not shorter ones

Gologle
Apr 15, 2013

The Gologle Posting Experience.

<3
Together the two stories are about 25k words, if I combine them I may be able to sell it as a short novella and raise the price to 3.99, perhaps. That means I'll have to alter the cover too, though. I had a nice dynamic cover in mind for the second story, which is more action heavy, I could try to spin one out and see how it goes. I'll look into mailchimp, as well as bookmark that alchemy link, thanks. I'll work on the blurb a little more too.

n8r
Jul 3, 2003

I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar
Have you ever purchased a short story? Me neither.

Fate Accomplice
Nov 30, 2006




n8r posted:

Have you ever purchased a short story? Me neither.

I was planning on coming back to this thread to ask the same question.


Also me neither.

Gologle
Apr 15, 2013

The Gologle Posting Experience.

<3
I have purchased collections, as well as a handful of novellas from local authors, but yes, I see what you mean. It seems I'll have to work on merging them after all, which is fine, they were intended to be read together all along, I just thought they might make a slightly bigger penny separate.

Camo Guitar
Jul 15, 2009

Gologle posted:

Thanks for the fast response. That's a very good idea about the short story incentive to joining the newsletter, I think once I get more established I will go that route. What should I be using to get a newsletter together? I know nothing about them at the moment.

I never planned to write a short story this year until I read about another author having great success in building their mailing list and thought 'well I really don't have anything to lose here do I? (Because my list was zero at the time)'. So my process was:

1. I wrote a 17k novella, set just before my series kicked off. Took me a week and a half and it was a nice distraction from working on the third of my series. At the end of it, I included a link to the first in the series.

2. I put it up in Amazon KDP but didn't enroll it in Select so I could still be able to host it/give it away somewhere else. I set it at 99 cents and still managed two buys so far.

3. I signed up to StoryOrigin (it's free and incredibly helpful for new writers) and set it as a reader magnet. People could now come along and download it for a read, once they signed up to my mailing list (set up through MailChimp)

4. StoryOrigin has tonnes of free promos you can be a part of, including ones solely for building your list. Through a couple of these promos over the last month, a new name appears on my mailing list every couple of days. I'm at 40 and counting which is a great start.

So if you have the time, write a short purely to build your list. And if you make any coin from it, so much the better.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Gologle posted:

Together the two stories are about 25k words, if I combine them I may be able to sell it as a short novella and raise the price to 3.99, perhaps. That means I'll have to alter the cover too, though. I had a nice dynamic cover in mind for the second story, which is more action heavy, I could try to spin one out and see how it goes. I'll look into mailchimp, as well as bookmark that alchemy link, thanks. I'll work on the blurb a little more too.

50k words is fine - and it'd be a short novel, not a novella. Much more workable than trying to sell something that's 25k words. I'd price it at $2.99, though, not $3.99.

Spokes
Jan 9, 2010

Thanks for a MONSTER of an avatar, Awful Survivor Mods!
Speaking of 50k, the Facebook group 20booksTo50k has all the answers if you feel like your questions have been asked a million times before, especially regarding “how do I sell more copies / make money”

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
*puff puff* finished draft of the second book !!!!! :dance:

the first book was ridiculously successful (11,000+ sales self-published - I have published friends who went "holy poo poo" at that) 'cos I accidentally timed a niche perfectly - it was about why bitcoin is stupid, and came out as the 2017 bitcoin bubble was accelerating

the second probably won't do as well - but it's a bit more mainstream, it's about Facebook's dumb cryptocurrency idea Libra

Writing method: start, write 40k words of text that wasn't a book but nevertheless had hundreds of footnotes. Have writer's block for three months. Mind-map ideas, make those an outline. Start a word count thread on Twitter, post to it EVERY DAY. This last worked.

Currently circulating the draft amongst friends and fans. It's here if you're overwhelmed with curiosity.

So I hope to have this out as soon as possible. ... I don't even have the title fixed yet. Working title is "Libra Unbalanced" but I don't like it. Also, my cover artist is AWOL *aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa* Also, I need a cover idea that won't get Facebook suing me for trademark violation. (yes yes I know nominative use but this will absolutely piss them off a whole lot in finely needling detail)

also I have to organise the promotion, get the serious people in serious financial publications to cover it (i.e. work my contacts - I've spent the past three years being a media pundit at every opportunity, for this moment) - now having flashbacks to the first weeks of the first book being out ... did u kno that publishers actually do things, and if you don't have one then you have to do them all?

also I should create the Amazon listing and rack up some presales

also laying out the print version

also I will need to record the audiobook without trashing my voice

*AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA*

So! pretty normal for self-publishing really!

the first book did well and made me the go-to media guy for this cryptocurrency nonsense. I have had a flat zero inquiries from publishers or agents, in three years. I'm figuring a lot of common ideas on the publishing world are basically myths, and nobody knows anything.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

I have no advice for you - I suspect you're the most successful and accomplished of any of us who still post here - but well done and good luck!

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

freebooter posted:

I have no advice for you - I suspect you're the most successful and accomplished of any of us who still post here - but well done and good luck!

I assure you, my Secret for $UCCE$$ is: pick your lottery numbers correctly

I literally expected to sell a few hundred copies, I woulda called that a big win ... then I randomly hit the timing jackpot

moana
Jun 18, 2005

one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web
Invasion of the Blockchain Hashers: subtitle goes here. Keep it on brand. Are you interested in going through a trad publisher if you could get a deal?

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

freebooter posted:

50k words is fine - and it'd be a short novel, not a novella. Much more workable than trying to sell something that's 25k words. I'd price it at $2.99, though, not $3.99.

50K words is perfectly good, agreed on $2.99 pricing. Nobody has ever said, "I loved every minute of that, I just wish the experience was shorter." Never. About anything.


quote:

the first book was ridiculously successful (11,000+ sales self-published - I have published friends who went "holy poo poo" at that) 'cos I accidentally timed a niche perfectly - it was about why bitcoin is stupid, and came out as the 2017 bitcoin bubble was accelerating

It was a fabulous book that also hit the shelves at the perfect time. You deserved every bit of that success. :)

Gologle
Apr 15, 2013

The Gologle Posting Experience.

<3
Thank you all for the help! Dang, and here I thought I was nearly at the finish line, when I was barely halfway done. But like I said before, any advice given now can only help for the future, so I really do appreciate it.

pseudanonymous
Aug 30, 2008

When you make the second entry and the debits and credits balance, and you blow them to hell.

Sundae posted:

50K words is perfectly good, agreed on $2.99 pricing. Nobody has ever said, "I loved every minute of that, I just wish the experience was shorter." Never. About anything.


It was a fabulous book that also hit the shelves at the perfect time. You deserved every bit of that success. :)

I’ve absolutely read things where I was like “I loved half of this, wish they’d cut the bad parts”.

VideoTapir
Oct 18, 2005

He'll tire eventually.

pseudanonymous posted:

I’ve absolutely read things where I was like “I loved half of this, wish they’d cut the bad parts”.


Essays and short stories that get expanded into books tend to be like this.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

pseudanonymous posted:

I’ve absolutely read things where I was like “I loved half of this, wish they’d cut the bad parts”.

Yeah, to be fair, I've written a book that was sitting around 145 Kindle pages and I had a review or two which, while still positive, said something along the lines of "even though this book is short some of it probably could have been trimmed down."

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

freebooter posted:

Yeah, to be fair, I've written a book that was sitting around 145 Kindle pages and I had a review or two which, while still positive, said something along the lines of "even though this book is short some of it probably could have been trimmed down."

yeah, read enough books that taught me:

* filler is always bad
* any work of any length can suffer from filler

don't ever do filler, check anything isn't filler

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


freebooter posted:


https://www.alchemybookcovers.com/clients

This is the service I used for my first series which still sells great.


I noticed you posted a link to your blog in the fantasy thread but i doesn't have a link to your books on it. Any reason why?

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

I've run that blog since long before I was self pubbing but the age of blogs is over - I mostly just write it for myself now. I do keep my pen name separate from my real name but not out of any particular concerns, I just don't have any reason to link them.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

freebooter posted:

I've run that blog since long before I was self pubbing but the age of blogs is over - I mostly just write it for myself now. I do keep my pen name separate from my real name but not out of any particular concerns, I just don't have any reason to link them.

my blog is basically my marketing email list - I got like a sudden $50/mo of new Patreon signups because I said "$5-and-up patrons can read the early draft of the book"

(here's to them sticking around until 1st Oct!)

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

divabot posted:

yeah, read enough books that taught me:

* filler is always bad
* any work of any length can suffer from filler

don't ever do filler, check anything isn't filler

Oh yeah, I'm not saying add filler. I'm saying the opposite; don't worry about it being too short if it's good. Don't add filler just to make it longer out of fear that it's too short.

Breath Ray
Nov 19, 2010

divabot posted:

I assure you, my Secret for $UCCE$$ is: pick your lottery numbers correctly

I literally expected to sell a few hundred copies, I woulda called that a big win ... then I randomly hit the timing jackpot

how much did you make from the book sales and have you been mentioned in the ft?

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Breath Ray posted:

how much did you make from the book sales and have you been mentioned in the ft?

i made £23,000 writer income in 2017-2018, which is sales plus talks and stuff, so GODDAMN I DID WELL

(i do fully appreciate how lucky I was. i don't expect to repeat this without equivalent luck)

I made a point of answering every journalist call, and saying "yes" to every media request. this made me the crypto pundit, and got me into a really good author's income stream: doing talks and panels!! (goddamn 2020) and corporate consultation. I got $5000 from one gig to explain Libra to a company - equivalent to doing another successful book in the middle there.

i had charmed the FT Alphaville crew early on and my first real-world splash was going on an FTAV podcast :-D https://archive.is/2jfE9 https://soundcloud.com/user-544122300/gerardpod

CURRENT STATUS: spent this week thinking hard, going through suggested rewrites from early readers. Completely restructured some early chapters. Three separate early readers named one paragraph in chapter 5 as the point the book takes off, and answers the question "why are you telling me all of this" - I mean, it's good that I did at some point?

so I'm now doing a light rewrite of the first five or six chapters focusing on what the book is actually about : a worked example of a government finally saying "hell no" to Silicon Valley disruptors. Today's sentence i'm pleased with: "But it’s normal in Silicon Valley to propose an all-encompassing international system, and base it entirely on how things work in Palo Alto."

tl;dr I know I'm good, I also know I got SUPER lucky. so, uh, set up all your chances as best you can?

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

What's your day job, if you don't mind sharing? I assume something in finance to give you the backgrounding to write the book in the first place?

Breath Ray
Nov 19, 2010
thanks for your response. i had a look at your libra book and I think it's wonderful. is it going to be available in other languages?

e. hes a unix dude i think?

Noobicide
Sep 12, 2007
This is going to be a weird post. About two years ago I started writing a book that was basically Chapo Trap House fan fiction (plus some other podcasts, namely Cum Town, Comedy Bang Bang and Harmontown—all poorly disguised). It exploded from that into a sprawling satire something on the scale of (and with explicit references to) The Stand. It's called Beefsquad.

This book is unpublishable, but I still think some weirdos might like it. Basically it’s about a bunch of Frankenfood causing Armageddon. It gets way more complicated, but I’ll spare you.

It should be free with the kindle unlimited thing. Check out how lovely my cover is.

Anyway, I’m sorry if this breaks the rules. If no ones sees this or cares, that’s okay too. Here’s the link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08K8G2BBB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=beefsquad&qid=1601336939&s=books&sr=1-1

NuclearEagleFox!!!
Oct 7, 2011
I asked this in the business thread, but I think I might get more interest here.

Where does one find freelance editors? I'm hoping there's some kind of magical search engine where I can plug in genre, length, and audience and get a list of people. (Also I'm rapidly realizing that may not exist.)

For those of you that work in multiple genres, do you have different editors for each?

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Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

NuclearEagleFox!!! posted:

I asked this in the business thread, but I think I might get more interest here.

Where does one find freelance editors? I'm hoping there's some kind of magical search engine where I can plug in genre, length, and audience and get a list of people. (Also I'm rapidly realizing that may not exist.)

For those of you that work in multiple genres, do you have different editors for each?

Word of mouth, mostly. Talk to other authors in your genre.

I'd recommend Kelly at https://booksidemanner.com/ as an editor. She did a ton of work for me in the past, and she was worth every penny.

I can't answer the multiple-genre part; I only worked in one genre (two if you count erotica shorts, but I think of that genre as cheating, really).

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