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Camo Guitar
Jul 15, 2009

Leng posted:

:psyduck:

But doesn't that screw around with your launch plans? Do you stealth publish it, order author copies, then immediately take the book down until you get them, fix any issues, then put it back up on your planned release date and then do your promos from there?!

I've sold one physical copy in two months since I finally got round to putting the option up. The rest have been downloads or kdp so as long as they're all correct then I'm good.

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Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
Alright, back with more questions!

Based on new data coming in, it seems like the majority of my target customers buy either from Amazon (in which case they'll most likely order the KDP paperback over the ebook), or direct from the publisher (i.e. me). Reading up on IngramSpark's vaunted "distribution" into actual bookstores seems like it's not that accurate and also not that beneficial (you would have to set royalty at 55% AND allow returns AND they won't ship returns to Australia :bang: so the only option for returned stock is destruction :bang:).

HOWEVER, the majority still prefer reading in hardcover.

So right now I'm thinking of ordering small batches of author copies and selling hardcovers directly through my own website. Since it's such a niche audience, I think I'd have more luck selling directly.

Has anyone done something similar? If so, what are you using for the ecommerce side of it (WooCommerce, Shopify, Wix, etc)? I'm looking at Ecwid currently as they have a free plan (https://www.ecwid.com/pricing) which would suit me fine since I won't need anything more complicated.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Leng posted:

Alright, back with more questions!

Based on new data coming in, it seems like the majority of my target customers buy either from Amazon (in which case they'll most likely order the KDP paperback over the ebook), or direct from the publisher (i.e. me). Reading up on IngramSpark's vaunted "distribution" into actual bookstores seems like it's not that accurate and also not that beneficial (you would have to set royalty at 55% AND allow returns AND they won't ship returns to Australia :bang: so the only option for returned stock is destruction :bang:).

HOWEVER, the majority still prefer reading in hardcover.

So right now I'm thinking of ordering small batches of author copies and selling hardcovers directly through my own website. Since it's such a niche audience, I think I'd have more luck selling directly.

Has anyone done something similar? If so, what are you using for the ecommerce side of it (WooCommerce, Shopify, Wix, etc)? I'm looking at Ecwid currently as they have a free plan (https://www.ecwid.com/pricing) which would suit me fine since I won't need anything more complicated.

I haven't. I know someone who's done his through Lulu, then linked that on his Amazon page as another version of the same book - he says it sets a price point nicely, even if he doesn't sell many.

However, I understand that KDP are now beta-ing hardcover. Main nuisance is doing yet another version of the cover. No idea when it's on general release.

n8r
Jul 3, 2003

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

Leng posted:

Alright, back with more questions!

Based on new data coming in, it seems like the majority of my target customers buy either from Amazon (in which case they'll most likely order the KDP paperback over the ebook), or direct from the publisher (i.e. me). Reading up on IngramSpark's vaunted "distribution" into actual bookstores seems like it's not that accurate and also not that beneficial (you would have to set royalty at 55% AND allow returns AND they won't ship returns to Australia :bang: so the only option for returned stock is destruction :bang:).

HOWEVER, the majority still prefer reading in hardcover.

So right now I'm thinking of ordering small batches of author copies and selling hardcovers directly through my own website. Since it's such a niche audience, I think I'd have more luck selling directly.

Has anyone done something similar? If so, what are you using for the ecommerce side of it (WooCommerce, Shopify, Wix, etc)? I'm looking at Ecwid currently as they have a free plan (https://www.ecwid.com/pricing) which would suit me fine since I won't need anything more complicated.

Where are you pulling the information about people buying directly from a publisher? I seriously doubt most people even know who the publisher of a particular book is. Having the infrastructure / volume to justify hardcover seems beyond the means of most self pub. You really should just stick with kdp/Ingram (with 55% and returnable).

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today

n8r posted:

Where are you pulling the information about people buying directly from a publisher? I seriously doubt most people even know who the publisher of a particular book is. Having the infrastructure / volume to justify hardcover seems beyond the means of most self pub. You really should just stick with kdp/Ingram (with 55% and returnable).

Yeah that's what I initially thought until I went and did some research (direct survey responses and actual observation).

Bilingual books are hard to find and source overseas. Most big name book stores just don't carry them because it's not worth for them as they cater to a primarily English speaking audience. Group buys direct from publisher are a regular occurrence on Facebook groups. When people ask for book recommendations, most give links to Amazon or publisher websites, with an occasional shout out to bloggers who make book lists.

What's your experience been like with 55% and returnable in getting books into stores? My recent lurking in the Ingram community is turning up a lot of stories about how despite having 55% and returnable, authors aren't able to get their books stocked (granted most are talking about Barnes & Noble where apparently there's a corporate policy against stocking POD titles?).

n8r
Jul 3, 2003

I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar
The book industry runs on 55% and returnable. If you don’t give that discount I believe they call it a “short” discount. If a bookstore can’t get full discount / ability to return it, why carry it?

The reason most people’s books aren’t stocked is most people’s books suck rear end.

I know nothing about bilingual books. I have dealt with selling English language through kdp/Ingram internationally. For actual foreign rights we just wait to get approached by a publisher and sell them for a flat fee.

Steely Dad
Jul 29, 2006



angel opportunity posted:

There’s a lot of a stuff on there other than litRPG. I read one for a while about an older woman who got sent back to her body as a teenager and got a second chance at life with all of her adult experience. It was set just like in high school and had no magic or weapons or other nerd poo poo

I really hope there was no love interest in that story

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


So I’ve done a soft launch of my book so I have a few days to work out if there’s any issues with it. So far everything seems fine EXCEPT the ‘Look Inside’ feature on Amazon. I prepared the book in Kindle Create and on phone and ereaders it looks fine. The look inside feature messes up the formatting of the first paragraph so it looks like this:



Instead of



Is there any way to fix this? I found some blog posts from authors but all they say is that Look Inside uses an HTML setup that’s known for messing up formatting.

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
If the dropcap is being done using CSS to float the first letter left and make it big, then the LOOK INSIDE might be playing havoc with it and overriding it. Dropcaps can be hit and miss.

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Yeah that's probably the issue... don't know if it's worth getting rid of the dropcaps to fix the formatting issues in Look Inside. I kind of like them.

Edit: There appears to be some real problems with the "First Paragraph Chapter" preset in Kindle Create. When I removed the dropcaps suddenly the formatting got all hosed up. I removed the preset and re-added elements I liked from it manually and now things looks fine in the Previewer. Waiting until the manuscript changes show up on the Amazon site to know for sure if the Look Inside is now fixed.

Once I'm sure everything is actually functioning i'll post a link to the book.

Ccs fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Apr 13, 2021

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
how's it look in the Kindle Previewer program on a PC?

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


It looks great on the kindle previewer for desktop and on the previewer that runs before publishing. I ended up going through in Kindle Create and making sure every paragraph had the settings I wanted. Honestly they’ve got to improve that program, it’s insane that you can’t edit the indents on the whole manuscript, you gotta select each page or paragraph at a time.

I think I finally got it though. Updated the version which is now publishing on the store, which seems to take 4 hours or so to fully reflect in the Look Inside.

This has been an exciting learning experience in the fun of formatting 🤮

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
My week so far:

Monday
Went through beta reader comments. Unfortunately, they confirmed two main flaws that I thought were there but didn't fix because :effort:.

Tuesday
Gritted my teeth and fixed both of the main flaws, i.e. rewriting sections of the text and then laying out the new text, then reformatting all of the pages for all the different formats. :bang:

Wednesday
Upload new revisions for hard cover and epub to IngramSpark. Epub was created by using the Kindle Kids' Book Creator, then converted from mobi using Calibre. Stupidly assume it's gonna be fine because it was like 3 AM

Thursday
Look at ebook with new eyes. Amazon's stupid rescaling of images makes everything illegible. Experiment with adding popups. Decide popups suck. Create ebook AGAIN, this time with individual pages as pages instead of spreads as pages. Spend hours trying to pass epubcheck. Try out draft to digital, except they basically don't help and their proof version actually makes something that was correct worse. Realize that this means the version on IngramSpark will probably have issues and that they will distribute the same file to everybody.

Realize this means I need to distribute to each place myself, and create separate epub specific to those formats.

:bang:

And that I need to yank ebook distribution back from IngramSpark (I had already opted out of distribution to Amazon before but now I need to yank it from them entirely) and that you have to do this by contacting their customer service team directly (and their response times are abysmal).

:suicide:

I freaking hate this part of the process and can totally understand why authors would opt to outsource this pain entirely. No wonder there are so many ebooks about how to self-publish and make ebooks etc etc etc. I just want to go back to planning out the next two books in the series. :cry:

Right now I don't even know if I want to set up a second paperback version on IngramSpark for Australian customers only (since KDP will apparently ship paperbacks from their US printer instead of...just printing in Australia via a partner) because I am so sick of wrangling with all of these back end platforms.

I will probably be less upset when I get my KDP proof next week. I hope. Maybe. But just the thought of it is again making me think I should just set up the paperback on IngramSpark so I can get and compare the proofs at the same time, since IngramSpark takes forever to process a title.

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


That sounds like hell. I did a lot of artwork for my book while I was working on it and at one point considered including it in the ebook. But then I realized that would bloat the size and Amazon doesn't like large ebooks, and images are incredibly suspect in terms of how they'll actually display on various Kindles. For example, the cover of my book shows up fine on the previewer and on Kindle Fire but gets scaled a tiny bit thinner on Kindle Paperwhite for some reason. And this is just uploading a jpeg at the exact size resolution that Amazon recommends.

It's kind of crazy that the display of text and images can be such a headache when the distribution for video seems to be so much simpler on the internet. I asked a friend who works at Amazon why this stuff is so difficult to deal with. He says the various departments don't coordinate with each other at all. The people who make the Kindle previewer are in one city, while the people who actually work on Kindle are on another, and the third dev team for the "Look Inside" feature is somewhere else. "Each org is like a startup bound to investors. The few commonalities between different Amazon orgs are only basic HR rules and the "leadership principles". "

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
yeah. I had this for my book and that was just text. I did an epub (Kindle accepts epubs) and hand-did each image as a full-screen image, with XHTML like:

quote:

<div><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="1.1" width="100%" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 1640 2550"><image width="1640" height="2550" xlink:href="images/image.jpeg"/></svg></div>

and that survived both most readers and epubcheck. If you remember to add it to content.opf:

quote:

<item id="id11" href="index_split_031.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml" properties="svg"/>

and in conclusion, if you ever find yourself hand-editing the XHTML in your epub then kill me.

full post of all the dumb poo poo I did, written as a reference to myself for next time

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today

Ccs posted:

That sounds like hell.

<snip>

It's kind of crazy that the display of text and images can be such a headache when the distribution for video seems to be so much simpler on the internet.

As an amateur front end web developer, I can say that this is exactly like trying to ensure cross browser compatibility and standards compliant code when IE6 was the most widely used browser. :suicide:


Your article was one that I referred to over and over again during the course of the ebook saga. I kept not going through with your solution, because I hoped that someone ELSE would have solved the problem for picture books but I may have to end up doing what you did.

Also in other website chat (because I'm now just sitting waiting for meta data to update and IS to give me my eproofs), I found a really good free Wordpress theme today: https://rarathemesdemo.com/author-landing-page/

It is great if you specialize in one type of books (like I am currently doing) and is well documented (https://docs.rarathemes.com/docs/author-landing-page/faqs/how-to-configure-footer-credit-settings/) on how to customize. My website now looks so much better than it did before and I'm glad I spent the afternoon fixing it up, because literally as I was putting the final touches on the book's product page, someone posted in a Facebook group asking for books exactly like the one I've written.

I have a mailing list sign up on that very page for people to be notified when the book comes out so here's hoping I can add some more emails to my list, in hopes of getting on that Amazon Best Sellers list on launch day.

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


So my book is live and will be going on a free promotion starting in a few hours for the duration of the weekend. In the past 2 days it's sold 13 copies, most of which came from this forum and 2 of which were from irl friends I told about it. I'm curious to see if the promotion sites I'm running with this weekend actually do much to boost sales, in total I spent $60 between Genre Pulse, Book of the Day, and Book Runes. The bigger promo sites like E-Reader News Today, Fussy Librarian, etc. all require at least 10 reviews so I can't use those right away. I'll probably run another promotion with them down the line if I manage to get 10 reviews.

At least the cover is nice, it definitely makes the whole presentation seem more legitimate.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092CHN6S6/



quote:

Cantus dreams of glory in magical combat. He should have ample opportunities to win fame by hunting down rogue spellcasters for the Order of the Magi. But when a seemingly simple mission leaves him permanently disabled, he must journey to the center of the Auduwyn Empire to track down the errant mage who can heal him before his magic disappears entirely. To make matters worse, he soon discovers a growing threat that challenges the very fabric of the Order and the lasting peace it has established.

A story about hubris, fear, and the occasional fireball, the self-contained novel Order of the Magi transports readers into a world where magic only complicates matters and glory comes at a grisly cost.

Ccs fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Apr 17, 2021

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
Are you doing any additional promotion of your own? I haven't reread your published version but I did flip to the back and noticed you didn't include any links to a website of your own or a mailing list. Your Twitter handle was mentioned but almost as an aside.

I'm currently in the midst of prepping for my own launch while my proofs are stuck with KDP and Ingram, so curious as to what you're doing. Though as I type I've literally just logged in and noticed both of them are cleared! Yay!

On the other hand, something I just learned is that if you have a foreign language title, you are boned if you want to change it halfway through the process. Thorpe-Bowker's system chokes on Chinese characters so it just shows up as "???????" in the records. Chinese characters show up fine in both Ingram and KDP, but KDP won't accept a title change if it doesn't match Thorpe-Bowker records exactly, which it never will because of the aforementioned choke issue. There wasn't a problem if I set up the book title first before assigning the ISBN though!

I need to make more calls this week to speak with someone who can figure this out and see if the system can be overridden. Otherwise I guess I go paperback with Ingram only, which will suck for KDP distribution. :suicide:

At least Chinese characters in titles works fine in Ingram, who have leapfrogged KDP again now. I wonder which of them I'll love/hate more at the end of this process.

EDIT: Wow, ok, KDP hate confirmed, back to liking Ingram:
  • KDP point blank don't support Chinese in print format (no reasons given) and will actively have you removed by the quality team
  • Pre-orders of print via KDP is not possible, you have to go and click a button to publish on the actual day you want the print book published
  • However, if you print via Ingram, you can enable preorders of print formats everywhere
  • Doing that involves approving an eproof first at minimum so the title has gone into "production" status at least once, so you can then enable distribution, with both the publication date and on sale date set to your planned release date
  • Further research shows that KDP will still fulfill orders using Ingram even if they could print on KDP, which according to chat on the IngramSpark Facebook community is verifiable using printer/manufacturer codes on the actual product
Since I just knocked back my proof again because I picked up a few more errors, I now have to wait two more days for Ingram to turnaround a new version so I can approve it, at which point I'm going to enable distribution regardless so I can get preorder links up everywhere damnit. :argh:

I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that if you plan on self-publishing in print, you should just do Ingram and screw KDP. Maybe I'll change my mind again next week.

Leng fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Apr 17, 2021

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Yeah I don’t have a following in terms of a mailing list or anything so there wasn’t much promotion I could do on my own.
The cover reveal is absolutely blowing up on r/fantasy right now though so sales are doing very nicely.

Edit: Today went well.

Ccs fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Apr 18, 2021

Paladin
Nov 26, 2004
You lost today, kid. But that doesn't mean you have to like it.


Ccs posted:

Edit: Today went well.

Congrats!

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
Congrats, that's awesome!

quote:

Best Sellers Rank: #72 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
#1 in Occult Horror
#1 in Epic Fantasy (Kindle Store)

Still riding at the top for Epic Fantasy and your other category, that's a nice achievement!

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Yeah, this weekend was great. I actually got a really terrible headache today from things going so well, it seemed like there had to be some catch. My choice of cover artist really paid off, that's what caused the book to go viral on the r/fantasy subreddit. That artist wasn't cheap, but he's my favorite and for a self-contained novel that I've been picking away at since 2017 I figured I could swing it. Glad it worked out.

Kindle runs sales in Pacific Standard Time which means the book will be free for another 6 hours, but I think most people who were gonna pick it up already have. In total I moved 1209 free copies on Saturday, and another 826 so far today. In addition there were around 2000 pages read through Kindle Unlimited, meaning I actually did make some money (a whole $8! ;P ) The majority of those page reads were from today, which means some might've come from reddit while others might've originated from the book hitting those sales ranks and coming to the attention of people with KU subscriptions. I've heard from other authors that free sales can produce long tails of KU readers so I'll be interested to see how those numbers shake out over the next week when the book reverts to its normal price.

I kind of wish I was the type of author who could crank out another book in 6 months, but I'm gonna take it easy for now and pick away at a short story set in the same world to try to develop my prose. And pray that the reviews from all these readers is generally positive, if they bother to leave one.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Congrats, glad this went well! FWIW I have definitely seen KU tails from free giveaways - although for a new release the giveaways are worth it in and of themselves just to rack some reviews up. They may not translate into immediate financial gain but it's all building towards that in the long term.

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
So this popped up on my feed today:
https://www.amazon.com/b?node=21613975011&ref=tsm_1_tw_s__4743373791&linkId=116620400

Kindle Vella sounds like KDP trying to get in on WattPad/Royal Road action. Is anyone planning to experiment with this?

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

Leng posted:

So this popped up on my feed today:
https://www.amazon.com/b?node=21613975011&ref=tsm_1_tw_s__4743373791&linkId=116620400

Kindle Vella sounds like KDP trying to get in on WattPad/Royal Road action. Is anyone planning to experiment with this?

i'm always weary of transactions that use Fun Bucks. Why does Amazon need a go-between currency?

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

also, hello thread, the last year has been hard. Last I popped in here, I was shopping a book to Thomas and Mercer with my co-author. They declined last winter, but w/e. Rejection happens. We released the book early this month, and it's doing very well. I'm looking forward to having writing income again after not publishing anything in a year and a half.

I also have a solo book in the same genre that I got back from my editor last week. Hoping to drop it on Amazon in May. It's been two years since I've launched a first in series, so I'm a little rusty (and short on cash), but I think I can make it work with newsletter spots from other authors in the genre I've gotten to know.

That said, I'm nervous about a new release without having a sequel nearly ready to go, but since this co-authored book is hot and in the same genre, I think I'll get a nice lift on my solo book if I release before co-authored book cools off.

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


angel opportunity posted:

Royal Road is a site with a lot of really active readers who are willing to pay to "subscribe" to stories that they read chapter by chapter. When you subscribe to an author on Patreon, you usually are just getting to "read ahead of the release schedule," but a lot of people are willing to pay like that to continue binge reading and to support authors. It's the first time I've done something like this, and I think it's a cool way to get writing in front of people who actually will want to read it, vs. just throwing it on Amazon with no promo and having it die immediately.

Anyway, I am shamelessly plugging my poo poo here, but to bring it in and make it more on topic, if you have any questions about this method of publishing or want to ask me about how to make it profitable, please ask away and I'll try to answer :D I'm planning to double-dip and make this an Amazon release in KU after it's done on Royal Road.

Here is the book, cover, blurb, etc.: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/41003/bronze-sun-the-red-smith-litrpg-crafting



I'm still curious long term about how I could use Royal Road for marketing purposes. My book is doing well on KU for now, but let's say in 6 months it's not doing good numbers anymore. I could take it off KU, start posting the chapters on Royal Road with a link to the Amazon page in the description that says "If you want to read ahead you can buy the book now." Then when its finished it's run on Royal Road, remove it after a month or so and put it back on KU for the next enrollment period?

In theory that's a totally free way to get new readers that doesn't require paying $100 to Bargain Booksy, etc. to try to get what will probably amount to a measly 30 sales or so.

Were you planning on listing your book on KU while also keeping it on Royal Road? Because i'm pretty sure Amazon doesn't allow that, though it's uncertain if they'd ever find out.

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
Amazon is abandoning .mobi as of the end of June this year:
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634390

And of course this is going to happen after my launch date.

:suicide:

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Leng posted:

Amazon is abandoning .mobi as of the end of June this year:
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634390

And of course this is going to happen after my launch date.

:suicide:

well, mobi was always a zombie oddity. Though I'll always remember my first smartphone, a Blackberry, and how the MobiPocket reader was the only ebook reader for it, and how it was almost impossible to get a copy 'cos Amazon bought MobiPocket and removed it from the web, and I installed a binary I found in some weird and disreputable corner of the web, and how I had to convert epubs to mobi with Calibre.

time to go ePub!!!!! :-D !!!!!

until Amazon makes KPF mandatory of course :suicide:

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Leng posted:

Amazon is abandoning .mobi as of the end of June this year:
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634390

And of course this is going to happen after my launch date.

:suicide:

Is your book reflowable or fixed? It says they still support it for fixed layout books.

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
Fixed, because children's book. But it would have been nice to just fiddle with ONE format instead of multiple. At this point I'm not even sure it's worth doing ebooks for all the major platforms; I'm tempted to just throw a PDF up on my own website and sell it direct. At least the PDF would display properly regardless of device.

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Yeah, honestly it's pretty weird these services don't accept PDFs. Something to do with how the format works or the control Adobe has over it that prevents using it?

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
Adobe is the developer of the format but these days it's pretty ubiquitous after it was standardized as an ISO in 2008 (so Adobe don't get royalties off people using the format anymore). The main issue is PDFs are perfect for fixed layouts on larger displays, since they're essentially printer files, but technically ebooks should be reflowable and optimized for smaller displays. Most ereaders will choke on a PDF, or if they display it, it will be an annoying reading experience full of scrolling or repeatedly pinching to zoom in and out.

In other news, the last round of my proofs have come in! I got an early proof from KDP, plus a paperback and a hard cover from IngramSpark. Gotta say, IngramSpark wins this round:
  • no annoying "NOT FOR RESALE" plastered all over the proof copy
  • shipped in a rigid cardboard shell (KDP packed their paperback inside a padded envelope that got crunched by the postal service when they forcibly shoved it inside my mailbox)
  • the glue on the paperback binding is done perfectly (KDP one is not glued together very well and you can see the white in the gutter)
  • the color printing and quality of the hard cover is beautiful - I felt pretty emotional on holding it in my hands
Shipping and printing costs are more expensive, but I guess you pay for that quality. Off on the back of the proofs, I am disinclined to do any print on Amazon at all, because the quality is just not great. I don't know what that's gonna do to whether they show up as in stock on Amazon, because currently the data has migrated over but I can't get pre-order links up for Amazon which is frustrating.

Still need yet another revision because I picked up errors when looking at the proof. :suicide: But better now than post launch!

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.
Hi, all, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but is there a general freelance-writing-for-money thread? I haven't published on Amazon yet, although I'm planning to in the future, although my idea for a book about sexy female scientists who bring ancestral humans back via cloning and then bang them for science is probably verboten in this thread.

Spokes
Jan 9, 2010

Thanks for a MONSTER of an avatar, Awful Survivor Mods!

Fleta Mcgurn posted:

Hi, all, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but is there a general freelance-writing-for-money thread? I haven't published on Amazon yet, although I'm planning to in the future, although my idea for a book about sexy female scientists who bring ancestral humans back via cloning and then bang them for science is probably verboten in this thread.

Yep! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3476455

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
In my ongoing saga:
  • Final revisions for interior are done and approved in IngramSpark for both hardcover and paperback, in KDP and in the Kindle ebook
  • The Apple iBooks epub has been updated and finalized but I'm stalled at setting up an iTunes Connect account because of some weird script choking on Apple's end :suicide:
Since the running advice in the IngramSpark community seems to be use KDP for distribution on Amazon, then IngramSpark for print everywhere else, but go direct for all ebooks, I'm now up to investigating Barnes & Noble for their self-publishing platform, which is apparently also trialing print on demand. Has anyone here tried out B&N?

EDIT: I hate marketing and publicity. Since I ran into technical issues with setting up ebooks, I spent the rest of this afternoon reaching out to bloggers, YouTubers and Instagram influencers. I swear writing the outreach emails are harder than writing the book.

Leng fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Apr 27, 2021

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

Leng posted:


* The Apple iBooks epub has been updated and finalized but I'm stalled at setting up an iTunes Connect account because of some weird script choking on Apple's end

Since the running advice in the IngramSpark community seems to be use KDP for distribution on Amazon, then IngramSpark for print everywhere else, but go direct for all ebooks, I'm now up to investigating Barnes & Noble for their self-publishing platform, which is apparently also trialing print on demand. Has anyone here tried out B&N?

draft2digital deal with both pretty painlessly IME

(indeed I find d2d less faffy than smashwords, so I hit Kindle for 90% of sales, d2d for the other 10% and smashwords just to sell on smashwords)

Leng posted:

EDIT: I hate marketing and publicity. Since I ran into technical issues with setting up ebooks, I spent the rest of this afternoon reaching out to bloggers, YouTubers and Instagram influencers. I swear writing the outreach emails are harder than writing the book.


fuckin preach. writing and publishing are great now, so 100% of your problems are marketing.

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.

Thank you so much! I'll name a ribald Australopithecine after you.

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
Today is an exciting update! Preorder links are starting to go up at various retailers (Amazon of course, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Kinokuniya, Dymocks), but there are weird glitches due to metadata lag:
  • Some of the retailers have only just gotten the initial round of metadata - which means the book title (and some of the links) contain Chinese characters which either get messed up as "???????" or escaped unicode characters like "今" which does not look great
  • Some of the retailers have the book info but are missing the cover for whatever reason
  • Amazon is super frustrating - the hardcover shows a preorder link as expected on the US site, the paperback is listed as unavailable on the US site, both preorder links work fine on the AU site, but both formats are listed as temporarily out of stock on the UK site. :argh:
This means I've updated my book webpage from taking in emails to putting actual links to preorder pages in there. Still haven't set up my estore, that's a job for tomorrow I think, in tandem with finally getting my email list sorted.

In other exciting news, I've heard back from 4 out of 5 of the bloggers I've reached out to. 1 isn't interested, but recommended 2 of the others on my list, 1 hasn't responded, and the other 3 have agreed to do a review, though 1 of those 3 are backed up with projects and doesn't have a definite timing on when the review will happen. The other 2 are US-based so I'm going to organise for IngramSpark to ship those copies now, but worryingly, the only shipping option I've got is "Basic", which IngramSpark says has no tracking available but the IngramSpark community at large insists that all levels of shipping in the US have tracking despite what IngramSpark's own documentation claims.

:bang: back to hating the stupidity and confusion of the IngramSpark interface.

EDIT: welp, for whatever bizarro reason, after submitting the order for the first US reviewer using "Basic" shipping, I now have other shipping options for the second reviewer. :suicide: There's just no rhyme or reason to IngramSpark's interface.

My book's metadata has also finally hit Goodreads for the hardcover, which means I can now claim my Goodreads author page. We're getting close to the 2 week mark prior to publication date which means I need to start planning out a social media blitz. I hate social media and I never know what to post, so this is going to be fun like having my eyes gouged out during a root canal.

Leng fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Apr 29, 2021

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Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
I hate Amazon so much. Preorder links that were working are now suddenly showing as temporarily out of stock. WHHHHY. :suicide:

Also the IngramSpark author copy shipping options are ridiculous. I'm in the process of getting physical copies out to my beta readers and it is actually ending up to be cheaper to order them copies off Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Book Depository, etc than to order them an author copy from IngramSpark.

Don't get me wrong, the unit cost is cheaper, but by the time you add in the processing fee, handling, then the actual shipping cost, the only shipping option that would make the total cost cheaper is selecting the basic non-tracking non-insurable option, at which point I might as well just buy it on Amazon or wherever else so I at least get the royalty while also getting tracking.

Also also this experience has definitely confirmed that I do not want to hassle around with fulfilment myself. Ugh.

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