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Dream Weaver
Jan 23, 2007
Sweat Baby, sweat baby
Also just re-read your post and I hope that you're already making a follow on supplement book for your main audience(people who had already bought in) and I hope you converted everyone on your Kickstarter list over or gave them an opt out for your newsletter. Nothing sells a book more than it's sequels. Leng can tell you that series do a lot better generally than standalones.

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Spokes
Jan 9, 2010

Thanks for a MONSTER of an avatar, Awful Survivor Mods!
I decided that this year i'm going to take the plunge and start self-pubbing Real Full-Length Novels.

i mean, i'm gonna write some first but you know, *then* i'll publish. I'm sure i'll have plenty of questions!

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
Started on another book, yay! Readers are excited to see what we come up with!

Note I said "we" there. That's cos I'm co-authoring this one - a friend started on this idea last year, abandoned it, and I suggested we collaborate. Going pretty well so far, we should have a good one by the time it's done!

So I finally looked up how Kindle handles collaborative works, and ... it doesn't. One author publishes the book and gets the money, the other relies on them sending the money.

(Sort of annoying cos Amazon do handle the split between author and narrator for Audible audiobooks.)

Has anyone here dealt with this in practice? How did you work it out?

The other thing is that the other author is in the US and I'm in the UK. Amazon payouts to either country go fine, but moving money from one country to the other is costly. Gah.

Dream Weaver
Jan 23, 2007
Sweat Baby, sweat baby

divabot posted:

Started on another book, yay! Readers are excited to see what we come up with!

Note I said "we" there. That's cos I'm co-authoring this one - a friend started on this idea last year, abandoned it, and I suggested we collaborate. Going pretty well so far, we should have a good one by the time it's done!

So I finally looked up how Kindle handles collaborative works, and ... it doesn't. One author publishes the book and gets the money, the other relies on them sending the money.

(Sort of annoying cos Amazon do handle the split between author and narrator for Audible audiobooks.)

Has anyone here dealt with this in practice? How did you work it out?

The other thing is that the other author is in the US and I'm in the UK. Amazon payouts to either country go fine, but moving money from one country to the other is costly. Gah.

My instinct here is to say(as a small imprint self pub) that there should be some in between corporate asset or one of you should just pay the other for their work at a set rate.

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

divabot posted:

Has anyone here dealt with this in practice? How did you work it out?

The other thing is that the other author is in the US and I'm in the UK. Amazon payouts to either country go fine, but moving money from one country to the other is costly. Gah.

I have not done this but you two need to get yourselves to a lawyer and put everything about your arrangement in writing in a legally binding contract.

You could set it up in many ways from just doing as an arrangement between two individuals (where one individual receives the money and has to pay out the other person's share) or establishing a separate legal entity (which receives the income into its own bank account and then pays dividends to you both). You both should get tax advice about which would be best for your situation, because working cross US and UK is gonna be tricky.

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
The Courtney Project has just started doing a new series of videos on YouTube doing cover critiques:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB34V4p66c4

It is very good stuff and super timely for me, because I recently got my draft cover from Damonza and I literally had no idea how to critique it.

I mean, it is a good cover because Damonza know their stuff but I keep feeling like I should have a critique of some sort?

Dream Weaver
Jan 23, 2007
Sweat Baby, sweat baby

Leng posted:

The Courtney Project has just started doing a new series of videos on YouTube doing cover critiques:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB34V4p66c4

It is very good stuff and super timely for me, because I recently got my draft cover from Damonza and I literally had no idea how to critique it.

I mean, it is a good cover because Damonza know their stuff but I keep feeling like I should have a critique of some sort?

Meanwhile I have an artist but he wants $1,000 for the cover.

moana
Jun 18, 2005

one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web

Dream Weaver posted:

My instinct here is to say(as a small imprint self pub) that there should be some in between corporate asset or one of you should just pay the other for their work at a set rate.
This is the most legal way to do it in case anyone gets weird.

In practice I've cowritten three books with different people and it's always just been one pays the other half of royalties until they are too low for it to be worth the hassle, then we did one last payout for like 20 or 100 bucks to cover the last trickle or just delisted the book. Make sure you count the payout as an expense as amazon will send you a 1099 for the full amount. Transferwise is a good way to get money from the UK btw.

ravenkult
Feb 3, 2011


Dream Weaver posted:

Meanwhile I have an artist but he wants $1,000 for the cover.

Let us see!

LionArcher
Mar 29, 2010


Dream Weaver posted:

Meanwhile I have an artist but he wants $1,000 for the cover.

Unless we're talking like sci fi epic hand drawn poo poo, that's too much. Especially if you don't have a pen name with a ton of readers yet. A good pre made (there's plenty out there) for first or second or third books, and spend the extra money on editing.

Don't pay for advertising till book three or so either, at this point, and depending on genre.

Dream Weaver
Jan 23, 2007
Sweat Baby, sweat baby

LionArcher posted:

Unless we're talking like sci fi epic hand drawn poo poo, that's too much. Especially if you don't have a pen name with a ton of readers yet. A good pre made (there's plenty out there) for first or second or third books, and spend the extra money on editing.

Don't pay for advertising till book three or so either, at this point, and depending on genre.

Yeah it's military science fiction. I may spend a good chunk of change on the editing but no advertising budget yet. Maybe a book bub.

Dream Weaver
Jan 23, 2007
Sweat Baby, sweat baby

ravenkult posted:

Let us see!

https://www.deviantart.com/alexiuss/gallery/all

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011



In my opinion, as someone who commissioned a book cover and who also works in the cg industry, this person does not yet have the skill level to charge those prices. For them it might make sense depending on how long it takes them. A contradiction among illustrators is the really pro ones have also gotten really fast, so they can charge $70 an hour but put out a book cover in 12 hours that will look light years better than an artist charging a smaller hourly amount but for whom it takes 40 hours to come up with something half decent.

Dream Weaver
Jan 23, 2007
Sweat Baby, sweat baby

Ccs posted:

In my opinion, as someone who commissioned a book cover and who also works in the cg industry, this person does not yet have the skill level to charge those prices. For them it might make sense depending on how long it takes them. A contradiction among illustrators is the really pro ones have also gotten really fast, so they can charge $70 an hour but put out a book cover in 12 hours that will look light years better than an artist charging a smaller hourly amount but for whom it takes 40 hours to come up with something half decent.

Yeah I think the difference here is that he has cornered his market. (Web serials, royal road) thus he can charge what he wants.

ravenkult
Feb 3, 2011


Throw in another one for "With a budget of $1000 you can do much better."

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

divabot posted:

Started on another book, yay! Readers are excited to see what we come up with!

Note I said "we" there. That's cos I'm co-authoring this one - a friend started on this idea last year, abandoned it, and I suggested we collaborate. Going pretty well so far, we should have a good one by the time it's done!

So I finally looked up how Kindle handles collaborative works, and ... it doesn't. One author publishes the book and gets the money, the other relies on them sending the money.

(Sort of annoying cos Amazon do handle the split between author and narrator for Audible audiobooks.)

Has anyone here dealt with this in practice? How did you work it out?

The other thing is that the other author is in the US and I'm in the UK. Amazon payouts to either country go fine, but moving money from one country to the other is costly. Gah.

My co-author mails me a check, or Paypal, if the royalty is less than $1000 that month.

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

in my own news, I turned in a draft last night! This one took super long and despite being only 60k words, and I didn't get it in the shape I wanted to have it before I handed the draft off to my editor.

oh well. I'm gonna have a longer than normal post-edits revision, but I'll survive.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
ok, this is wild. Email I just got:

quote:

I’m a narrator and was contacted by a third-party to record an audiobook for your book “Attack of The 50 Foot Blockchain.”

I was 3/4 of the way through when the third-party pulled the book because of copyright infringement. I’m wondering, do you have an audiobook for it, if not would you like me to continue?

me:

quote:

Was absolutely nothing to do with me. Who was the third party?

reply:

quote:

The company is https://www.acx.com - which is a legit company of Amazon, iTunes & Audible.

The guy who hired me is Bounce Gregory.

Apparently this is a thing people do?! Stealing copyrights lol. So you don’t know anyone named Bounce? If that is his real name.

soooo ... has anyone ever had someone try to audiobook their book??

haven't replied further yet

Camo Guitar
Jul 15, 2009
How strange - was Bounce hoping you'd never discover your work in audio form out there?..

The Fuzzy Hulk
Nov 22, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT CROSSING THE STREAMS


All my books are audiobooks too. 50/50 split with the narrator, it is just free money and all I had to do is make a square cover.

newts
Oct 10, 2012
I think I read that there was a vulnerability in the acx system that allowed people who weren’t the author to claim works and submit them to potential voice actors for audiobook recording. I remember being told to claim my book as soon as it was published to avoid that, even if I had no intention of every making an audiobook.

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

divabot posted:

ok, this is wild. Email I just got:

me:

reply:

soooo ... has anyone ever had someone try to audiobook their book??

haven't replied further yet

Yes, it happens a lot. Never to me personally but several other authors I know. Third parties will try to claim your books on ACX to make an audiobook. You get nothing from this. They're stealing your poo poo.

Claim your books on ACX! You don't have to look for a narrator or set up royalties or any of that poo poo, but once you've claimed your works, they are assigned to your ACX account which stops anybody else from trying to steal them.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

KrunkMcGrunk posted:

Yes, it happens a lot. Never to me personally but several other authors I know. Third parties will try to claim your books on ACX to make an audiobook. You get nothing from this. They're stealing your poo poo.

Claim your books on ACX! You don't have to look for a narrator or set up royalties or any of that poo poo, but once you've claimed your works, they are assigned to your ACX account which stops anybody else from trying to steal them.

I signed up to ACX and had a look. "Attack" is marked as not suitable for an audiobook. (It totally is of course ;-) ) I'll have to see about making it eligible. And claiming it

my second book "Libra Shrugged" says ... "This book is already in audio and available on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes." WHAAAAAAT

I can't find it on any of those services, and I just emailed a query to ACX about this ...

The nice narrator lady - who is a real professional VO person - asked if I'd like to proceed. She just worked 7.5 hours for nothing ... she doesn't read like me at all, but hey. If this was a pitch, it's one she put a lot of work into. And I could do with an audiobook at all. I've said hold off while I sort this poo poo, and sort other poo poo.

divabot fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Feb 3, 2022

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

divabot posted:

I signed up to ACX and had a look. "Attack" is marked as not suitable for an audiobook. (It totally is of course ;-) ) I'll have to see about making it eligible. And claiming it

my second book "Libra Shrugged" says ... "This book is already in audio and available on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes." WHAAAAAAT

I can't find it on any of those services, and I just emailed a query to ACX about this ...

The nice narrator lady - who is a real professional VO person - asked if I'd like to proceed. She just worked 7.5 hours for nothing ... she doesn't read like me at all, but hey. If this was a pitch, it's one she put a lot of work into. And I could do with an audiobook at all. I've said hold off while I sort this poo poo, and sort other poo poo.

I've only done like 1 audiobook total, but if memory serves, the narrator is at the point where she has already entered a contract with the jerks trying to steal your work, and I'm not sure what/if anything can be done, but yeah make sure ACX gets back to you. I think you now have to prove to them that you are the copyright holder of your own work.

Sorry this happened to you, dude, it's a fuckin' bummer.

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
Contacted ACX, no response as yet.

In further news, loving d2d:

https://twitter.com/HickeyWriter/status/1491060100693430273

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

well that sucks

n8r
Jul 3, 2003

I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar
We were contacted by a narrator who got scammed into doing an audio book for one of our titles. He did a pretty good job so we paid him some money and published it. Most of our stuff is not suitable for audio but it’s paid a nice little royalty.

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

divabot posted:

Contacted ACX, no response as yet.

In further news, loving d2d:

https://twitter.com/HickeyWriter/status/1491060100693430273

turns out it wasn't that at all!

https://twitter.com/Draft2Digital/status/1491070419658592259

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!

*exhale* thank gently caress

"Thank you, gently caress, for all you gently caress."

Dream Weaver
Jan 23, 2007
Sweat Baby, sweat baby
Alright can someone break this merger down barney style for me?

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

D2D is good

Smashwords now better

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

divabot posted:

*exhale* thank gently caress

"Thank you, gently caress, for all you gently caress."

Dream Weaver posted:

Alright can someone break this merger down barney style for me?

I had thoughts. Many thoughts. I tried to be coherent. I'm not entirely sure I succeeded. It is as Barney-style as I could make it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAurKVm8iuM

But the TL;DR is

KrunkMcGrunk posted:

D2D is good

Smashwords now better

kaom
Jan 20, 2007


That was a helpful video, thanks! I wasn’t familiar with either service before but will definitely check them out when I get closer to publishing. It’s exciting to hear they both have authors at the table informing decisions about their business.

newts
Oct 10, 2012
Anyone have experience using Kindle Create here?

I know it sucks, but it’s what I’m familiar with and it (mostly) worked for me. The issue I’m having is that the ‘Look Inside’ feature on Amazon is messed up, even though the actual ebook looks fine. Apparently this is a known issue with Kindle Create. Probably a long shot, but does anyone have a trick for fixing this? Or just avoiding it?

Ebook:



‘Look Inside’, the first few lines are all hosed up:



I guess if I have to I’ll switch to a better formatting program. I was looking at Atticus. I’m just not in a place right now where I have time to deal with learning something new.

newts fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Feb 15, 2022

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

I just run my manuscripts through D2D. They have a few dozen preset interior formats, and since I put my books into KU, I just don't click the publish button on D2D but I still get a formatted ebook.

If you have a bunch of custom back matter, you'll have to tinker with the ebook file in something like calibre to get it all added in.

newts
Oct 10, 2012
Oh, I had no idea the book formatting on D2D was free. I just assumed I had to publish with them.

KrunkMcGrunk
Jul 2, 2007

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

The really cool thing is you can get .epub formats and all that, but also you can get .pdfs set to different page widths, which can be used to create paperbacks through KDP

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

newts posted:

Oh, I had no idea the book formatting on D2D was free. I just assumed I had to publish with them.

Publishing with them doesn't require an upfront fee either; they charge about 10% commission on every sale. Though I think Smashwords might be better for your book, their formatter is colloquially known as the "meat grinder" so...

divabot
Jun 17, 2015

A polite little mouse!
So after five years of self-publishing, many hours of punditry and 15,000 sales, I've had zero non-spam approaches from anyone in the world of "real" publishing.

like, not that I've reached out. But it surprises me.

Anyway, just got an email from someone at this lot, suggesting a meet and chat. https://www.therightsfactory.com Anyone heard of them, anything about them, know anything? Good/bad?

Update: So five minutes' googling shows a lot of stories of taking the shotgun blast approach to publishers and being happy to do bugger-all. But, all those stories are from the early 2010s. But but, same guy is running the place. The one who emailed me has actually read my books, so that's +1000 points already. So I emailed back saying sure, let's meet up. We'll see if we can come to agreement on a good project ...

divabot fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Feb 21, 2022

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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

divabot posted:

Anyway, just got an email from someone at this lot, suggesting a meet and chat. https://www.therightsfactory.com Anyone heard of them, anything about them, know anything? Good/bad?

Update: So five minutes' googling shows a lot of stories of taking the shotgun blast approach to publishers and being happy to do bugger-all. But, all those stories are from the early 2010s. But but, same guy is running the place. The one who emailed me has actually read my books, so that's +1000 points already. So I emailed back saying sure, let's meet up. We'll see if we can come to agreement on a good project ...

Interesting! I was actually gonna ask about your next book and whether it will be on NFTs? Because that just seems like the next logical step from your previous publications.

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