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angel opportunity posted:my new erotica writing schedule is to just stay up really late until I finish my words Story of my life, late-writing buddy.
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May 8, 2015 03:52
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Sundae posted:Story of my life, late-writing buddy. I am writing right now! My words are always better in the night. Really conflicts with the whole job thing. My whole motivation for making money at writing is so I can stay up as late as I want and no one can tell me when i have to get out of bed in the morning. 
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May 8, 2015 04:40
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angel opportunity posted:my new erotica writing schedule is to just stay up really late until I finish my words Same, but not erotica.
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May 8, 2015 05:30
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I don't think I've ever posted in this thread, but I just want to say thanks to all you super-inspiring goons. Published my first two, erm, 'turbo romances' on KDP earlier. You've all been a great help and motivation, whether you realise it or not.angel opportunity posted:my new erotica writing schedule is to just stay up really late until I finish my words Yeah that's me too. I'm up way too early and up way too late, but to be fair I also work full-time and have a newborn. My deadlines think that's a poo poo excuse, though.
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May 8, 2015 06:16
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SquirrelFace posted:I am writing right now! My words are always better in the night. Really conflicts with the whole job thing. Yeah, same here. Some weeks get so bad that I sleep during the day to write during the night.
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May 8, 2015 12:07
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Okay, I stayed up super late last night and wrote about 5,500 words, then published everything and got all my promo lined up for this weekend. Off to vacation I go! Hopefully I come back to all the money. 
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May 8, 2015 15:29
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Running another 50% sale. Same bat website (https://www.store.ravenkult.com), same bat code (FIFTY). You can also add on a wraparound cover and/or title design at checkout.
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May 10, 2015 12:49
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ravenkult posted:Running another 50% sale. Same bat website (https://www.store.ravenkult.com), same bat code (FIFTY).
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May 10, 2015 15:40
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I noticed that an erotica short series in the genre I am targeting just uses the same blurb for each edition. This seems bad to me, but I want to copy what works. Should I set the blurb up that it just fits all of the stories, or should the blurbs give an idea of what happens within each released part?
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May 11, 2015 21:21
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Why not both? Blurb for each, followed by a short blurb for the overall series.
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May 11, 2015 21:26
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You sure as hell better nail that blurb.
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May 11, 2015 21:39
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angel opportunity posted:I noticed that an erotica short series in the genre I am targeting just uses the same blurb for each edition. This seems bad to me, but I want to copy what works. Should I set the blurb up that it just fits all of the stories, or should the blurbs give an idea of what happens within each released part? It looks incredibly lazy when you use the same blurb or even the same intro paragraph for each book. That's an automatic no-buy for me.
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May 12, 2015 03:18
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angel opportunity posted:my new erotica writing schedule is to just stay up really late until I finish my words Mine is stay up late playing Borderlands 2. It's not working out so well at the moment. I need a new taskmaster 
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May 12, 2015 13:02
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I've been doing about 2,000 words per night, getting out a 10,000-word short every week. There are days I don't quite hit the goal, and some days I go out and don't write at all. I work 40 hours per week 8-5, so it's hard to have a day where I go out AND write 2,000 words, but as long as I release something every week it feels pretty good. edit: Here is my plan for my current series, please let me know if any of this is bad, and if so, how I can fix it: I released a paranormal erotica short as my first release, and I used fiverr and the 5-day promotion on it. Since then, I've released two shorts of a billionaire story that will be three parts in total. Only the paranormal story has had sales (very few) and KU downloads. It's made like...$16, while the billionaire stories have made $2. I think this is happening because I have not done a free promotion on the billionaire stories. My plan is to release the final part of the billionaire story this weekend, or on Monday. Is there a general best time of the week to start a five-day promotion? As soon as part III is live in the store, I am going to do the fiverr promotion again and make Part I of the series free for five days. When I last did the five-day promotion, my short got over 1,000 free downloads and hit top 10 in its sub-category, but I had NOTHING else for sale, and that story was not even part of a series. I really hope that having direct follow-ups to what people read for free available to buy and read on KU will translate to a lot of sales. My only concern is that with thousands of free downloads, I still had very few KU reads relative to the free download number. I don't think there's any solution to that beyond "write more" though. I've also taken some advice from people in IRC and priced all my 10,000-word shorts at $0.99. I've heard people say this is bad in general, because it comes off as low quality. I've seen ~20,000 word shorts on the best seller list going for $2.99, and I'm only doing 10,000 words. $2.99 seems a bit steep. People in IRC were also saying that the key is to get a lot of KU downloads rather than actual sales, and maybe by having a lower price point I will make up the lost sales revenue in a higher borrow volume on KU? Once I start writing longer stuff, I will definitely price at $2.99, but $0.99 seems appropriate for a 10,000-word story. angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 13:29 on May 12, 2015 |
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May 12, 2015 13:19
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By The Horns posted:Mine is stay up late playing Borderlands 2. It's not working out so well at the moment. If you ever want this to be a career, you have to learn to self motivate. e: which by the sound of it, Angel Opportunity is managing admirably. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 13:26 on May 12, 2015 |
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May 12, 2015 13:23
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angel opportunity posted:I've been doing about 2,000 words per night, getting out a 10,000-word short every week. There are days I don't quite hit the goal, and some days I go out and don't write at all. I work 40 hours per week 8-5, so it's hard to have a day where I go out AND write 2,000 words, but as long as I release something every week it feels pretty good. Is there a consensus on how to target for KU downloads as opposed to purchases?
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May 12, 2015 13:35
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I don't really know, I'm just floundering around  I'm guessing--and what I heard on IRC which was passed down by successful people in this thread--is that by doing the lower price point you are trading in the 70% share of your sales by selling more volume, which increases the exposure, which increases the KU borrows, which presumably is where most people are making their money now? I'm not the best example, but my $18 total revenue is like $15.50 from KU and $2.50 from purchases.
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May 12, 2015 13:45
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When I had stuff priced at $0.99, it didn't really do anything my stuff at $2.99 wasn't doing. Just my experience.
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May 12, 2015 13:53
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What length was your stuff though? My concern with pricing 10,000-word stories at $2.99 is that people will feel ripped off.
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May 12, 2015 13:55
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I do not enjoy writing nearly enough to want to make a career out of it! I do enjoy the money though. I usually do OK with regards to motivation (again... mostly money) but there are a couple of other mundane thing holding me back at the moment. Borderlands 2 is a symptom, not the disease.
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May 12, 2015 13:57
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angel opportunity posted:What length was your stuff though? My concern with pricing 10,000-word stories at $2.99 is that people will feel ripped off. If you're writing in the genre I think you are, people understand. Just mark the correct category and people can see the correct page count. If they feel ripped off, they'll just refund the book (incidentally, has anybody noticed that refunds have plummeted these past few months? I haven't been getting any at all that I've noticed). Even if they leave a lovely review that doesn't matter at all for this genre. $2.99 is a pretty standard price point for this stuff.
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May 12, 2015 14:22
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Hmm...I'll wait to see what more people say. I'd heard someone in this thread who makes a lot of money was advocating $0.99
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May 12, 2015 14:27
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I'd heard that pricing the first part of a series at .99 and combining it with free promos is a good way to sell parts 2 and 3 at 2.99, but of course that only works if you have a part 2 and 3 to link to. http://jakonrath.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/guest-post-by-selena-kitt.html?m=1 Basically it seems you do get more exposure, but less money per sale. It seems to back up the strategy of selling part 1 at .99 and the rest at 2.99, because you get the exposure, you get the new readers, and they pay full whack for 2/3 of their purchase (provided they buy all 3, which they probably will unless you gently caress up on an astronomic scale). e: far from an expert, just offering the advice I was told. The landscape changes so much though, that post could be completely irrelevant by now.
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May 12, 2015 16:01
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I feel like this is a possible genre goon authors could dominate. http://www.amazon.com/Patriots-Surviving-James-Wesley-Rawles-ebook/dp/B003ODHO8G/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-3&qid=1431438161
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May 12, 2015 16:29
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angel opportunity posted:What length was your stuff though? My concern with pricing 10,000-word stories at $2.99 is that people will feel ripped off. There are authors making an absolute killing pricing 5,000-word stories at $2.99, but as you may imagine, they aren't publishing normal romance. If you're dealing with 10,000-word eroms, $2.99 is an okay price point. I doubt that word length or price would hold up under the standards of a normal romance market, though.
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May 12, 2015 17:46
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smallmouth posted:I feel like this is a possible genre goon authors could dominate. I could write the hell out of the world building but I suspect I would not hit the ideological tone expected by the reader demographic. I've been meaning to ask: is there a way to examine keywords on a published book? Like if you are writing something that is similar to X, can you look at X's keywords to see what is appropriate?
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May 12, 2015 17:54
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Toaster Beef posted:There are authors making an absolute killing pricing 5,000-word stories at $2.99, but as you may imagine, they aren't publishing normal romance. If you're dealing with 10,000-word eroms, $2.99 is an okay price point. I doubt that word length or price would hold up under the standards of a normal romance market, though. Well, I'm writing explicit erotica, so I guess $2.99 is actually okay...
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May 12, 2015 17:55
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Pricing is all part of a publishing philosophy, there are many factors to it and there are several people (like myself) making bank on 99 cents but the general "price it all at $2.99" can't hurt you too bad. Pretend I typed three thousand words here on "holistic approach", "average royalty rate", and "visibility". poo poo here's some more as a bonus: "cascade effect", "sales funnel" EngineerSean fucked around with this message at 19:22 on May 12, 2015 |
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May 12, 2015 19:19
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EngineerSean posted:Pretend I typed three thousand words here on "holistic approach", "average royalty rate", and "visibility". synergy?
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May 12, 2015 20:06
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the brotherly phl posted:synergy? synergy of catalog is definitely there, that's part of holistic approach
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May 12, 2015 20:11
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Keep going, I'm nearly there.
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May 12, 2015 20:30
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What do you guys use for your ebook files? I've been using Direct2Digital's tool to knock my google doc writing into a formatted ebook file, then I open it in Calibre and modify the html as needed. With Calibre I'm mostly just using my custom "Also By AUTHOR NAME" page with links to other books and my "About the Author" page. I actually really like Calibre because I can modify the file to make it look exactly how I want, but I also just spent like 1.5 hours last night dicking around with HTML errors instead of writing more words. I know that typesetting and this whole aspect of self-pub is its own skill set, and if I start getting really money I'll probably just pay someone to do it for me, but for now I'd like to use the optimal tool to learn how to do it on my own somewhat efficiently. I'm trying to get everything clean and organized in Calibre so that when I release new books I can quickly go back to older books that are still getting downloads/buys and updating the "Also by" page to include links to the new stuff. It's still pretty tedious to update these through Calibre and then Amazon even with only three total shorts for sale; I can't imagine when I have ten or more.
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May 13, 2015 13:35
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I would love some info on that as well, I've been converting books using Amazon's word converter and I'm really unhappy with the process (and the results). I'd love to build a template where I take the plaintext story, add in tags for italics and bold etc and separate it into paragraphs and chapters, and then slot it into the title page and front/back matter and the css styling. I just haven't been able to find a decent resource online that I'd be happy following.
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May 13, 2015 14:04
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Until someone else responds, you can give this a shot: https://www.draft2digital.com/ You can use their converter and not actually publish on their site. Just do the conversion, then it lets you download the file. The tool will carryover any italics, bold, etc., and it does some paint-by-numbers formatting method. If you have block paragraphs in GoogleDocs it converts automatically to indented paragraphs, for instance. You have to use something like Calibre afterward though if the tool makes any mistakes (don't try to use direct2digital's about the author or copyright pages, for instance).
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May 13, 2015 14:08
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I don't know about Google docs in particular but I assume you can put links in the document in Google Docs and give it its own chapter heading, then Draft2Digital will add it as another chapter in the document. Also I assume you're exporting as ePub and editing that in Calibre, but you might check that you're not getting hugely inflated filesizes if you do that (since you're paying the outrageous cost of $15/gb for Amazon to deliver your book). The only times I did that (made edits in Calibre) was when I was working with multi-author bundles though, and each of those came with their own unique formatting quirks that probably added to that.
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May 13, 2015 14:16
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I just do it all in Word and let D2D do the rest. If you center and bold the title and then the ''Also by'' part, it'll make the TOC on it's own. I do have a related question though: I just add a single book (cover and blurb) to the end of all my books. Should I be plugging two or have a list of links for more of my stuff?
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May 13, 2015 15:03
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Scrivener. Exports to .epub, .mobi, .doc, .pdf, etc. Scrivener is well worth the price, even if you don't buy it on sale. Best investment in my writing I ever made.
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May 13, 2015 15:19
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psychopomp posted:Scrivener. Exports to .epub, .mobi, .doc, .pdf, etc. Do you make your "also by" and "about the author" etc. pages in Scrivener also? Or do you make them later with something else?
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May 13, 2015 15:20
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angel opportunity posted:Do you make your "also by" and "about the author" etc. pages in Scrivener also? Or do you make them later with something else? You can make those in Scrivener as well, actually.
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May 13, 2015 15:52
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I've had good luck using D2D as well, but then I edit the epub in sigil. Seems to be working well for me, though it needs a bit of basic html knowledge I guess.
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May 13, 2015 16:05
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