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There's been some mention of this in Romper Billson's literary agencies thread and the subject of self-publishing a novel and promoting it was discussed, but I'm interested in how the same applies to short stories. Finger, how did you (or anyone else who's done this) go about marketing your short stories? Do you have a blog/website/etc? How did you come up with the cover? Did you create it yourself or pay someone? I'm just curious as to how much time/money investment is appropriate for the promotion/marketing of, say, a 6000 word story. I imagine the mechanics are very different than for a novel, so I want to get some input from you or anyone else who's delved into it firsthand.
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Mar 27, 2011 18:04
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 22:19 |
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This thread inspired me to take the plunge and self-pub a short story. Some advice I can offer to any new author considering self-pubbing, which I learned the hard way and which doesn't seem to have been extensively covered in this thread: I uploaded to Amazon first. Don't do this. Go to Smashwords, read their formatting guide, and format your manuscript exactly as it tells you to. There are a lot of things like indents and spacing which might look fine in Word but will gently caress up as soon as they're converted to any other format. Amazon offers only a nominal preview and then takes 24-48 hours before you can view what it actually looks like to customers. Smashwords offers you no preview but their upload is much faster (a few hours, depending on the queue) and you can double check the manuscript in several formats to ensure it turned out all right. This same manuscript can then be uploaded to Amazon and B&N fairly easily. You can also download the Mobipocket creator, which lets you convert your documents to a Kindle book, so that you can see how it will look when converted on Amazon. Converting all your work yourself and checking it before hitting the publish button will save you a lot of waiting time. There seems to be a lot of the sour grapes mentality about the whole business of self-publishing vs. traditional. I'll be honest: I'm going the self-pub route not because of the "traditional is dead" argument but for the simple reason that this short story was rejected by the magazines listed under [Genre: Science fiction, Style: Humorous, Length: 4500 words, Payscale: Semi-pro and up] on duotrope that seemed to fit it best and this thread has convinced me that self-pubbing can probably drum up more exposure than a token or less payment market. I would seriously recommend though that any new author try at least a couple of traditional outlets first. There isn't any harm in it, except the couple of months you might "waste" waiting on replies, but if it pans out you have the potential for exposure to an audience which might otherwise never see your work and eventually the rights should revert to you anyway so you can always self-pub later on. As a budding author, you should be worrying about not how much money you can make by selling your stuff yourself but how much exposure you can get by any means possible. At the very least try a couple of the pro or semi-pro markets before going to self-pub; you have very little to lose unless your work is so poo poo that you know it won’t ever pass muster in any such market, in which case spare both yourself and slush readers everywhere by just flushing the whole thing, and possibly yourself, down a toilet. But that's just my two cents. Of course, if you can consistently spew the sort of drivel that Amanda Schlocking or John Schlocke and their ilk do, don't bother with the above. Go straight to self-pub. You've got it made. Anyway, here’s a link to the story on Smashwords. http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52866 Summary: A short comedic tale set at the end of the world, Not With a Bang finds the last two men alive electing mutual suicide in favor of years of agonizing boredom, when an almost literal deus ex machina intervenes. Things quickly slide downhill from there. Anyone who actually ends up reading the story: can you please tell me if you think the summary does the story justice? Would you read it based on that summary alone? I know that the summary is the second most important thing besides the cover for luring readers in and I want to make sure it's as good as can be. Also a blog and twitter I created specifically for this. The blog has a 50% preview of the work, in case you don’t feel like downloading the preview off Smashwords. http://aandrewtantia.blogspot.com http://twitter.com/#!/AAndrewTantia I actually first put this up on Amazon and B&N a couple of weeks ago but was dissatisfied with the cover, so I looked around for a professional designer but then she got sick and I decided the cover was okay after all and re-uploaded it yesterday/today, so it will be a couple of days before it gets updated. Long story short, I’ll post KDP and B&N links here when the updates go through. Whew, that was much longer than I intended it to be. Tl;dr: awesome thread, keep it up please.
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Apr 29, 2011 03:04
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Not a sidetrack since it might help others too so I'll keep it here. Duotrope is your friend. http://www.duotrope.com/ I've gotten the best results by filling in only the Genre, Style, and Payscale categories, leaving all others in their defaults. You can also fill in Length but if you do, fill in the number of words. Don't pick anything from the dropdown since different mags have different definitions of what they consider "short story", "novelette", etc. You can also experiment with filling in other categories if you want but those are the ones I like best. Once you have your results, scour the websites/sample works of every single magazine that comes up. From these, pick out the ones that seem to fit your story best and submit to them in a top-down fashion, i.e. send to your top pick first (whether or not it's the highest paying of the bunch). Make sure that your story is as polished as it can be before you do so. Also, if you get good results from Duotrope, donate to them. Link is on the right hand side of the front page.
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Apr 29, 2011 03:45
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Fair enough. Like I said, I'm new to the whole self-publishing thing so I just wanted to chip in with what I've gleaned so far from my own experience. Also, I was talking only from a short story standpoint, for which the submission process as I understand it is very different than with literary agents for longer works. I have absolutely no experience with novels...yet. I think anyone who gets to this point in the thread would probably do better to follow your advice than mine. HiddenGecko posted:And I really don't think I want to hear any spew about other authors in this thread, or name calling, and I think the OP would agree with me. Konrath's blog http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ is what set me on this path and you would be wise to read it before criticizing him. Hocking even explained exactly why she chose to take a 2 million dollar book deal http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/self-publisher-signs-four-book-deal-with-macmillan/ she's definitely doing something right. That comment was sort of a joke. It did not include anyone in this thread or Konrath. And I wasn't commenting on the wisdom of Hocking's business decisions, only the quality of her writing. HiddenGecko posted:As for you. You need to work on this marketing thing a whole lot. You rushed your cover and it shows, It's amateurish and tells the reader nothing about the book. If you're dissatisfied with the cover art then try to find someone else, heck we have an entire forum here full of desperate goons who'll do a lot better job than that. Your description is fine but brief, feels rushed. And the writing overall just doesn't catch me, maybe I would have a better opinion of the writing if you hadn't said you were rejected by all the magazines you submitted to, I didn't feel like what you wrote was ready yet. This is nothing personal, we're here to help each other and If I'm noticing the above then so are your potential readers/buyers. Yep, I wanted to get some goon opinions about the cover to judge if it really is worth it to shell out $50+ for a cover to a short story. Sounds like it is, and I’ll be getting on that shortly. Also, the rejections were from semi-pro+ magazines; no shame in that, these are the toughest markets. I would venture to say that this is because of the fully comic nature of the story, while most of these mags are in the serious literary/more subdued humor business, but that might just be sour grapes-ing (yes I just used that as a verb). Basically my point is that don't let the rejections alone prejudice your opinion. The story’s been through a couple of critique groups and has received very positive reviews from the majority that have read it. Of course, that doesn't automatically mean it's good but I think it's as ready as can be. Different strokes, I guess. Haven’t done any real marketing yet besides posting in this thread; I wanted to make sure the cover and summary are good before I really start trying to sell it. Will take your marketing advice as soon as these are ready. FranticDisposition fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Apr 29, 2011 |
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Apr 29, 2011 12:09
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So I went through and read a sample of at least one work by each author listed in the OP so far. Some of these are competently written but some suffer from lazy editing in places and could benefit from the services of a professional editor. Most of my critiques are from a grammar/spelling/sentence construction standpoint (which is probably one of the first things readers will judge your work by), not overall story/characters, as I only looked at the available samples and not the full works. For works that have a lot of problems I’m only quoting some example lines with corrections. Bodily Harm by William Vitka A fart joke in the second line? Okay. That will certainly draw the LCD audience… Before his wife had died…he had a place and a purpose. He took care of them... …he had had a place and a purpose. He had taken care of them... Mondays were particularly oppressive because he had fond memories of the work week starting. This is very awkwardly phrased. I get what you're trying to say: that Mondays were oppressive because they used to be the start of the work week before he retired and now all he has are his memories of Mondays, but you can rewrite this to convey that better. It was a nothing terribly dangerous as far as he could tell. A nothing. that lead to his kitchen that led to his kitchen Overall decently written but errors such as the above interrupt and spoil the flow fairly frequently. Suggest going over this again with an editor’s brush. The Hunter by James Martin There was nowhere for me to go when I left my parents house. Right off the bat, very first sentence, you’ve missed an apostrophe. Does not inspire confidence in the rest of the work. Page 2: and he started leading us… Started leading me Shuffled his rags, a little Extraneous comma And I get the feeling And I got the feeling Etc, etc. Make sure your indents are consistent. Some look like they are .25” and some are .5”. It changes kind of haphazardly. “Sarah was one of the most popular girls in our school at the time, and there was no way I should have been with her.” Most of what follows is very goony. Don’t write like this. Page XX We even managed to piece together a glass or two of punch. What, out of a dumpster? How do you “piece together” a liquid? Maybe you mean that they found enough discarded fruits to squeeze out a glass of punch? In which case it should be something like We even managed to scrounge up enough ingredients for a glass or two of punch. Sorry, there are a lot of problems with this work that could benefit from the attentions of a competent editor. The prose definitely could stand improvement. Also, you use italics for emphasis, which is correct, but then occasionally you have an underline. Be consistent. The Hermit by Ray Holland Is this meant to be a children’s novel? I can see the humorous aspect to this, but the tone of voice it is written in reads more like children’s fiction than anything else, despite the “adult” plots you introduce later. Read a couple of your other works and they are less children’s fiction-sounding. Soft White Underbelly is probably imo the best of the bunch and the only one I actually found as amusing as you were trying to be. Still, they’re all decently written and properly edited except for a few minor errors (e.g. Iask on the second page of Solitaire America, spaces before and after ellipses). Flyday by Laura E. Bradford Can’t find too much to fault here. Well edited, although I noticed a couple of minor errors that must have slipped through the cracks. Occasional hackneyed descriptions/awkward phrasing also, but otherwise consistent in the writing. Rebecca Knight Couldn’t see anything in samples of No Rest for the Wicked, probably because it’s too short. I would recommend making this one free. 1150 words is hardly more than flash fiction, and letting it be free will let potential readers sample your work. Your call though. For Write or Die, I can only see the first two paragraphs so I’ll say something about the first one: One man wearing a brace felt the impact of my work as a box of old papers knocked him flat on the porch. They are moving these boxes one at a time. "Knocked him flat" seems to imply the box fell on him or was thrown at him; what I think you mean is that the weight of the box toppled him over. Also, I don’t get what a brace is in this context. Shaken and Stirred by Scott D. Rothrock The very first word of this, which is not even the first word of the actual story itself, is misspelled. Foreword, not Foreward. I almost quit immediately, but decided to go on just for the sake of critique. The rest of the writing is competent enough, but not very engaging, and could do with additional work. …were graduating. They finished one chapter of their lives and started another. We all did. They had finished one chapter of their lives and were starting another. We all were. Page 3 switches between past and present tense in the same paragraph. Rewrite all your paragraphs on that page in past tense. E.g. Up until then, I’d been on a private…The problem with that was that Japanese regulations… The Red Man by Alex Meleg Scritching, not schritching. A whimper, like a lost puppy,… A whimper, like that of a lost puppy…Otherwise the whimper itself is like a lost puppy, rather than the whimper being like the whimper of a lost puppy. Eyes on the verge of crying glared at me, small moist eyes. Its head lolled against… Check the antecedent for the “its” pronoun (there isn’t one). Also, eyes on the verge of tears, not eyes on the verge of crying. Eyes themselves don’t cry—the person cries, the eyes tear up. What kind of evolutionary process could produce such a creature? So far, for description, you’ve got “small moist eyes”, “head lolled against shoulder, too big for its frail body”, and “fleshy protuberances locked it…” You’ve used a lot of words to tell me nothing and I have no idea what the creature looks like, so the above line means nothing to me. Overall, the prose needs considerable work and better editing. I did this, then I did this, then this happened, ad nauseam, is not very engaging. Also, several awkward sentence constructions, e.g. After hours of walking, the wind died. This sounds as if the wind itself was walking. Casey Criswell No samples available on Smashwords. Short stories, so very limited samples on Kindle. I don’t recommend this. I personally always download a sample first to see if the story is worth buying, irrespective of cover or summary. At least make a decent length sample available on Smashwords. I can see only the first paragraph of Deep Lies the Murky Floor, so I’ll comment on that. Seldom did he pass the chance to impose himself upon someone of lesser stature. “Impose himself” doesn’t sound right. It conveys a sense of imposing on someone’s hospitality, whereas what you really mean is “…Seldom did he pass up the chance to impose his will upon someone of lesser stature.” A Day in the Life of Lester Reason Did not see anything too worthy of criticism in this, except for the fact that there is nothing original about the genre or narrative. Zombie comedies are just about as dime a dozen nowadays as regular zombie books/movies. You can stand out with exceptional dialogue (comedy-wise) or narrative—Shaun of the Dead comes to mind—but I don’t see that in this. Still, it’s competently enough written and I’m sure you can find an audience. Z.N.A. by Matthew Boyd Don’t use quotes for thoughts. Technically it is acceptable, but very unusual and unnecessary. Some awkward prose here but for the most part generally competent, except, as above, nothing original. Could benefit from a paragraph by paragraph edit. I hope that some of the above is helpful. I think it will be more constructive than me just blindly buying people’s works to show support as others have been doing in this thread. I definitely want to support authors that I like, but based on samples I haven't yet seen anything worth buying (for my tastes in reading) in this thread so I think I can better show solidarity with goon self-pubbers by offering constructive criticism instead. I encourage others to do the same with my work; I have a lengthy preview posted on my blog, the link to which is in a previous post. Buy a copy and spread the word only if you genuinely enjoyed it based on the sample or know someone who would. If you didn't, my email address is available to send comments/suggestions to. I'm always open to feedback. Generally, my target audience is anyone who loves the works/sense of humor of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, P.G. Wodehouse and their ilk. If you fall into this category and don't like what I write, I definitely want to hear from you and know why. In addition, can somebody please point me to an inexpensive (<$50) cover designer. Vitka, Rothrock, Haycraft, Meleg, and Bradford, yours are the covers that are to me the most professional-looking ones of the lot. If one of you wouldn’t mind sharing contact information for whoever designs your covers for you, my email is aandrewtantia (at) gmail. It'd be much appreciated. Also, rewritten summary for Not With a Bang: In this short comical tale, the last two men alive happen upon an average, run of the mill, garden-variety garden. Unfortunately, this is all the real estate that remains of their shattered planet. Despairing at the fact that the human race has been wiped out and failing to see the bright side of things, viz., that the human race has been wiped out, they elect to end their troubles once and for all, when an almost literal deus ex machina intervenes. Things quickly slide downhill from there. Better than before? Smashwords’s short description limits me to 400 loving characters, resulting in this: In this short comical tale, the last two men alive happen upon an average, run of the mill, garden-variety garden; all the real estate that remains of their shattered planet. Despairing at the fact that the human race has been wiped out and failing to see the bright side of things, viz., that the human race has been wiped out, they elect to end their troubles once and for all, but fail. Edit: Just want to add that I apologize if I came across as too harsh on some of these. I criticized the work and not the person behind the work and from what I've seen, people in CC are generally receptive to this and also some people had asked for feedback when posting links to their stories. My intention was just to offer constructive criticism, but I know what the road to hell is paved with. If you'd rather I didn't do this, just reply to this or send me an email and I'll gladly delete out anything I said about your work. FranticDisposition fucked around with this message at 01:55 on May 1, 2011 |
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Apr 30, 2011 21:16
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Two Head Knight posted:I really do wish Amazon had a free option for listing, because I definitely agree that No Rest for the Wicked is too short. I wanted to put it up for free, but couldn't, so I went for the $0.99. What the hell, right? It's not doing anything for me sitting on my hard drive. You could make it free on Smashwords only and put in a note at the end of the Smashwords edition to the effect of "If you liked this free ebook, support the author by purchasing the story at Amazon". Then promote both versions on your site/blog/whatever. It's a thought. tarepanda posted:Thank you! I’m glad it helped. I'm afraid I probably came across as too harsh on some of these. Still, better not to spare the rod? I would recommend getting yourself a good editor though, I only looked at the sample and if there are errors in the first three or so pages there are definitely errors in the rest. tarepanda posted:I design my own covers, for better or for worse. Definitely for better. That cover is solid. If you get a chance to read my short and think you can design something just as good as yours for that, I'd be glad to pay you for your services. Edit: engimahfc posted:Terrorist Plumber, thanks for the feedback. The fact that you didn't find any glaring faults with the writing part is good by me. And yeah, I know zombies are played the gently caress out, but this was just me dipping my toe into the pool with something...safe? That's the word I want to use I guess. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with writing in a saturated genre, there's just more pressure to really excel at it than in a more gently used genre. I think there's potential in your work, I'd suggest taking some risks with your next story though and trying something new, just to see how you fare. FranticDisposition fucked around with this message at 03:00 on May 1, 2011 |
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May 1, 2011 02:30
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Secret Agent X23 posted:Well, here's the thing about that (and keep in mind that this is just a reflection of my own sensibilities, developed over years of dealing with people in similar situations). I try to refrain from offering criticism, constructive or otherwise, unless explicitly asked. I don't think something minor like pointing out a typo is out of line under any circumstances, but beyond that it's easy to come across as rude. (To be clear: No, I don't think you were trying to be rude. I'm just saying I think it would be easy to read your post that way.) Fair enough. I certainly didn't mean to be rude, I was simply trying to contribute to the thread in some capacity and I thought this would be the most constructive way. In the future, I'll keep this to personal emails. Hope I haven't derailed the thread too much 
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May 1, 2011 06:47
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 22:19 |
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E: that quoted post was probably sarcastic. Removed. The problem with trying to get honest reviews in self-publishing is that posting a negative review invites a retaliatory review from the author, who may purchase your book and drop a similar review without even reading it. This is why I personally have tried to stay away from reviewing any fellow self-publishers at all or soliciting reviews from the like (at least officially on Amazon or any other outlet). I did contribute some critiques mainly from a basic grammar/spelling standpoint here a few pages back but that isn't what this thread is for. My take on the matter is that I've essentially started ignoring the reviews on any self-published book, instead choosing to download the sample first and judge for myself. It's usually fairly easy to tell within the first few pages whether the reviews posted are genuine or the results of a mutual masturbation session. polyfractal posted:As a completely outside observer (having not read or reviewed any of these ebooks), I have to ask: why do you guys care if people circle-jerk reviews on some tiny corner of Amazon? Any single ebook probably only gets a handful of views anyway, it isn't like they are deceiving millions of people. I would like to think that no one in this thread has purposely posted a fake positive review but at the same time circle-jerk reviews are a problem in self-publishing in general and not confined to some tiny corner of Amazon. The issue definitely warrants discussion, especially in a thread which is purportedly about advice on self-publishing/promotion. The consensus in this thread so far has been "no quid pro quo reviews," which is a step in the right direction but it still doesn't address the issue of blindly retaliatory reviews. As long as that possibility is there nobody is going to be leaving anything but positive reviews. I have only one published short up so far and what I've been doing lately is sending out copies to blogs/websites that do reviews, as recommended by somebody earlier in the thread. That way there is no obligation to review the reviewer's work in turn and what you get is (relatively) honest. The only thing is, several such sites have a policy of "we'll leave a positive review or none at all," so if they don't like your book it will be returned to sender with original receipt and no review. This is again quite stupid, because it games the system in another way: while the positive reviews left are honest, there are no honest negative reviews being left. Hence my personal policy of ignoring reviews altogether. But at the same time I recognize that there are people who do heed them, and therefore it is a good idea to get my work reviewed. I just think that getting these reviews from (relatively) impartial bloggers is the lesser of two evils vs. getting them from other authors. Your mileage may vary. I hope this post is the definitive word on the matter and ends all further debate, much like the Scopes Monkey Trial ended all debate on evolution forever or Roe v. Wade killed the abortion debate in its infancy. (Since a couple of the people who have chimed in on this discussion are very dense, I must add that the above line is /sarcasm. Please leave only a positive review of this post or none at all). FranticDisposition fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jun 12, 2011 |
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Jun 12, 2011 20:09
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