|
FingerbangMisfire posted:One thing I'll mention though is that a lot of places are keen as gently caress on having first publishing rights (domestic & worldwide), which by definition disappears if you publish something yourself. Might be able to get a book deal for a new property if you prove yourself in self-pub though. That I don't doubt. In the last few months, I have found a few agents and one publisher who accepted unsolicited manuscripts who explicitly state that they will not represent or publish anything which has been released via any self-publishing portal previously. Whether the majority of the industry follows that view or not, I couldn't tell you, but there are definitely at least some places that disapprove.
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2011 15:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:26 |
|
|
Fenarisk posted:This makes perfect sense from an IP standpoint, but from what I gathered those that went from self publishing to traditional publishing did so with new lines of novels. Amanda Hocking is one that comes to mind (her publisher deal books are separate from her kindle ones). Absolutely on this. I meant in terms of "don't shop a manuscript to agents while simultaneously self-pubbing it." There doesn't appear, in this day and age, to be much of a stigma for new materials. The first-rights stuff applies to each work individually, of course, so if it's a new IP, nobody cares.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2011 02:57
|
|
|
Yeah, the takeaway point from his messages wasn't "you can write crap, just be prolific", it was "write a lot of okay stuff and use Amazon's organizational systems to your advantage." Read the parts further down the page where he talks about linking genres, links to different books inside his ebooks, etc. The ten-page thing also hits on one of the tendencies people have noted with e-reader users, which is that they are much more open to short stories and quick reads. $0.99 for a decent short story works with them, whereas the publishing costs of binding a short story at that price point would bankrupt you (and you wouldn't sell it at anything higher, because it's only ten pages; who would buy it?). It gives him an added market of impulse buyers and short story fans, who then may read his other works as well. It might not be the most artistic of approaches to writing, but it sounds like he's got one hell of an approach to getting exposure for his work. Getting yourself to stand out is half the battle with ebooks. Sundae fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Nov 10, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2011 00:39
|
|
|
vseslav.botkin posted:PROPOSAL: goon erotic anthology. Result: The Neovella thread.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2011 03:07
|
|
|
I'm horribly unimpressed. Penguin's BookCountry doesn't seem to have that much oomph behind it in the first place, and you get hit with multiple levels of fees / royalty cuts from the various channels on top of Penguin. What, if anything, is the author getting out of this that they couldn't figure out on their own if they spent 15 minutes on Google? Is Penguin putting any kind of marketing oomph behind your book? I highly doubt it; for that much effort, they'd just traditionally publish you instead. You're not getting access to extra distribution networks, not getting an artist, not getting any marketing assistance... what exactly are you paying for? quote:Are formatting and a cover really worth losing royalties forever? It doesn't even say that you get a cover. You get access to a cover creator. Edit: http://bookcountry.com/CMSContent/Templates/Marketing.aspx?pageid=120483 ^^^ Fee lists. quote:Professional Print and eBook: $549 Your Publishing Kit posted:The Professional Publishing Kit includes: Sundae fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Nov 16, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2011 21:18
|
|
|
The biggest thing I wonder is why now? They're ridiculously late to the game, and they think they're going to break into Amazon's self-pub market with a horrible, sub-par program? Even if it's the best a traditional publisher has put together so far, the only advantage I can see is the $6.00 manufacturing fee per copy for print books being slightly better than what the average CreateSpace or Lulu paperback charges for PoD. Everything else is not only terrible, but several years behind the other self-pub players.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2011 22:41
|
|
|
vseslav.botkin posted:Would you guys be interested in a private forum for sharing and editing between goons? I'm working on setting up a website and it looks like it would be pretty easy to do. A bit old, but did this ever end up happening? I'm taking a look at Scribophile in the meantime, but a goon group would be pretty awesome.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2011 22:40
|
|
|
quote:How do you guys and gals handle this? If you don't care about the Paperwhite font bug, Amazon will actually recognize standard page breaks from a .DOC/.DOCX upload and turn them into new sections. If you do care (in which case don't go uploading through Word), a centered # or *** or even embedding a separator image and defining it as a style in the epub header work great. (Don't be the idiot who embeds a low-res JPG with all sorts of artifacts, though. It looks pretty terrible.) I honestly don't read a lot of ebooks, but the best I've seen anyone do for epub formatting, so far, is the book The Magicians. They had custom fonts before those were really a thing, special formatting, inlaid borders on some pages, and a bunch of really amazing things that looked almost like you were reading a real book, only in epub. It looked fantastic. I do not use TOCs or chapters in short stories. The only short works I use chapter breaks in are serials, and even then I break my own rule 3/4 of the time.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2012 16:46
|
|
|
psychopomp posted:A lot of people must be having killer sales because my Amazon rank just plummeted to the lowest point it's ever been at. I can't vouch for other genres, but I made a killing yesterday in romance. I went to bed excited at having my first $200 day and woke up to almost $900 in sales. For reference's sake, I usually average around $30-40 a day.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2012 17:45
|
|
|
CRAlvery posted:Over in BFC, 3k+ seems to sell well but that's also romance and erotica. I can't speak for other genres. My short stories in mainstream genres don't sell worth a drat at all. To be fair, though, I am also a terrible hack of a writer.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2012 19:27
|
|
|
Without going into a ton of detail (the BFC thread spills over into so many others that I don't want to add to the general infection), I'll just say that it's not as easy as it sounds. On a topic more suitable for this particular thread, my favorite genre to write is still mainstream fantasy. God, I love writing it when I get a good idea going.  One of these days, I need to take a break from the romance and go finish off editing the last twelve chapters of my most recent YA fantasy and convert the book to ePUB. I also need a new pen-name for it, since there is no way in hell I can use my normal one for it anymore.  OrangeKing - that looks like an awesome book idea. I just grabbed a copy.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2012 03:02
|
|
|
Just about 350,000 words for 2012. One 67,000-word YA fantasy, one 55,000 word erotic romance, and 38 short stories averaging 6,000 words each. Looks like my total earnings for December will be right around $2,000, but I have to wait until the 15th and see how many 35%-royalty zones got lumped into my Amazon sales report to be sure. Earnings for the year are much lower, at around $5,000 or so. I didn't really start making money off any of it until June, and it didn't really take off until December 21 when I released the 55K romance. That thing sold 330 copies on Christmas Day alone. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 1, 2013 12:56
|
|
|
Haomo posted:To the people who have written 100k+ words this year, I have a few questions for you: When I do not have a major project in mind, I write for about an hour a day, six days a week, plus about 3 hours for cover design + blurb + keyword optimization + uploading / dealing with smashwords and kobo. That will be enough to comfortably churn out one 5-8K word short story every week, plus a day off. When I have a major project, all bets are off. I spent 40 hours over a 4-day weekend before Christmas to finish editing my lovely billionaire erotic romance, for example, and the writing took a bit longer for that. Not a lot longer, though, because I released it originally as a five-part serial at about 10K-12K words per part, with a new part every two weeks. My next book is due on Feb 25, and I expect I will have to work 2-3 hours a night to get it done in time because of some of the research I'll need to do as I go along. The novelization of it is in the Top 100 for suspense and thrillers in the UK, in the top 4,500 overall in the UK, and in the top 6K in the USA last I checked on Amazon. I made about $1,500 (give or take depending on 35% vs 70% breakdown due Jan 15) from it in 10 days in December, and it has sold 43 copies so far today for Jan 1st. I priced it at $3.29 for no reason whatsoever. As far as overall income goes, it's been ramping up since about June 2012. I used to make about $30-100 a month back when I started writing in January 2012, and in June it hit $250. From there, it just went up and up and up each month, spiking out at about $1,900-2,300 in December (depends on 35% zone breakdown on Amazon.com, which I will see on about Jan 15). December was shaping up to be my worst month since August or September, and then people decided they liked billionaires or something.  It is definitely nice beer money. Now that the checks are becoming reasonably large, though, I'm going to start throwing them toward student loans in 2013.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2013 01:09
|
|
|
Edit: OOF... 15% cut of digital publications?? I looked at your sales ranking on the paper version, and I think you're getting ripped off. 1.4M sales ranking since October means that most likely only one purchase was made (or a few all at once right at the beginning for personal copies), and if it's only one, it's probably by your publisher to start the rankings (which don't activate until the first sale). What exactly did he do for you? Did he write your blurbs? Design covers? I see another Vitka listed as illustrator - did you do your own cover design too? Did he do anything? Doghouse posted:Whoa, that's pretty good. How many stories or novels do you have out? Two novels (67K YA Fantasy and 55K erotic romance) and 38 short stories in the erotic genres, averaging 6,000 words a piece roughly. My next mainstream contemp romance should be out in late February or early March. The 55K romance made up the vast majority of my revenue last month, and it has been growing steadily. I sold 53 copies of it yesterday, for example. My other stuff is still growing (except for the YA fantasy, which is pretty stagnant and also, IMO, not really all that good), but it's not growing anywhere near the rate of that one book. I have actually been pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it is to write romance (and I mean contemporary romance, not victorian poo poo or straight erotica). The "Harlequin Formula" doesn't really apply as long as you make sure you follow a few basic genre rules, and readers are much more willing to consider a self-pubbed book (in my experience, at least) than in sci-fi or fantasy. Also... this sounds really dumb, but another advantage is that most of your competition sucks horribly. As long as you're a reasonably coherent writer and can put together a sweet / sassy / sexy story (depending on your focus, I guess), you have a good chance of standing out. Your literary relevance may still be on par with bird poo poo, but yours is from an ostrich and everyone else had pigeons. You stand out. Tell a compelling story or make interesting characters, and readers cut you a lot of slack. Being brutally honest with myself here: I don't think my romance novel does either of those things. I think it's pretty much a train-wreck. That didn't stop people from paying for my New Year's Eve booze bill, though. On a different note... I really need to find an easier way to manage pen-names. I have four of them now, plus my non-fiction under my real name. I don't really 'manage' my real name, but I've got websites and twitter feeds and facebook pages and AuthorCentral profiles and  all over the place for the other names. One of these days, I'm going to gently caress up and post a promo for sexy stuff on the YA page, and I'll have to go into hiding from angry soccer moms. Anyone have suggestions, or do you just keep spreadsheets / separate folders for each of them? I am pretty likely to gently caress up one of these days with my current system of bookmark folders containing all the appropriate links. Sundae fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Jan 2, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2013 17:34
|
|
|
gently caress Smashwords forever. Unless you actually make sales on their main site, I'd highly recommend Draft2Digital instead. They can't get you onto Baker&Taylor or Diesel yet, but most people can deal with missing out on all zero of the sales they'll ever get on those two portals. All I needed in order to be completely sold: They fixed an ePub error for me and e-mailed me to let me know what it was, and then still got my last book active on the Apple store in less than 72 hours. It was basically "Hey, caught an invalid fit designator for your cover image; that thing works on mobi but not in standard ePub. We switched it to [whatever it was]. Let us know if you have a problem, otherwise we're submitting tonight." I literally had a real person contact me. It was awesome. 
Sundae fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 10, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2013 17:55
|
|
|
Everyone I know in the other writing thread and in another writing forum got in, so decent odds I guess? I had an invite the same day I requested a code.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2013 00:02
|
|
|
Ant, you seriously need to do some cover research and reconsider how you think about cover designs. Let's compare some covers and titles here: http://www.amazon.com/Deadlocked-ebook/dp/B006OOSWRO/ http://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Apocalypse-Infection-Unleashed-ebook/dp/B008R53WBO/ http://www.amazon.com/World-War-Oral-History-Zombie/dp/0307346617/ http://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Z-Beginning-Manel-Loureiro/dp/1612184340/ http://www.amazon.com/Hollowland-Amanda-Hocking/dp/1453860959/ http://www.amazon.com/Forest-Hands-Teeth-Carrie-Ryan/dp/B004EYUDMS/ All popular zombie or zombie-like books (well, and a zombie-based dystopian romance by loving Amanda Hocking), most with pretty good sales rankings or long histories of sales, except for maybe the last one. (However, that's probably the loving publisher's fault for setting the eBook price at $9.99.) Still, it's an acceptable cover. Look at what they're doing. Now go back and look at yours. Your titles don't stick, either, but that's another issue. I could buy "Year of the Zombie" as a title, maybe. It's at least short enough to remember. The rest of it sounds like a M:TG expansion gone haywire. Next, repeat after me: I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever use Poser, DazStudio, Bryce, or anything 3D that I made by myself in a cover ever again. 3D in general is best avoided unless you know exactly what you're doing, but home-made 3D is probably the worst idea ever. As a side-note, the first cover you posted (minus the pile of items) immediately made me think of the Dungeons and Dragons hardcover manuals.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2013 02:14
|
|
|
Just a FYI, but your back cover has some typos according to the Amazon preview at least. Need to capitalize the O, and you've got a verb/noun agreement thing going on there too.quote:One in fifty paranormal happenings are aggressive in nature... "One Just to ask: Is this intended to be a commercial project, or is this a project you're publishing so you can see it in a store and get a copy in your hand? (Nothing wrong with the latter - I completely agree about the awesomeness of receiving a copy of your own book. )The reason I ask is because, if you contact AuthorCentral directly, they'll link your createspace version to your Kindle version so that they show up as being by the same author / as alternative versions. (This has the advantage of making the Kindle version look like it's on sale, too. You'll get that lovely red strike-out / digital mark-down.) Sundae fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 27, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2013 15:52
|
|
|
quote:How do you mean commercial project? I asked because I had a bunch of other things I was thinking about the book at the time that I was considering posting. Plenty of people just use CreateSpace to make personal copies just for posterity's sake, though, so I wanted to find out before I made any other comments about blurbs, Amazon keyword selection, etc. (I've got a few hobby books on my shelf that really only exist for nostalgia / embarrassment's sake. ) I didn't want to churn out some big effort post for a hobby book. That's all I meant. I wasn't trying to insinuate anything.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2013 00:56
|
|
|
Anyone know when Amazon or B&N send out 1099s? I'd love to get my taxes done with sooner rather than later. On the topic of Novel vs Short Stories, I prefer the 'have my cake and eat it too' approach. A bunch of mine are serials. If it's selling well, I keep it going longer and longer while people keep buying the parts until it's reached its inevitable conclusion, then edit it into a novel and release it. If it doesn't take off, I kill it in a few parts and call it a day. This way I'm not wasting all my effort to finish a book only to find that people don't like it. It's actually how my 50SoG rip-off got started. I did it as a 9,000-word 'to be continued' and then kept writing more parts as people bought it selling. I got reader feedback as it went on, and revised the earlier parts for newer readers, until eventually all five parts were fairly popular apart from the usual schmucks you always run into. Once the story ended (at about 48,000 words), I went back and edited it, added more content, etc, and released it as a 55,000-word short novel. Or long novella. Whatever. gently caress that distinction. It worked great. The existing reader-base snarfed it down like mad, and that drove it so far up into the rankings that the Christmas Kindle rush caught wind of it. At its peak on like January 2nd, it was #76 in Romance, #53 in Erotica, #24 in Suspense and Thrillers, and #21 (gently caress you, page 2  ) in the UK Hot New Releases.It's died down to about rank 65K-75K overall now, but that's Amazon's new visibility algorithm for you. The older a work is on Amazon, the harder it is to keep it visible even if it's selling well, because Also-Bought lists appear to now give newer works a higher weighting than relative sales. It used to just be pure sales volume, but that favored the reverse problem. It still sells great on B&N, at least. (One quick comment on serials: Check your genre to make sure it isn't absolutely despised by your readers before trying it. My sci-fi serial got ripped a new one by readers, even at $0.99 per 15K segment, because, in their view, "gently caress serials." ) Sundae fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jan 30, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2013 17:43
|
|
|
I suppose technically you can pull together all their stupid sales reports, run the currency conversions, and grab the number that way. I love how every single publication portal has their own set of gently caress-ups that make them unique. It's really been eye-opening to learn how all the different publishers (don't) work over the last year.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2013 23:08
|
|
|
There are a few specific things I'd say about serials. #1 - You (usually?) have to read them in order. I've never seen one that could be read out of order. #2 - Each part is clearly incomplete. You might close a scene, but there is an extended plot which has not been resolved. #3 - Not always the rule, but cliffhanger endings are very common. You want the reader to race out to get the next part. http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_lin...pf_rd_i=Serials Kindle Serials program, for reference. ^^^ To give a few lovely examples: If a story was ostensibly about a guy breaking out of jail to get revenge on the man who framed him for the murder of his wife, you haven't completed the plot if the story ends after he digs under the fence and sprints off into the woods with guard dogs chasing right behind him. You're writing a serial at that point. As a counterpoint, a set of short stories about a five year mission to explore strange new worlds, blah blah Shatner, is episodic. You can land on a different planet and bone a different alien babe in every story, and it doesn't matter what planet you were on last time. As long as you end that plot, you're good to go. Of course, you have to satisfy different sorts of reader expectations, but that falls under "no duh."
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2013 01:13
|
|
|
Longbaugh01 posted:This all started when you mentioned poor feedback regarding science fiction serials, and since I'm specifically interested and worried in and about this aspect: I realize John Scalzi is established, but his serials seem fairly popular? Is the backlash from a vocal minority, biased against unknown authors, a more general backlash, or some combination of these? Honestly, I don't know. I'm one author with one sci-fi serial with six 1-star "gently caress serials" style reviews. I am not able to speak for everyone. All I know is that romance readers loved the serial format, and sci-fi reviews butchered me. quote:This doesn't work with Amazon's system, but I've thought about it. Yeah, you'd have to either get accepted into their Serials program (not good odds because of how many submissions they get) or figure out another system. I can think of one way to do it, but readers would be insane to let you do it. (They could theoretically sign up to receive updates by Personal Document on their kindles, and then you'd do direct-mail to all your subscribers.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2013 02:43
|
|
|
Yep. They started rolling that out about two weeks ago, actually. Why some sections went away before others is beyond me. They literally did nothing, and haven't since at least June of last year, so no loss.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2013 04:04
|
|
|
We've tested the tag search stuff to death now both in the other thread and on a related outside forum. Tags did count for searches a long time ago, and then Amazon realized people were using them for exactly that purpose (what the hell else would we use them for  ) and instituted the separate tag search which was conveniently placed way the hell down the side menu where nobody ever saw it. Once that new search was implemented, they dropped tags out of the primary searches. The only things that matter on Amazon are your seven keywords, your title, and the author name. Not even the words in your blurb matter.If your book has been up long enough / gotten popular enough / publisher gave enough money for Amazon to apply inside-text scan to it, then you can have your book text apply to searches as well. I can't imagine this applies to any of us. In spite of this, Amazon is still the most functional search engine of any of the major portals by a long shot. If you ever try messing with Kobo's or B&N's search engines for a little bit, you'll see what I mean. Sundae fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Jan 31, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2013 04:54
|
|
|
quote:The reason I think is because I managed to write the complete anti-young adult novel. The heroines aren't pretty and the plot is essentially "you can whine and mope all you want but the world isn't stopping for you so grow up and save it." I refuse to believe you've ever read a YA book in your entire life based on this statement. quote:Unless he correctly guessed the future (not hard in this instance), and it's happening now. http://k23detectives.com/2011/11/22/authorsdoormats/ It all started after that article right there, which he then posted about in this thread. 4chan got wind of it, and you can guess the rest.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2013 16:02
|
|
|
Bug Bill Murray posted:Destroy your computer and read a book a week. An actual book, not a comic book or C++ manual. I wish everyone would do this, honestly. Reading improves your writing just as much as the act of writing itself. quote:(If you're even being honest about a sudden jolt in sales.) Judging by SRE, I'd estimate that he sold between 10-25 copies over the last week, probably a product of being featured on Worst Things For Sale. At $0.35 a copy, it's a few cups of coffee. (Never, ever price yourself at $0.99 for a full novel, piece of poo poo or not. Seriously.)
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2013 17:25
|
|
|
Sorry, I shouldn't have included temporary pricing in that. You can do whatever promos you want; I just meant as a long-term price. You need six times the sales at $0.99 to make the same as a $2.99-priced book, and I've not seen any conclusive proof of a $0.99 price-point doing that. A $0.99 starting price can be great for exposure and promotional stuff, but sacrificing the 70% royalty rate just isn't worth it.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2013 02:38
|
|
|
The algorithm changed a while back, and while I've definitely seen a few effects regarding title visibility, I honestly don't know how/if pricing entered the picture. Sorry. Edit: Also - hooray for royalty statements from Kobo and Amazon! Sundae fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Feb 23, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2013 04:12
|
|
|
FingerbangMisfire posted:Amazon has this whole 'price match' deal, so if you make it free on SmashWords, for example, they'll make it free on Amazon. Just an FYI, but Amazon no longer matches Smashwords prices. However, they will match Kobo's freebies. The time it takes to get a price match is roughly proportional to the sum of the moon's phase and the winning lotto numbers last night. quote:Opinions will differ, but I generally feel like short stories ~5k-7k words should be free if promotional (I'll be doing this at the end of the week) or $.99 if you're looking to make money (which you probably won't since anything under $2.99 only nets you 30% from Amazon). It varies so hugely from genre to genre that there's not much point making a rule about it. I price nothing under $2.99 unless it's either a promotional price or the first part of a serial. However, I also would never dream of trying to sell a 5,000-word fantasy short on Amazon. Different markets, different expectations. If the market's expectations are such that I'd have to be in the 30% royalty range, I'm simply not going to write it. There is nothing as disheartening as seeing 900 sales and knowing that it's not even going to cover your grocery bills for the month. It's just not worth it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2013 16:21
|
|
|
Check the rest of your genre and find other works that match your intent. Are they successful? Are they getting crapped on by reviewers? Are they floundering at rank 800,000 or sitting contently at 8,000? That's what you need to do in order to price yourself, not ask here. (Unless, of course, goons are your target audience... in which case God save us all.)
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2013 20:09
|
|
|
Hey, contradict me all you like. If people who actually write the stuff say otherwise, they are by far a better source than a random goon (aka me). Also - on that whole "dread" thing: don't dread anything if you want to try it. The worst that can happen is that you waste a little time and burn a pen name. Big deal. Hope it works! I'm biting my nails while I watch my newest book make its way up the rankings. It debuted at #2011 a week ago and has slowly been dropping from there. It dipped below #1500 once today, and now it's hovering in the low 1500s and #34 overall in its genre. Beautiful, beautiful sales, but it hurts to see that I'm so damned close to the front page of my genre and just barely missing! Hopefully the review copies I sent out will drum up a little more interest. Even if they don't, I'm still happy that I can call this one a success. It meant a lot to me.
Sundae fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Mar 5, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2013 21:53
|
|
|
quote:Is this crap? Can you name a single successful book with a cover like that? (It's crap.)
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2013 02:04
|
|
|
Exioce posted:How are you guys marketing your stuff? I'm fine with writing the odd thing and getting it self-pubbed, but I learnt a long time ago that build it and they do not come. So what steps should I take to get the word out? Short stories: I do absolutely nothing. I build it and they do, in fact, come. Novels: Get it on Goodreads about 7-10 days in advance of release. Goodreads is responsible for like 95% of my most recent romance novel's success. (I may have something else up my sleeve for later this month, but I don't want to go spouting it as a good idea until I see if it works. I'll check back when I look over the data and see if it worked.)I'd say that I've spent maybe 10 hours total on promo across everything I've ever written.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2013 16:07
|
|
|
Longbaugh01 posted:This thread suddenly got depressing. If it makes you feel any better, based on my experiences and those of my writing group, I think pretty much every single word about marketing in the last page is complete and utter crap. Almost all of us are kicking rear end in mainstream romance on minimal, well-targeted promotion and negligible expense. I could buy one or two of us being special snowflakes who got lucky, but there are sixteen of us. I'm more inclined to think that the average bestselling author is still just a writer and not a marketer, and then everyone else repeats his mistakes because he's a bestseller. Being successful in spite of your dumb marketing campaign doesn't make it any less dumb.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2013 01:22
|
|
|
Icon-Cat posted:Just for fun: This is beautiful. I love that someone thought it a good idea to use an embossing effect on colored pencil, as if it'd do anything other than blind the reader.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2013 14:55
|
|
|
psychopomp posted:Don't charge less than $2.99 for anything you release, it's just not worth it. If you're going to publish a loss-leader, might as well go ahead and make it free. Completely agreed. Just to elaborate on it a bit: In order to match the total royalties of a single $2.99 sale, you need six $0.99 sales. If your goal is exposure, you might as well price-match it to free and get even more people. If your goal is to make money, you're only hurting yourself by going less than $2.99. Remember: $2.99 is less than the price a cup of decent coffee in most of America. It's not like you're ripping off your customer by charging that. (Well, assuming your story is decent.) The only $0.99 reasons I've seen that makes monetary sense, to date, are for either a loss-leader that hasn't yet been price matched or for a "LIMITED TIME ONLY" sort of thing to shoot you up the rankings. Whether that's worth it will depend on the size of your audience.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2013 17:47
|
|
|
Adraeus posted:I think if you want to drive adoption, you need to buy sales by heavily discounting your books, at least through regular promotions. Ahh, I could see that being true in non-fiction. I have very minimal exposure in non-fic and almost all of it is non-applicable since they're scientific journal publications, so I'll take your word on it. I don't think, in fiction, that it quite applies though. At least not in romance. We'd have hit maximum kiltage decades ago if so.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2013 20:59
|
|
|
Shima Honnou posted:Another couple questions, though. When it comes to a cover, obviously I want to have something, but do I pop that into the file I send them, or can I just upload it and it auto-applies? Also, is it kosher (Or just a good idea in general) to upload the same works to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble? I'd assume it would increase possible exposure, but I don't know how binding publishing with one or the other is. #1 - Depends on the site and upload format. For Amazon and B&N, if you upload a DOC or DOCX, it will auto-apply a cover. Do not add a cover to your upload unless you want there to be two covers. If you upload an epub or mobi to Amazon, it will duplicate your cover unless your NCX / OPF is correct. B&N adds a cover to everything (I think?). Kobo adds no covers to anything last time I checked. #2 - It is absolutely a good idea. The only caveats are: (a) - Amazon's TOS requires they match the lowest price you offer it at anywhere else, and (b) you cannot list a book anywhere else if you've enrolled it in KDP Select through Amazon. I think this may also apply to Kindle Singles, but for most people, that's not an issue. #3 - Yep, use as many pen names as you'd like. Just remember that you can only manage three (or is it four?) per AuthorCentral Account. #4 - If you don't have an e-reader, go get yourself the free program Kindle for PC from Amazon's site and invest $10.00 in a bunch of e-books for your genre, preferably professional ones. Load them up and start reading on your PC. You'll be able to see what accepted formatting looks like.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2013 15:05
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:26 |
|
|
workingdogv1 posted:To add to point #2, consider smashwords as well, since they can get a well-formatted book to Apple and Sony, which is nigh-impossible on your own. I'm still working out how exactly to get into the Google Play store. Never consider Smashwords when Draft2Digital does it 1000X better. As for Sony... well, I'm weeping bitterly over the ones of sales I'm losing out on by not distributing to them. They're a pointless distributor with minimal market share and aren't worth dealing with.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2013 16:23
|
|