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Book cover chat: I can't remember if I saw the reference for this company given in this thread or somewhere else on the internet, but I wanted to call out https://getcovers.com/book-cover-design/ as giving me excellent value for my  . They're a Ukrainian company, which I always love supporting in this day and age. They also offer higher-end design, but for someone writing a book that won't sell/KU many copies on its own (making the bulk of its sales/reads later in life when the trilogy is completed), I decided to go with their lower-end offering.The way it works is you pick one of their packages and pay for it: $10 (1 licensed image), $20 (2 licensed images), or $35 (3-5 licensed images). (Print covers only are available at $20 or $35.) Then you go to their stock images website and find pix you would like them to use. (You can also use your own pix if you like; I imagine each one of those counts as a licensed image for cost purposes.) You describe your desired cover, link them your preferred stock images, let them know the genre, give them the text (title, author, back cover text, etc.) and other key info, and they put together a cover for you. At the $20 level, I got back a .jpg of the front cover, a .jpg mockup of a hardcover of my book sitting on a bench, and both a .jpg and a .pdf of a full paperback cover. If you don't like it, or there are problems with it, you can go back to them and have them revise it, which they will do within a day. (I had to do this twice, once for a text error on my part, once for coming back with paperback page count/cover size -- first time author; didn't realize I could calculate this in advance on Amazon -- and both times it was done promptly.) I only had one issue: the turnaround is four days, but they were delayed and asked me in advance for 2-3 extra days due to technical issues. If you're in a real hurry, they'll turn your cover around in a day for a $10 surcharge. Is my cover perfect? No. Is it $20 worth of perfect? Hell yeah. My cover's below (click to embiggen; eta to add it because even though it was in the last post I sniped the page). They have a portfolio of other covers as well as examples of how they put together a cover from stock images on their site. 
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Dec 13, 2022 19:03
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Which part of writing do you all find takes the most of your time? Thinking of a plot and characters is what I find most time consuming but I wonder if that's just a newbie problem and others tend to spend most of their time on other things after they get more experience writing and publishing.
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Dec 13, 2022 21:45
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The writing part takes the most time.
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Dec 13, 2022 22:59
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Admiralty Flag posted:
That's a nice cover! Gets my attention. oliveoil posted:Which part of writing do you all find takes the most of your time? Thinking of a plot and characters is what I find most time consuming but I wonder if that's just a newbie problem and others tend to spend most of their time on other things after they get more experience writing and publishing. Editing and revisions take most of my time. Writing is probably the "hardest" in terms of effort.
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Dec 13, 2022 23:28
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oliveoil posted:Which part of writing do you all find takes the most of your time? Thinking of a plot and characters is what I find most time consuming but I wonder if that's just a newbie problem and others tend to spend most of their time on other things after they get more experience writing and publishing. Thinking of plot events and characters comes pretty easily to me. If you want to speed it up, I recommend keeping a notes app on your phone (or a physical notebook if you're old school) that is dedicated solely to creative ideas, and write down every idea you have no matter how stupid or irrelevant it seems (for example, I rarely if ever write literary fiction but I still jot down ideas "wouldn't it be cool if there was a lit fic story about X"). Much like with keeping a dream journal, the more you write down the more your brain will provide. Or at least that's how it works for me. Note that this is a good technique for generating ideas that you're enthusiastic about. Turning those raw ideas into a solid plan for a novel is a different process and still takes me a lot of time.
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Dec 13, 2022 23:47
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Seconding the "keep a notebook" suggestion. I've always had one by my side, since college, but using it? Whoops! I gave myself the rule of "note down every idea. Drop whatever you're doing and write it the gently caress down!" as well as using "Hey Siri*, take a note." Before I started doing that, I'd have an idea and it'd be gone without a trace before I was able to loop back to it. That rule made an enormous difference because it gave me so much more grist for when I began writing, outlining, etc. *Not saying get an Apple whatever, but if you have a voice assistant that can do that sort of thing it's a huge help for when your hands are full. Dishes, shower, you get the drift.
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Dec 14, 2022 01:11
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oliveoil posted:Which part of writing do you all find takes the most of your time? The outlining. Every time I've tried to become more efficient in writing words by using a more detailed outline, my discovery writing brain nopes out. I just finished rough drafting the next book in my fantasy series. I wanted to smash out the prose so I gave myself a month to do a really solid outline. It was the biggest waste of time because I over thought and outlined the same book maybe four or five times and the outline never survived contact with the blank page. I ended up just vibing my way to the end. Oh and marketing. Instagram actually drives organic sales on my kids books but Instagram posts and reels also take forever to do. I was dumb and decided to do content marketing for that so it takes me extra extra long to put together but even for my fantasy novels where it's just quote pics, it still takes a stupid long time to put together. Edit: though the best marketing is actually still publishing the next book so I guess the real answer is still "writing the next book"
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Dec 14, 2022 03:21
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oliveoil posted:Which part of writing do you all find takes the most of your time? Thinking of a plot and characters is what I find most time consuming but I wonder if that's just a newbie problem and others tend to spend most of their time on other things after they get more experience writing and publishing. spending hours trying to get my brain to form sentences on a screen and not play a mobile game instead. 2020 was The Year Of Untreated ADHD.
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Dec 14, 2022 11:58
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newts posted:The writing part takes the most time. This, 100%. Everything I've done over the last 9 years has basically been to try to improve this and find a process that actually gets me to write anything at all ever. And then also to type it up, because part of accomplishing the former usually requires writing in longhand for some reason.
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Dec 29, 2022 07:54
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I had entertained the idea of publishing this memoir I've been working on for a decade but at this point I just want it to be seen. I want to just upload it to The Internet. I don't need to make profits on it; for one, I don't think it's going to be of much value and also if I were to go that route I'd need an editor and I can't afford any of this. What would be the most accessible way to have it be available to be accessed? What's the cheapest way I can distribute this? It's not finished yet. At least, in its entirety. I have finished 11 volumes and it will be 13 by the time it's done. It's currently at about 1.3 million words :|
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Jan 12, 2023 23:47
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credburn posted:What would be the most accessible way to have it be available to be accessed? What's the cheapest way I can distribute this? Run your doc through any number of converters available, upload the resulting epub to Amazon KDP, Google Play, and Draft2Digital. This will make your memoir purchasable/downloadable on 95% of the retail outlets for ebooks out there and requestable in libraries. Optional: throw it up on Wattpad. I think that's the web serial platform that's friendliest for memoirs Also an option: forget above the formal publishing process. Create a free site on Wordpress.com or Wix or anywhere with a free plan and  insteadcredburn posted:also if I were to go that route I'd need an editor and I can't afford any of this. I'm of the opinion that paying an editor does not guarantee a quality book. Fortunately, it's possible to still publish a good book with $0 upfront. I have a whole YouTube video about it but the TL;DR version is: 1) DIY as much as possible as you can using free tools and resources; and 2) for the stuff you absolutely can't do, go and raise some funds to pay for it. BUT: credburn posted:I just want it to be seen. What do you actually mean by this? Because the mechanics of publishing the thing is easy; the hard part is driving traffic to the thing and convincing people to read it. It's hard enough convincing people to download my book for free and then read it, even when I've spent money on a professional cover that's appropriate to genre and slaved over the blurb, etc. If you do not think your memoir is going to be of much value, nobody will even click your link, let alone download it and read it.
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Jan 13, 2023 01:28
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Leng posted:Also an option: forget above the formal publishing process. Create a free site on Wordpress.com or Wix or anywhere with a free plan and I'll probably go this route. I was going to ask if there was a commonly used template or theme or whatever wordpress uses that makes it easy for uploading long documents and having it formatted in a digestible way. I think probably this is easily found if I just peruse their site, though. Leng posted:What do you actually mean by this? Because the mechanics of publishing the thing is easy; the hard part is driving traffic to the thing and convincing people to read it. Ye mortal have no capacity to comprehend the degree of interest that will be generated once this baby is online.
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Jan 13, 2023 03:25
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credburn posted:Ye mortal have no capacity to comprehend the degree of interest that will be generated once this baby is online. Good! As long as you believe there is an audience for it and you can clearly articulate the value of it to that audience, you'll find readers. Good luck!
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Jan 13, 2023 07:24
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Leng posted:Run your doc through any number of converters available, upload the resulting epub to Amazon KDP, Google Play, and Draft2Digital. to completely avoid the OP's point: the "any number of converters" rarely if ever produce an ePub that passes epubcheck, and D2D requires that now. Which did you have in mind that does pass? (Calibre and PanDoc don't, for instance, and most online converters use one of those in the back end.)
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Jan 14, 2023 11:08
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I use Vellum personally but if I had to go for a free tool, I'd use the D2D converter. https://www.draft2digital.com/steps/ If you don't go wide then I'd just stick with the Kindle Create app for simplicity. https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Create/b?ie=UTF8&node=18292298011 Edit: in both cases this is on the assumption you're not doing anything too fancy with book formatting and layout. I wouldn't want to test either tool with heaps of footnotes or tables for example.
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Jan 15, 2023 03:28
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I recommend you also download a copy of Sigil E-Pub Editor. Use the converters on D2D or whatever else you use, and then when you fail EPUBCheck, start loving with it in Sigil and fix your stuff there. I found it much easier to work in markup mode and generate all the TOC stuff and internals that way, and fixing broken poo poo at least felt like it was easier when I could look under the hood and modify stuff directly. YMMV, of course, that I found it helpful.
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Jan 17, 2023 04:23
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Howdy, writing friends. I return about 5k words away from finishing a rough draft of my fourth novel. I've written an average of 1k words a day for about two and a half years, and by the end of the month I'll have four rough drafts of lower case "H" horror novels. And this time, I've been letting a trusted person who is published read along. They...think it's worth publishing? I understand it's a sympathetic reviewer of a rough draft, but I'm a little buoyed by the response. In all seriousness, I'd say novel number two (monsters attack a secluded restaurant) and novel number four (two civil war veterans living in Tennessee earn the ire of the klan, who inadvertently piss off old forest spirits) are the ones worth a poo poo. That said, I'm needing a little guidance on my next step - finding an editor. I'm taking the advice from this thread seriously, and planning to do a god job of polishing out the rough edges in turning these from a "rough" to "first" draft before anything else happens. Also, I'm not allergic to paying for quality service as a first timer without any publishing credits to my name. But trying to play Google Roulette about editing is overwhelming and contradictory. What would the recommendations be from this kind and helpful thread? P. S. - The advice I've received here, along with Leng's videos, have literally outweighed anything else on the internet so far.
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Jan 21, 2023 15:23
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Seconding the recommendation for GetCovers. I just got a cover at the $35 tier that looks as good as some stuff I've seen for way more. Customer service is fast and courteous. Definitely tip the artist if you can.
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Jan 21, 2023 16:30
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Captain Log posted:I've been letting a trusted person who is published read along. Congrats! Captain Log posted:That said, I'm needing a little guidance on my next step - finding an editor. First question: what kind of editing are you looking for? Developmental (structural stuff, like plot/character/arcs), line/copy (prose, style, continuity, etc), or proofing (typos, formatting)? EDIT: Captain Log posted:Also, I'm not allergic to paying for quality service as a first timer without any publishing credits to my name. But trying to play Google Roulette about editing is overwhelming and contradictory. Can't speak for the thread but I'm of the opinion that hiring an editor does not a good book make and that at the very early stages, the ROI on paying a pro editor is NOT worth it. Editors usually charge by the word. Developmental editing on a 100k novel at $0.05/word is going to run you $5,000. Add line/copy and proof on top of that and you're looking at 5 figures before you've even considered the cost of your cover. You're far better off focusing on getting some good beta readers and spending that editor money on your cover or learning to write better. I can point to any number of examples of high profile self-published books that went through editing and are being re-released and re-launched because despite said editing, the target readers judged it as "not good"—see Daniel Greene's Breach of Peace or Shad M. Brooks' Shadow of the Conqueror. I've not read either beyond the samples but it's very telling that both of them are relaunching the books for their crowdfunded special editions. But if you're committed to hiring an editor then I would personally check out comparable titles of books you liked and try to find out who edited them and THEN ask for references. It's hard because the editor's work is usually invisible to the end reader but it's a better starting point than asking other people for recs. Also I'd start with editors who offer sample edits of your work so you can see how they work and if they're giving you the feedback you need. Leng fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jan 21, 2023 |
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Jan 21, 2023 22:55
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As always, thank you for your well put response.  Jesus Christ, $5k? I could summon up a couple if it got done right. But five? That's really, really pushing it. First off, I'm aware that I have some grammatical foibles. I'm awful with possessive apostrophes, I can have a tendency to repeat words unintentionally, and I know my formatting of characters speaking with each other is probably done incorrectly. Also, I'm entirely open to guidance about what works and what doesn't work. Not sure where that would fall, categorically. I'm long winded from a lifetime of reading Stephen King, with this one probably clocking in at about 150k words in the rough draft. Which I know it too many for a first timer. I don't expect anyone alive to trust a first time publishing stranger to tell them a story that long. My father (another published guy in his early sixties) is dumbfounded that a process no longer exists of sending samples to publishing companies, or editors, or anything else like that. Truth be told, I'm assuming self-publishing is the only way to go these days. My initial goal is not making a bunch of money, although I don't want to lose any. I want to see if this is a feasible way for a recently physically disabled person like myself to get back to a productive line of work.
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Jan 21, 2023 23:31
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The process to submit work to publishers definitely still exists. The issue is that nobody even bothers to tell you 'no' anymore. As someone who has been trying since 2007 and magnificently failing, I've been through three publishers and the latter two did absolutely no promotion on their end, the middle one also taking a massive cut and consistently changing their live contract for the worse. It's always been sort of true that without an agent you can't really get the attention of the sort of publisher that can get you into actual stores, though the actual stores are kind of fading at this point too. I was surprised to hear from a friend of the family that she'd published something with a very real press back in the 90's and even back then she had been left completely alone to promote it. The thing is to be a successful writer you somehow need to have an audience, like hey if you have a 3k subscription youtube you can probably put out a successful book, but if you have that audience you don't really need the publisher. And hell if you have a 3k youtube audience you might as well just make shirts or sell mugs or something. It was frustrating ten years ago where it was clear that it was a random chance if your submission would even get read, let alone considered, but nowadays as mentioned before it's just "If you haven't heard from us in four weeks/four months/whatever then assume the answer is no." Oh they still don't want you submitting to more than one place at once of course. The most well known and prolific author I know who helps me with my edits is on food stamps despite putting out several books a year to an active fanbase. He's not with a publisher, and doesn't really see a point in having one.
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Jan 22, 2023 01:57
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Woof, that's discouraging to the whole venture. Anyways, I write and I'll keep writing. I just don't want it all to be for naught. That said, I'm getting ahead of myself. I guess I'll rein it in a bit. - Length - Everything I write seems to clock in around 150k words for the finished product, as a rough draft. I've not gone through the process of rough to first draft yet, so I'm not sure how much I should try to shave. Articles I read seem to say anything over 80k words is dead in the water, with 100k being pure hubris. Is there a place for longer novels these days? Truth be told, if something is less than 400 pages, I typically don't read it. I like a meaty novel when I'm reading, but I might be the minority. - Editing - Would anyone share their process of going from a raw rough draft to first? My rough drafts are "complete" in the sense that I've not skipped anything, or left sections with a note all in caps saying, "WRITE AN ENDING HERE!!!" I'm not sure if the process of crafting a first draft should be more focused on grammar and mechanics, or if it should have a more broad focus. I do have a printed out copy with notes ready to help at least. 
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Jan 22, 2023 14:50
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Especially as a non established author yeah you don't want huge books. You want to be prolific and consistent, the more releases of 50k-70k word books you can do of solid quality with force of promotion, production and overall work put into them the better. This isn't what anyone wants to hear but it may be helpful to actually start something new with the specific intent to restrict yourself to that 50k-70k area. At one point ages ago I specifically set out to write two books that could seed into series with the aim of that page length, and I specifically made one with the intent of 'comedy', and another with 'tragedy'. The comedy one ended up being likely my best piece of writing and I did learn a significant amount just by doing it overall in terms of the mistakes I made by having overly huge and elaborate page count books for my 'labor of love' novels. There's also apparently a weird thing where you specifically want your book *to* be over 200 pages, in that lower than that also makes people think less of it. The simplest problem with gigantic books is that they're rarely as interesting as we think they are as the one who painstakingly imagined and wrote them. Sure, some people like large books but for most people it's just going to seem kind of daunting especially when it's an author they aren't already following. If you want I could go over my process with you, I guess shoot me contact information in a PM, but I'm the furthest thing from a successful author or an optimistic one for that matter and there might be better and more hopeful advice to be had from other folks in the thread. Honestly I'm probably not giving great advice either, I really don't know, it's just my own observations and experiences.
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Jan 22, 2023 15:26
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Phone posting, so just a quick thought - My stories are not loaded with flashbacks to character’s various childhoods, soliloquies about the weather, or fifteen page descriptions about the glories of medieval pies. I do believe I tend to keep “chapters” at about 1k to 1.5k words and move the action along. That said, dividing any of my novels into smaller novels as part of a series would be easy. I could tell you where I’d chop them up from memory. If people want more bite sized novels, or novels served in separate courses, to me that’s an easy fix.
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Jan 22, 2023 15:57
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Captain Log posted:Jesus Christ, $5k? I could summon up a couple if it got done right. But five? That's really, really pushing it. Some editors may do it for less. Some might agree to work on a per hour or a flat rate basis. Some might also, in lieu of doing an edit on the whole manuscript, offer to do a manuscript assessment instead. The $5k figure I gave was an example based on the recommended rate from the EFA. Captain Log posted:First off, I'm aware that I have some grammatical foibles. I'm awful with possessive apostrophes, I can have a tendency to repeat words unintentionally, and I know my formatting of characters speaking with each other is probably done incorrectly. This is a pretty easy fix. There's any number of free resources that can teach you the style rules. Grammarly/ProWritingAid will also pick up most issues. Captain Log posted:My initial goal is not making a bunch of money, although I don't want to lose any. Breaking even is a good and reasonable goal. If that's the case, the only thing I'd spring for is a professional cover. If you don't have Damonza money, then check out Admiralty Flag's review of GetCovers, which is a really good affordable option. Everything else you can do to a reasonably good degree by investing time. Captain Log posted:Everything I write seems to clock in around 150k words for the finished product, as a rough draft. I've not gone through the process of rough to first draft yet, so I'm not sure how much I should try to shave. Articles I read seem to say anything over 80k words is dead in the water, with 100k being pure hubris. Is there a place for longer novels these days? Length depends on genre. In fantasy, especially epic fantasy, 80k would be on the short side. My first book ended up being about 115k published (it was 109k at rough draft and ended up at 122k post revisions). But word count is not a great measure precisely. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is about 140k words and tells a sweeping story in a compact, satisfying way. The Priory of the Orange Tree is about 260k words but tells a sweeping story in what imo is a pretty shallow treatment, with most of its plotlines resolved in a less than satisfactory manner. Tell the story you want to tell with the right amount of words to do it justice. For whether you're hitting the mark on that, you need alpha and beta readers. Captain Log posted:My rough drafts are "complete" in the sense that I've not skipped anything, or left sections with a note all in caps saying, "WRITE AN ENDING HERE!!!" I'm not sure if the process of crafting a first draft should be more focused on grammar and mechanics, or if it should have a more broad focus. Work down from big to small. There's no point polishing things up at the line level if structural elements like plot, character, and tone aren't working. You'll end up wasting all of the time you spend fretting over comma placements and word choice for scenes that just don't serve the story. Get the big stuff right and confirm it works with alpha readers. Once the structure works, polish things up at the line level enough to make it readable to beta readers—by that I mean run a basic spelling/grammar check and get basic style rules (like how to punctuate dialogue) right so your beta readers aren't constantly thrown out of the story. They're gonna find issues. Rework until you've addressed the critical flaws. If you've had to make big enough changes, send it through another beta read to make sure your changes worked and didn't introduce new problems. Line edits and proofing should be the last step. I generally do my line edits at the same time that my beta readers are doing the beta read, which only works when I'm like 85% confident most of the book won't need big rewrites. (Guess what? I still end up doing rewrites anyway.) Captain Log posted:Would anyone share their process of going from a raw rough draft to first? Brandon Sanderson has put up a lot of stuff:
I stream all my writing so if you want to see what my rough drafts look like, you can look at any of the past livestream replays on my YouTube channel but uh, that's probably not a lot of fun. What might be more useful for you are the annotations on my website. I wrote these for curious readers mostly because I enjoyed Sanderson's annotations. I mainly focus on behind-the-scenes decisions I made during the writing/publication process, like showing before/after versions or explaining the thought process behind why I wrote something the way I did. Captain Log posted:That said, dividing any of my novels into smaller novels as part of a series would be easy. I could tell you where I’d chop them up from memory. This would probably be more profitable and I have a video going through that strategy here. I ultimately didn't end up going through with it because I don't think it would have worked for my book. If it might work for yours, it's worth looking into what your competition is doing in your Kindle short reads categories. EDIT because I just realized I didn't respond to this: Captain Log posted:Truth be told, I'm assuming self-publishing is the only way to go these days. Both trad and self-publishing are valid paths. It really comes down to your appetite/tolerance for risk and your desire for control given your circumstances. If you decide to go self-pub instead of trad pub, you don't get to bypass the pain of pitching your books to strangers—it's just that you've time shifted the pain to post-publication and instead of pitching a select group of individuals who wield influence and power in a publishing house (agents/editors), you have to pitch it to a select group of individuals who wield influence and power with readers (reviewers) or to readers directly. Leng fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Jan 23, 2023 |
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Jan 23, 2023 06:00
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First off, thank you for taking the time to break down my queries and offering such well thought responses. I need to absorb everything just a bit, rather than rattle off a ton of questions like a toddler who just learned to ask, "why?!" But I do have one specific question before I really dig into everything. I'm not quite sure what you mean by alpha and beta readers. Could you expound on that just a bit?
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Jan 23, 2023 13:30
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Alpha readers might read the story as you’re writing it, or read a very rough draft. They’re not worried about grammar or word choice usually, but they may actually steer the story if they feel your plotting is off course. You don’t need alpha readers and most people probably don’t have them. Beta readers read a polished rough draft. They’re there to give you an overall impression of the story, what works, what doesn’t, are there areas where the story could be improved, weak chapters? Are your characters interesting and are they performing actions that makes sense, etc. You get the idea. Everyone should have beta readers. And you can usually find people who will do the work for free or for an exchange of reading.
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Jan 23, 2023 14:20
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newts posted:Alpha readers might read the story as you’re writing it, or read a very rough draft. They’re not worried about grammar or word choice usually, but they may actually steer the story if they feel your plotting is off course. You don’t need alpha readers and most people probably don’t have them. Please excuse me if I'm further asking the obvious, but are there recommended places to find beta readers? I'd be more than willing to offer whatever poor guidance I could muster for their work as well, once I've got a finished product in the next couple of weeks. I'm putting all my juice towards having this rough draft done. I've existed in the forums as a lurker since 02, and as a poster since 06, but I stay in my little insulated subforums. Do we have that type of community here? I'm utterly unfamiliar with this helpful nook of creatives.
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Jan 23, 2023 14:34
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You can ask around here. But there’s a pretty small pool of people here who might be willing to beta read, although they are very good. I’ve had some luck on r/BetaReaders. You’ll get farther there with an enticing blurb, a popular genre, and with offering to beta read in return. Those are the places I’ve used. Leng knows a lot more (about everything) than I do. I’m sure she’ll be summoned to the thread soon.
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Jan 23, 2023 14:52
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newts posted:You can ask around here. But there’s a pretty small pool of people here who might be willing to beta read, although they are very good. I’ve had some luck on r/BetaReaders. You’ll get farther there with an enticing blurb, a popular genre, and with offering to beta read in return. Those are the places I’ve used.  I appreciate the guidance. Leng has been an invaluable resource through my adventures, so I'll be sitting here like an irritating sophomore waiting for their professor's office hours.
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Jan 23, 2023 15:14
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The Fiction Writing Advice thread provides general guidance and critiques on short excerpts of your work, while the Fiction Farm to Table thread will give feedback on longer pieces.
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Jan 23, 2023 15:37
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Captain Log posted:Please excuse me if I'm further asking the obvious, but are there recommended places to find beta readers? In addition to the suggestions from newts and Sally Forth, there is such a thing as paid beta readers. I've not used one personally but I know authors who swear by them. You can try your luck with listings on Fiverr or sometimes on YouTube (some BookTubers/AuthorTubers offer beta reading services on the side). You can also try reaching out to people on Goodreads (another community foreign to me)...there are several beta reader groups there.
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Jan 24, 2023 06:40
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Has anyone had any success using a third party marketer to promote their books? I have a trilogy that was published three years ago that was well received, thanks to the advice from this thread (thanks!) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0753KKR7B I havent done anything to market them in the last two years or so, and dont have the time for writing or promo since I'm working full time at my day job - so I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to hire a marketing team to do the promo for me. I've checked fivrr etc and cant tell the wheat from the chaff - or even if it is worth doing in the first place. 
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Feb 6, 2023 01:54
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jazzyjay posted:Has anyone had any success using a third party marketer to promote their books? I have a trilogy that was published three years ago that was well received, thanks to the advice from this thread (thanks!) I'd highly suggest taking David Gaugrhans free course "Starting from zero" and doing bookbub and some other stuff he recommends instead. https://davidgaughran.com/.
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Feb 6, 2023 16:29
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jazzyjay posted:Has anyone had any success using a third party marketer to promote their books? I have a trilogy that was published three years ago that was well received, thanks to the advice from this thread (thanks!) i know of a few authors who have, but the services are typically a few hundred bucks per month, plus you have to pay for all the ads. It can be very pricey up front while the marketers figure out how to position your book, but if you can eat that cost it seems like they pay off over time. I did use Aurora Publishing to run KDP ads for me, but I couldn't put enough budget into the ad at the time to have it pay out to the point where the fee made sense, so I stopped using them. I'd like to again! Overall the experience was positive, just pricey. KrunkMcGrunk fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Feb 8, 2023 |
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Feb 8, 2023 15:29
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jazzyjay posted:Has anyone had any success using a third party marketer to promote their books? I have a trilogy that was published three years ago that was well received, thanks to the advice from this thread (thanks!) Just a compliment - Those really caught my eye in a good way! Do they not come in print form? Not sure how that all works. It seems a shame, to not see those covers in person.
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Feb 9, 2023 14:34
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Dream Weaver posted:I'd highly suggest taking David Gaugrhans free course "Starting from zero" and doing bookbub and some other stuff he recommends instead. KrunkMcGrunk posted:i know of a few authors who have, but the services are typically a few hundred bucks per month, plus you have to pay for all the ads. It can be very pricey up front while the marketers figure out how to position your book, but if you can eat that cost it seems like they pay off over time. Captain Log posted:Just a compliment - Those really caught my eye in a good way! Its almost like I'm looking for some sort of person who publishes things in a traditional way...
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Feb 10, 2023 23:46
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jazzyjay posted:I'd love to but unfortunately/fortunately I'm running a business while studying as well already :/ The course really isn't that long and you would really really benefit from it as a self publisher.
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Feb 11, 2023 03:38
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jazzyjay posted:Has anyone had any success using a third party marketer to promote their books? I have a trilogy that was published three years ago that was well received, thanks to the advice from this thread (thanks!) I personally have not but I am seeing lots of other indie authors whose books are doing good say nice things about Escapist and Love Books. Personally I wasn't sure that the hundreds of dollars most of these tours/services cost are worth it. Something that I'm considering: https://twitter.com/BBNYA_Official/status/1623941163144351745?t=L3N2en5LfN9N2MteMq0Crw&s=19 Entry fee is 20 EUR and they give out blog tours as prizes. Open to all genres as well. If I were going to roll the dice on promo money, this looks like a decent option. jazzyjay posted:Thank you! No, I havent got them in print form but I really should. I wasnt happy with any of the print options when I was publishing (2015-2018). Go IngramSpark if you're gonna do it, and if you don't want to spend extra on a wraparound paperback cover, just make it a plain block color. There's currently a February free set up code too: https://twitter.com/IngramSpark/status/1620855002938974209?t=MyN43SDXAhVLe1BATbsLXA&s=19
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Feb 11, 2023 07:01
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Log into Draft2Digital on occasion OR ELSE: https://angelahighland.info/2023/02/28/draft2digital-killed-my-account/
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Mar 1, 2023 13:23
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