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I wish you nothing but success but I am not a fan of book 3’s cover at all. The visual motif you had going of the girl standing and looking with the titles in front and the cool background is completely replaced with a close up muddy shot. Book 2’s cover is excellent and 1 is a tier below, but 3’s is bad. I had to stare at it for a couple seconds to understand it.
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Sep 27, 2019 22:03
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Third is best, but the lighting feels off on the girl. At her head level, the sun is clearly shining from her front left, but if you look down at her hand and over to her hair, it looks to come from her back left.
Fate Accomplice fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 14:58
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I just want to see her face better, there’s too much shine on it
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Oct 2, 2019 02:05
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is it...supposed to look like an MS Paint?
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Dec 20, 2019 02:37
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Burkion posted:Rough draft, remember. We're just getting the general idea across before going into it. What critique are you looking for? This could work, if the foreground + dude is a lot clearer, and....everything else is a lot clearer too. What's the dude supposed to be doing? knocking on an invisible wall? getting real mad at something many stories tall? maybe if you gave us a sense of what the story is about it would help. incidentally, you mention the cover as cosmetic stuff, which it is, but I won't be the only person who'll tell you that unless people know your name/penname on sight, your cover is more important to selling your book than the words you've written.
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Dec 20, 2019 02:55
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Personally I think you should shamelessly use these images for inspiration: 
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Dec 20, 2019 16:43
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I'm going to answer as many of these as I can but take heed that my answers may be out of date - I haven't been publishing new stuff for a couple years.Gologle posted:1. My current plan of action is to put out a bunch of short stories first, get a good quantity out there for a nice backlog, before trying my hand at an actual novel. Most of my short stories are anywhere between 5k to 15k words. What should I price them as? I remember a year or so ago the advice was to put them all out, regardless of length, at $2.99, is this still true? outside of a very specific niche, erotica, readers don't pay for single short stories. They also don't pay for collections of short stories unless you're Ted Chiang or famous Gologle posted:2. A few years ago, the advice that I saw in regards to Kindle Select was "don't" because when you publish your stories to KS, Amazon has exclusive rights to the work for a certain period of time and you cannot publish it anywhere else. I was told this can be a problem if the work is somehow reproduced somewhere else, Amazon finds out about it, and decides to ban your account or withhold funds or something. Has that changed? it seems unlikely to me that your work will be reproduced somewhere else without you doing so. they don't ban you because people pirate your books - all of my books are available on book download sites. Gologle posted:3. Is Amazon still the main publishing route to go? yes Gologle posted:4. How can I promote my works? I don't have much of a social media presence because I despise social media, but I'm willing to try if it only involves minimal interaction with those platforms. mailing list, paid ads, collaboration with other similar genre authors. Gologle posted:5. I worked on the cover myself with a friend's help, because I'm poor and unwilling to pay for even the cheapest covers found on goonwrite.com. I do plan to change this once I get more money going, however many months that takes, because I'm aware that a professionally done cover and editing are both good investments. My question now is the cover we ended up designing is small, very small. The ideal dimensions Amazon recommends is 1600x2560, this cover is like less than 400x250 or something like that. My friend, who does have some expertise publishing on Kindle, assured me size is not that important on a Kindle/ebook reader because of the thumbnail, but I want to check that with others first, because it feels like a big deal, how are people going to notice my book if it's got a small cover? But if I try to resize the image, it of course looks blown out and terrible. make it the highest definition image you can that fits the 16x25.6 ratio. a homemade cover remains a huge mistake. you're already behind the 8 ball trying to publish a single short story. Gologle posted:6. Again, I absolutely plan on getting a professional cover artist down the line, but for now, for my first few short stories, are Canva and GIMP good platforms to use? What meager talents I had with Photoshop wasted away years ago, and I wasn't that big on it anyway. Canva sounds nice on paper for my kind of people. I don't have an opinion on platform but unless you are a graphic designer do not make your own cover. It's been said in this thread before, but unless you are famous for your writing, your cover is more important to your sales than the words in your book. Gologle posted:7. The blurb. I have one done, and I'd like a third party to review it and see if it's suitable. To give context to it, I'm just going to copy and paste the description of the story I sent my friend here: as a reader I'm not going to have access to your context, so it doesn't matter. Gologle posted:So, I am aware that I am mixing genres here, something frowned upon, but I wanted to do it despite that, since again, this story likely won't sell well anyway, and I find things I write just the sake of writing them rather than purely to sell come out better in terms of quality. Here's the actual blurb I have so far: make it more immediate. even if the story is about an old man reminiscing, don't talk about that in your blurb. make it exciting. just cause he's talking to his would-be assassin isn't enough. Gologle posted:8. Like I said in the description, I put enough alluded background details and plot into the story that I could make it into a series if I wanted to. And since the two short stories I'm planning on uploaded from this are a sort of package deal that I'm splitting in the name of profit, would it be a good idea to put the books together as a series (like Book 1 of 2, or however many I might make?) But I don't know if series' sell well. Down the line, I do plan to make them a bundle too. don't do anything with short stories in the name of profit except give them away for free. Gologle posted:9. My interest is mainly in fantasy fiction, but the only recent fantasy fiction I've read is The Dresden Files, which is urban fantasy. I don't mind doing urban fantasy, of course, but what I want is recommendations on other modern fantasy books to read and research. Most of the material that inspired me, other than Lord of the Rings of course, is from the 80's and 90's, stuff like Moorcock and Zelazny and such. I still love them, I still think of them fondly, but they're dated, and if I want to get a feel for the current trends I need to read modern stuff that isn't garbage. I got nothing for you here, not my genres
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Sep 18, 2020 01:17
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n8r posted:Have you ever purchased a short story? Me neither. I was planning on coming back to this thread to ask the same question. Also me neither.
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Sep 18, 2020 03:08
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newts posted:I’m also thinking about covers. Considering drawing my own for my crappy novel, even though illustrated covers are not the genre convention. Unless it’s a book featuring a witch protagonist in a cozy mystery, which mine is not. I realize that’s probably shooting myself in the foot. Maybe I’ll just draw it and see if I hate it. your cover is more important to sales than the quality of your book. if there is any well-spent money in self publishing, it is on covers.
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May 27, 2021 17:34
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The only parts I dislike are the fonts. Edit: also joint investigations is a bland series title.
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Aug 22, 2021 00:51
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I am years out of being immersed in KU vagaries but I recall the boost from free days translating into paid visibility lessening or disappearing, in which case wouldn't it be better not to use free days unless you have other books to funnel readers toward after they're done?
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Aug 2, 2022 13:24
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please have your editor check your apostrophe usage EDIT: in case anyone else wondered, this user PMed me to assure me they get laid. Fate Accomplice fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Jul 23, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 16:42
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also what're the best introductions to the genre? if I want to read 3-5 to understand it, where do I begin?
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Aug 30, 2023 16:34
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KrunkMcGrunk posted:Writing thrillers and mystery books wasn't my first choice, but I happened to fall in with lots of successful people who do write that genre, and they offered me help. how do I fall in with these successful mystery and thriller writers?
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Sep 1, 2023 16:44
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Leng posted:At a margin of $0.30 ($0.99 pricing at 70% royalty minus KDP's download fees), you need to move 1000 copies to break even. https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634560 according to this if you want the 70% royalty your minimum price is $2.99.
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Sep 28, 2023 15:35
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