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Searching online I found that Amazon got into a scuffle with publishers over Text to Speech. I’m guessing that it was only the bargaining power of the big publishers that allowed them to disable TTS on their books though, and that with self published authors Amazon will not allow any easy way to disable that option.
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Jun 27, 2021 16:05
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 16:24 |
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Captain Log posted:Thanks for the input, yours and Leng's has been really illuminating and helps show me how I need to think about moving forward in this venture. I'm sure I'm going to have some more silly questions pop up, but it's great to have a goon resource to keep me from trying to poke through a hodgepodge of "SO YOU WANT TO WRITE THE NEXT BEST SELLER IN THIRTY DAYS?!?!" blogs and advertisements. You could also start writing stories and trying to grow a following on Royal Road, and not get involved in any of the monetary aspects of publishing. I published through Amazon but to be honest the money I make is almost not worth having to deal with the tax forms at the end of the year, since I have to prepare taxes in 2 countries and having foreign source income increases the chance of audits which is a headache I don't like to think about.
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Jul 7, 2021 16:47
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Hey thanks for the shoutout, Anvil! My thoughts about marketing on reddit are that the Fantasy community seems the most open to self published endeavors. There's a few high profile authors that have gone from self-publishing to traditional success, then there's dudes like the creator of Cradle who proves it can be profitable with the right content staying in self-publishing, and there's not the immediate recoil from self pub work as long as the author seems to have put the time in to prepare a polished manuscript and know the genre. My book fell off from its early numbers but still gets a few sales here and there and a few hundred KU page reads per week, and that probably wouldn't have happened without reddit.
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Jul 28, 2021 21:25
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Leng posted:I think a lot of your success came from the awesome cover you had too! But I think it was a hefty investment. Any idea on what your payback period is looking like? Oh I'm never going to make that investment back. But it's alright, it was a personal project I'd been picking away at for a while as a hobby and got to involve my favorite artist in through a commission. Maybe if the book continues to sell its current numbers for 10 years I'll make it back.
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Jul 29, 2021 17:24
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Your background in accounting probably gives you a better sense of how business actually works and approach it as a profit-generating venture. Most people will just see the sticker price of "editing costs a few hundred, a cover could cost a few hundred, most Americans have less than one months rent in savings" and chalk that up to "privilege is necessary for publishing." Which, I suppose, is true that any sort of business endeavor take an appetite for risk that people who literally have no savings might not be able to shoulder, but.... I do think it dilutes the concept of privilege. For example I approached my book as a pure vanity project, and I suppose if you don't bother coming up with a business plan for the book then yeah, you do need some capital of your own to risk on it. Not a problem in my case, overtime hours put in on doing vfx for some bad movies paid for all my publishing costs. If I was risking more i would have tried to consider how I was actually going to recoup investment. Ccs fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Aug 21, 2021 |
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Aug 20, 2021 18:20
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In my opinion, as someone who commissioned a book cover and who also works in the cg industry, this person does not yet have the skill level to charge those prices. For them it might make sense depending on how long it takes them. A contradiction among illustrators is the really pro ones have also gotten really fast, so they can charge $70 an hour but put out a book cover in 12 hours that will look light years better than an artist charging a smaller hourly amount but for whom it takes 40 hours to come up with something half decent.
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Jan 30, 2022 03:49
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I went to high school with a lot of people who now work at hedge funds or in tech for places like Meta and they all love Sanderson’s books and think nothing of spending like $300 on his kickstarters. I’ve recommended other fantasy novels like Baru Cormorant or even The First Law to them but the politics of those series rubs them the wrong way (these were people who were liberals in highschool but as they’ve accumulated wealth over the past 10 years have shifted toward the right.) Probably the only other fantasy novelist they’d drop that kind of cash on is Rothfuss but he is allergic to writing.
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Mar 3, 2022 16:42
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Admiralty Flag posted:I also want to get a head start on the cover as I know that may take some time if I go down a custom route. I know Goonread is the bargain basement option, and actually had a couple of good, fitting, and catchy covers that have been taken Contact artists you like that you might assume would be out of your price range. Thats what I did and my first choice actually was available. Nowadays he's too busy to do art for indies because he works on big titles like special editions of "Howl's Moving Castle", but there's a lot of great illustrators out there. You could also try doing a cover with AI, but...
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Oct 15, 2022 01:01
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Damonza doesn't have any budget covers that'll work, but I'll keep checking that page. Am I stuck at paying $400 for the cheap Damonza design option or is there a more reasonable option for me? I wouldn't know where to start finding a freelance artist, especially one who would come in under $400 while delivering quality work. Any suggestions would be welcome.
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 16:24 |
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I like this one the most. These things are always subjective though.
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Mar 26, 2023 04:00
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