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On the topic of serial fiction, I have a story that will probably stretch 70,000-80,000 words total: from a business standpoint, is there any general consensus on whether it would be preferable to publish it as a single complete novel, or as an ongoing serial?
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May 23, 2015 08:06
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 18:18 |
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Ack, sorry for the content-light question.  The genre would be fiction with a heavy action-thriller component, the original plot arc was intended as a contiguous narrative but it would be very easy to fiddle with and reformat as 4-6 15,000-word sections that stand on their own. Target market would be men and women age 16-27, the format I'm going for is "young adult fiction for adults," if that makes any sense: character study framed in a super-simple narrative conceit, "We like these people so let's watch them go on adventures". Omi no Kami fucked around with this message at 18:14 on May 23, 2015 |
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May 23, 2015 18:06
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18-45 sounds reasonable, although in practice I suspect most of the plot I'm writing will come off as excessively silly past a certain age- it's basically juvenile wish-fulfillment with bigger words. I think that in terms of pure format, keeping it together does make more sense, I'm just trying to make sure that I'm not cheating myself out of money- selling a single work for 2.99 when I could be selling it in four 0.99 chunks.
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May 23, 2015 18:38
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Hmm, amazon's help topics are a bit unclear: let's say people really want to pay to read triceratops porn, so I want to publish triceratops porn alongside serious fiction, all without contaminating the rest of my portfolio or risking harm to my reputation in meatspace- am I allowed to form a one-man publishing company, make an amazon account with the publisher's bank account + EIN, then publish works written and submitted by "anonymous" writers within the company?
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May 25, 2015 01:25
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What kind of frequency do you need to maintain if you're trying to shoot for stable revenue? Is a reasonably popular book going to keep selling, or are you looking at a handful of months of income per book, at which point you'd better have something new ready? Also, not to ask the obvious, but the authors who actually make a living wage off of this are primarily focusing on novel-length works, right? There's no money in shotgunning high-quality short stories of 10-20k words each and hoping that 1/5 hits?
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May 25, 2015 17:19
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Since you're already established, do you mind if I ask how you decide what to write? Do you do a lot of demographic research in the form of "Okay, 82% of ebook purchasers in 2014 were women age 30-54, here's the subgenres of romance that sold best, here's the matrix of narrative attributes that the bestesellers all had in common," or is this more a matter of finding a niche that you're good at writing and building a pen-name through repeated, quality releases?
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May 25, 2015 17:28
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EngineerSean posted:Thinking analytically and paying attention to data has helped me the most. Look at the Top 100 list. Write a similar book. Make friends. Be willing to spend time and money to help them out. Pay attention to algorithms (this is the Internet Marketing hat). Don't pay attention to bald negativity. Where do you source your data from? I'm at the point where I know (or at least hope) that my writing chops are there, but I have absolutely no idea how to assess sales figures for different genres- say, for instance, I'm writing a love story- straight women age 30-54 seems to be the demographic to shoot for, but that's apocryphal; how would you go about actually substantiating that in order to make an informed decision about what market to study and target?
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May 25, 2015 19:44
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This is incredibly useful, I really appreciate the tips. The one other question I have is pretty exceptionally stupid, but from a business perspective which do you prioritize: interests, or market? Taking the romance example, what I'm best at writing isn't romance, it's military sci-fi and noir detective stories. However, those are both pretty niche markets, and since my aim is to try and (eventually) build up a sufficiently large fanbase to make this cover cost of living while I run another business, I feel like I'm obligated to look at the best-selling genres (romance, erotica, possibly triceratops porn) and focus on studying what's done well and emulating that.
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May 26, 2015 00:12
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When you guys say mailing list, is this an amazon/kindle thing? Or is it a literal, independent mailing list you advertise on your catalog pages/website?
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May 26, 2015 00:44
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Registering a mailchimp account on the strength of the name alone.
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May 26, 2015 01:14
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That's about what I concluded as well- I didn't know the exact figures, but the OP specifically mentioned that all of the goons he knew who made a living off of it were principally romance guys, so I figured there was something to it. I know that amazon divides romance and erotica into separate categories, and the latter basically walls you off into its own space- when you say that Romance as a whole sells whatever amount, is that romance, erotica, and erotic romance, or strictly fade to black, PG-13 romance?
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May 26, 2015 02:17
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That makes sense, thanks for the clarification! And I don't know if John Scalzi should count- didn't he build his reputation on traditionally published, mass-market paperbacks before self-publishing was a thing?
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May 26, 2015 03:05
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Am I correct that for marketing purposes I'm best off using one pen name per genre, so somebody who's looking for more sappy love stories like the one they just read doesn't trip over a bloody sci-fi extravaganza?
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May 26, 2015 16:55
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Assembly lines are tough- the union has been trying to negotiate a raise in price-per-E-key for months, but thus far no dice. Seriously though, what do you guys think about Pub Yourself, the goon-run publishers? I'm seriously considering shooting them an email once I have the book I'm currently working on finished, under the assumption that 35% of a book being marketed competently is going to work out to more than 70% of a poorly-managed release, but since my main purpose is to see if I can actually make halfway-okay money from this, I feel like it's silly to pay for services anyone trying to make a living with this should be proficient in anyway.
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May 28, 2015 00:09
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That's the impression I got from reading their website- they seem really on the ball. Thanks for the recommendation! ^^
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May 28, 2015 00:37
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EngineerSean posted:I'll be honest, if you think you're competent with everything it would be a mistake to give someone half of everything you make for them to do it for you. However, it sounds as if this is your first self-pubbed work? There's an awful lot that is common knowledge but putting it all together is more than a little daunting, and you're going to make some serious mistakes. Struggling through those mistakes is part of the process of becoming your own self publisher but if you'd prefer to maybe skip a few of those mistakes, it's a great option. This is definitely my first self-published work, everything I've done before now has been "Commit mouth words to text, wait to get back from vetting and proofreading, send to publisher, never think about it again". Even that was all academic stuff with university publishers, so I'd wager 99% of my experience doesn't apply here. What I was thinking was finishing my market research, deciding on a niche/theme within romance to pursue, write one book that I'm pretty happy with, and use Pub Yourself as a kind of tutor by watching and learning from how they suggest marketing it. This is getting pretty obscure, but is there a recommended reading level in the romance genre? I keep having to restrain myself from writing silly purple BS like "How could I possibly keep him from feeding my vulgar, licentious appetites".
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May 28, 2015 01:08
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Oh crap, some pompous walking thesaurus I am- turns out it's spelled licentious. I just learned it today- heard somebody use it on TV, and figured "vulgar, licentious appetite" was just about a case study in how not to write fun-to-read fiction.
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May 28, 2015 01:23
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Yea, things have been brutal ever since they started timing people- anyone who can't punch out a variation of clitoris within 0.65 seconds gets put on probation but quickly.
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May 28, 2015 01:51
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EngineerSean posted:whoa whoa we were talking about Miranda, not Mrenda. Mrenda, of course, was illiterate- she responded to all forms of writing with distrust and disdain. I don't want to get into erotica too much, since the OP asks us not to, but am I correct that it's below romance & erotic romance in terms of pure volume of sales?
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May 28, 2015 03:31
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Wow, really? That's a little surprising; looking at the top 20 list, they're nearly all novel/novella-length, with the exception of one author who seems to average 28-36k.
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Jun 1, 2015 21:12
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I've been reading through aubrey rose's romance structure linked in the OP, does the same general narrative arc apply to short-form fiction, or are they literally looking for nothing deeper than "This is a boy; this is a girl. They're right for each other but don't know it, let's watch them figure it out"?
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Jun 1, 2015 21:47
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For those of you who primarily produce high volumes of shorter (20-40k) works, how do the book covers work? Does each individual story still make enough to cover the $50-200 cover * 3-5 times/month?
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Jun 2, 2015 22:20
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angel opportunity posted:What genre are you thinking of doing? Romance or erom, once I figure out which one I'm actually better at writing.
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Jun 3, 2015 21:16
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Thanks, stock photos are quite awesome so I think I'll start there and see how badly I can futz it up. I'm starting to plot out a short romance novel to test the waters and I feel incredibly stupid even asking this, but from a marketing perspective is setting important? I'm pretty rigorously following jami gold's beat sheet (http://jamigold.com/2012/11/write-romance-get-your-beat-sheet-here/), so the character arcs will remain roughly the same no matter what: girl meets boy, boy meets girl, they hate, then somewhat like, then really hate, then really like each other, prompt happy ending. That having been said, there are some very obvious recurring themes among bestsellers (mostly modern in setting, white collar prince empowering Cinderella fantasy to name one at random). Given that, does a familiar theme ("I like billionaire stories, this story has the words "billionaire playboy" in the blurb and a tie on the cover, I will buy this book") win out over an original setting (she is a Bolshevik, he is a Tsarist enforcer, can their love weather the February Revolution)?
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Jun 4, 2015 03:02
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That's what I was asking about, thank you! I just wanted to be sure that I wasn't wasting time getting really, really good at writing modern business-themed stories if I was able to get away with writing incredibly obscure settings that were fun to research while retaining the same character beats.
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Jun 4, 2015 03:21
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Statistics question: looking at amazon breakdown of romance novels by themes and heroes I see that the most-published hero is a Wealthy love interest with Secret Baby as the most-published primary theme, but does the kindle store have an equivalent functionality for popularity? I'm trying to figure out if there's any way to get the same breakdown by ranking, e.g. "What Theme and Hero occurs most frequently in the top 1,000, top 100, top 20" and so forth. I'm assuming they don't make that public, but it'd be a pretty useful measure.
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Jun 5, 2015 09:26
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Crap, I thought I was doing a really good job of keeping my writing simple but interesting, but the rough draft still popped a flesch-kincaid of 10.6.
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Jun 8, 2015 05:45
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For those of you who do romance shorts, what do people actually enjoy reading in terms of story balance? I see how you can tell a satisfying love story in 100-150 pages, and even in 50-75, but when I see authors who do very well for themselves publishing 10-30k romance stories, I just can't figure out how you manage to balance meeting, taking each others' measure, hitting a roadbump or two, and finally resolving into a happy ending without each point in the arc feeling rushed and unsatisfying.
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Jun 10, 2015 02:12
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Oooh, is that what all (or more probably most) of those short-form romance serials are? That makes a lot more sense... I had been assuming that most of the short stories I was finding in romance were at last semi-rigorously following the same structure as novel-length romances, hence the confusion.
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Jun 10, 2015 03:28
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Am I correct that if I want to publish works in multiple genres (e.g. romance and scifi) I'm best off using multiple pen names, as the positive effect of name-as-brand ("I feel safe understanding that buying anything more from this author means more of the exact same thing I liked in this book") is more powerful than sales I'd lose by readers buying a violent starships troopers homage thinking they were getting a bodice ripper, and feeling less inclined to make impulse buys from that author in the future?
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Jun 11, 2015 06:43
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Ooh that's a really good idea, thank you... I know it's obvious, but I'm surprised at how much more involved successful marketing is compared to the actual writing process.
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Jun 11, 2015 11:20
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Crap, so I was just winding up to start churning out cruddy romantic erotica in the short format- given the changes to KU, am I right that my best chance at monetizing the same would would likely be to screw short-form stuff entirely, and try to do 1 100k novel a month instead of 5-10 10-20k shorts?
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Jun 15, 2015 20:04
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:Hmm I might have found a problem... Well not bad cruddy, but I think there's a big difference between "I wrote this, edited it, sent it to an editor/proofreader for a second look, then combed back through it to tighten it up and deal with any glaring issues my reader found" and "This is a story I'm hugely passionate about, I've put this through five major edits for content and multiple subtle tweaks, I need to re-read it once or twice and then I should be just about ready for a final edit". Blue Scream posted:Are you a wizard? Not until I put on my robe and wizard hat- I do write pretty quickly though. I work as a technical writer right now, and while that's a far cry from fiction, I can churn out about 2k/hour pretty consistently. The bare minimum I'd need to get a rough draft every month is around 3500/day, so it seems like 100k/month is reasonably realistic if I can spare two hours/day for writing and 4-5 hours/week for marketing and market research. I may've been off on something fairly major though, for the authors who support themselves through this, is KU a primary source of monetization? I had been under the impression that people focused more on marketing for sale than for borrowing, but especially given the large number of works that romance fans go through, that might be a silly assumption.
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Jun 15, 2015 20:27
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 18:18 |
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So as someone who has been crunching the numbers and doing market research on Amazon far longer than I have, is your advice for authors just entering the market to still start in novel-length Romance and build their portfolio on "Write what everyone is already buying, make your money on marketing it more effectively than the other guy", or do you see any reason at all to diversify into a high-frequency underdog like (non-disguised) Fantasy?
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Jun 23, 2015 06:10
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