|
hello self publishing world. I just got my Createspace proof copy and IT IS BEAUTIFUL MY BEAUTIFUL CHILD even if i did spot a mahoosive typo on the cover that somehow evaded the attention of both me and the artist for two weeks. I am stopping here to tell you probably yet again: * never use Kindle's print option for anything, it's Createspace with a concussion * seriously, it's horribly incompetent and you will wish you'd done it on Createspace and linked it to your Kindle version afterwards * everything on Createspace is vastly easier and fundamentally sensible in ways that Kindle print just isn't, and even the dumb bits of Createspace look like genius compared to Kindle print * the artist and i literally wasted a day wrangling with Kindle print's bullshit when Createspace has templates that would have done the hard part in minutes * really, Kindle print can't do author proof copies. What the. So does anyone know how to delete a never-to-be-finalised print version from your KDP bookshelf?
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2017 18:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:24 |
|
|
Jalumibnkrayal posted:I think your only option is contacting KDP support directly and asking them to do it, if that even works. There's no way to do it in the user interface. everything about amazon's interfaces really is just complete poop at least they sell the frickin books, my word. 500+ copies on kindle, about 10 on smashwords, 0 in all the other stores. ("You gotta get it on iTunes!" they said. yeah that's great thanks) For print I'm just doing Createspace and people can buy the darn thing from Amazon. i'd call smashwords important since you'll have people who just want an epub or hate drm or amazon or whatever, particularly since my readers tend techie. but basically, bloody everyone who pays money's on kindle.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2017 18:25
|
|
|
Jalumibnkrayal posted:Congrats on the sales! Your book has an odd price ($6.35 in the US) for an ebook, so I don't know if that's just autoconversion from your local currency or what. You're over $2.99 so honestly you could probably go to $9.99 without losing too many folks. If people care about bitcoin they are young and have money to spend. yeah, it's £4.99 autoconverted to the price of the day, which has varied from $6.15 to $6.55 over the past two weeks. Pricing is a PITA because (a) Amazon get super upset if it's cheaper somewhere else and you really can't afford to lose Amazon (b) I don't want to rip off the Smashwords buyers, who are a small but vocal and appreciative audience and also Smashwords pays a bit better ($5.19 on a $6.60 sale). I might try $6.99 on amazon.com if I can keep £4.99 on amazon.co.uk. Most sales so far are US, sales in UK are bigger per head of population. Other countries, a smattering. The print version will be $17 US, £13 UK, EUR14.50. Not cheap, but I'm certainly not springing for a print run ... Createspace quality is actually really good and I can tell you, obey the guidelines and you and your readers will not be disappointed. Bookshops can hypothetically order it, though I'm pretty sure that's a thing that basically doesn't happen. I've done very little to promote it so far, a few podcasts, trying to become a rent-a-quote pundit. But it looks like I got lucky and wrote a book that was accidentally timely. Been super busy just keeping up with stuff. It turns out self-publishing to a professional standard of quality is work, and publishers actually do things ... The audience that are really getting into it are not the techies, but the business and finance types who are sick of bitcoin and blockchain BS. They are delighted. I like this audience because they have money! Must get the frickin proofreading done and the fixed copy uploaded. I told everyone Monday ...
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2017 13:54
|
|
|
yeah. It's promo push time for me, because the initial burst of sales has dropped right off. OTOH there's at least a few ebook buyers who also want a nice paperback, so I'm enormously glad of spending ActualMoney on a cover artist. Nicest thing anyone's ever said to us: "it doesn't look self published."  (that cover)I'm doing my promo entirely on the cheap, and best result seems to be from me offering to write something about bitcoins/blockchains for them or offering to go on a podcast. I do recommend the latter, btw, if you're at all a good BSer and can be charming and witty even with prepared phrases to drop, because it does (a) attract attention (b) pump up your press clippings file. And podcasters are perennially desperate for subjects and guests, as is anyone who has to do some creative thing on a regular timely basis. Minus points: lots of time and/or work. OTOH, it's better promo than money. I'm very pleased that my target audience seems to love the book ... if they ever find out about it. I think I'm gonna turn my book site into a blog on the subject and try attracting attention for pontification. Hard part: coming up with substance that is even slightly of booklike quality, given it basically took 53 drafts to be as good as it is. edit: this is my artist/graphic designer, Alli Kirkham. She is pretty awesome actually, and put up with me being the Client from Heck and going through 24 revisions of the ebook front cover. If you need art, see how she is for time and inspiration. divabot fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Aug 13, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2017 23:06
|
|
|
Burkion posted:What I'm curious about is, what are the benefits or issues with using CreateSpace to self publish? https://www.createspace.com/ This all sounds like you have the right ideas. CreateSpace books themselves are gorgeous and fully production quality; my only qualm is they're expensive, compared to mass-production. I treated my paperback as an indulgence for the few that would like it, then I was surprised how many people who already had the ebook really wanted an actual paperback; so take the time to typeset it beautifully. I did my ebook on Kindle and then did the ePub for Smashwords/Draft2Digital and the paperback through CreateSpace. (Under 5% Smashwords/Draft2Digital sales, but a sale is a sale.) I recommend you prepare an absolutely beautifully laid out PDF that perfectly fits the CreateSpace formatting guidelines - see the templates for interior and cover. You can include literally anything that will print inside the book. I used it for some black-and-white line art I didn't put in the Kindle version to avoid byte charges. If you're printing black-and-white, use 1bpp non transparent PNGs, or the previewer shits itself. I made my Kindle copy £5/$7 and my CreateSpace book £13/$17. I also make sure to link the CreateSpace paperback page first because I get paid about $10 a copy and only $7 through Amazon itself. DO NOT EVER use the Kindle Print options. They're CreateSpace with a concussion. And they don't offer author proof copies! You MUST get a proof copy. You will spot problems that are only apparent in the physical item. (I spotted a massive cover typo.) Don't bother linking your Kindle and CreateSpace->Amazon copies - the system will do it itself within a day or two. NOTE: all the above is generalising from a single data point - first time non-fiction author who is surprised how well his book is doing. There is almost certainly stuff above I am wrong about in the general case, and I welcome being corrected.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2017 22:34
|
|
|
Bizarro Kanyon posted:If you publish an ebook through Kindle and do the KU exclusive set up, are you able to go through Createspace or can you only go through KDP? The FAQ seems to say you can CreateSpace it, they're only concerned about digital: quote:When you enroll a book in KDP Select, you're committing to making the digital format of that book available exclusively through KDP while it's enrolled in the program. Though if you're worried I'd suggest a support query for clarification. edit: and what I hear from fiction author friends is that Kindle Unlimited is totally worth it. Those guys are the rabid readers. And some buy the book afterwards! I only chose not to KU because I'd published too much elsewhere before (lots of promotional excerpts, and my final editing process was, literally, post the whole book in chunks to my Facebook and get my friends to be querulous nerds about it). divabot fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Aug 15, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2017 12:55
|
|
|
Bizarro Kanyon posted:Yeah, it would be around 300 pages. You get rereaders too. YMMV. I would try it and see. I think the usage pattern is different - KU users think of it as borrowing, not purchasing - a fee-paying library. (I might ask around again.)
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2017 00:48
|
|
|
yeah, I highly recommend people pay an artist who's also a graphic designer money to do a cover that looks professional, and scales from 160px to 3000px. It's super-important. I will never regret having done so. (Also my artist is way cool and I recommend her. I used to think I was okay at graphic design, the evidence is I am Just Wrong.) If anyone's curious, here's my precise sales figures up to 14:32 UTC, Sunday 3 Sep 2017. I've topped 1000, which is flabbergasting for a first self-published book, but I accidentally caught a wave (Bitcoin hype). I was seriously expecting maybe 100-200 when I started it (Oct 2016). Amazon Kindle: 889 Smashwords: 25 (ePub) Draft2Digital: 21 (ePub) CreateSpace (paperback): 148 I would have considered making it Amazon-exclusive so I could get it onto Kindle Unlimited, but I posted >10% publicly. But that pleased the techy end of my audience who want ePubs. Sooooo I'd say do an ePub and put it in those places too. A sale is a sale. Eventually I'll actually get paid for all of these ... I got a small payment from Smashwords, and my first Amazon (July) and CreateSpace (August) money is end of this month. I spent months hyping it up in venues that would appreciate it, and got about 200 Kindle preorders, which gave it a nice kickstart and got it on the first page of the relevant Kindle subsubcategories. I've now turned the book site into a blog where I try to enhance my reputation as a pundit (note the very trustworthy and boring photo!), and I'm participating in Bitcoin Twitter which is frankly full of nutcases. But that keeps the sales ticking along at about 10-20 a day. I tried promoting it to journalists and pretty much failed. I clearly have no idea how to do that one. I'd have thought it was vastly topical, but evidently not ... So! Anyone got tips on promotion? I asked the fans to write Amazon reviews and they wrote lots, so that's good. But how to promote it in the wider world?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2017 15:42
|
|
|
Bizarro Kanyon posted:Book is published on Kindle and it just became available on CreateSpace. Wait two days, in my experience - it tries to match on author and title. If it doesn't match after that, contact Amazon I'd suggest.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2017 21:47
|
|
|
oh hell yes. Here is my placeholder cover: Here is the final cover, ebook and paperback:   (the colours are different because CMYK printing is evil lies. the physical paperback is way greener.) I got an artist friend and gave her actual money (not bitcoins) to draw the nice robot and guy pics, and the tulips on the back, and also she did the graphic design ... SPEND A BIT OF MONEY. I used to think I was okay at graphic design. I was clearly wrong.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2017 20:53
|
|
|
Here's a couple of questions! 1. Both Kindle and CreateSpace should be paying me at the end of this month. How good are each of these at being on time with payments? 2. My Bitcoin pundit career is going great guns! (I got to go on BBC Newsnight and call cryptocurrency garbage. Don't ever buy into cryptos, btw, they're a car crash. Trust me, I'm an expert.) Soooo I just got a note inviting me to speak at a seminar, to a small number of people who have money. I'm gonna charge for my time of course, but I can sell books there. Which means physical paperbacks I bring in a box. Now, one of the great things about this self-publishing racket in TYOOL 2017 is 0 capital expenditure. Has anyone here done this, or anything like it? Was it worth it? Did you end up with a box of books under your bed forever? The books are $3.03 each to print, but all author copies come from America (because Createspace is dumb), at some ruinous shipping rate to the UK. Obviously I'll have a pile of money on September 30 assuming the answer to my first question is good, but I sorta don't right now. Does anyone have suggestions as to how to approach this? Doing a talk with a box of nonfiction books - good idea, bad idea, no idea? (I'll no doubt do a pile of flyers for people who haven't got cash on them right there. Who carries cash in the UK these days? Less people than you might think.)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2017 22:35
|
|
|
Asked on my FB too. Consensus (including from some authors, though not self-publishers) is: 1. get de goddam honorarium at least, "for exposure" is worthless. Even if cheap, pricing one's time is important. All of this is an exercise to make money. 2. bring about 20 physical books. Even if 0 sell, it waves the flag. If all 20 sell, hand out flyers and business cards. 2a. PayPal on the spot might substitute ok for cash. Or bring a tablet with the Amazon or CreateSpace page open on it. 3. bring an assistant so they can sell books while you schmooze, video the talk, etc. (The video is vastly useful for promo.) oh, and 0. work out a good frickin talk with slides etc. Oh God. I have done one talk with slides ever and it was mediocre. If it was a bookstore signing they'd be expected to have got the books in, but the book won't physically exist until I order them, so. Basically this is all blocked on nailing down 1. I have happily been doing what's effectively free consulting on the phone, 'cos it turns out to be very useful getting people's legit beginner questions and turning them into blog fodder. I might stop at some point though. The blog has been super-effective. I posted a quick thing that took 30 mins at most, about the Mt. Gox bitcoin heist in 2013. It went viral and got me 20k hits and at least 30 ebook sales, and more than a few paperbacks. So feeding it material is good. Anyone else here doing self-published non-fiction? Strikes me as a completely different field than fiction. edit: oh God, translation requests. What's a good deal for a translator when it's all self-published? I have no clue here. (Not to mention no ability to tell if the translation is any good, but I can ask someone of course.) divabot fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Sep 19, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2017 11:20
|
|
|
Jalumibnkrayal posted:If you have an audience that are actively interested in what you have to say, you should also consider what's next for you. What's your next book? Will you continue to write on crypto, or was this a one-off for you? Being able to peddle your current book is great, but doing that AND teasing your next book is the pro move. Well, my next planned book has the working title "Roko's Basilisk", so that's a subject I know way too much about that has 0 quick audience ... so fail on that one ;-) I considered writing a catalogue of Bitcoin scams, but there are not so many that have an actual conviction attached ... stuff like that. n8r posted:The shipping Amazon charges for ordering your own createspace books and sending it to the UK is stunningly cheap compared to what it would cost me to send it USPS. I just selected a random book on our list and did a 50 book order and shipping was only $50. So I'm guessing you'd only be into each book $4-$5. What is your retail price for the book? I would contend that self publishers of non-fiction niche books tend to underprice them (I'm guilty of it). A combination of speaking and in person book sales can end up being result in nice income depending on what sort of fees you can command. I always pictured the paperback as a sort of vanity souvenir, not something people would actually prefer, on which I was of course wrong. So I priced it at £13 UK, $17 US. Which is not outlandish compared to lots of other blockchain books through Createspace. (I think they're working on the theory "overprice the paperback so the ebook looks cheap.") As it happens, I'm getting a lot of paperback sales! (280 as of today.) So I'm glad I spent the time to typeset it beautifully, and the time and money to get a beautiful cover. (Yes, the artist and her mother got copies. Yes, she wanted to show proper book work off to her mother.) n8r posted:Have a shortened URL for your book that links to your book to Amazon through your affiliate code. ... do you know, Amazon affiliate codes had completely not occurred to me. The audience I really want with the paperback are business/finance types, 'cos they have money and spend it :-D But techies are delighting in it (and tend to hit Smashwords, which also pays better than Kindle even if it's 5% of the readers).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2017 00:25
|
|
|
Bardeh posted:Well, while that particular thought experiment is pretty niche and out there, AI and its rise is a topic that's trending quite a lot in the media recently, and I think there's definitely scope to write a broader book about that and maybe just include chapters on quirky/interesting stuff like Roko's Basilisk. Written in the same sort of style as your Bitcoin book I think you could do quite well with a book like that right now. Plus there's probably a decent amount of crossover between people interested in both Cryptocurrencies and AI, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to market it to your existing audience. Also, Hillary Clinton's book quotes Elon Musk regurgitating Yudkowsky, so these ideas are in the air. (And I'm betaing a novel, to be a self-pub, by Andrew Hickey covering more than a few of the themes, sooooo maybe it's time? we shall seeeee)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2017 08:58
|
|
|
So I sent back "I would be delighted to do a talk for £300" and haven't heard back. Oh well! (a price calculated on spending proper preparation time, slides, practice for timing, etc. Really it should be about £500 all up, but hey.) I'm getting more curious about book printing. SO! Anyone here in the UK got your own short run of books printed? Who did you use? What did it cost? Would they cope with PDFs for CreateSpace or mangle them? Experiences welcomed!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2017 22:34
|
|
|
n8r posted:Do you have a plan where you would sell these? I don't really know the U.K. wholesale market so maybe you can get into that. Selling to the US wholesalers have some pretty big hurdles. nah, this is in case I do talks etc and need a pile of books to sell in person. CreateSpace charges $3.03 per book plus shipping, which is eminently reasonable. Trouble is finding a UK POD printer who even do 140x216mm (5.5x8.5"). Also, one I got an online quote for offered to charge me £77 for the first copy ... yeah, you're not doing POD. Dude finally came back with "sorry, we don't pay speakers" yeah, no. I thanked him for thinking of me! edit: 20 copies via CreateSpace is $60.60 plus $55.99 for fast shipping, so $5.83 each. WHY CAN I NOT BUY FROM THE UK YOU PRINT HERE AAAAAAAA divabot fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Sep 23, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2017 09:28
|
|
|
gerg_861 posted:Agreed! I was thrilled that my local book store reached out to me the other day to ask for half a dozen copies of my novels, but then my author copies had to come from the U.S. and would take weeks? This makes no sense. I looked at Lightning Source, who print in the UK and a friend said their POD was really nice. Prices look good, rejigged the cover to fit their template (paper is slightly thinner), go to create a login aaaaaand they'll get back to me in a couple of days to see if they really want me as a customer! ... what? I want you to print stuff from PDFs I upload. So, erm, waiting ...
|
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2017 08:26
|
|
|
Popular Human posted:This is a hell of a lot of effort to go through for a troll. Lots of people write at this level. That's better writing (and editing) than Handbook for Mortals, or half the other stuff in PYF Terrible Book. reignofevil has done the most important thing, which is to finish something. The sample and cover didn't hook me either, but let's give the first-time author credit where it's due. of course I'm in a fantastic mood because i just got MONEY from Amazon. Witness my joy:  the "AMAZON" entries are Kindle sales from July, and the "ON-DEMAND" entry is CreateSpace from August. I expect next month's take to be on a similar level. Month after,, ehh, we'll see. Either I'll have got this drat thing to take off, or that'll be its lot I think. So far I observably suck at promotion, and pretty much all the sales have been word of mouth from people who loved it ... Here in TYOOL 2017, I can do this stuff with zero capital expenditure. And that makes all the difference. I think my first actual spending on the book was £2.70 for a copy of the Financial Times ... So, this is what you can do if you're writing in a niche that suddenly gets popular attention! (I have a business PayPal, so the money from SmashWords went straight from that into my bank account also. About £41.) divabot fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Sep 30, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2017 21:48
|
|
|
Ccs posted:Congrats man! Are all those separate amounts that get added together or are they listed multiple times because the numbers are updating? Either way, good job! That's from each territory. Basically you get a flurry of emails about 10 days in advance, then you get all the payments. It's useful here that the UK and US have a tax treaty, so I don't have US withholding (Amazon just tells HMRC, so the next thing is to put half of this into an account where I can't touch it, to be handed over to Her Majesty early next year). I must stress again that I'm amazed it's done this well, I'm going HOLY CRAP at everything about this, and that I originally thought 100 sales would be good. So far: 1195 Kindle, 338 paperback, 50-ish Smashwords/Draft2Digital.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2017 22:44
|
|
|
Burkion posted:Do you use Createspace for the paperbacks? yeah, all the paperbacks are CreateSpace. Quality is good, I've had no complaints at all, even slight ones. Really annoyed I'm in the UK and can only buy author copies from the US, even though they print in the UK ... The book is nonfiction about Bitcoin and so on. (There's samples on that page, and now I'm doing a blog on Bitcoin basically to promote the book.) I hang out on the Bitcoin thread, who were fabulously helpful. I expected not many readers - this is actually all ridiculous garbage no normal person should go near - then the 2017 bitcoin bubble started and suddenly this was a topic of popular interest.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2017 10:44
|
|
|
n8r posted:Have you looked and ingram spark? The platform is easier to use and the same stuff. I believe the pricing is virtually the same. We have an LS account but the book setup stuff was a royal pain in the rear end. I am under the impression that LS is really for larger publishers. Ingram bought LightningSource, and this appears to be another version of that. I must admit, I'm balking at the bit where their price list has a $50 "setup fee" per book and they demand my credit card before I can finish account setup. Yeah, I strongly suspect Amazon actually use Ingram to do the printing in the UK.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2017 18:13
|
|
|
freebooter posted:Well done! Did you really do basically no promotion? I guess given all the media interest you probably have had a massive amount of hits from people simply typing "bitcoin" into amazon. I tried, but I was really ineffective at it! I got a HUGE list of bitcoin and business journalists and book review sections and bitcoin podcasts and fired off press releases and ebooks ... the Financial Times loved it and I did a podcast with the FT which was enormously good promotion, one Bitcoin podcaster did a piece which came out really well ... and it's been uphill grinding since then. That's why I'm writing the blog, to keep my name and the book around. I think the ICO for synthetic rhino horn dick pills sold me 20 copies. (Now that's a viral headline.) It's ticked along at about 10 ebooks a day and 5 or so paperbacks. So! HOW THE HELL do I get reviews of nonfiction? You'd think the specialist press would go for it, but the Bitcoin "press" is entirely boosterism and don't want to hear from anyone who isn't a believer. And "self-published" says "crank", especially in anything to do with economics. (I know, 'cos these people email me now.) Gah. edit: btw, the only mainstream press with decent Bitcoin coverage is the Financial Times, and particularly Izabella Kaminska.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 00:51
|
|
|
n8r posted:Are you doing spark or source? You want to do spark unless you've got some specific reason. The spark platform is easier to use and everything else is the same. Tried signing up for both. Source is "we'll get back to you if we want you as a customer", Spark is "$50 setup fee and we want your credit card and authorisation on it before you can finish creating an account. Refundable if you buy 50!!" It's the bit where they take $50 before I can even get a proof copy that has me going "what". freebooter posted:Also, lol, this from your only 1 star review: That is actually the best review I've had of anything I've done ever. One person said they bought it specifically because of that review, 'cos it had attracted the right sort of objector. divabot fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Oct 2, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 09:15
|
|
|
Today I happened to idly look at all my Kindle pages and noticed the Canadian site was running a promo, selling it for C$3.20 instead of C$8.61. I did previously tick the box saying "yep, put me in promos", but I figured they'd warn me so I could tell everyone ... Is there a way to find out when Amazon's put you into a Kindle promo, other than looking at all your Kindle book pages for all countries? (I was wondering why my sales took a sudden uptick from Oct 1st ... BLAME CANADA)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2017 19:48
|
|
|
CreateSpace eStores being absorbed into Amazon! Your eStore page will redirect to your Amazon page as of October 31st! https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp?orgId=00D300000001Sh9&id=50139000000oxUN tbf, the eStore pages sucked and the Amazon page is what any sane human wants. The only attraction of the CreateSpace page is I get paid more.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2017 00:42
|
|
|
Bizarro Kanyon posted:I wonder if I will be able to still buy author copies for extremely cheap. ... gently caress, that'll be annoying.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2017 09:30
|
|
|
CassandraZara posted:Divabot if you think that the price of your book should really be $8.23 or whatever oddball figure and Amazon is only paying royalties on the $3.20 that is being charged (this can be checked via the kdp reports), you need to contact them. I don't know where you got the idea that Amazon runs multi week long promotions on random self published books but they do not. Mostly cos they said they would run promotions on it. I might ping them and see what's up. (The oddball figure is £4.99 translated into C$.) I don't actually mind, it seems to be getting sales => delighted readers in, so ...
|
|
#
¿
Oct 21, 2017 20:50
|
|
|
Bacon Terrorist posted:Just logged into Smashwords after receiving an email from them, I only ever published one admittedly poor erotic story with them. Somehow through 9 purchases and 158 downloads it made $25 The UK and US have a tax treaty, so if you go through a tedious form you can get it all and it's your job to tell HMRC. You may want to hop to it.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2017 14:34
|
|
|
Bardeh posted:All of the sites have an easy tax interview thing you can do nowadays. You might need your national insurance number that's it. Back in the day we had to call some person in America and give them all our details and get a US tax number and the person was usually a middle-aged lady who couldn't spell my town's name and was utterly baffled/intrigued that you could write books on the computer and sell them. Smashwords apparently used to suck at this until quite recently.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2017 18:05
|
|
|
freebooter posted:But also, on that note, I used an accountant for the first time ever this year and was amazed by how much stuff I could write off because publishing from home basically means you're running a small business. Home internet, utilities, my new laptop, Microsoft Office, etc. It was great. Australia is particularly awesome for that, yes. I'm in the UK, but I plan to deduct every breath I've taken this year.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2017 23:38
|
|
|
Success time! I got my second monthly pile of money from Amazon, about £2200 this time - that'll be Kindle from August and CreateSpace from September. On present form, I've a few more months of this.  (Then I have to start actually writing my second book instead of just talking about it. Working title: "Roko's Basilisk". Nobody will want to read it, unless there's a fortuitous Bogus Artificial Intelligence bubble just at the right time, which is what happened this time with Bitcoins.) Nice review in the LSE Business Review today. This is the precise readership I want, i.e. people with ActualMoney. just to emphasise that first paragraph, i am still boggling that I wrote a successful self-published book. I seriously expected 100-200 sales, to people I probably knew. holy crap.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2017 18:05
|
|
|
n8r posted:Yah any book that has sub 100k sales rank generates a nice little bit of revenue. You should consider finding a literary agent if you think you've got another good marketable idea. I'm actually surprised I have had zero bites from actual agents, let alone publishers. (I have of course had offers from clearly scammy translators ... also from sincere translators. What sort of deal is appropriate to a friendly translator on a self-pub?) Actually, this is a good question: self-published books are the quintessential long tail product, where 99% nobody is going to care about. I've sold maybe 2500 pushing 3000 of mine. This strikes me as a possible story! Who in the press is interested in self-pub success? I really should approach my local paper ...
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2017 00:20
|
|
|
Currently setting up a Patreon. I'm stuck at our dear old friend, the W8-BEN tax form for non-US citizens. Amazon are super-helpful and fill in all the required magical declaration words, article number etc depending what country you're in! Patreon don't, and leave you to guess. Googling turns up some old guides, which include stuff like links to IRS pages that are now dead links. So I'm not that confident in them. Is there a known-good, current guide to filling in the correct magic words for the W8-BEN for Patreon for UK residents?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2017 17:34
|
|
|
Bardeh posted:This link: http://angelasstone.livejournal.com/15902.html is old, but the IRS pages it links to are working and current. That's the link everyone keeps giving me, so I'll go with that one :-) A couple of the IRS links later in the post are dead, and it's about "royalties" rather than whatever Patreon sponsorship is ... but it's what people go with, so I'll give it a go. For the W8BEN, your NI number is the correct number to use. It's certainly the one I used with Amazon/Smashwords/Draft2Digital. So I assume they will duly forward the info to HMRC who will expect it to appear on my return next year. Must get an actual accountant ... Keromaru5 posted:So it turned out selling my book at my church's holiday market was a great idea. Out of twenty copies, I wound up selling eleven over two days! I really should just bite the bullet and order a printed box of books and take them places with me ...
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2017 17:28
|
|
|
Did anyone here use Pronoun as an ebook distributor? They're shutting down. (I found out when Draft2Digital emailed apologising for delay in answering support tickets 'cos they just got flooded with Pronoun refugees.) Why is Pronoun shutting down? They forgot the bit where you're supposed to have a business model, and their tempting offer of FREE distribution left them with no actual, ah, income.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2017 16:48
|
|
|
Oh no! Draft2Digital has emailed that Inktera is temporarily suspending all eBook distribution! * looks at sales: 0, 0, 0, 0 ... Has anyone here ever sold a book through Inktera?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2017 09:54
|
|
|
Keromaru5 posted:I'm doing a weekend giveaway for my novel, Thresholds of the Grand Dream. The Kindle version's free through Halloween. And in a few weeks, I'll be selling physical copies at my church's holiday market/bake sale! Just finished reading it. Well written, nice ideas, a bit weird in interesting ways ... looks like a kid/not-quite-YA book - what was your anticipated target audience? e.g. it's the style and ideas I'd throw at my kid (10yo, gobbles up her mum's thousand-page fantasy novels) except for the detailed suicide stuff. (And I really like that the action has multiple peaks. That's good.)
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2017 00:23
|
|
|
simplefish posted:Thanks guys. I ask because I do voice acting on the side of my regular job and have never considered audiobooks before. A revenue split sounds very appealing - I'm going to look into this ACX thing If you can write and do your own audiobooks you will own. I keep getting asked for an audiobook and my desired reader fell through because of some trivial matter of a brain cancer operation affecting his speech - I mean really tch - so I'd have to do it myself. Trouble is getting good and consistent sound quality on potato-quality junkpile equipment. Also my vocal chords are trashed so it hurts to talk for an hour. Most annoying. Any tips for getting good and consistent sound out of potato-quality equipment?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2017 17:10
|
|
|
simplefish posted:and generally take good care of your voice I snort and inhale steroids so I can keep breathing clearly. My vocal chords are not happy organs ...
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2017 19:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:24 |
|
|
divabot posted:That's the link everyone keeps giving me, so I'll go with that one :-) A couple of the IRS links later in the post are dead, and it's about "royalties" rather than whatever Patreon sponsorship is ... but it's what people go with, so I'll give it a go. ok, so the old LJ link appears out of date compared to what Patreon do now. So! I asked someone else who's in the UK and whose Patreon is to do more or less what I'm doing: sponsorship for ongoing articles/journalism. What he did was: he filled in the actual IRS form (PDF) and sent it in. If you put "United Kingdom" in question 9, you can leave question 10 blank. My wife did the same on her art Patreon. tl;dr if you're in the UK and you really aren't doing business actually in the US, just say "United Kingdom" and then it'll all be between you and HMRC. Patreon going live shortly, I hope ...
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2017 17:10
|
|