Self-Publishing Goons: Yep, people buy it!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Self-Publishing Goons: Yep, people buy it!

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

Shocking development: Smashwords, years behind the competition, finally offers daily sales reports for several of its expanded distribution channels!

# ¿ Jun 12, 2014 01:57

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 11:37

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

I did a zombie horror serial a while back, got 7 episodes out each 20K words minimum. It did... okay. As in, probably made me a few hundred dollars when it was new. Still pulls in a few sales each month (slowly upping my $/hr average for writing it).

Would I do it again? No. Not unless I already had a huge fan base that would buy it up right away. Other people are correct in that romance serials are the only things that will likely do any real business. There are of course some one-offs, like Wool, but they are exceptions.

There are plenty of headaches that come with serials. The first is that people are going to bitch and moan at you constantly for two things: pricing and length. If you dare charge any money over $0.99 per episode, you're a baby-murdering rear end in a top hat. Why is this? Here comes the other part: no matter how clearly you state it in the blurb, no matter that it gives the page length right there on Amazon, you will still get people thinking that each episode is a full novel. And when they find out it isn't, they will crucify you in the review section. I'm talking like 1 or 2 stars here, most of the words being vitriol about how you, the author, are a dirty, lying con trying to take an honest reader's money.

Depending on how you are as a writer, you may quickly get tired of trying to churn out episodes on time. Especially if you get bitten by any of the stuff I mentioned above.

Even if you do a romance serial, you'll still get blasted for length no matter how clear you make it. Basically, unless you have a big fan base you can take advantage of, and don't mind crap reviews from moronic readers who couldn't be bothered to read the book's blurb, don't write serials.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2014 18:24

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

Even 20-30K serials are going to get you a lot of ire. People will buy and read them, but they'll bitch to the ends of the earth about how they "thought it was a novel" even though you state in three or four different places the length. Just write series of novels. Less of a headache.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 22:57

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

Different genres have different expectations. As Sean said before, in romance you can get away with 50-60K word novels (depending on subgenre; if you intend on writing historical stuff it's expected to be much longer for instance). Once you start start getting into SF/Fantasy, you're looking at minimum 75-80K with upwards of 100K being the expectation/norm.

A prequel novella could be a good marketing tactic, but it would depend on how you go about it. Were I you I'd consider writing the companion novel as well and then offering the prequel story for free to people who sign up for your mailing list (you have one of those, right?) as an incentive.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 17:07

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

Goodreads is a great place to mine for reviews on Amazon, however. Just send a polite note thanking them for giving your book a rating on Goodreads and request that they write a short review on Amazon (give them the link so they don't have to hunt for it). I think my conversion for requests is about 1 review for every 7-10 people asked.

This also lets you cherry pick the 4 and 5 star ratings.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2015 17:29

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

I think that really goes to show that the quality of writing itself isn't something people necessarily look for in a story. They're looking for an experience of a certain sort (especially when it comes to romance) and they're often willing to forgive a lot of bad writing and storytelling if the story and experience behind those things is what they're seeking.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2015 20:58

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

Be proactive about your reviews. Moana has a great point about ARCs, but as you're past that point, you'll need to do something else. As I've suggested before, go find your book on Goodreads and start sending polite requests (with the Amazon link to your book ready) to anyone who gave your book a nice review/rating there to also post it on Amazon.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 01:13

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

A lot of people (especially the more successful ones here) will go the extra step and make their book available in paperback through Amazon's CreateSpace service. This gives you a few extra hurdles to jump over. You have to design the entire dust jacket, for one. Front, spine, back, etc. You also need to double and triple check your typesetting so that the book doesn't look like crap. It doesn't cost you any extra money to do yourself, just time. However, many cover artists will charge extra to do up the whole jacket.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 21:35

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

Is it really that different with the Brits? As a Canadian, I applied for and got an EIN and then submitted a W8BEN to Amazon/the rest of my publishers and that takes off the 30% IRS withholding.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 20:24

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

So you have promos set up AFTER the first 30 days?

This whole thing kinda sounds like a big "BM" to me. And I don't mean Book Manager.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2015 22:16

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

Hey guys, long time no post.

I�m still doing the whole self-pub thing, five years later.

My wife would like to offer her services as a freelance editor for anyone looking for some professional editing. She holds a PhD in English lit, has edited books for a major Canadian university press, has a bunch of articles published and forthcoming, and has a book manuscript under consideration with Palgrave Macmillan.

Seeing as she wants to establish a client base, she�s offering discounted editing services for now. She can copy edit and line edit as well as offer manuscript appraisals (for certain genres).

As usual with editors, there�s a free sample edit of up to 2,000 words of material. If you�d like to engage her services after that, we can work out the details.

For anyone interested I can provide bonafides (LinkedIn, etc.).

If you�d like to get your sample checked please PM me, or if you know anyone who may be interested in getting some editing done please send them my way.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2017 16:54

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

freebooter posted:

I will second "don't half rear end it." If you were close to getting it out with a publisher, you will almost definitely be able to make plenty off money off Amazon provided you do it properly. Spend at least $100 (ideally several hundred) on a cover, and another $100 or so on ebook newsletter promotion (here you go: https://www.readersintheknow.com/list-of-book-promotion-sites).

If in a month's time you've barely shifted any copies, you gave it a shot and didn't lose any more than a speeding ticket. I doubt you will barely shift any copies. I put the same amount of cautious effort into my first book which was a re-edit of a zombie story I wrote as a teenager, and within a month I'd earned my outlay back. A few months down the track I'd earned back 10x that much. So yeah, don't half rear end it.

I've seen this link before for promo stuff. And while it's handy to have so many, it can be hard to separate what on there actually provides any sort of meaningful boost. And it sucks to try and type them all into Google to find reviews from places like Reddit or Kboards.

Bookbub is of course the best one, but also the hardest to get. I've tried Book Bongo before and it seemed to have little to no impact. BKnights is OK, especially for freebie downloads.

Anyone else care to share which of the promo sources on that list is actually worth it and which ones should be avoided?

# ¿ Nov 18, 2017 15:45

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 11:37

Faded Mars: Jul 1, 2004; It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.

BBQ Dave posted:

Book launch

Congrats on getting a book ready to launch, first off.

You have an edited ms and a professional cover, so that's pretty awesome. Your next step is an awesome blurb. From my own experience, as well as what I've seen and learned from others, is that most readers are going to buy based 1) On your cover and 2) On your blurb. So get something nailed down.

How? Here's a bestselling (romance) author on blurb writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVPkeQdMKJs

Follow that and then post what you come up with in this thread for critique. There are also indie author Facebook groups that serve the same purpose.

Price? For a full length, standalone novel, I'm going to recommend $3.99. It's a pretty standard price for an indie novel. Pricing low (like $0.99) on books that aren't the first in a series is often viewed as a lack of confidence in the book by readers. But like I said, there are exceptions. First in series, promotions, that sort of thing.

Your next task is figuring out if you want to put the book in KU (Amazon's Kindle Unlimited or KDP Select for those using the author dashboard) or go wide, ie releasing to Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, etc. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. The 'zon still has far and away the largest share of the market, and a book in KU gets both search ranking privileges and access to Amazon's promotion tools, which include countdown deals and free runs. I would personally lean towards KU myself, but it's up to you.

Keywords are an interesting beast. On Amazon at least, keywords are both search terms and ways to get into book categories that aren't available on the publisher dropdown menu. There are official lists of these keywords, just type in "KDP horror keywords" or something into Google and Amazon's lists should appear. You can also go look at books similar to yours and see what categories they are in. If there is no official keyword to enter or category to select, after your book is available you can email KDP support and ask them to put the book in the category. I believe you can have a total of 10 categories for a single title.

There are also many tools to use to find marketable keywords. Kindle Samurai, KDP Rocket, etc. Though you can also find stuff by just typing up things you think a potential customer might search and see what the suggestions are on Amazon.

As far as author presence, something is nice. Even just a blogspot site and a Facebook fan page you can link readers to in your Author Central profile and the back of your book. Now is also the time to start up a mailing list through something like Mailchimp. Get that set up and put a subscription link in the back of your book. There are so many ways of getting subscribers I don't really think I can go into it much here.

You may also want to look into some marketing. It doesn't have to be anything crazy. Many people have found amazing success simply using Amazon and Facebook ads.

I would also like to say that if you have more books in you, you may want to actually hold off on publishing this title. If you're looking to make a serious go of this indie author thing, "rapid release" is a proven strategy for success. What's that? Having three or even more books ready to go, and publishing them in quick succession. How quick? Current wisdom suggests approximately every 1-2 weeks. This works much better if your books are in a series. Can this book you've written be the first in a series, or is it standalone only?

The indie publishing rabbit hole goes as deep as you're willing to delve, and then some.

I'd really recommend getting into a couple of author communities. There's a lot of experience and wisdom in some of them. My personal recommendations are 20Booksto50K and Indie Cover Project, both on Facebook. Just type them into the search bar.

I know this post probably raises more questions than answers, but I hope it was also at least a little helpful.

Faded Mars fucked around with this message at 15:07 on May 21, 2018

# ¿ May 21, 2018 12:48

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Self-Publishing Goons: Yep, people buy it!