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Authentic You posted:The fact that the site looks like some sketchy internet relic from 1997 is probably more damaging than you telling us the dude got all butthurt about you taking your books down after a couple weeks and "wasting their time". Yeah, it was a lapse in judgment on my part. A few people on another site swore they were great despite their terrible look, I was just starting out and figured it was worth a shot. Lesson learned.
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# ? Oct 17, 2014 13:24 |
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# ? May 8, 2024 05:15 |
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Zratha posted:Thought it seemed like really bizarre customer service.
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# ? Oct 17, 2014 16:32 |
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Zratha posted:I thought it was important to share the email exchange I had with Fiction4all. I sent them an email last night when a book that was supposed to be unpublished from their site was sold. I was freaked out because that book is now in Kindle Select and -really politely- asked them to please make sure it was no longer listed. passing this on to other author communities
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# ? Oct 17, 2014 23:09 |
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If you post this dumb poo poo I'm sending you right now, it's defamation and thus I will sue you.
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# ? Oct 17, 2014 23:22 |
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ravenkult posted:If you post this dumb poo poo I'm sending you right now, it's defamation and thus I will sue you. *grin* Yeah, that always works out so well...
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 00:57 |
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magnificent7 posted:Have any of you had experience with publishing your books in audio format? On Audible, for example? If you can, try and look up getting a stipend. Amazon will pay the producer $100 (for instance) for every hour of the work. This helps defray costs of production and makes your book a lot more popular in terms of attracting producers/narrators. I mean, they basically are working for a fee up front and royalties in the back. It's win/win. Though as the author you get nothing. And people will buy the ebook to get a discount on the audio. At least from what people tell me. I only have one book up, however. http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Hard-Luck-Hank-Audiobook/B00KYXRVKA/
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# ? Oct 19, 2014 00:30 |
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Zratha posted:I don’t think new authors trying our service is a waste of time – what is a waste of time is putting up a number of books for just a few weeks. Obviously I will be checking the blogs and forums and if you have defamed me you will be hearing from my solicitor with a very large claim for damages." Keep me posted on this, ok?
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# ? Oct 19, 2014 16:08 |
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Has anybody ever done a successful kickstarter for your self-pubbed book? I've been looking through the book KS projects. List of successful fiction KS projects. https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?state=successful&category_id=47&sort=magic
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 01:38 |
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I kickstarted a magazine, but that's about it.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 01:53 |
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It looks like they mostly fall into a couple categories: Established authors who have enough fans / cred to get funded. Magazines / anthologies / small publishing companies that have some long-term prospects. Random people with really small goals that just barely get funded, probably due in large part to friends / family. There's a few on there that don't fall into these categories, and most of them are just really good at selling their project and have good rewards. There's also a few that just got lucky I guess, because nothing about them seems intriguing or polished. I think trying to fund a book through kickstarter could be successful if you had some marketing know-how / charisma, writing samples, and a good pitch. You'd probably need to be pretty social-media savvy, too. The biggest thing seems to be having a really clear layout of where the money is going. Looking around, there are a lot of unsuccessful fiction kickstarters where people have half-baked ideas and they are just asking for money to pay their rent while they write full-time or something. On the other hand, the people that have put a lot of work into their campaign prospectus seem to have pretty decent odds of getting funded, even if the writing itself is mediocre (and sometimes downright bad). edit: Also looking at these projects made me realize that someone successfully raised $30,000 to replace every instance of the n-word in Huck Finn with "robot." Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Oct 23, 2014 |
# ? Oct 23, 2014 02:04 |
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quote:Random people with really small goals that just barely get funded, probably due in large part to friends / family. When I had my project up, it was literally impossible to search for it unless you knew its name. I sat there trying to find it just by normal exploration and couldn't find it for the vast majority of its lifecycle. You could find old projects that had expired and failed before you found mine. And like...pretty much anything, the more popular are, the more it is boosted. I.e., the less popular and newer you are, the more you are buried. So, as stated, if you have enough social media to get people to boost your work, you could probably just send them to your webpage and use Ebay or PayPal or Amazon or whatever. Or tell them to just mail you a check. I read an article on it and they kind of likened it to begging your friends and family for money without the ugly stigma. The venture capital ones get the spotlight where they raise a million bucks. But those are insanely rare. Then there was just the hassle. I had to sign a bunch of books and posters and box and mail them. My goal, the real reason I was doing it, was to hopefully use KS as extra advertising. It was a whole other populated and popular web site where my name and work would appear. The fact you couldn't find it made the entire reason I was doing it a waste.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 02:28 |
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Hmm. Great insight. Thanks. I like the idea of skipping KickStarter and just begging instead. Do everything that Kickstarter does, just without Kickstarter, and without a "meet it or gently caress it all" goal. I'll take what I can get.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 04:03 |
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I did a kickstarter my first year to fund the paperback edition of a collection of novelettes. Goal was around a thousand bucks, went towards a new cover and some editing. Hit goal + 10%, just about. Never bothered doing it again; my royalties had increased beyond needing to crowdfund commissions and editing. Now I'm gearing up to do a Kickstarter for a film project with a $25,000 budget and the number alone intimidates me. There's a lot of math that goes into figuring out stretch goals and reward tiers. Way more complicated than it was the first time around.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 05:11 |
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magnificent7 posted:Hmm. Great insight. Thanks. You're in luck! http://www.patreon.com/ psychopomp posted:Now I'm gearing up to do a Kickstarter for a film project with a $25,000 budget and the number alone intimidates me. There's a lot of math that goes into figuring out stretch goals and reward tiers. Way more complicated than it was the first time around. A few years ago when I was paying more attention to crowdfunding, I know a lot of folks got blindsided by tax issues. Something about doing the project at the end of the year and not spending the money until the next calendar year. It might be worth talking to an accountant if you hadn't planned on doing so already.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 13:08 |
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Yes, if we get the donations this year but don't have time to use them, we can't cite the expenses as a tax write-off, so we're waiting until next year to do the kickstarter. There's a similar issue with incorporating; if we incorporate before the end of the year we'll need to file a tax return for the entity, even if we have no financial activity for the year. So we're waiting on that, too. Another issue to be aware of is sales tax, depending on what your rewards are, and your state's take on the matter. Talk to an accountant.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 18:30 |
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magnificent7 posted:Has anybody ever done a successful kickstarter for your self-pubbed book? I've had a couple of successful Kickstarters, one for a multi-author anthology, and a broader one for my small press. I also have a couple of friends who've used KS a lot to get work funded. Most important thing is definitely to have a lot of friends, family, and social media pals you can turn to for help. Also, be modest in your goals. Do a video which shows your face, and be excited. Have a kick-rear end sample. Give as few physical rewards as possible (postage is a BITCH). Have some very high-level rewards, just in case. Emphasise that it isn't a pre-order system, it's a funding system with benefits. Look at a bunch of rewards from a bunch of other KSes. If you can, get other people seriously enthused to help you via their friends and family -- name your protag after a close friend, for example. Don't expect to get more than 10-20% from people just wandering by on KS. Learn to be a bit shameless on social media (I find that very hard). Keep the faith right to the end. Three days out from the end of my small press KS, I was just at ~50%. Hit 100% (c. $18k) with 6 hours to go. That did involve brainstorming a strong, high-ticket reward, but it shows not to despair. KEEP WORKING. Don't be scared to ask people with some profile for a signal boost. Ideally, people you've already chatted at (with is better) in the past. The anthology was a definite help, because it wasn't just me, it was 30 of us all talking to friends and family. We raised $10k. (Postage and printing ate most of it.) It's stressful, and a lot of hard work, but if I can do it (as a social-media-challenged friendly introvert type), anyone can. Ideally, you'd have a lot of friendly contacts with blogs / podcasts / big twitter feeds / &c, but it's not necessary. Also, if you don't want to have to hit a target, indiegogo allows for "Keep whatever you can get" funding.
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# ? Oct 24, 2014 20:50 |
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Ghostwoods posted:Specific Awesomeness
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# ? Oct 24, 2014 22:42 |
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On one hand I think my KS should have had a higher goal. I wanted to have a low goal to at least get the thing made, but I might have shot myself in the foot by doing that. It did get funded to 146% but realistically I was aiming for at least 200%. On the other hand, I got the thing made and there was a bit of money left over because we didn't have to pay for the stretch goals we had planned. Perhaps we could have gotten the best of two worlds if my initial goal was double what it was and we had no stretch goals, but who knows. My 2 bits.
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# ? Oct 24, 2014 22:49 |
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Kindle Scout is now live. If any goons need nominations I've got three for the cause.
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# ? Oct 29, 2014 23:03 |
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What do you mean by 'nominations' ? Are those the reader votes?
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# ? Oct 30, 2014 16:08 |
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Currently it's only available for people with US bank accounts and social security numbers / tax numbers. You can be nominating up to 3 books at any one time, and change it as you want. Like a Top 3, I guess. e: seems like your nomination only counts if you're currently nominating the book when it's 30 day period ends.
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# ? Oct 30, 2014 16:26 |
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General Question: It sounds to me like the all-important blurb is really similar to what you'd try to send agents in a query letter, minus maybe the bio info and word count/genre descriptors. If I had a decent letter (resulting in multiple partial requests at the very least) would it be stupid to use it as the blurb? Also, forgive me for being a dumbass, but I've read a lot of this thread and I can't seem to find any more suggestions for editors other than the two listed in the original posting. Is there anyone out there who really likes to do sci fi? (And I'm a goon who can actually pay a good chunk of change for this).
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# ? Oct 31, 2014 21:21 |
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AgentCooper posted:General Question: It sounds to me like the all-important blurb is really similar to what you'd try to send agents in a query letter, minus maybe the bio info and word count/genre descriptors. If I had a decent letter (resulting in multiple partial requests at the very least) would it be stupid to use it as the blurb? I'm doing editing these days, if you're interested. I run a small publishing house and I've done some freelancing on the side, mostly spec fic. The guy I recommended to other goons in this thread before is Max Booth III (he's in the OP) and he's good too.
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# ? Oct 31, 2014 22:11 |
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AgentCooper posted:General Question: It sounds to me like the all-important blurb is really similar to what you'd try to send agents in a query letter, minus maybe the bio info and word count/genre descriptors. If I had a decent letter (resulting in multiple partial requests at the very least) would it be stupid to use it as the blurb? That probably depends on your genre. The blurb is audience-facing, so it just needs to appeal to your audience. Agents have to weigh industry knowledge to decide if your book is worth their time. I think readers are easier to win over if you target your blurb towards them. A great example of this is the Urban Romance genre. Look at this blurb: quote:Growing up with everything and having it all taken from her because of her lifestyle, Chelsea White grew up with everything. Her parents made sure she was well taken care of, but all of that stopped once she chose the streets instead of college. Jason was an old friend of hers who loved her dearly. He did everything in his power to help Chelsea, but he was no match to what he was losing her to. . . . the streets. It's not even a "good" blurb, right? But...this book is ranked #500 in the entire Amazon store. It's moving about 150 copies a day. Knowing your audience is everything, otherwise you might lose them if you didn't know that knowing your audience is everything.
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# ? Nov 1, 2014 03:28 |
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I am baffled as to how the hell either an author or a reader could look at the first line of that blurb and go "yep this looks good!" edit: To actually contribute to discussion, I've got two tiny questions dealing with design / layout: Are drop-caps still considered a thing? I see them occasionally in self-pubbed stuff, but not very often. It's a lot more common in trad-published writing, but even then I seem to see it less and less often. Sometimes books just lead in with the first few words of each chapter / section / story in all caps, as well. Is it purely a stylistic choice, or do you run into issues like e-readers not rendering it properly or formatting getting all messed up when converting to e-pub, etc.? And slightly related, but what are the fancy symbols that people use for scene breaks called? I'm talking about like the ornate swirls and stuff. That's another thing I see way more often in trad-published works and I'm kind of curious if there's a reason (I would guess font compatibility issues?) or if it's just a thing that isn't common in self-pubbed writing for whatever reason. The little flourishes and formatting oddities that go with publishing have always kind of interested me, so it's kind of cool seeing what sticks around and what new stuff emerges from new publishing mediums. Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Nov 1, 2014 |
# ? Nov 1, 2014 03:37 |
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ravenkult posted:I'm doing editing these days, if you're interested. I run a small publishing house and I've done some freelancing on the side, mostly spec fic. The guy I recommended to other goons in this thread before is Max Booth III (he's in the OP) and he's good too. Hey, will you PM me your website/email info? I'd love to know more. Thanks!
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# ? Nov 3, 2014 14:43 |
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So roughly two years ago I stumbled on to the literotica thread. I never pulled the trigger, overwhelmed by the process of obtaining covers and marketing and everything... but this profession never left my mind. And I have stumbled back onto this thread. And I feel like this is one of my only chances to achieve a career I can be happy with. I am in research phase right now, trying to read back as much as I can and get an idea of how to do this right. So I have two questions: goonwrite.com - As premade covers, does that mean the point is to just pick a cover, buy it, and build a story around it? That sounds kinda fun, like beating challenges in a video game. What have been the most lucrative genres over say, the past six months? I think I would rather approach this as a business venture at first rather than much of a creative one. What is the best advice you could offer to an unabashed lazy person and procrastinator like myself, aside from paying a fine goon to make me kickass covers and nailing my blurb with the blessing of you fine folks? And I know there is no erotic discussion in this thread, but is it okay to ask if literotica is more lucrative than everything else? I wouldn't necessarily prefer to write it but, again, business over art for now. (Glad to see some of the old faces from times past, I remember being in awe at how helpful and communal everyone was, and how I felt like I was truly getting in on the ground floor of something hip, like so many things from my 10+ years as a goon. Did anyone see that loving Colbert episode talking about literotica many months ago? I was like WHOAAAAAAAAA I KNEW ABOUT THIS LIKE A YEAR AGO!) Enrico Furby fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Nov 4, 2014 |
# ? Nov 4, 2014 00:28 |
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Erotica is having a bit of a resurgence with KU, but there are lots of other popular genres out there right now. Are you a writer? I have to say that if you procrastinate, you probably just... won't be able to write a novel. It's hard to get through at first. So maybe write a short erotica story and start there. I'm not sure what niches still work, you'd have to ask EngineerSean.
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 00:36 |
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All Else Failed posted:
My best advice? If you intend to approach this as a business and not a hobby or form of self-expression, don't be lazy or procrastinate. Self-publishing is not easy and there's a very good chance that even if you do everything "right" you won't see a return on your investment worth the effort. I make a living at this, barely, and it's turned me into a workaholic. If I'd been lazy I never would have even earned beer money. If you want anything like real-job returns, you need to put in real-job effort. 40 hours a week, at the very least. Already having a job takes some of the pressure off, but you're seriously going to have to treat it like a second job. Or get super lucky, but if you're going with that strategy it's a lot less work to buy lottery tickets. Disclaimer: I don't write erotica, so can't speak to how much easier that might be. psychopomp fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Nov 4, 2014 |
# ? Nov 4, 2014 00:37 |
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All Else Failed posted:What have been the most lucrative genres over say, the past six months? Go spend a bit of time going over the data at http://authorearnings.com/reports -- that's about the best source of genre performance information that I know. All Else Failed posted:How silly would it be to throw together 4 very short stories/writing I did that aren't really similar and put them up? Does a complete flop hurt you? In general, very short stories are totally ignored by everyone. So go ahead, throw them up, but don't spend any money doing it. Complete flops can sometimes hurt the name you put them out under -- if they get a lot of negative attention -- but much more likely they'll just remain utterly obscure.
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 00:47 |
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moana posted:Erotica is having a bit of a resurgence with KU, but there are lots of other popular genres out there right now. Are you a writer? I have to say that if you procrastinate, you probably just... won't be able to write a novel. It's hard to get through at first. So maybe write a short erotica story and start there. I'm not sure what niches still work, you'd have to ask EngineerSean. I don't quite know how to answer that question, but let's say yes. Beating my laziness and procrastination is a much bigger worry to me than my ability to sharpen my writing skills. I am leaning more toward short stories. Is $2.99 for 10,000 words still the typical recommended rate (iirc)? I'd guess short stories would be worth more like a buck. psychopomp posted:My best advice? If you intend to approach this as a business and not a hobby or form of self-expression, don't be lazy or procrastinate. Self-publishing is not easy and there's a very good chance that even if you do everything "right" you won't see a return on your investment worth the effort. I hope not to drown you in a sea of bloviation, but I need a light at the end of the tunnel and to put my energy behind something I believe in. I don't mind long shots. I am an artist at heart. I have nothing to lose. I suppose the goal is to try and churn out material that I think will sell; to try like hell to build a meager income for myself; to hone my lackluster story-telling skills in tandem with my supposedly exceptional penchant for the written word; then hopefully segue into the kind of writing I would consider art. I want to have faith in myself and push myself on this. I rarely believe in anything enough to be bothered. My music project is really the only other thing, and would hopefully sate my inner artist in the meantime. I appreciate the reality check, truly, but it will not be enough to discourage me this time around. The battle will be with myself, as always. Another quick question: how silly would it be to throw together 4 very short stories/writing I did that aren't really similar and put them up? Does a complete flop/bad work hurt your name in this business -- would it be noticed? Would anyone care to read them and tell me what I suspect to be true, that they suck and I should really start from scratch with something that took me more than an hour to write? An outside set of eyes or two would help me parse what is my realism and what is my self-loathing, as well as gauge what is an acceptable quality for selfpub versus what I am capable of. I'd rather not invest $50 in an even greater deal of wishful thinking if I am delusional on that front. (Sorry for the wonky editing, wanted to edit/expand from last post.) Enrico Furby fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Nov 4, 2014 |
# ? Nov 4, 2014 00:55 |
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Ghostwoods posted:Go spend a bit of time going over the data at http://authorearnings.com/reports -- that's about the best source of genre performance information that I know. Bookmarked. Throw them up without a cover? I have absolutely zero design skill. Duly noted, though. <3
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 00:58 |
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I'm finally back to writing again, thank goodness. I was sick and vomiting all over the place for a good two months straight, and now I can finally stare at a screen long enough to type again. Just started a new novel, so smack me if I don't have a clean first draft done by 10DEC2014. KU has been my bestest friend and sustained my sales beautifully while I was out of the game. If October stays around $1.50 per borrow, I'll be looking at $22,000 from Aug-Oct.
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 01:24 |
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Man, read the OP. Like that giant image that says the blurb and cover matter as much as your book. But if you're writing erotica, just go join one of the erotica forums to talk about it since you can get away with poo poo like fiverr covers, I think http://dirtydiscourse.com/forum/ is the new offsite one.
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 01:29 |
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All Else Failed posted:Throw them up without a cover? Uh, hell no. Sorry for the misunderstanding. That would go against you. Get the best cover you can. For a throwaway, if you don't have any talents in that direction, your best bet would be to find an understanding and sympathetic friend with an eye for design and bribe them with a pizza / whatever. Your next best bet would be to buy some of RavenKult's (excellent and good value) premade covers. Just bear in mind that it might be a year before you make the cover fee back off 'em. EDIT: I know nothing about Fiverr covers per se, but there's a lot of good, ultra-cheap people on there working from non-Western economies who can afford to put an hour or two in for $5 or $10. EDIT 2: The point I was trying to make is that in general, you need to treat short pieces as if they're not going to make anything back. They need to be as good as you can make them, but you shouldn't spend anything you can't afford to throw away. That can lead to a core tension between "Not suck" and "Not spend", but there's no one set way to resolve that tension. Ghostwoods fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Nov 4, 2014 |
# ? Nov 4, 2014 01:37 |
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moana posted:Man, read the OP. Like that giant image that says the blurb and cover matter as much as your book. But if you're writing erotica, just go join one of the erotica forums to talk about it since you can get away with poo poo like fiverr covers, I think http://dirtydiscourse.com/forum/ is the new offsite one. But I said very clearly that I understand the importance of the blurb and cover, and was responding to Ghostwoods about not spending money on short stories but putting them up. I did read the OP and remember a bunch from my first go around. I don't know if I'm writing erotica or not, but I am not paying tenbux for some erotica discussion forum that may or may not be goons, that's for sure. Ghostwoods posted:Uh, hell no. Sorry for the misunderstanding. That would go against you. Get the best cover you can. For a throwaway, if you don't have any talents in that direction, your best bet would be to find an understanding and sympathetic friend with an eye for design and bribe them with a pizza / whatever. Your next best bet would be to buy some of RavenKult's (excellent and good value) premade covers. Just bear in mind that it might be a year before you make the cover fee back off 'em. No problem at all, just wanted to clarify the conflicting views there. I'll hold off for now. edit: quote:EDIT 2: The point I was trying to make is that in general, you need to treat short pieces as if they're not going to make anything back. They need to be as good as you can make them, but you shouldn't spend anything you can't afford to throw away. That can lead to a core tension between "Not suck" and "Not spend", but there's no one set way to resolve that tension. Totally. I am a little fuzzy on what is considered short. I seem to have 10k words for a novel ($2.99) and 2-4k for a short story ($.99) stuck in my head but I am seeing a little conflicting information across threads, and it seems it might differ between fiction and literotica. Just trying to wrap my head around it -- sound about right? Enrico Furby fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Nov 4, 2014 |
# ? Nov 4, 2014 01:38 |
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Are successful self-pubbed novels written in first or third person? I've been writing a bunch of short stories in the first person for my blog, and I find it much, much easier than writing in the third person.
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 01:56 |
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laxbro posted:Are successful self-pubbed novels written in first or third person? Yes. A very tiny percentage are even successfully written in second person.
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 01:57 |
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There's a moratorium on talking about erotica here and although I do make dozens of dollars a month selling erotica I'll have to pass on answering this question very clearly and just say that, for the most part, the same stuff that was popular two years ago is still popular today. $2.99 is still the standard price, yes. Everyone in the erotica community saw Stephen Colbert talking about dinosaur and Bigfoot erotica.
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 02:20 |
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# ? May 8, 2024 05:15 |
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All Else Failed posted:I don't know if I'm writing erotica or not, but I am not paying tenbux for some erotica discussion forum that may or may not be goons, that's for sure. All Else Failed posted:I seem to have 10k words for a novel ($2.99) and 2-4k for a short story ($.99) stuck in my head but I am seeing a little conflicting information across threads, and it seems it might differ between fiction and literotica. Just trying to wrap my head around it -- sound about right? Erotica discussion is not really allowed any more because it gets weird fast.
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 02:41 |