Megazver posted:

Guys, for YEARS now I've had no one to talk to about how much I HATE the also boughts disappearing

I hate it so much

KrunkMcGrunk posted:

My goon, you are not alone. I can't think of a single author I know who doesn't miss also boughts!

KrunkMcGrunk posted:

My goon, you are not alone. I can't think of a single author I know who doesn't miss also boughts!

Bright Bart posted:

Is there any aggregator that lets you send coupon codes/free copies of eBooks to friends, family, and reviewers other than Smashwords via Draft2Digital?

Leng posted:

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: set up a Google form to collect email addresses and preferred stores. Manually set up coupon codes on each store and send that to your people. Hope that most of them are on Google Play, because that one will let you input a bunch of email addresses and send them the free book directly.

Best answer: just set your book to free for the first X days then put the price up after all your friends and family have downloaded their copies. It's easier than hassling with everything else.

freebooter posted:

Hmmm, OK. Well, the book in question is currently sitting at #67,700 in the Kindle store and #73 in vampire horror, so I'll circle back in a couple of weeks and see if it made any bump in ranking.

SimonChris posted:

What tools do people use to hand out review copies? I tried Booksprout, but they don't seem to care about short fiction; only one person signed up for my campaign, and they didn't even post a review.

SimonChris posted:

Would there be interest in setting up some kind of goon review exchange?

Bright Bart posted:

Do you know offhand any other stores that let you either use to send the ebook for free or at least (and actually better yet) generate components comes to share? I tried Googling and it seems for certain on KDP you cannot do either (unless something has changed); for the rest I didn't find any info including when it comes to Google Play.

Your suggested solution doesn't really work as well for me. Mostly because there are some people I'd like to gift it to or even feel the need to as they appear annonymously in it, with their permission of course, but they don't use social media very often and I'm unlikely to be able to talk to them all in the span of even of a month or two. There are also other reasons.

freebooter posted:

Circling back around on this, two weeks later it's sitting at around 37,000 in the Kindle store overall, and #48 in vampire horror, which is more or less where it's been for most of the past week when I've remembered to check on it. No uptick in earnings (as expected) but also no apparent flow-through to later books in the series.

Leng posted:

Personal opinion here but imo review swaps are going to hurt more than help you, in the same way that pushing your book to friends and family who aren't your target audience are going to hurt more than help you.

Review swaps on launch is a standard strategy on some platforms like Royal Road and you might get away with it on something like Goodreads, but it's not gonna fly on Amazon. Not only are there restrictions on what accounts can post reviews but review swaps are explicitly against terms and conditions.

Besides, readers are smart; they can tell if a review is genuine. Spend your time figuring out where your ideal readers are, finding them, coming up with better pitches to get them to read your work, and basically everything that's involved in building an audience. Reviews are a lag indicator of how well aligned your pitch, your packaging and your book are—they're the result of a reader who made it all the way through your sales funnel and cared enough about how your work made them feel to leave a review. Having a bunch of random 5-stars with generic praise isn't going to magically skyrocket your sales.

Leng posted:

KrunkMcGrunk posted:

Libbie hawker had a good blurb explainer on YouTube. I haven't seen it in years, but let me find it...

E: I can't find it.

However! I always set my blurbs at that transition between Act 1 and Act 2 when the main character has just been pushed out of their comfortable, familiar life and is now faced with the bigger problem they must solve, then I close with the stakes. What happens if the MC fails? Embarrassment? Death? Losing their front tooth?

So, paragraph 1 is introducing the MC, what they want, who they are, etc.

Paragraph 2 is when the MC learns of the main problem, and any unexpected complications (sometimes this takes 2 paragraphs to get right).

Paragraph 3 is the stakes - what does the MC gain/lose if they succeed/fail. In mysteries and thrillers, this is almost always "the MC dies" which is kinda boring, but ya gotta give the people what they want.

Here's an example from one of my books

quote:

Cready Marsen wants two things in life: South Florida Sunshine and a mountain of money. Living on his forty-seven foot trawler at Dinner Key Marina gets him sunshine, and his work as a private investigator brings in cash, but it requires every bit of Cready’s skill, guts, and questionable morals.

When a scummy businessman offers Cready work with a big payout, he happily accepts. The job’s tricky, but nothing he can’t handle. At least, until his client’s daughter gets involved. She’s doe-eyed, gorgeous, and runs with bad company.

Cready’s job gets complicated, and deadly, in a hurry. He’ll have to think fast and act faster if he’s going to outwit the assassins and thieves after his client's property, because if he fails, he’ll lose everything he holds dear—including his life.

In my example, you learn a little about Cready (and get a sense for the genre/setting) in paragraph 1. Paragraph 2 is all about the Act 1 -> Act 2 transition, where Cready is faced with his problem. Paragraph 3 is purely about stakes.

e2: re-reading your blurb, you seem to follow this, generally. I think the problem lies more in language choice and sentence structure, and things could be a bit snappier. I'd suggest cutting it down to three paragraphs, and, specifically, getting rid of paragraph 2 as much as you possibly can.

SimonChris posted:

I meant swapping review copies for honest reviews, not just writing generic positive reviews. I will much rather have an in-depth 3-4 star reviews than generic praise no one cares about.

SimonChris posted:

I know am I required to submit two copies of each book to the Royal Library in Copenhagen - and I have dutifully done so - but I have never heard of that applying to every country where you sell the book. I am pretty sure it goes by the residence of the publisher.

Bright Bart posted:

Do you submit two seperate files of an eBook

e: I mean actually there could be a benefit to two copies of a file in case one gets corrupted and the Royal Library really needs a working copy of Swordy Tales of Swords and Wizardy Wizards. But they can click 'copy here' themselves. Athough I can also see a national library want to keep a fun tradition, or on the less cool side have set rules and need to follow them regardless how silly.

Bright Bart posted:

So I'm just now learning that most countries legally require publishers to deposit a copy or two with a national library or a designated university's library. I don't think there's an exception if you as the author are the publisher. At least I can't find one.

...

Guessing this isn't really taken all that seriously right?

SimonChris posted:

Anyway, I checked and it definitely only applies if you are either a Danish publisher or a reseller importing the book into Denmark. Danes being allowed to buy the book on Amazon isn't sufficient. I assume other countries have similar rules. You also have to register your own publisher, of course. If you get a free ISBN from Amazon, presumably they are the publisher and required to fulfill all legal requirements.

Bright Bart posted:

I am worried there's a way to look up either the parent publisher of a book or the owner of an ISBN. What I'm putting out isn't smut or libellous or disclosing state secrets but it could still be a massive headache for professional reasons if anyone found out.

quote:

If your publisher entry includes personal data (e.g. a home address, telephone number or personal email), you have the right to refuse consent for the personal data to be transferred to us and to require your ISBN Registration Agency to suppress that information from the data that they supply to us. You can also request us to remove your personal details by sending an email to info@isbn-international.org.

Leng posted:

Huh. I can't remember how Prime Lending works and have only tried it out once on a free Prime trial, but I seem to recall there's no "end date" on when you can have the book borrowed. So I wonder if you're not seeing read-through because people have grabbed it but haven't cracked it open yet?

Leng posted:

I do legal deposit for my state and country of residence (NSW Australia) which ends up being 3 copies, though I only need to provide print versions for 2 of them.

They don't really chase it that hard; I've technically still yet to drop copies to 1 of the locations. The national e-deposit I do at the same time as upload but the physical copies I do whenever convenient.

freebooter posted:

The Australian government can barely even do anything about the billions of dollars of tax fraud that waltzes out the door every year, I'm never going to bother with this outdated practice

freebooter posted:

The Australian government can barely even do anything about the billions of dollars of tax fraud that waltzes out the door every year, I'm never going to bother with this outdated practice

Megazver posted:

People have discussed publishing on RoyalRoad a few pages ago. A successful RR author just posted a pretty good guide on the subject:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/16mdl4s/how_to_become_successful_on_royalroad_part_1/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/16mrn0i/how_to_become_successful_on_royalroad_part_2/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/16nj6ww/how_to_become_successful_on_royalroad_part_3/

And here's a couple more useful guides:

https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/116847
https://www.webnovel.com/book/book-of-authors_10589139205070105

Bright Bart posted:

I've learned that just because the government won't go after the rich for breaking laws doesn't mean it won't go after regular people for breaking rules or just existing.

One place where I've lived, in a first world country mind you, the service line for people on unemployment to e.g. schedule appointments or ask about re-application status was a premium number that charged by the minute.

I'll send a copy to at least the national Library where it's being published.

quote:

The TikTok Video Format That Worked:

It was literally the most simple out of all the videos I had tried.

I put an image render of the main character, with a one sentence explainer of who she is/her current situation.

Then after 8 seconds, I switch it to a picture of the love interest with a one sentence explainer of that character.

******THE KEY HERE is that the way I describe them sets up the conflict. It explains the hook of the book without flat out saying it. ******

So of course since its a romance, you can assume they will end up together (at least at some point). But with the hook, the viewer instantly goes "how do they end up together with that stopping them?"

From the comments on the video, that seems to be what intrigued people.

SimonChris posted:

I've been reading the self-publishing reddit and came across this post from a woman who claims to have made nearly 6k in the first two weeks by advertising on TikTok. I particularly like her advice on how to create video blurbs by describing the characters in a way that implicitly sets up the conflict

Bright Bart posted:

Is that even feasible? Authors with traditional publishers whose books are in hundreds or thousands of bookstores, with an established fanbase, and on bestseller lists in their genre can sell just around 1,000 copies per week on a nice week. When BookTok propelled an author to 4,000 copies per week for a couple of weeks it made the news. So is she selling eBooks for $10 to ~450 people per week or making that much profit on ~300 print copies per week?

I may be talking complete rubbish and actually hope I am. I'm phrasing it this way to be easily refutable if it can be refuted.

Bright Bart posted:

Is that even feasible? Authors with traditional publishers whose books are in hundreds or thousands of bookstores, with an established fanbase, and on bestseller lists in their genre can sell just around 1,000 copies per week on a nice week. When BookTok propelled an author to 4,000 copies per week for a couple of weeks it made the news. So is she selling eBooks for $10 to ~450 people per week or making that much profit on ~300 print copies per week?

I may be talking complete rubbish and actually hope I am. I'm phrasing it this way to be easily refutable if it can be refuted.

Bright Bart posted:

Is that even feasible? Authors with traditional publishers whose books are in hundreds or thousands of bookstores, with an established fanbase, and on bestseller lists in their genre can sell just around 1,000 copies per week on a nice week.

SimonChris posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublish/comments/138rswh/how_i_made_568699_in_my_first_two_weeks_of_self/

Does anyone here have experience advertising on TikTok, Instagram, etc.? I've been reading the self-publishing reddit and came across this post from a woman who claims to have made nearly 6k in the first two weeks by advertising on TikTok. I particularly like her advice on how to create video blurbs by describing the characters in a way that implicitly sets up the conflict:

Megazver posted:

Does anyone have any suggestions of good funny popular author TikTok accounts to see what they're doing?

CaptainCrunch posted:

That is a clunky fuckin' sentence.

Also, so that's how you do 230ish ticktocks a month, use whatever Midjourney barfs out and call it a day.

Megazver posted:

MJ is very good at generating an endless stream of hot girls.

Megazver posted:

Does anyone have any suggestions of good funny popular author TikTok accounts to see what they're doing?