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EngineerSean posted:I should be able to provide you with some tips for your next work. He's not joking. He spent a good amount of time with me fixing some stuff unrelated to this, so don't pass up this opportunity.
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# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 18:26 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:33 |
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Looks like Amazon is soon going to roll out Kindle Unlimited, a $9.99/month all-you-can-read program ala Scribd and Oyster. It looks like books that are part of KDP Select are automatically a part of Kindle Unlimited. Edit: the graphic for the service also mentioned audio books. Edit2: http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/07/16/amazon-launch-new-ebook-subscription-service-called-kindle-unlimited/#.U8cEmlZH1FK Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Jul 17, 2014 |
# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 23:53 |
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ArchangeI posted:Any word if/how they are going to monetize that for the authors? syscall girl posted:I'm just doing napkin math here but it looks like $9.99 x n subscribers / infinity. Unless they're willing to make it a subsidized loss leader in order to put Scribd/Oyster out of business, the payouts aren't going to be good. On the other hand, if their payouts are too low, people will just pull out of KDP Select and the service won't have any content.
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# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 00:01 |
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jazzyjay posted:The Silent Circus What genre will this be? Historical fantasy? Horror? What search terms does your audience put into Amazon to find new books? Can you pack your blurb full of those words? This seems to take place during World War II, yet if someone searches for "WW2 fiction" they might not see your book. As for the content of your blurb, Hemingwayapp.com has some suggestions on how to make it more readable. I'm also not a fan of your last sentence (it's convoluted).
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# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 15:38 |
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A cool person posted:Hey all, so I finally bit the self publishing bullet. Making my crime/thriller/noir whatever book free on Amazon from now until Monday if any of y'all want to check it out. I downloaded this to my kindle, and noticed some formatting issues: 1. The spacing between lines is too generous. An average paragraph takes up the entire screen of my paperwhite. 2. Your alignment is "right ragged". Consider going fully justified instead. Looks like you have a shot at breaking top 20 for Crime novels. Congrats! Edit: And it looks like they rolled out Kindle Unlimited to the US. Upped the global fund to 2mil for July as well. Lets see how big these crumbs are. Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Jul 18, 2014 |
# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 14:54 |
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A cool person posted:Thanks for the input. Messed with the settings and I think I fixed it. First time using calibre to convert the source doc and I'm kind of retarded when it comes to that stuff I ended up doing the same thing with my books so I'm sensitive to it.
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# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 23:19 |
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BKnights on Fiverr has a mini Bookbub gig. He sends your book link out to 4800 people for $5. The first time I used him it was for a full price short romance story and it got no sales, so he refunded me. Since then I published another work, got some reviews on it, tweaked the blurb and decided to try Bknights again. It's not primetime in the US yet and it's already my best sales day. Mind you, these are tiny numbers, but to me it's a big deal. Thanks for being awesome, thread!
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# ¿ Jul 22, 2014 22:41 |
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Published my third short story yesterday, and I'm about a third of the way done with my next one. What's everyone working on?
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# ¿ Jul 30, 2014 14:18 |
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Yooper posted:Could I get a blurb check? The only thing I didn't like was the last sentence. The second sentence implies high stakes and drama (finding a new enemy), but then the last sentence is more about a career decision, and that seems like lower stakes.
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 03:20 |
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When do we find out about the KU payment rate? When does Amazon usually update the month's global fund?
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2014 00:23 |
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Grammaton posted:Is 2k to 10k the best book to read to improve your writing process? I've gotten a lot of good ideas from it. (I've also found four mistakes in it. Maybe I should become an editor instead of a writer.) I've found it to be pretty good wrt to the mechanics of improving your output. As for motivation to put my rear end in the chair, I liked both The War of Art (Steven Pressfield) and Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (Mason Currey). The latter is more of a peak into historical figures and their often eccentric processes. Midday naps seem to be a somewhat common component, for what it's worth.
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# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 15:25 |
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I had three romance short stories up for free over the weekend. Gave away about 3k copies. Hit #1 in some small categories and #3 in a very large category. Now we'll see if any sales come of it. Author ranking hit top 500 for a microsecond, so that was exciting. Sorry if this is all mundane drudgery for you old hands: I'm still a stupid newbie and everything is new and great!
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# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 17:44 |
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EB Nulshit posted:Is short romance a thing that sells? My mom is writing short erotica but she'd much prefer to write straight-up romance. I think the main draw of romance is the development of the relationship between the main character and their love interest. That would be hard to explore satisfactorily in a short story length. However, I think there are some folks who write serialized romance (there's a huge thread about it on Kboards here http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,184087.0.html). That might be one way to write smaller 15-20k word romance stories but have them continue along a much larger plot arc. Your mom sounds awesome.
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# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 04:04 |
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KDP banner at the top says the August Global Fund is $2mil. I guess Amazon is anticipating a lot of people to bail Kindle Unlimited after the free month.
Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Aug 8, 2014 |
# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 02:18 |
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quote:Dear KDP Author, Apparently tons of authors are getting this sent to them at the email address they registered with KDP.
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# ¿ Aug 9, 2014 22:00 |
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Nessus posted:Has anyone had much success with children's or YA books published through Kindle or similar? I have an idea, which would perhaps best be compared to the early Potter books or Lemony Snicket, and which I think could do rather well. But I don't know if that market actually exists or not for e-publishing. Any experiences? No personal experience, but YA stuff does very well. Just browse the categories in Amazon. Children's books (ala Dr. Seuss) don't do as well in ebook format because little kids drop them and pour applesauce on them, so physical is better.
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# ¿ Aug 10, 2014 01:57 |
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Nessus posted:Awesome. Is there any issue, as far as Amazon is concerned anyway, with having works under multiple pen names on one account? Not that I know of, but I just have the one pen name right now.
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# ¿ Aug 10, 2014 04:51 |
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July KDP sales reports are posted. I'm showing $1.805 per KU/KOLL. I really hope that rate holds for August.quote:Hello, Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Aug 14, 2014 |
# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 22:39 |
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Nessus posted:Huh. Well, that makes sense I suppose. What fields are you writing in, moana? Mailchimp.com is mentioned a lot as being free (for up to 2,000 subscribers) and easy to manage. There's also TinyLetter.
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# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 22:53 |
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ravenkult posted:A story of identity and redemption, satanic cults and funny bunny slippers, The Mind is a Razorblade is the deformed lovechild of a lunatic raised on cheesy ‘80’s science fiction movies. I liked the blurb till I got to this part. It's kinda random and seems to undermine the paragraph before it, which was suspenseful. Plus I don't know why I have to hear about the author's depiction of himself. I also want to know more about the antagonistic force(s).
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# ¿ Aug 19, 2014 02:47 |
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mostkillingest posted:My wife recently self-published and I need some good ideas on how to help her get the word out. It is a light sci-fi novel. 1. The cover doesn't say post-apoc to me. It says medical romance/chick lit. The blurb sounds a LOT like Hugh Howey's Wool series (which is great because people are going buttfuck for those books). I would probably aim for an orange/red cover, maybe a desolate landscape. 2. I don't know what a Veterox is, so the title doesn't help me out. The term isn't defined in the blurb either. Is it the name of the virus? Is it an alien species? 3. Plug the blurb into hemingwayapp.com. The last sentence is especially hard to parse. I would do shorter sentences. 4. "pandemic or catastrophic event" Pick one. Make a strong choice. 5. The blurb seems to state as a fact that all her friends and family are going to die. If that's what the story is about, I think it should be pitched as the stakes of the book: Can Evangeline save everyone around her, etc? Entice me with the notion that everything hangs in the balance, and if the main character fails everyone dies. 6. The wording of the blurb is very passive. She's forced, cruelly propelled, etc. I'd rather the main character have agency. Tell me what she wants and the things she does to get them. If she's just a victim of fate...that's a tough sell. 7. I'm not seeing a pagecount or wordcount. I don't know if it's a 10k word short or a 200k word epic. Amazon usually automatically puts in the pagecount so I'm not sure why it's not showing up. People will pick up your book if the title, cover, and blurb all match up to what they want. Genre fiction has expectations: meet them. But to specifically answer your question, I'd put it up for free then market it to all the websites that do promos for that genre. Then I'd go to Fiverr and pay BKnights $5 to promote it to his email list. I did that with my short over the weekend and got around 900 downloads. I wouldn't spend more than a day on this: more time than that should go into the next book. Nothing will be better marketing than the next book.
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# ¿ Aug 19, 2014 21:37 |
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Mr. Pumroy posted:Even before her parents' tumultuous divorce, Divorces are lovely by default, so I'd ditch tumultuous unless you are going to key into something really traumatic or painful about the divorce. quote:But when her father's insurance company transfers him to the city of Bybridge she must grapple with an entirely new level of culture shock. This is a little hard to parse. Maybe add a comma after Bybridge or tighten it up a little? Grammar's not my strong suit. But I'm a dummy and I know when it's hard for a dummy to read. quote:Bybridge, a city on an artificial island off the coast of New Jersey, is home to the world's largest population of superhumans, aliens, and other strange and aberrant folk. Tighten up the end of this sentence. Strange and aberrant are synonymous so choose one. It will also let you ditch that last "and" which throws the reader for a loop. quote:However, it's Carrie who's declared the anomaly when the city government declares her a security risk. Too many declares and the sentence structure is too passive. quote:Then her father is kidnapped by a rampaging robot. It's a bad start to what was supposed to be a new life. Carrie must save her father from a grisly fate in the forgotten ruins far below the city, First sentence is short and seems like a throwaway. Second sentence is stating the obvious. Third sentence FINALLY gets good because Carrie is doing something. How about you turn all the above into "When her father is kidnapped by a rampaging robot, Carrie must save him from a grisly fate in the forgotten ruins far below the city." quote:aided only by the undead, a mad scientist-in-training and a pack of insane chefs. "Aided only by...., Carrie has to [overcome obstacle, defeat badguy, face ghost from her past, etc] or [the highest stakes you can feasibly frame your story around]" quote:After that comes the hard part: having a heart-to-heart talk with her father that doesn't end in a shouting match. This relieves the plot tension in a way that I don't like. It's fine if this is the overarching theme of the book, but I don't think it helps the reader to know this in the blurb. Star Wars wasn't sold on "and then he finds out who his dad is."
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# ¿ Aug 20, 2014 04:24 |
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mostkillingest posted:My wife rewrote her blurb to try to address some of the concerns that were brought up. The cover was already finished in the blue tone and actually looks pretty good on a print on demand cover. She had ordered a proof. A cover can look pretty good but work against you if it doesn't meet the readers' expectations. quote:Evangeline is ordinary. She lives an ordinary life. Her friends and family are ordinary. Only one of these statements turn out to be true. At twenty years old, Evangeline Rolieux has an idyllic life. She understands how lucky she is, being born just five years after a pandemic. Her parents were survivors of the infamous influenza virus that swept through the world and ravaged the population, killing three-and-a-half-billion people. She’s read about it in books and has heard the stories, but a spark, lit from a simple history assignment, sets fire to her curiosity and pushes her to delve deeper. Soon she’s tumbling down a path towards a startling discovery that may destroy everything she cares for. Unbeknownst to her, the currency for this knowledge will be exchanged in blood, and it’s far more than exists in her body. Light this blurb on fire and start again. Is this really a romance?
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# ¿ Aug 20, 2014 17:02 |
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September KU/KOLL payout pool set at $3 million.Yooper posted:Polishing the draft on my next novel. What do you guys think of the blurb? It's a story about dogs on a planet, and the protagonist has an ancient sentience? Are the dogs pets of the people who flew the crashed starship, or did the dogs fly the starship? It's an unusual premise, not sure how I feel about an animal protagonist.
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# ¿ Sep 2, 2014 03:18 |
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Imperfect posted:Is this even close to a good idea? Oh, and sci-fi - is that just a bad idea from the start? I'd say focus on the novel, and put serious thought into expanding it into a series. Readers want series: it inspires confidence in the quality of the product and if they like the first one, they'll pick up the rest. Especially with sci-fi and fantasy, which are notorious for worldbuilding. I don't want to read a hundred pages of description of how one particular universe works if it's a standalone book. The op features at least one goon who has found great success writing sci-fi, so that's no impediment.
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# ¿ Sep 3, 2014 20:17 |
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A1989 Honda Accord posted:"In the town of Cyprus Grove everyone has a secret. Even the dead. Three children explore a myriad of dark happenings in this first collection of stories. Many towns tried to get back to normal in the years following the civil war. For Cyprus Grove, there is no normal. That all looks good. quote:In "Gifts and Nightmares" a sinister snake oil salesman provides a young girl, Rebekah, a music box. How about "...salesman gives a music box to young Rebekah." Parses much easier. quote:"Watchers of the Field" has Jacob and his neighbor take an up close look at some scarecrows that are more than they seem. I don't like "take an up close look at". Would "investigate" suffice? Also, could you be more specific about why they are being looked at closely? Do they move when you're not looking at them? Do they attract crows? In your previous two summaries you give some good tasty details for readers to bite into. This one is pretty vague. quote:They will have to escape the corn field or be lost to the monstrosities. " I don't care for "lost to the monstrosities."
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# ¿ Sep 10, 2014 04:18 |
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TheForgotton posted:1. 2. If you want strangers to buy/read your book, hire someone to make your cover. They can be had for as little as $5 and will look significantly better than this.
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# ¿ Sep 13, 2014 14:28 |
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August KU/KOLL rate is $1.54/borrow. The total payouts were $4.7 million. There's also a new KDP All Stars program. Top 100 authors and titles get payout bonuses.
Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Sep 15, 2014 |
# ¿ Sep 15, 2014 20:32 |
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Does it make sense to change keyword strategy after the initial launch blitz? When I put out a new work, I'll target the keywords towards a bunch of different subcategories that the work would fit into. Then when it goes free and I market it, it often tops those genre charts for a few days, then slowly falls into obscurity. Once it's out of the top 100 or whatever, I don't think anyone is going to find it by browsing the categories. I think what I should be doing at that point is more SEO style keywords to land on lists of books when people put in specific search terms. Any opinions on this?
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2014 02:21 |
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EngineerSean posted:I'm going to tell you the truth. At this point your best marketing strategy is to wrote more. I concur, doing that as well.
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2014 04:10 |
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Sundae posted:There are some algorithmic reasons not to use it, if anyone cares for details. It's something to do with pre-orders not helping with sales rank once your book goes live, right?
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# ¿ Sep 21, 2014 15:04 |
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Sundae posted:I'll certainly give it a shot. EngineerSean posted:As I stated in my explanation, this is obviously a pipe dream for your average mere self pub and should not factor into your decision. I'm going to quote the exceptions I had from my post, apologies to Milly Taiden if she ever reads this (I doubt she's a goon though) You guys are seriously awesome and an inspiration. Could anyone speak to how free book "sales" factor in all this? I've heard anecdotally that you want to end your KDP Select free promotion manually during book sale prime time. Otherwise it likely expires when your target market is asleep and your ranking sinks faster. Does this sound right? Just published the first in a new series today. Hopefully this one will perform better than the one I wrapped up last week.
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# ¿ Sep 22, 2014 01:17 |
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http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/09/22/amazon-publishing-crowd-source-next-books-now-recruiting-kdp-authors/#.VCDJLPRH3Vqquote:Late last week Amazon started sending out emails to KDP authors, informing them of a new program which Amazon plans to launch soon. According to the email, which was forwarded to me by author Angela Kulig and by Amazon's pr dept, when the new program launches authors will be welcomed to submit their unpublished book to what I would describe as a crowd sourcing program. quote:Guaranteed advance & competitive royalties: You will receive a guaranteed $1,500 advance and 50% royalties on net eBook revenue. WTF is Amazon smoking? Who is going to bring their book to retail finish by themselves then give it to Amazon for $1500 and less royalties than KDP? The special targeted emails and promos would have to be incredible.
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# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 02:18 |
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EngineerSean posted:I mean this is more along the lines of "a traditional publishing company can do absolutely nothing for me" which is said sometimes in self publishing circles but is absolutely wrong. Would you pay for cover design even though you can put words on a picture? Would you allow somebody to self publish for you if they were an expert on visibility and kept part of the profit? If no, why not? There is a decent chance (almost 100%) that Amazon handling your publishing would more than double your sales. It will be interesting to see more details as they roll this program out. I'll rescind my prior scorn. Forgive me, Jeff Bezos.
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# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 17:11 |
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Elfforkusu posted:... this will probably end up being free at some point, so don't buy it! (I am bad at marketing) Joke's on you, it's free right now for us Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Get you a KU borrow! Although you should reformat the blurb. It's all scrunched up on the left hand side, making it look like a poem.
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# ¿ Sep 24, 2014 04:04 |
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Elfforkusu posted:And... it's free for Kindle Unlimited people? Anything in KDP Select is available in KU, which is like Netflix for books. Around October 15 we'll all find out how much we get paid per borrow (for the month of September). If you were expecting a fraction of $0.99, you should be pleasantly surprised. Backmatter question: At the end of my stories I have Amazon links to my other stories. When I click these links on my Kindle it says "this mobile site doesn't allow you to purchase". It lets me add the items to my wishlist but I have to complete the transaction on a computer. Is this normal? Is there a link I can use to let my customers buy stories on their e-reader? Edit2: Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited in the UK today. Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Sep 24, 2014 |
# ¿ Sep 24, 2014 13:38 |
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My main concern about the cover is that in a smaller icon the mountain looks like a tree stump. This is compounded by the grass in the foreground and the feathers. I don't know if this would have any impact, but if your book is about a boy traversing a dangerous maze under a cathedral...I'm not getting that from this cover. The feathers especially seem very whimsical. Blurb: The first two sentences I don't care for. Personally I like to know who is having thoughts before being told said thoughts. The blurb starts to get good with the setup about the maze and limited time with the torch. But the very next sentence says he makes it through, so that anticipation is now gone. Could you instead say it's rumored that a whole world exists beyond etc? The "He could learn..." sentence doesn't pose any stakes or conflict, and it reads as passive as "I could get up and change the channel." And the last sentence is boring. It's way too early for me to care what this character is trying to prove to himself. Is there a tangible benefit if he succeeds? Is there a dire consequence if he fails?
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# ¿ Sep 25, 2014 22:17 |
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DukeRustfield posted:Well, I guess it depends on what you're shooting for. I will say it works quite well as a business plan in nearly any business. If you apply to a company, let's say Google, and tell them, "I just do what everyone else does," you won't get the job. If you tell your prospective agent, "I just want to make C+ grade work," s/he is likely not going to be interested. These are not apt analogies. Would you spend months or years honing yourself for an interview at Google without knowing what Google was looking for? That's ridiculous.
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# ¿ Oct 14, 2014 14:15 |
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Kindle Scout has launched. https://kindlescout.amazon.com/about#how-it-works-authors Looks like you can only submit Romance, Mystery, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy. They also upped the auto-renewal threshold from $5k to $25k every five years.
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# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 01:54 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:33 |
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September borrow rate is $1.518, a little higher than I was expecting. Edit: UK borrow rate is £1.27 ($2.07). Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Oct 15, 2014 |
# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 19:27 |