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Nessus posted:(I did get inspired to go SLASH SOME PRICES on the back catalogue, at least) Simply slashing your prices isn't going to do anything unless you promote it. Erotica is difficult to promote and I'm not going to go into it here, but there are options for you if you go KDP Select with those particular titles. If they weren't making you money before, you don't have a whole lot to lose anyway.
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Aug 15, 2014 13:43
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I wonder what kind of speaking fees I could get for talking at these kinds of things. I mean, one of the number one things that I would say is "if you want sales, write to your genre" which in science fiction is like pulling someone's heart out, but I can't imagine I'd do worse than these jokers.
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Aug 16, 2014 20:56
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Haha definitely not going to the UK, thanks for the reality check.
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Aug 17, 2014 16:16
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If you think there's a possibility that your book is not sexually charged enough, it probably isn't.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:01
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psychopomp posted:From what I understand it's less of a plot-to-sex ratio as it is the focus of the plot. Is the protagonist's goal sex related or relationship related? If the latter, it's a romance. The former, erotica. Either can include copious amounts of sex; the difference is in why all the fuckin'. It's pretty close, to be honest! Romance is about the feelings (which may include a lot of sex for an erotic romance), erotica is all about the sex. Most erotica is shorter, most romance is longer. If you do a romance serial and it's less than 20k words a volume, be prepared to get a ton of "ugh they didn't finish writing the story, just trying to get another $3 out of my wallet" reviews.
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Aug 19, 2014 18:57
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Hijinks Ensue posted:Edit: Why on earth am I getting "Big Idiot Bad Post" for my avatar? to encourage you to buy a new avatar
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Aug 19, 2014 19:38
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moana posted:Also, not to burst her bubble, but I wrote a science fiction romance once, and what took me to another level was: never writing a science fiction romance again. This is really eating at you today :/
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Aug 19, 2014 22:27
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I happen to be the firstborn 
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Aug 19, 2014 22:39
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The thing with Time Traveler's Wife is that the scifi (if you can even call it that) is a device rather than what the book is about. It is still absolutely a character-driven romance, just like Battlestar Galactica is a series about war rather than about spaceships.
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Aug 23, 2014 04:32
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Your question is: How can I write everything under the sun without having a separate platform for each individual genre? There's a few possible answers to that question and I don't think you'll like any of them. The easiest one is to become a ghostwriter, but there's a lot of hoops to jump through in order to do that and you'll still have to write to reader and even publisher expectations. Another is to lump them under a single pen name (or your own real name) and just deal with the same kind of people who say "I read Dolores Claiborne and Lisey's Story, not like Cujo at all!" (I'm in this group even though I make fun of it). The solution that I most favor is just to buckle down and stick to one thing for a while. I don't know man, you've been doing this longer than I have and I respect that, but it sounds like you've been needing to take this to the next level for a while now.
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Aug 23, 2014 06:24
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psychopomp posted:Thanks. I'm just not sure exactly what the next level is or how to get there, besides writing more books and hoping I reach a critical mass while slowly building my mailing list. I don't know your pen names but it sounded before like you have a daily word count of 5k a day, which is way more than I do. The next level is getting a large set of at least categorically similar works on a single pen name so that you become an author that people go to when they want to read X. I'm not sure what X is but I remember you saying horror and maybe some sadbrains stuff (for lack of a better word). I'm not familiar with the horror market at all but there are names in science fiction and thriller in particular that I always turn to when I want to read something, and that's what you want to become. I even have my favorite romance authors, and they aren't the kind of authors that did a one-off romance novel and then wrote a steampunk novel next. When you say "critical mass", it seems to suggest that you just need to throw enough works in a pile for it to go critical. But if some of your works are uranium and some are lead, your pile might remain hot enough to make you a living but will never go nuclear.
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Aug 23, 2014 06:56
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EngineerSean posted:Whoever took 1% of borrows last year probably thinks that he or she can make the same amount this year, even if it's a smaller fraction of a bigger pot. Hey this rear end in a top hat was right by the way.
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Aug 30, 2014 11:04
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Sundae posted:How do you see what the total number of borrows was, or are you just back-calculating based on the payout per borrow? I ran a Monte Carlo simulation based on numbers pulled completely out of my rear end.
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Aug 31, 2014 02:37
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Imperfect posted:Kind of a dumb question: Yes, pen names are used by everyone in romance and in romance but I'm pretty sure they are also used in genres all over. There's no reason why you can't write as I.M. Perfect and tell your mom or anyone else "Pssst, this is me" if it ends up being your full time job. (don't choose I.M. Perfect as your pen name)
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Sep 8, 2014 21:04
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Faded Mars posted:you're a baby-murdering rear end in a top hat This sounds like hyperbole but is pretty close to the truth, I've never seen people get so upset about being offered a $3 half-novel.
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Sep 10, 2014 18:30
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Yooper posted:The series is slated for a run of 100 segments... In aggregate, this guy is actually almost making a living. Each one of those sells, on average, once every three days or so. So he gets about 20 sales a day, at $2 a piece.
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Sep 10, 2014 20:32
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A1989 Honda Accord posted:It says it has 25,000 sold and the cover and blurb aren't the best in the world. I should take the sales numbers with a grain of salt, but he's either making money with it or has a crippling case of autism. Guy has been working on it for over two years, looks like the more recent ones get more love, yeah I can believe 25k sales lifetime. At an average of 75 pages per volume, he's at 4500 pages of text for those 25k sales though.
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Sep 10, 2014 20:46
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First of all, congratulations on your success, Steven Campbell (Self-Employed)! I'd like to mention that many of us have tried audiobooks and found their sales to be really dismal. Nobody who makes serious money seems to make any more than 1% of their money from audiobooks. Not only that, but ACX (the company that you're going through) takes 60% of each audiobook sale for themselves just for posting it to Amazon and iTunes, or twice the fee that Amazon takes for eBooks. They don't even seem to promote them at all, but they'll sure as hell discount them as much as they want. I really don't like the current audiobook structure and am waiting for a new retailer that will allow us to control pricing before I jump in with more.
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Sep 11, 2014 20:36
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DukeRustfield posted:ACX is Amazon. Same company (Amazon bought them some while ago). The benefit of having it go through them is if you go to your Amazon book, you can have print, ebook, audio all right there as choices. I'm aware of their business relationship which is why the fact that they do business so differently is so baffling. I'll refer to "Amazon" as "KDP" now though for ease of conversation. quote:As for promotion, it's not their job, nor was it ever, to promote your work. Debatable, as KDP makes a hell of a lot by promoting our work (whether by emails, or otherwise) and ACX takes twice as much as KDP does. quote:It is another revenue stream that costs you: Outside of romance and all but the best selling self pubbed of other genres, it is very difficult to get a royalty share for a quality voice actor or a producer. Many people have to pay out of pocket. You can imagine why, when I have to pay $225/finished hour that I might be a little concerned about how valuable that revenue stream is. Still, you are giving up something (your audiobook rights in case another venue ever opens up in the next seven years). quote:If they ever offer a sale or somesuch, you'll still get your share from the full price. Completely incorrect, you'll get your share from however much that they say they collected from it, which in the case of a Top 100 book of mine, $1.95 (if they buy the ebook, which many got for free). For a six hour audiobook. Or if they pay for credits, they divide up their cost per credit, and give you your percentage of the lower of the cost that was paid per credit or the price that's on Amazon. quote:But Amazon proper also price controls for ebooks. I don't disagree with this statement or any that follow it really, but there's a big difference between KDP's "We're offering incentives for you to price in this area and we reserve the right to price match if you go lower on another retailer" and ACX's "We'll price however we please and gently caress you if you think otherwise." EngineerSean fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Sep 11, 2014 |
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Sep 11, 2014 22:01
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Tenacious J posted:Could anyone explain how royalties work as a self-publishing Canadian on the US Kindle store? I just can't make sense of it. Canada has a tax treaty with the US, so as long as you can get a US EIN, you get whatever Amazon pays Americans for sales, then pay Canada taxes on that income.
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Sep 14, 2014 14:33
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Jalumibnkrayal posted: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. I'm going to tell you the truth. At this point your best marketing strategy is to wrote more.
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Sep 16, 2014 02:49
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I dunno what an agent can do for me at 15%, probably nothing that I don't do better myself.
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Sep 19, 2014 20:33
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A1989 Honda Accord posted:Yes, there's a story behind why it's spelled that way. You just made yourself a sale
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Sep 20, 2014 04:20
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Sundae posted:There are some algorithmic reasons not to use it, if anyone cares for details. I feel like the last time I tried this I fell flat on my face, maybe you can do it better 
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Sep 21, 2014 04:01
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Sundae posted:The one exception I mentioned earlier... 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) quote:Exceptions:
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Sep 21, 2014 21:33
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Jalumibnkrayal posted: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? I generally end mine at 6 pm EST, yes. Not only that, if you hit it just right (and it's always luck), you'll stay on the free list for a while after you're paid, and Amazon even has like a mea culpa that says "Why is this not free?" "Because the publisher changed the price" Something like that.
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Sep 22, 2014 01:42
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/09/22/amazon-publishing-crowd-source-next-books-now-recruiting-kdp-authors/#.VCDJLPRH3Vq Those are equal terms to what my publishing company gives (except we don't give an advance) and better than practically every other publishing company. They can and do send those targeted emails more often for their own imprints. Check the ranks on montlake books. They also seem to be guaranteeing reviews. If not for the "must never have been published" clause I'd consider submitting a novel or two. One question is, it sounds like you can only request rights back if the book is nonperforming, but whats the actual length of the contract? Life of copyright?
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Sep 23, 2014 02:29
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Szmitten posted:I don't really understand the benefit. Even if you're not nominated, you get that same initial exposure as the winner and you'll be able to self-publish anyway and retain the higher royalties. Granted I haven't gone through the process and am being totally naive but it sounds kinda pointless? 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.
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Sep 23, 2014 16:00
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I feel like I'm at the top of the self publishing game and I'd still do it if I could submit older works.
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Sep 23, 2014 18:52
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Ed Zeddmore posted:Can the romance authors here give a rundown of the best times to release a book over the next few months? I'm trying to get my act together in time for Kindlemas. Glitchtember has come and gone, I just published a book today and will continue to do so until January at least.
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Oct 3, 2014 06:39
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THIS February will have the movie release of Fifty Shades of Gray and I imagine it will be like another rennaissance for erotic billionaire romance novels, so get going on it!
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Oct 5, 2014 09:03
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If anyone has proved us wrong, its Duke's story. I still think "write what your heart desires" is bad advice, but for Duke and anyone else who has just wrote what they loved and made a ton of cash on it, I bet it's pretty sweet.
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Oct 14, 2014 23:58
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Hey looks like they had the "write whatever you want/write what sells" conversation at KBoards today, albeit with a ton more negativity! http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,197056.0.html
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Oct 15, 2014 05:05
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hoiyes posted:I'm interested in how a revenue sharing model would work, though I'm an editor/translator not voice talent. It seems like there's some translated self-pub stuff on Amazon here in Brazil, but not a great deal. Has anyone here dipped their toes in that water yet? Some authors have used Babel Cube for their foreign translations, I'm not sure exactly how they interface with Amazon. Also it should be noted that nobody I know has gotten paid by them yet apparently, though that's apparently because of their payment delays rather than their delinquency. http://www.babelcube.com/ ACX may also handle your foreign translation audiobooks but I imagine it is hard to find quality foreign language voice work there. http://www.acx.com/
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Oct 15, 2014 14:04
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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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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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did my boss really mean it when he said I was the worst temp he'd ever worked with? 
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Nov 4, 2014 05:01
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All Else Failed posted:will have a little cash shortly which will help me in procuring the alcohol and cover art I will need to do this properly I think if you have to drink in order to do this job, you're not going to get very far. Hemingway said "write drunk, edit sober" but it probably wasn't because he hated what he was writing and needed to drink his way through it. Grizzled Patriarch posted:I've know a good number of people that I think are pretty good writers, but they can't force themselves to stick to a consistent schedule and actually put words down. They get distracted or start doing chores around the house or say "let me just watch one more episode of this show first" and pretty soon they've got nothing done for a whole day. There's a number of really successful authors (myself included) who are pretty much like that, constantly kicking themselves for how little they get done. quote:Also, I didn't see it mentioned yet, but as far as I know, you probably aren't going to see a paycheck for the first two months, and when you do, it's probably going to be like $20. Places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, etc. pay you a month after each month of sales (i.e. you get paid for the stories you sold in July at the end of August / beginning of September) and those sites usually have a minimum threshold you have to meet. Usually it's like $10 or something so it's not really an issue, but just something to consider. If you are trying to jump into self-pubbing to make some quick money, you are going to be disappointed. It's even worse than that, it's two months after, which means that the stories you sold in July will get paid out at the end of September. quote:I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of people self-pubbing in erotica and romance still have day jobs. This is largely true, yes.
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Nov 4, 2014 22:44
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I feel you on the "regretted hitting this as hard as I could right away" thing. I first saw the erotica thread at the end of 2011, wrote my first story in February 2012 and it bombed, so I didn't go back to it until July and I saw a bunch of people making thousands. In August 2012 I really threw myself at it, and now I'm a rock star. If you commit to this and also pray to the lord Jesus Christ every day, there's no limit to how high this will take you (seriously, I really am at the point where I think there is no limit).
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Nov 4, 2014 22:56
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ravenkult posted:Do you post anywhere else? Blog? I'd like to learn more poo poo. Nah, but I follow Russell Blake, Konrath, and The Passive Voice daily. In addition if you read "Let's Get Visible" by David Gaughran and truly understand it, you'll basically be on the same level I am. Then it's just a question of following trends, following up on new opportunities (Kindle Unlimited has been huge for me), and writing in lucrative genres (romance and erotica are the top two). In addition, (lol self promotion but I was asked), I can plug a free 21 day series I consulted on called "How to Pub Yourself" at http://www.howtopubyourself.com but it's all pretty basic stuff. You're welcome to PM me specific questions as well but many of the questions I get are like "how can I do everything better?" and I can't really take a huge chunk out of my day to answer a question like that. edit: in addition I do post occasionally on the erotica specific board that moana mentioned earlier
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Nov 4, 2014 23:05
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