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No Gravitas posted:Eh... I need a Give yourself a pen name and pretend you're from Latin America. edit: this also lets you explain any awkward prose as 'translation difficulties'
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Nov 16, 2014 22:03
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ART! 
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moana posted:What does the amazon bestseller list look like in that category? Make your cover look like those. Note: this applies to every type of writing you might want to sell.
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Nov 21, 2014 20:47
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Well hell, I just started writing again last month: I cracked the $500 threshold in May and am looking on track to make $1200-1500 this month, and it's mostly b/c of KU borrows. This is going to gently caress me starting in July, especially since everything I'm publishing is between 15-20 pages. Oh well, I was already starting to think of moving into the novella format, anyway. edit: on second thought, if they actually do count the # of pages read, this might not be such a bad thing. I would estimate close to 100% of people who borrow my stories read all of it, even if its terrible: but how many people who borrow a 500-page self-pubbed fantasy novel will finish it, or even get 25% of the way through it? Popular Human fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 21:21
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I'm glad at least that the system will be updating your pages read instead of your borrows the day it goes live. Makes it real easy to see if I even want to keep writing shorts in July or start pivoting ASAP.
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Jun 15, 2015 22:01
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angel opportunity posted:Without knowing the pay per page though, how will you make that decision until aug 15th? Comparing myself to other authors, mostly. If most of the self-pubbed forums I read fill up with "I have ten borrows on my novel but only twenty-five pages read on average, WHAT THE HELL!?", I'm probably good.
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Jun 15, 2015 22:07
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I'm in the same boat - I started writing again three months ago and this month I've made nearly 3x what I made at my peak the last time I tried self-pubbing. It's still good money, regardless - I just wish I'd been taking better advantage of KU the last year.
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Jun 22, 2015 16:26
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:As a reader if nothing else I hope this will help get all you super romance scum off my sci-fi new release list. As scum myself, I agree that this is 100% bullshit. Succeed or fail on your own merits, don't try to game the system by pretending your book is some genre it isn't. I will say that this is totally a thing in the mainstream to an extent, though. If I go into my library's Overdrive system and pull up the most popular titles in "Sci-Fi/Fantasy," nearly a third of them are basically romance novels with a medieval coat of paint (loving Nora Roberts, man, I swear). Popular Human fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jun 22, 2015 |
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Jun 22, 2015 19:30
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Christ, I had no idea your ENTIRE CATALOG got blocked. I just about lost the will to keep up with Amazon after they blocked two of my stories right after the other - seeing my entire catalog go down would have had me running for the hills. Good on you.
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Jun 22, 2015 22:02
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Mr. Pumroy posted:A question: if I've written a 80k word novel, and in doing so thought of a neat spinoff short story that I wanted to write (I'm 5k words into it right now after a day's work), is there any harm in appending it to the end of the novel as a fun bonus? I understand that "free short story attached" is not at all a selling point, I'm just wondering if there's any reason not to do this, like maybe it's worth splitting it off and selling it as its own thing instead. Probably not worth it, but I wanted to hear it from people who know better. Because right now I'm thinking "I have this short story, it's not going to sell on its own. It's related to the novel I've already written, so just staple it onto the end and be like, hey dudes, you've read my book so here's this extra thing if you're cool with it." Do digital authors put extras into their books if they happen to have them? Is that a thing people do or even think of doing? I literally don't know, I haven't been published, digitally or otherwise (though I am putting up my novel on Amazon on July 1st). I would probably just stick it on the end as a bonus (and mention a bonus story in the blurb), but I'm lazy like that. Sean's idea is probably better.
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Jun 29, 2015 14:51
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I think you're fine. I have a horror novel that's only a few thousand words shorter than yours with no TOC, and Amazon has never said bunk to me about it.
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Jul 1, 2015 14:18
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So I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised by my KENPC page counts so far. They're about twice as many 'pages' as the actual Amazon page lists for the pagecount.
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Jul 1, 2015 15:36
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EngineerSean posted:And finally, some information from Amazon Oh. Oh gently caress.
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Jul 1, 2015 16:17
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:Didn't Amazon say that for the next month you could pull out of KDP Select at any point, without waiting for the 90 day thing to expire? Where are the options for that, I reckon I'll use this as an opportunity to try my stuff on other platforms now that I don't need it to be exclusive to Amazon. Yeah. I'm out - I estimate I'm making just under 2/3rds of my revenue right now from KU and this just torches it. Where are you guys publishing, besides Barnes and Noble/Smashwords? Does Apple's eBooks thing generate a significant amount of sales?
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Jul 1, 2015 16:37
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So you have to write a 260-page book now (AND have it completely read) just to get the same $$$ you were making last month. Christ. I know that since it's a zero sum thing with the way Amazon hands out the fund that SOMEONE has to be making more money under this system, but who? Is there some cadre of authors writing 750-page fantasy novels with a rabid fanbase that I don't know about?
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Jul 1, 2015 16:53
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the brotherly phl posted:Well apparently my one book is 1 KENPC long. Trying not to freak since I'm sure they're squashing these bugs right now but I hope I'm not losing out on income. Sent an email earlier. Anyone else having issues? "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
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Jul 1, 2015 19:20
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guaranteed posted:Okay, pardon me for just jumping in here, but it seems to me like everyone should give this a little time. I get this, I really do. I was trying to be optimistic - the problem is, Amazon released their pages read for last month and it comes out to about a half-cent per page. Even at a cent per page, I'd be losing 80% of my borrows revenue. Believe me, I would LOVE to come crawling back to Amazon after discovering erotica shorts can make a killing through KU after all. And if that somehow happens, I'll pivot and re-add the 35 titles I've written in the last two months. But the fact is, I was making about $40 from borrows a day and now I'm making less than $3. That's just not worth it for me. I'll (hopefully) make more than that from B&N/Smashwords sales. How long did it take you guys to get confirmation from Amazon that you were removed once you sent your ASIN's through that form? I just sent them mine; I've been camping the last couple days and just got home. Feels good, man.
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Jul 4, 2015 03:21
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Yeah, talking about specifics is what got the old goonerotica thread shut down. Plus, you can't talk about poo poo like that without some posters taking it to an absurd degree. If you want to send me a PM w/any questions about genre specifics or w/e, I'd be happy to help.
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Jul 7, 2015 15:36
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Yeah, you can talk specifics for your sci-fi/fantasy/horror/whatever novel. Not everyone in this thread writes romance/erotica, but I'd guess a majority of the regulars do. Although a lot of us (myself included) write other, more "normal" stuff, too. And I don't know anybody's pen names, to be honest.  edit: also I'm an idiot - I didn't know 'super romance' was code for anything, and just assumed that a lot of people in this thread were writing supernatural romance novels, with ghosts and vampires and poo poo. I was all "man, the post-Twilight market is still humming along, I guess." Popular Human fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Jul 7, 2015 |
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Jul 7, 2015 16:43
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:Amazon is an absolute monolith and they are not afraid to bully people around, they just don't give a gently caress. Safest thing is to keep your drat head down. This really cannot be stressed enough: catching Amazon's notice is like having the loving Eye of Sauron on you. You WILL have to jump through a half-dozen hoops and send two e-mails to do the simplest things. I lost an entire pen name to that poo poo a year or so ago because it became less hassle just to start all over again.
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Jul 7, 2015 16:59
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Soichiro posted:2-3 shorts a week? In all seriousness, this is like the baseline you want to hit. I do three on a lazy week, and upwards of five on weeks I actually get off my rear end and spend a few hours a night writing - but then, I've always been fast. In heart-warming news: I've actually seen a sales increase sine I pulled out of KU, and it doesn't seem to have faded. While I was in KU I was averaging 5-6 sales a day and 30+ borrows; now I have no borrows and 10-12 sales a day. The thought that some of my borrowing customers like what I'm doing enough to become full-paying customers is almost a better feeling than the money. 
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Jul 8, 2015 17:08
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I would have to be making an ABSURDLY large amount of money to ever quit my day job. Even then, I might not: I like having health insurance, thanks.
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Jul 8, 2015 22:26
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Depending on your Chromebook, you can mod it to run Linux and use OpenOffice. I have one of those cheapo Samsung ones, and it lets me switch between Chrome OS and some stripped-down Linux distro with a keypress. It's pretty cool. I still do 99% of my writing on an Alphasmart Neo, though. So much convenience, so few distractions.
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Jul 14, 2015 22:01
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Yeah, I've been wondering if I should suck up my pride and go back to KU. I've made about $15 this month from Nook Press and Smashwords - even at a half cent per page, I was making ~$5-7 per day from KU. The one thing that keeps me from doing it is that my actual sales have jumped up a bit since I took everything off KU and haven't come back down yet - I'm worried I might be undercutting those by going back to borrows.
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Jul 23, 2015 22:29
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Could someone direct me to a good tutorial online on how to make those bundle covers I keep seeing everywhere? They have that sort of 3D effect, with the cover on one side and a list of titles on the other. This is a good example of what I'm talking about.
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Aug 3, 2015 12:40
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Sundae posted:Here you go: This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
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Aug 3, 2015 17:26
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Anyone else seeing an embarassingly long turn around time on their work lately? The last two stories I submitted to Amazon are still both 'In Review': one's been there two days and the other is coming up on its FOURTH day. Are they taking a vacation or am I about to be hit with something bad? Edit: yep, the magic of "complain about it on SA" works. Both stories are now publishing as of four hours later. Popular Human fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Aug 11, 2015 |
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Aug 11, 2015 16:23
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Sorry about the double post, but is there a decent guide out there to tax stuff for self-pubbing that you guys would recommend? There isn't anything about it in the OP that I could find, and I'm actually starting to make a decent enough amount of money self-pubbing that I need to worry about things like that.
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Aug 11, 2015 20:51
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CommissarMega posted:Great, now I want to write a romance so I can get in on this ground floor I just got it - thanks! It might take me a bit to get around to it (I just started a new job on Monday, so both my writing and my free time are completely out of whack) but I'll definitely leave a review when I'm done.
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Aug 29, 2015 21:05
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Way to go! Out of curiosity, how many sales a day does that translate to? I'm over here freaking out b/c a story of mine got into the ~9500s a couple weeks ago, and I discovered that there's easily as big of a gap between a 10k sales ranking and a 20k as there is between a 20k and 100k.
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Sep 2, 2015 21:10
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So I'm having something really weird happening with my KDP, and I was wondering if I was the only one. I published something last night, and instead of showing up as "In Review" like normal, there's just a white bar between the New Title Checklist and my list of titles that says: "Your Bookshelf will auto-refresh once we finish updating your changes. You can continue working while we update." Okay, I figured it just needs some time to update and things are getting swamped. I was sure it would fix itself in the morning. Except today, the bar is still there and my new story is nowhere to be found. And three very strange things have happened: 1) My newest story has apparently been published - I can see it on Amazon, even though I can't see it in KDP 2) My most-recent story before that has disappeared, and is now back to "In Review" status on KDP 3) The story I published before THAT one (so two stories ago) now shows "Publishing - Updates Pending" What gives? I pulled up the other KDP account that my friend uses to publish our shared world poo poo, and the same thing is happening on that one, (minus the first issue because we haven't published anything in a few days). Is this happening to anyone else? edit: okay, after looking at some self-pubbed forums, it seems like this is a known issue that's happening to a bunch of folks. Hopefully it sorts itself out in a day or two. Popular Human fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Sep 12, 2015 |
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Sep 12, 2015 17:48
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Holy poo poo. Okay, I'm definitely taking all the old poo poo I wrote on my OG penname and bundling it. How much are you guys putting the bundle price at? 99c, since all of the money is coming from borrows?
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Sep 12, 2015 18:28
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Sundae posted:Mine is priced at $9.99 but is currently free until 6PM or so tonight. How many stories are in it, out of curiosity?
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Sep 12, 2015 22:19
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Hijinks Ensue posted:Had my first-ever Kindle sale in Japan! The only countries I still have to infiltrate are Italy, The Netherlands, Brazil, and Mexico. Way to go! Enjoy being in the top 10 of whatever genre you're in for the next couple of days 
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Sep 13, 2015 18:07
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Stuck the ~25 stories on my original pen name together into a bundle and pulled the trigger. Hoping this turns my opinion on KENPC around.
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Sep 14, 2015 03:22
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That makes me feel less bad that my KU bundle went over like a lead balloon.
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Sep 16, 2015 00:49
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Counterpoint: similar stories have broken several times (the article even mentions a few) and Amazon never does anything substantive to address them.
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Sep 17, 2015 04:51
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Sundae posted:They actually do. They make the rest of us completely miserable, destroy our incomes, create substantive (but severely flawed) filtering systems, sometimes confiscate unpaid royalties, and close people's accounts for things that were okay for years in response to this crap. The first 2011-2012ish pornapocalypse was directly in response to one of these lovely news articles, and the Chicago event they reference from last year also resulted in a huge purge. Reading over that, I realize it came out a lot snarkier than I intended. I apologize. Also to the sci-fi goon, I just bought Battuta's book (that Baru Cormorant thing) today and its really, really good so far.
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Sep 18, 2015 02:18
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Also this thread convinced me to try LibreOffice (I'd previously been using OpenOffice) and holy crap its so much faster and more responsive. Thanks!
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Sep 18, 2015 04:57
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Yeah Amazon's web services are down - no ones going to get any sales for a while, it seems. I work for a shipping company that handles Amazon parcels and we are getting HAMMERED right now since all the people who'd usually call them can't. Sorry about your promotion 
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Sep 20, 2015 16:42
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 19:22 |
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My advice at this point would honestly be to try and pull the thing entirely, re-tool it with a new title/different cover and re-release it down the road. Put a "was originally published as X" note in the blurb, but honestly its unlikely any of the half-dozen or so people who bought your book are going to accidentally buy it twice and feel 'scammed'. That way you get a do-over to try and promote this right. Side-note: I've been looking over your posts - did you make that promotional image, or did the publishing company do it for you? I mean this one: 
Popular Human fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Oct 22, 2015 |
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Oct 22, 2015 00:25
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