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Going back to Kindle Unlimited talk for a second: It appears that borrows do indeed count for sales rank. Algorithm effects are still unknown at this point, of course, but they're definitely raising my sales ranks. Interestingly enough, I am also seeing no decline in individual unit sales, just extra borrows.
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Jul 19, 2014 19:16
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Basically, if my end goal is a collection of shorts, what is the best course of action to take to ensure that I at least give myself the best chance at making it successful? Finish it, leave it unpublished, write something else that makes you famous, then publish it. Problem solved!  Honestly though, short story collections sell like crap and almost nobody publishes them unless you're already famous. Sorry.
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Jul 19, 2014 21:23
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I'd rather just use an affiliate link, honestly, but I'll definitely view the terms of the program and consider it when it comes out. Between the visibility algorithm changes, possible cut of revenue going to Facebook (no idea), and that it requires the reader enter their payment information into Facebook when they already have it likely saved on Amazon, I'd rather just have them click a link, then click Buy It Now, and give me an extra 6% for the affiliate click in the process. 
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Jul 23, 2014 16:24
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EngineerSean posted:On the other hand, there has been very little change in quality of self-published books. Anyone can poo poo out a book with incomprehensible prose and tortured plots, upload it to Amazon and B&N, and call themselves a published author. And in the current paradigm, they would not be wrong to call themselves that. This is something of a slap in the face to those of us who actually put effort into our craft, those of us who work hard and pay our dues in the trenches of rejection and the classrooms of trial-and-error to earn the title of published author.  I'm gonna name my next angsty emo romance The Trenches of Rejection. (Or not, because I like to make money.)
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Jul 24, 2014 23:47
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I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I know several of us have sold serials before, so sure, why not? 
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Jul 27, 2014 17:27
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I just finished a Goon Project(tm) romance serial that is selling okay, and we're gearing up for the novelization release in three weeks or so. On the side, I'm publishing one short story a week in romance and I'm about 13,000 words into my next novel. I'm also reading "Wired for Story" by Lisa Cron on the recommendation of some buddies who went to the RWA convention this year. http://www.amazon.com/Wired-Story-Writers-Science-Sentence-ebook/dp/B005X0JTGI/
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Jul 30, 2014 14:46
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EngineerSean posted:Kindle Unlimited is either going to make this the best month of 2014 for me or the rate paid per borrow will be so low that it will be a PR disaster for Amazon. I'm wondering about how it's going to pan out too. I've been assuming $1.00 per borrow and even that makes it a pretty crazy month. If it's higher than that, somehow, I'm going to be a happy camper. I'm sitting on ~700 borrows for the month, which is way higher than I usually get. Like, an order of magnitude higher. I've broken 100 borrows once in two years, and it was on a book that almost broke the top 100 (#140, screw everything  ). Given I've done jack poo poo this month apart from shorts and the serial, which isn't even on my KDP account, I'm very happy with this month.
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Jul 31, 2014 01:44
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quote:If he follows orders he might get to keep his career, but if he makes a stand he might find his place, or lose everything. (Explain. What does finding his place mean?) Anything ultra fancy he's doing this time that you could say he's saving? It'd let you rephrase the line as a decision: Does he take the easy path and save his career, or does he risk it all in a chance to save the galaxy?
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Jul 31, 2014 19:54
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Oh, and happy royalty day, everyone! I hope July (well, technically May?) was a great month for everyone.
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Aug 1, 2014 02:37
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Somehow, I don't see someone with your degree of Select luck as a "dum dum." Was there a certain degree of luck? Probably. Dum dum? gently caress no. It makes a hell of a lot of money for you, so why would you stop? (And thanks for convincing me to not abandon Select after that ridiculous 65K-download freebie failure, by the way. It may not be doing much for my not-so-prolific NA pen-name, but it's doing a ton for my other one. )
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Aug 2, 2014 01:15
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Sundae posted:I'm also reading "Wired for Story" by Lisa Cron on the recommendation of some buddies who went to the RWA convention this year. Just wanted to follow up on this post earlier. This is a good book. I definitely recommend it.
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Aug 4, 2014 16:23
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Hrrm. While trying to write an erotica short I seem to have accidentally written the beginning of a fifty shades steamy romance thing. Sounds like something you need to keep fleshing out and then promote like crazy right around Valentine's Day 2015, huh? (Fifty Shades movie comes out 14FEB2015)
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Aug 19, 2014 16:35
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How do you see what the total number of borrows was, or are you just back-calculating based on the payout per borrow?
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Aug 31, 2014 01:39
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Imperfect posted:children's books Where on earth did you read this? Got a link? Or do you mean YA?
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Sep 3, 2014 04:44
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Compare the Hobbit to the Silmarillion. One of these contains world building, and the other causes abdominal distress in all but the most dedicated of Tolkien fans. Don't cause abdominal distress in your readers and you'll be fine.
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Sep 4, 2014 18:24
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PoshAlligator posted:I don't even know what font my CreateSpace book is. Draft2Digital just rolled up with a nice interior and I said "yeah". So how did that process go? I haven't worked through them for CreateSpace books yet, and I'm curious what it was like.
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Sep 5, 2014 19:31
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Did you publish it yourself?  (Post it. Someone may mock your cover or blurb, but that's par for the course here.) Edit: Ravenkult, that is one snazzy looking interior.
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Sep 6, 2014 18:20
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quote:Has anybody got any experience with self-pubbing books with lots of illustrations? Not a graphic novel, not a kid's picture book; kind of like Shel Silverstein books or Diary of a Wimpy Kid. My wife is just starting to work with the new KDP Kids program to see if it can produce a reasonable illustrated books with text contributions. Most illustrated books, even ones from trad-pubs, look TERRIBLE on Kindle because of the separation of IMG and text. I bought a big pile of them to review last week and ended up refunding all of them because not a damned one was readable on a Kindle Fire. It's tough to format illustrated ebooks right now because even the most reasonable idea (embedding text in the illustrations and making it part of the pictures) doesn't scale well depending on the device and orientation. It's all fine and well to do that on a Kindle HDX, but cell phone readers would be pissed. (Whether you care if cell phone readers are ticked off or not is your own decision. Just saying it's a potential gap.) Check out KDP Kids and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, your next best bet is formatting the book TXT --> IMG --> TXT --> IMG --> etc etc, alternating story and image on separate screen flicks. It's not ideal, but it's the best you have going for you right now. Unless someone else here knows more and wants to ream me for bad advice (go right ahead!), it seems to me that heavily illustrated books are one area where trad-pub still wins by a wide margin.
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Sep 9, 2014 14:20
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Romance serials sell. Can't vouch for other genres.
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Sep 10, 2014 15:46
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Yooper posted:I've seen a handful of scifi serials and none seem to do all that well. One particular dude has like 60 episodes out, each 10k-30k words. Maybe the combined royalties add up, but it seems to be a dud. In fairness (and it could be one hell of an exception), Wool started out as a serial and did damned well. There are always outliers, though.
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Sep 10, 2014 18:01
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ravenkult posted:I'm tentatively offering editing services. I have a few years experience but it's been mostly for acquaintances. If you could throw that up in the OP, that'd be cool. I got plat if you need to contact me. Also do eBook formatting and print layouts, but you knew that. Updated.
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Sep 12, 2014 00:58
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TheForgotton posted:I'm getting closer to publishing my first novel. Two blurb candidates and DIY covers for your critiques. The cover is terrible. Go review your genre, then change it entirely. Never use either of those fonts ever again. Regarding blurbs, you have a few good things in each of them that I think (not knowing anything about your book) you should combine. Overall, the second blurb is significantly worse than the first. I took a stab at a third version, but I am not big on the horror genre at all. Someone with more experience with horror, please rip v3 apart as well. v3: quote:When horror movie buff Martin Bowers takes an attractive coworker on a midnight joyride in a stolen car, he finds that the police and his girlfriend's wrath are the least of his worries. Getting rid of a stolen car in the seedy underbelly of (city, Florida) isn't as easy as he thought it'd be, and all the horror films in the world can't prepare him for what he finds in the trunk. Sundae fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 13, 2014 16:38
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TheForgotton posted:
Okay - yep, with that blurb and cover, it didn't scream comedic thriller either. My modified blurb totally doesn't work in that light, either, so don't use it.
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Sep 14, 2014 23:30
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SmockJoc posted:So here’s my book. Big thanks to everyone in the fiction writing discussion thread. I mostly lurked but gained invaluable advice from the regulars there over the years. Congrats on publishing!! I absolutely love your chapter headers. I snagged a copy to check out how they look on various e-readers, and they're really snazzy. Well done on making the book interior stand out a little. I feel like the blurb could use a little work, but I have no idea what to suggest so ignore me on this one.
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Sep 20, 2014 15:46
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Szmitten posted:Only thing, you've reminded me, and I've noticed this in almost every single selfpub ebook/physical book in and out of this thread: The first paragraph of a chapter shouldn't be indented. You notice some weird borderline subliminal poo poo when you're learning how to format this stuff. Which e-reader are you reading them on? It's probably authors forgetting about correct formatting, but depending on the e-reader, sometimes it ignores your stylesheet indents. For example, one of my books starts with... code:code:No idea what it does on an iPad or phone. I'd rather stick my face in a jar full of bees than read a book on a phone.
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Sep 20, 2014 17:35
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Yooper posted:I don't see much reason not to use it. There are some algorithmic reasons not to use it, if anyone cares for details.
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Sep 21, 2014 01:58
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EngineerSean posted:I feel like the last time I tried this I fell flat on my face, maybe you can do it better I'll certainly give it a shot. Quick and dirty Amazon basics: #1 - Amazon wants to sell books. (Well no duh.) #2 - They want to sell whatever sells, regardless of whether it's a self-pub or a trad-pub. (If the customer wants it, they'll give it to them.) #3 - Amazon believes that it is good for sales, in the long run, to make sure people see new things instead of the same old stuff. (Do you really want Twilight and The DaVinci Code to be the top books in any given search result FOREVER? Mystery Section: Literally nothing but Agatha Christie until the end of time? A literature section of only Shakespeare?) #4 - At release (unless you already have a big name for yourself) a book that is available for pre-order will not sell as many pre-order copies as it would actual release copies, per day. (Breaking News: More people buy something that exists than buy something that doesn't exist! Details at eleven!) Therefore... To support these goals, Amazon's search engine and website use several algorithms (exact details are in flux all the time and have probably changed by the time I wrote this sentence) to deliver what they believe is the best user experience for shoppers. One of these is skewing results / search suggestions (as you type, the auto-completes) based on your previous purchase history to provide what they think you are likely to buy, based on your keywords searched. The other one is the  popularity algorithm.The previous known data for the popularity algorithm indicated a 30-day rolling window of sales relative to other books. Its current details are unconfirmed as usual, but the general gist of it still seems to apply. In short, your sales visibility in searches, suggestions, etc, is a weighted combination of your POPULARITY (combined with an age factor) and your SALES. Over time, the age factor will drag you down and let other books start to take over. This is an issue if you have a #1 bestseller, but a potential boon if you're not a bestseller. (Do you really want to never, ever see Divergent stop hogging the top 5 slots of YA for all eternity? Even with its crazy sales, the series will eventually lose internal search popularity due to age, and sales will fall as it's no longer in everyone's faces.) The popularity index projects your book's popularity based on its known data, and extrapolates to an undetermined degree where it has none. This means that if your book has been out three days and had crazy-pants awesome sales for those three days, the algorithm is going to look at it and say "Hey, people really like this thing! On a 30 day scale, that's a lot of sales. Really popular!" It is then going to start showing your book to more and more people. Think of it like that bullshit Facebook "more likes = more people see your post" thing, kinda. The more people who seem to want your book, the more popular your book is, therefore the more the site thinks other people will want your book. On the other hand, if your book has been out for 30 days, sold 1 per day for the first 29 and the 61 on the 30th day, your popularity is 3 books per day. Third example: You release a book that sells 30,000 copies on day 1, zero copies for the next 29 days. You appear to be selling 1,000 copies (or more) per day and are going to be extremely popular. (This won't happen because people would buy your book with that kind of visibility, but bear with me for the example, okay?) Tomorrow morning is day 31. Your 30,000-sale day has just aged out of the popularity algorithm, so in our extremely unlikely / almost impossible example, you now have 30 days of sales that show zero per day. You are now completely invisible in the search results as far as preferential treatment goes, because in the eyes of Amazon, nobody wants your book. Sooo.... long story short, Amazon shows your book to more people who bought other things like your book, provided your book appears to be more popular than all the other books like your book. If you're higher in the sales popularity algorithm than any other book using the relevance keywords of "cthulu's underpants", your book will show up above all the other novels about Lovecraftian lingerie in the search results. A certain someone (not me) in this thread had a book on page #1 of the keyword "romance" after a particularly strong first week of sales last year. I was extremely jealous. Still with me after that background info? Here's how this applies to pre-orders: Here's an example (as of 21SEP2014) of a book with a pre-order: http://www.amazon.com/Ella-Micha-Infinitely-Always-Secret-ebook/dp/B00KANT97W/ Note that it has a sales rank. When you are listed in the store, your timer has already started. Amazon is already treating your pre-order exactly like every other book in the store (with one key difference that I'll get to in a second), complete with the popularity algorithms. Jess's book will probably be a success despite this because she's had two or three #1 NYT bestsellers now, but for the rest of Planet Selfpub, we don't have that fantastic pre-existing audience. (Interestingly enough, it looks like she's out of her contract with Hachette for her newer books, but that's a bit of a tangent.) For the rest of us, here's what happens: #1 - You list your book as a pre-order X days in advance. #2 - The hidden popularity timer starts. #3 - Nobody buys your book in any substantial quantity on pre-order, because you don't have a million-reader fan base (and look at that rank on the Ella & Micha book... that's not exactly a good rank either!) Your book's rank quickly plummets. #4 - In the background, Amazon is tallying how many people per day bought your pre-order, and is already making decisions about how popular your book is. #5 - Your book actually comes out on release day. #6 - Whatever promo you actually scheduled for release day seems like it has no impact whatsoever, and your book sinks like a stone. #7 - You scratch your head and drink yourself silly as you wonder what went wrong. Here's what went wrong: Since you didn't have a whole bunch of sales during your pre-order period, Amazon decided you weren't very popular. Therefore, you didn't have a lot of visibility when your actual launch came, either. Even worse, that promo drive you ran where you sold 300 copies on launch day was blunted by the fact that Amazon thinks your book has already been out for X days. Actual impact: 300 sales / X. Did you do a 30 day pre-order? Whoop-di-doo, Amazon thinks your book's good for approximately 10 sales per day! (That's awful.) Now let's look at it in reverse: #1 - You list your book as a normal release-day sale, no pre-order. #2 - The hidden popularity timer starts the moment your book is live in the store. #3 - Your promo hits the shop on Day 1, 300 sales divided by X where X = 1 (or maybe 2 if you were careful due to Amazon sometimes getting buggy). This skyrockets your book in rank, too. #4 - In the background, Amazon tallies up your poo poo and sees (x=2) 150 sales per day, says "Whoa, that's pretty great. Let's show this baby to more people and see if it sticks!" #5 - Your book now sinks or swims depending on cover, blurb, subject matter, and (sorry) luck. You might still have a failure on your hands, but at least it's not doomed from the start. THAT is why, for most people, pre-orders are a bad idea. You don't have a big enough fan-base to make it work, and there's really no reason to do it. The one exception I mentioned earlier... The one exception is that Amazon will report all those pre-order copies as day-one sales for the purposes of NYT and USA Today Bestseller lists. If you're trying to hit a list, they *may* be helpful then. Damned if I know, though - I have no letters.
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Sep 21, 2014 15:59
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Jalumibnkrayal posted: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. Amazon has a lot of subscribers on its mailing lists and a looooot more sway with purchasers than any promotional infrastructure we can assemble. You may get a higher percentage turnout with your own dedicated mailing list, but you won't beat the sheer numbers that Amazon can pull with targeted mailers (and they have a LOT more data than we do). There is something they can do for me that traditional publishers (and I myself) cannot do for me: guarantee me fantastic visibility on the website of the largest bookseller on earth. I've been watching what they do with their own imprint releases, and they definitely give them a ton of extra exposure and purchase-promos that the rest of us don't get. I'll come right out and say it: If Amazon offered me a deal like that on my next book or offered me one of their decent Montlake deals, I'd be all over that poo poo. I'm pretty much exclusive to them as it is. Edit: I might be able to give some insight on how good their targeted campaigns are in the next few months. A fellow author and I agreed to terms with Amazon for one of our books for an extra targeted promotional deal. Not a full program like your link talks about, but some extra oomph on one of our books courtesy of their targeted campaigns. We'll see what it does. Sundae fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 17:50
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Just to give an example of what I'm talking about for extra promo that you don't get as a normal person (or even a trad-pub): http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Wire-Gwenda-Bond-ebook/dp/B00H9JRUWG/ref=zg_bs_3511261011_5 Publisher: Skyscape (October 1, 2014) Skyscape is an Amazon imprint. A few weeks ago, this book was in the top 5 in the store, paid, as a pre-order. It is #30 in the store, paid, as a pre-order. It is all over my Kindle whenever I turn it on (the lock-screen ads), gets recommended all over the site, and has an extra promo option that is not available to anyone else: Free pre-order for any Prime members. It's effectively getting freebie promo treatment on the paid sale list. Of course, I have no idea what the author is getting out of it, payment-wise, but I cannot argue with the visibility aspect. Amazon throws all its weight behind the books it picks up for its own imprints, which (MIGHT) be worth its weight in gold. From what I've seen, every Kindle First book is an Amazon-owned imprint. Edit: Confirmed - all four books right now are Amazon imprints. Hard to say until one of us gets an offer and agrees to it, though.
Sundae fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 18:07
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Jalumibnkrayal posted: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. Unfortunately, depending on your e-reader, it is not possible to get around that mobile restriction. It exists on a Paperwhite and on the old Kindle, but (as far as I can tell?) doesn't exist on Kindle Fire models. If anyone else has found a way around it, please do pipe up! KU in the UK today? I don't know whether to say "yay" or "poo poo." I'm leaning toward Yay, but damned if I know.Edit: Bookbub has now added UK stores to its coverage and will offer listings for a ~100,000-reader mailing list across the pond as well. Sundae fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 18:24
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I just got the most adorable fan-letter from a reader, and she asked if she could be a beta reader for my next book as well. Now I just need to get healthy again so I can write the damned thing.
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Oct 3, 2014 19:52
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Hijinks Ensue posted:I've got a BookBub 99 cent sale going today! Congrats! quote:I don't want to alienate older readers if they see it listed as a '9th to 12th grade' piece. No real search benefit apart from the internal age ranges in KDP (which I think break down mainly for children's books). I think your cover and blurb will say more about your age range than anything else.
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Oct 6, 2014 14:55
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moana posted:You find authors who write books like you and go after their fans with a Exactly! This is another important reason to go through those "Painful Pre-Marketing Questions" from the OP. Once you know who your fan-base is, it's a hell of a lot easier to figure out how to market your book to them (and that includes giving them ARC copies).
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Oct 7, 2014 02:19
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Explain this to me as your average reader: Why on earth would I want to read a book about you? (I'm serious - why? What distinguishes your 2012-2013 life from the other billions of people on this planet? What actually makes your memoir worth reading? If you have a good answer, maybe you can go somewhere with this. If not, well... probably not a good idea.)
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Oct 7, 2014 13:42
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Sepherothic posted:So does anyone know of alternatives to Bookbub / Booksend? I largely use goodreads, bloggers, and existing fan-base for ARCs. Other possible submission sites are Kindle Nation Daily (expensive but okay), Kindle Fire Department, eReader News Today (very good), Pixel of Ink (supposedly good if you can get a listing), MyRomanceReads (genre, duh) and then the rest just sort of go to poo poo from there. If there are any other genre-specific ones out there worth pursuing, I don't know about them because I'm not active in those genres.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:15
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Aliquid posted:Well yeah, I realize there are tons of memoirs out there. The first few hundred listed by new/popular on Amazon tend to fall into pretty distinct categories: finding God/purpose, being a Troop, overcoming a disability/disease/mental illness, dealing with death, long-form autobiographies and travelogues (which are further divided into ones written by Jane-Goodall-type experts and snarky thirty-something women). I've obviously had a difficult time finding a memoir written by someone under 30 who wasn't a teenage runaway. I spent twelve months working directly for the Nigerian presidential family, and I had the pleasure to experience a lot of things that are hitting the world news in the last year. Finding a memoir of a person working for a third-world leader has been impossible, unless they were published decades ago or by, like you said, retirees. I guess the closest thing I've found recently is "I have Iraq in my Shoe", but the author is incredibly myopic and never left her compound, whereas I'm chock full of stories of Femi Kuti, child slavery, typhoid, Goodluck Jonathan and cannibals. Thanks for your backhanded recommendation of Save the Cat, it really looks useful. Give me a sentence. "During 2012-2013, I was a ____________ and I'm notable because I did _________________." That's all I'm really asking for. There are memoirs of everything from strippers to military leaders, and they might not sell a ton of copies, but done well, an interesting story can sell. (Whether you are capable of writing an interesting story is a separate issue entirely.)Nobody wants to read about meaningless drivel, though. Why are you interesting, and what can people learn from your experiences? Edit: From your little blurb there, you actually could have (minor) sales, maybe, done well. My brother published a documentary of his work in Namibia back in 2012 and has had some reasonable luck with people picking it up. He had a similar case of having lots of anecdotes from meeting with presidents, business leaders, etc, as well as an interesting story to tell. However, it's worth mentioning that most of his success with it has been in academic circles. Popular culture and Africa don't mix often, especially not sub-Saharan. I have no idea whether you are capable of writing it, but if you have an interesting story that you can tell in a compelling way about your time in Africa, you might get something small going with it. That being said, I'll be honest here: Africa 'real-life interest' is a small genre. It has its avid (academic) followers, but most people don't give the smallest of shits about that continent. You need to make it really compelling, because nobody cares. 
Sundae fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Oct 7, 2014 |
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Oct 7, 2014 19:04
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Aliquid posted:I totally agree with your edit. That's why I'm mostly asking for advice, because I'd like to find an audience and I know nobody gives a gently caress about SSA. However, there's an increasingly large Nigerian diaspora, especially in Texas and the UK, and they're pretty voracious for tabloid-y stuff about politicians and celebrities. Nigeria's been in the news a lot, too. As interesting as it sounds to me, I'm still with Moana on this. I don't see that your audience exists in a targetable way.
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Oct 7, 2014 20:15
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Yeah, I have nothing (in theory) against trying out something new as a 'break out' sort of project. However, in reality I have very limited amounts of time and bills have to be paid. I can write something that breaks the mold (and is more likely to fail miserably than be a super hit), or I can write something fitting a pre-existing concept that is all but guaranteed to net me $8-20K before I move onto my next project. When I have a nice buffer built up, I'd love to write some more experimental stuff. Until that happens, I have to stick to 'tried and true' styles. Gotta pay bills.
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Oct 14, 2014 01:02
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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. This is one of those things that is a little bit foreign to me, because in my field (pharmaceutical science, a highly regulated field), that's exactly what they want to hear. They don't want to hear that you do unique things - they want to hear that you know the CFRs, USP/EP/JP and ICH guidelines inside and out and that everything you do is exactly aligned with those guidelines/laws/whatevers. "I shoot for the next big thing" is a surefire way to not get a job in the field. My entire job is defined by SOPs, even though I'm supposedly a "creative" scientist. Go figure. I agree on a gulf between carbon copy poo poo and AAA blockbuster, and I wasn't trying to imply that "make carbon copies" was the answer either. A better example of what I meant would be this: I have an idea for a billionaire romance in the shadow of 50SoG with a few twists of its own, and I have an idea for a really cool science fiction romance novel that hasn't been done before. Is there an audience for sci-fi romance? No, not really. It's very, very small, so even if I do it well, the odds of it being even a moderate commercial success are incalculably small, no matter how great the book is. Is there an audience for kinky billionaires? Hell yes. Even if my work is just another billionaire book, I can bank on at least $8K in earnings. I could turn around and say "Hey, let's break the mold and write a sci-fi romance anyway!" and that'd be just fine as long as I also acknowledged that it would most likely be a commercial failure. I may very well do that someday when I get to write full time (I'm aiming to quit pharma at the end of 2015), but right now, I'm still stuck with very limited writing time at night after work. I can't afford the time to take on experimental projects, because every experimental project I take on is a guaranteed money-maker not being written.
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Oct 14, 2014 14:26
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Hmm... might be worth playing with if you already have a reasonable mailing list / fan base. Not sure. At this point, I'm basically Amazon exclusive anyway, so why not? 
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Oct 15, 2014 02:24
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