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Well this thread, and the writing one, have been an enormous help over the last ten months as I pulled myself out of a years-long funk. Got the first draft of my book done in Sept. and have been compiling my disparate notes for the second since then. Planning on NaNoWriMoing as much of that first draft as I can in Nov. Then back to book 1 etc. I don't think I'd be at this stage without these two threads. If it's cool, I'd like to hear what people think of my blurb for the first one. (Seeing Admiralty Flag's post reminded me I need to get one down!) quote:Vampire playboy Eddy Fry has spent years living it up, so to speak, in Las Vegas. In all those decades not once has he met another of his kind.
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Oct 25, 2022 19:11
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newts posted:I like it! It’s a tiny bit short, but I’m not sure if that’s really a bad thing or a good thing. Thank you! Short in that I should tease with a bit more information? Or just be a bit more descriptive of what I am already teasing?
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Oct 26, 2022 19:39
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I dug in to the Admiral's comments, incorporated his punctuation suggestions and am trying out a tag line for the opener. Viy, the question you raised is one of the mysteries in the plot that gets revealed quite late in the book. I was hoping the wtf-ness of the statement in the blurb would function more as a hook than as a deterrent. I hopefully did adress the "turf" question from you and the Admiral with this version: quote:What dies in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
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Oct 27, 2022 04:05
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Seconding the "keep a notebook" suggestion. I've always had one by my side, since college, but using it? Whoops! I gave myself the rule of "note down every idea. Drop whatever you're doing and write it the gently caress down!" as well as using "Hey Siri*, take a note." Before I started doing that, I'd have an idea and it'd be gone without a trace before I was able to loop back to it. That rule made an enormous difference because it gave me so much more grist for when I began writing, outlining, etc. *Not saying get an Apple whatever, but if you have a voice assistant that can do that sort of thing it's a huge help for when your hands are full. Dishes, shower, you get the drift.
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Dec 14, 2022 01:11
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Admiralty Flag posted:My $0.02: Don't change the title. It would lose some punch with the additional word. I second these suggestions. My only addition is that the lines on the left half of your Raven & Crane logo that surround the "1" are a bit thin. They're getting lost, at least to my eye, and don't read as anything but a scrawl. I have to zoom in to make out the detail. Zoomed in, I do like the design of that logo quite a bit.
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Mar 17, 2023 01:43
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Leng posted:I'm really happy with Damonza. Damon's put together a great team (I don't think he personally works on most of the covers anymore) and they're super quick in turning things around. The add-on prices for different formats of the cover (paperback, hardcover, foiling, audiobook, etc) are all in the range of $50-150 extra per so a no brainer. A literal year later follow-up, but this review was immensely helpful. I did end up going to Damonza for my cover and am utterly thrilled with it. So, thank you for posting your review. The cover: 
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May 9, 2023 19:01
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Leng posted:That is a most excellent cover! It really nails the vibe of your blurb and genre. anime was right posted:i mostly lurk here but drat thats a cool cover Also, you remembered my blurb! Wow! Krunk: their gallery of past works is pretty impressive. Some A-Listers in there. Megazver posted:Allin is a bit of a weird name, but I like the boldness of just using your MC's name as the book title. 
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May 10, 2023 16:22
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Leng posted:OK I have dithered and I am going to do a YouTube thing on it but I want it to be actually, you know, constructive instead of contributing further to the echo chambers. So I reached out to Damonza to see if he'd be willing to come on a livestream to answer AI book cover questions and he said yes. Thanks for doing this. Seeing that email was like picking up my half finished drink and seeing a cockroach floating in it. It's probably a coincidence that all the people screaming "it's here to stay, can't put the toothpaste back in the tube!" are all people who stand to profit from it right this instant. 
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Jun 15, 2023 17:04
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I've been meaning to ask for a while, but the recent activity in the SPFBO-sphere brought it back to mind. Is there a good round-up of contests/competitions/etc that we, as self-pubbies, would benefit from being aware of? Between google going to poo poo, the preponderance of predatory vanity scams and my own lack of native proclivity to compete, I've been unable to amass anything satisfactory on my own. Having missed SPFBO this year by... not being aware of it and with my book languishing in the "no-one knows I exist" void while I work on the second, I'm becoming acutely aware of this blindspot in my preparations. Of course, with all the AI bullshit maybe I've missed the boat entirely as they'll all be stuffed full of machine-garbage seconds after submission open from now on. 
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Aug 28, 2023 18:53
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Leng posted:There's tons, but only 4 that I think are worth highlighting if you're publishing spec fic: I also ran across this resource, entirely by accident, while following up on other things. It's more for general authorship and literary writings, not aimed directly at SF/F or Self-Pub at all. But just in case it might be of use, here it is: https://www.booklistonline.com/book-awards We're all Pulitzer worthy, right?
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Aug 30, 2023 16:42
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That is a clunky fuckin' sentence. Also, so that's how you do 230ish ticktocks a month, use whatever Midjourney barfs out and call it a day. 
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Sep 22, 2023 20:41
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Megazver posted:MJ is very good at generating an endless stream of hot girls. "Good" doing a lot of work there, but yeah I know what you mean. It basically ate DeviantArt and Artstation in their entirety and those are basically 90% pinups and pinup wannabe fanarts.
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Sep 22, 2023 20:53
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Well. This promises to be interesting. FTC files a massive antitrust lawsuit against Amazon https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/26/23809817/amazon-ftc-antitrust-lawsuit-monopoly Guess we’ll see if the FTC has any teeth at all much less if it’s still capable of a Ma Bell style break up. Figured it was relevant here because, well, KDP etc.
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Sep 26, 2023 19:06
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I'm curious about how hardcovers are received by readers these days? Are they still popular outside of the brick and mortar, trad pub "hardcover first then paperback" context? I feel like my knowledge is super out of date on them. Then there's dust jackets. Apparently KDP doesn't have them? The cover is just laminated to the board? I'm probably dating myself something fierce, but that seems really... cheap, to me. I guess what I'm asking is do self-pub books sell hardcovers, and do they offer the traditional dust jacket or laminated style? (I'm sure it's genre dependent too.) Also, is a small self-congratulating cheer acceptable? I achieved a milestone in my brief career as an author that I thought would be years in the coming... if ever. I received a very nice email from a fan informing me that my book was their favorite read of 2023, and included fan art of their favorite character. I have officially "made it" and can die happy. 
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Feb 24, 2024 19:06
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Dream Weaver posted:Congratulations. So a hardcover would be more for prestige/serious fans and really not for any profit potential? Ok. I think I can wrap my head around that. Thank you and congrats right back, on finishing your book! Dream Weaver posted:These young masters need therapy badly. Also, the blurb makes it sound like the protagonist isn't too torn up about leaving his two girls behind. What's his emotional state, what's going through his head when the truth hits? In the second paragraph, if you establish why therapy is the new hotness in DragonBall World, that would help to explain why the influential groups are trying to tap him. (lol) I feel like the last sentence is really, well it sort of lets the potential energy drain out of the piece. This guy got isekai'd to Martial Arts Land, will he be throwing punches and focusing his chi at all? Does his introspective powers make him better/faster at cultivating than the locals who've been doing it their whole lives? There's no sense of that in the blurb, but also no clear sense that he will, instead, be running from couch to couch in order to ask Flying Dragon Fist #5 "but how does that make you feel?" I don't mean to be super harsh, suggesting that I think it sucks or whatever. There's a nugget there, I'm feeling it and I can tell there's a twist I've not seen before. I just want to feel it more and also get a few more tantalizing glimpses at the stakes and the cool poo poo to sink that hook in my interest.
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Feb 25, 2024 22:45
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Leng posted:*Hardcover Stuff* Thank you! I believe I will do what my gut was telling me: Hold off until I can do a "prestige" release, possibly as a kickstarter thing. (I have had some success on kickstarter in the past, so it's not as daunting as it might otherwise be.) Especially as my audience is still... growing. I neither hate nor love dust jackets, but a hardcover without one comes off as "cheap" to my sensibilities. Which might just be my age talking. Leng posted:This is awesome and I hope you've asked that fan for permission to post it and use it in your marketing. Or, like, hire them to do more art in an official capacity. I did ask them to write a review, at the very least. Once I figure out my next round of marketing, I'll approach them for permission to repost the sketch. CaptainCrunch fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Feb 27, 2024 |
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Feb 27, 2024 17:45
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Thanks for the heads up on that. Been checking Lawrence's blog on and off waiting for that info. Ooof on "random selection of 300 out of eleventy-billion entries," though. One is allowed to enter a book only once, being eliminated sight unseen is going to sting.
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Mar 29, 2024 16:45
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Leng posted:I don't think that's the intent of how it's going to be applied—I'd interpret it to be more if your book is selected to be in the competition, you can't resubmit it again just because it didn't do as well as you'd hoped. (I.e. if it got cut in the first round one year, you can't reapply with the same book next year.) But comments are enabled on Mark Lawrence's page and he does check those so if you want to clarify it for sure, I'd suggest leaving a comment there for him. Oh, hah. I never scroll down looking for/at comments anymore so I missed that. Someone asked a similar question about a previous year and Mark responded that the cut off is "just the 300." Hooray.
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Mar 30, 2024 00:11
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