/lit/ - Literature

amazon

I despise myself right now. I'm shit.

>>2754356
why? Taking a while?

OP, long and hard road, I just did this myself: Amazon works well, but their subsidiary, Createspace, is actually very good for this. Google it and pop it up; in essence, you can design the whole book, both online and print, without any cash coming out of your pocket. I'd explain better, but I think it's better to just do it yourself.
If you want to talk some more and swap links for our respective books, however, reply, and I'd be interested to talk more

>>2754587 This

I might suggest doing just an e-book format first through Kindle Direct Publishing, which is part of Amazon. If there are any errors or people see things wrong with it, it's really easy to fix.

Plus, if you enroll in the Kindle Select program you get five days out of every three months to promote your book for free and get extra exposure, which, as a self-published author, is really what you need in the beginning.

Also, the royalties are way better. Minimum pricing is .99 cents at 30% royalties, which really sucks, or 2.99 at 70% royalties, which is what I opted for.

Once you do that and reviews start to come in, it's easy to set up the print version through Createspace. The only cost associated with that is if you use their services for editing or design or opt for more exposure into bookstores. Royalties suck for print versions, but it's always nice to have a book in your hands. I didn't feel like I had really self-published until my first proof came in the mail.

And something I'd really suggest: hire a professional editor. I had a handful of minor errors in my book that I wish didn't make it into the final product, but I'm kinda stuck with them now.

>>2754678

Isnt there an argument you sell more copies at .99 than 2.99 so make more money?

30% is still far higher than any traditional publisher.

Curious about this as someone considering publishing via amazon.

Thanks.

>>2754678
And I, in turn, agree with this, even after putting forth Createspace; I've done the KDP route and the Createspace route, but because of lackluster sales: maybe like 3 in about a month, I'm considering pulling it down and using the KDP exclusive route to get the free promotion for a while, so you might try this, like he said first.

>>2754678

I've heard that .99 is a great selling number, but the math just doesn't work for me. To me and most of the people I know, there's very little difference between one dollar and three. Add to that the fact that with the select program you get those five free days and that exposure you would normally receive for being just a dollar kinda dissipates.

The way I see it, you get the exposure of being cheap when it's free, which I see as WAY more likely than the dollar option, and then when people start to respect the work and hear about it, if they buy the book you're getting two dollars per copy instead of thirty cents.

For self-publishing it's really just about exposure at first. My first book is part of a trilogy and I basically went into it not expecting to make any money off this first one. That's what the sequels are for. Once enough interest is garnered, I can charge a bit more for the sequels and make back my investment.

So, kinda like a drug dealer? First taste is free.

(cont.)

(cont.)

And just as a personal example, my first two free days I had 500 people download the file, my second set of two days I had another 500 people download it. I thought these numbers were really good, even though it's hard to really ever be satisfied in this realm. I tweaked my marketing and advertising strategies and prepared for today, which was my last free day until the August rollover.

I had about 2400 people download it today. I have an hour left and it would be awesome to get to 2500, but I'm trying not to get ahead of myself. While it's probable that a lot of those people aren't going to get around to actually reading it for a while, that's 2400 extra people that could possibly love the book, leave reviews, and most importantly recommend it to their friends.

When's the last time three dollars stopped you from reading a book that your friend was telling you to read? To me it's just as big a barrier as one dollar (mainly, the effort of putting in a credit card number. I'm lazy)

tl;dr Really up to you

>>2754737
>>2754736


Thanks I found those both very helpful and confirmed some advice I read elsewhere.


So if sold 2400 books today that equates to nearly 5000 dollars, that surely is a good day's earning?

>>2754744

God, yes, and I wish I was there, but, alas, I will still be waiting tables come Wednesday. But that's the thing:

No one knows me. Now, 2400 people in addition to the other 1000 people now have my book sitting on their kindle, PC, or whatever they use to read ebooks. That's 3400 people that could read my book, tell their friends, and then at such a cheap price ACTUAL sales could start coming in.

And once the momentum starts, it really doesn't stop. Book sales are like that. I'm certain that the last thousand of my sales came from the fact that my book was the #2 top-selling free sci-fi book today. And before today I was NOWHERE close. I had sold all of six books between this promotion and the last. It would have been absolutely fantastic to break into the Top 100 free books today, but I'm at 106 with just an hour left. Kinda infuriating to come so close.

Still, for an unknown, unrepresented 25 year old who self-published two months ago, I really, REALLY, can't complain.

>>2754758


Link to book(s)?

>>2754770

Here's the site. You can click the big red button and get a free book :) kevinkauffmann.com

I was keeping up a thread on here for most of the day but then, well, I felt like I was being rude to keep bumping it.

It's sci-fi, but really light on that aspect. It was just a good way to tell the story.

>>2754795

>well, I felt like I was being rude to keep bumping it.

please don't :)

>>2754795

wtf does tyler king's review even mean?

i'm glad he's sure kauffmann exhibits a conviction to put meaning to words, it's not like that's the point of writing shit

and it looks like you're writing shit, cough-guy, so good luck in snagging all the plebs

>>2754810

Hah, it's a problem I've had for a long time and only recently have I started to get over it. I really don't want to waste anybody's time or annoy people by clamoring for attention. Even the possibility of doing so kinda unnerves me.

Luckily some growing up and waiting tables really helped me start to ignore it, but, well, sometimes the sentiment hits me hard. Besides, I had been monitoring that thread for about seven hours. Felt like I had overstayed my welcome.

>>2754822

What I got from it was that he thought I didn't care about dumbing down the themes or the story in order to sell the book, which is exactly right. I didn't compromise any aspects of the novel in order to attract the masses.

And without actually reading any of the book how can you know I write shit? If you did, I apologize, but it's pretty unlikely that you took any time with it.

I wouldn't be insulted if the plebs do like it, actually. I'd rather a series like this be popular than 50 Shades of Grey. The plebs might not get all of it, but there's multiple levels to enjoy and the writing quality doesn't make me want to throw up like Shades.

>>2754867


> 50 Shades of Grey.

I keep hearing this title, I have no idea what is it about.

Then again I don't feel the need to check the NYTimes best seller list or whatever that book is on/recommended by.

>>2754873

Don't... just, don't. When I learned about it I was livid. I read the first couple pages and then the summary/author paragraphs on wikipedia and it broke me for a couple minutes. The woman wrote Twilight fan-fiction and then re-worked it into a female sub fantasy and is ridiculously rich now.

And Time named the author one of the top 100 most influential people of the year.

That said, from an objective standpoint, she is actually THE success story for self-publishing. She published the first book online and then the attention she got was able to bring in the publication companies. Got a three book deal out of fan-fiction.

But her writing is cancer and makes me angry for authors who actually try to make something of merit. So I'll just stop, now.

What about chapbooks? Are those worth looking into?

>>2754736
Good sir Anon, help me out here: I'm following what you're doing and just enrolled in KDP select, but minimum pricing is 99 cents, so tell me, what are you doing to get around this? Is your book normally 99 cents, only free on your promotional five days, or normally 2.99 and free on promotional days? Because I'm personally leaning towards the latter option

>>2754886
Why are you mad?

Life is a dirty game. You've gotta play dirty if you wanna win. -Harris

>>2755087
I dunno, I'm the same way. It's like, a lot of us work hard and put in real talent, and then this shit hack makes it for writing shitty fanfiction and changing the names around? Fuck her, she's got no talent and this is a prime example of the world being a shithole.

>>2755095
Write for the lowest common denominator if you want to get rich as shit.

Write for a bunch of elitist pricks who subscribe to the James Joyce Quarterly if you want to have critical acclaim and live off of stipends.

This has always been the way of the world.

Stop being so naive. It pains me.

>>2755099
There's nothing naive about it. I know the way it is, but that doesn't change the fact that it sucks for it to be so rare for actual talent to get recognized. If you disagree with that, then you're the naive one.

>>2755080

I chose the 2.99 minimum at 70% royalty. That's the great thing about the Select Program. I can still grab up the people who want free stuff without turning into a panhandler.

>>2755087

Basically I agree with 2755095. As a writer it's incredibly frustrating:
A) because of my ego. I'm understandably not the best writer, but I really try to make stories worth reading with the best possible writing and I know other authors doing the same. Writing is a craft that people dump years and even decades into refining and even then most of the time the final products are not entirely satisfying.

B) It's basically dancing on the corpse of the industry. What stopped me from publishing regularly was the fact that the whole industry is broken. The only REAL way to get published these days is through agents, directly trying to contact publishers is like playing darts underwater while wearing a blindfold. It's a six month commitment of time and expectations for the most likely answer of being ignored.

Thus, agents are the way to go, but just like the publishers, they don't want to invest any of their time on anything they can't sell. In order to really have a chance, authors must(not always) compromise their work in order to have mass-market appeal.

(cont)

(cont)

And because of that, the book clones come out. To a small extent I had to go down the same path. I don't particularly like my book description because it sounds too much like the baby of Hunger Games and this science fiction book which I can't remember right now. But, you have to draw people in. It's the only real sacrifice I had to make in content, but I made sure not to let my actual work be affected.

Other authors don't do that. In order to make their book deals and put food on the table they make all-out copies and inspired works from the most popular books in the genre. Classic romance novels, science fiction, fantasy, all the genre literature does it, which is why it usually has a stigma associated with it, but the paranormal erotic fantasy is what hurts me the most. It's usually horrible writing, the books are CLEARLY working off of Twilight (even if it was old school Anne Rice it would be more acceptable) and now it's the go-to success for publishers and agents alike.

50 Shades is basically the culmination of this trend and it is just .... frustrating. It is total and complete disregard for good writing. And even though Time isn't really relevant anymore, to see that woman's name on the top 100 is enough to make my blood boil.

Because they're right. She is extremely influential in the literary world. She's killing it. And really, it will only get worse.

>50 shades of grey

Just another reason why I just don't bother with female writers. Female anything, for that matter. The world is just one huge reason why women are useless whores.

>>2755308

*cough*

>>2755308

homo detected.

>>2755311
Woolf is terrible, George Eliot & Colette are female writers par excellence
(okay Daniel Deronda wasn't great).

>>2755311

Yes, there are exceptions. I actually like Plath too. But any writer or woman in general who makes a 'career' out of being a woman or is anything but anti-feminist is a useless whore.

>>2755337
It's kind of sad how all the best female writers initially had to pretend to be male.

Kaufman if you're still here, how many copies have you sold?

>>2755525

Sorry, had to do that sleep thing. Just checked the stats and 2586 people downloaded it and three random people bought it (one person borrowed it, which is exciting for another reason).

So six real dollars in the pocket and I *think* that I get a very small amount for each free copy. If that's the case, even at one cent I'd get $25, too. Nothing compared to what I spent, but I'm super happy about the turnout. And that's the last I'll talk about it unless anybody asks. I really didn't mean to hijack this thread.

Also, there's nothing wrong with women writers. A lot of them write terrible lit, but so do men. Gender has little to do with it.

>>2756032
>one person borrowed it, which is exciting for another reason
Elaborate, please.

>>2756048

Alright, last one. The way that Kindle borrowing works is that if a friend grabs a copy of a book, they can let you download the file for about a week. That means someone liked the book enough to tell their friend they had to read it, and now that friend only has a week to get done with the entire book unless they want to buy it.

So, unlike other readers, that particular reader has a time limit of a week. They're much more likely to read it than just keep it on the shelf. And then when they're done they might tell other friends, etc., etc. Just another way to get easy word of mouth.

>>2756058
cool, thanks