Quote: (06-20-2013 04:24 PM)painter Wrote:
I just bought it and am looking forward to reading this on my new Paperwhite.
Hey Man - Thanks! You didn't have to purchase, but of course, I appreciate the support. Hope you enjoy it.
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Your rank was #117,000, which is good. What kind of jump does a sale give you? It may be too early to tell. My books languish anywhere between 500,000 and 800,000 but as soon as there's a sale they jump way up. I do have a few questions for the thread.
Is it? LOL To be honest, I still don't know a ton about rank and what's good and what isn't. I plan to study it further, but I haven't gone there yet. I'm also still struggling to see how to best monitor everything.
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How are you promoting it? Are you going to advertise it anywhere?
I'm not promoting it much at all right now besides blabbing to friends and family on social media so I can get some reviews. And I'm being very non-salesy about that - more like, hey, I got this up if you want to check it out. The more reviews you get, the more likely people will buy, which drives up rankings, so that's my initial focus.
Unless I get a strong response from the people who do read it, I probably won't do much promotion.
My feeling about books is this - keeping in mind that I don't have any clue what I'm talking about...
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Either a book has potential or it doesn't. Yeah, redrafting can take a manuscript a long way, but at the end of the day, a shit story is a shit story. And often it may not even be a shit story but rather it just doesn't grab people or generate widespread interest - in the end, only the market can decide if it's marketable.
And self-publishing, in my limited understanding, seems like a way to get the market's opinion before you put a ton of effort into it.
I'd be the first to admit, for instance, that my book could probably use a decent amount of further redrafting. If people are responding well to it, then okay, I'll pull it out and rework it ASAP - without taking away from the story too much. And after that, once I've seen people are willing to buy, then I might start looking at more external promotions.
I also feel that as Amazon exists now, if it encounters high-quality stuff, their system will cover a good deal of the marketing for you - and they've got far more reach and clout than I'll ever have. So the best thing I can do is keep trying to give Amazon what it wants. Just the sense I get from what I'm reading out there.
Of course, once you gain some readers, you can take them away from the platform a bit more and will wield a bit more power to promote your stuff on your own, but starting out, I honestly think you can gain a lot more ground by putting your head down and churning out more books than you can promoting the hell out of a dud and trying to force it to do well.
A lot of the guys who are killing it seem to be hitting a critical mass when they get more stuff out too. Many report seeing hardly any cash beyond a few hundred bucks over half a year to a year, and then somewhere around the 5th or 6th book, they hit a tipping point and start seeing that it's working. And once that happens, the ball really gets rolling.
A lot of this also depends on successful cross-promotion, which is definitely something I'll be working on.
Also more important for a guy at my stage is niche selection. Learning to research ahead of time and write a book that serves an existing marketing on Amazon. Since my first novel and short stories were pretty much already written, this wasn't something I could leverage, but I definitely plan to make it a main focus for future work.
So, right now, I don't plan to advertise or promote much. I may submit my book to some online review sites and keep trying to get feedback on there to make it credible enough to be picked up, but other than that, I'm going to get started writing another book and more short stories
I've already published two short stories since my novel went live. Both link to my novel at the end - would be nice to have another 10 doing the same.
To be clear, I have a ton more to learn about this. I only really started looking into it about a week and half ago. I've got a stack of solid links saved in my bookmarks with some good advice though, and this will be my reading material for now on. If a promotional technique comes across as especially viable, I'll certainly consider giving it a go.
I also like the suggestions by cardguy up above about finding a way to "manipulate" the media. If you had a book you were confident about, I do think that finding a creative way to spark a viral buzz about it could really be a golden ticket. I'll read that book he mentioned and keep working on my writing for now.
One more thing, I've noticed is a common idea among successful self-pubbers is that books don't have to be an end but can be a
means. What I mean is that books have always been seen as this big thing that had to be perfect, and blowing it up so big is what held most people back from ever producing one.
But with the market as it exists now (I don't think it'll be the case forever), each one can be a means of growing your skill and getting better. Pop up a book and see how it does rather than tweaking it for perfection forever. See what people say before putting too much energy into whittling it down. After all, over-editing a manuscript before you really know what you're doing can often rob it of your natural, unique voice anyways.
And after you get some type of feedback - or find out if it's even a possible seller - bring it back to the workshop or continue to the next book, intending to improve.
I could be wrong about most of this though. Like I said, I'm just learning now. All food for thought, in my opinion.
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What did you write the book in (Apple? Microsoft?) and how did you format it for Amazon? The two books I have on there were done on a Mac in Pages and I did my own formatting and covers. Definitely took a ton of trial and error to make it look right but I finally figured out a way that worked for me and they both look good on different devices. What's cool with Amazon is that if you see an error you can edit it, upload it again and usually in about 6 or 8 hours it's live in the store.
I actually wrote the book in Microsoft Word, but right now I've only got OpenOffice on my computer (still saving as .doc files). I didn't bother converting the file before uploading. I just let the Kindle Publishing program convert it for me. But there are some free programs out there that allow you to convert from .doc to .mobi, and I'm going to figure that out for the next book. Not only does it make it compatible with more readers, as I understand it anyways, but it would allow me to send it to proofreaders and have them upload it directly to their Kindle.
I'd rather them proofread on the platform it's meant to be read in than in .doc or .pdf, which is what I've been doing so far. By proofreaders, I mean the very first people I show my book to - before it publishes.
As for how I handle the document formatting, I like to write with big font while working on the book, with space between paragraphs, so I wait until the document is done to format it properly. Then paste it in a text doc and then back in Word (to remove unnecessary formatting). Set the font at times new roman and 12pt - they can alter it as they see fit on their Kindle so it doesn't matter.
Single-spaced, with no gap between paragraphs, and no more than .3 indent on the first line of each paragraph. I'm sure you know this already, but it's imperative not to use "tabs" for indenting your paragraphs. And no unnecessary space anywhere in the document (should never do more than 4 returns in a row).
I use the horizontal bar between sections and a ### at the end of each work to signify the closing.
I don't remember where the webpage I got my initial formatting info from was, but their general advice was to keep it as simple as possible. That way it'll look good on most platforms and there's less room for error.
I'm probably missing some things, but this is what stuck in my head so far.
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I have another book that'll be ready soon
Been saying the same for years about a memoir and another novel I started, so I know how you feel. lol Feel like I really am building some momentum now though.
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Are you going to get this on Barnes and Noble for the Nook? My KDP Select (which I didn't use at all) 90 day exclusivity is way over now and I've been meaning to upload it to their store, seems pretty similar to Amazon, a little bit less of a royalty though. I've also looked at Apple but you need a bona fide ISBN number which I think you can get for $100 or so.
Yeah. After the KDP Select exclusivity is up, I plan to submit to a few different platforms. I still need to do research in this department though. I also plan to release on Amazon as a physical print-on-demand book. I've had about five people on Facebook mention they would buy a copy if it was available as an actual book. I get the sense that there's still a huge market for printed books.
Based on reviews, I may start formatting and getting a cover designed for that within the next couple weeks.
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Your book looks good, I like the cover and I like the pseudonym, I should get into it soon and definitely have some feedback for you. Again, good job, it's not easy writing fiction at all!
Thanks again, Man. I do appreciate it and I hope it doesn't let you down.
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By the way, I'm getting my covers off fiverr. I've ordered three covers from this person so far and the first two look pretty decent. Surprised the hell out of me. I found them because they were recommended in a Warrior Forum thread somewhere.
If you want a link, let me know.
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