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Post By
HH

In Reply To
Anime Jason 
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Location: Here
Member Since: Sun Sep 12, 2004
Posts: 2,834
Subj: Re: Well, the villains are rotters.
Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2015 at 06:23:59 am EST (Viewed 1 times)
Reply Subj: Re: Well, the villains are rotters.
Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2015 at 11:45:17 pm EST (Viewed 850 times)



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      I recently updated the archived material on the Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom. I was impressed by the body of work you've done for this place.



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    To be fair a lot of it wasn't all that good, but I felt like I had to keep things moving so I kept going.


First rule of being a writer: write. Often. Every day if possible.

Second rule of being a writer: self evaluate. Kill your babies.



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      The keys seem to be pricing and publicity. A "non-brand" author's sweet spot seems to be either with a $1.99 15-20k novella or a $2.99-3.99 30-40k novella. The latter price allows more options on Kindle but I don't recall exactly what; that stuff is usually done for me.



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    That's about where I thought it would be.


There's even a button on the Kindle uploading site now that you can push to get Amazon's "suggested price".

There's also a decision to make on opting in to "KDP", a programme where you make your work available for lending and for download as part of a bulk-purchase package. I'm registered for that but it doesn't give me much (you get a proportional share of the whole income pot divided by reads); I think my biggest monthly cheque has been $12. On the other hand, it does get my name and work seen so there's no way of telling if that factors in to other direct sales.



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    Marketing is always my weak point. With everything. Partly because I have unusual tastes, so I can't really look at something and predict what everyone else will like.


Marketing is every waiting-to-break-through writer's weak point. If there was a certain route it would have been found by now. It almost definitely isn't those companies that charge an upfront fee to "promote" your book.


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    If I sold 70 copies of something I'd be amazed.


A lot of publishers are really cagey about sales figures. Royalty statements don't usually come with any explanation for the total, not even to say which book or books they are for. I've had to really push to get an idea of what actual sales they represent.

One reason is because a lot of contracts these days give the author a back-end percentage (usually 60% net sales in my experience). If there's an advance its usually small (I've never had one over £3000) but those are rare in small-print publishing and getting rarer.

The "net" part is important though, because before calculating your share of profits the publisher gets to deduct expenses - production costs, complimentary giveaways, advertising, admin etc. The best contracts I've had specify what is eligible as a cost on the gross and cap how much it can be, either by a fixed sum or as a percentage of gross. Most contracts don't and you have to rely upon the publisher's honesty not to sneak a finger onto the scales.

To be fair, many reputable small press companies do play fair in their own opaque way. On the other hand, I've had stories in a couple of anthologies where I've never seen a penny because they have "not yet recouped expenses" (e.g. the cost of the publishers going to ComiCon).

I reckon that's partly why publishers are reticent about sales figures. They don't want authors doing the maths. They also sometimes don't want to upset authors with how poorly books have sold or else to inflate the author's expectations because things have sold well. Finally, they don't want other publishers to know what brands and which authors sell well because that's commercially valuable information.



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      If you want feedback for a specific purpose, like "does this serve as the first chapter of a standalone novel?" then you'll need to be clear when you post it. What makes a good PV story or even a good episode of an ongoing series is different from the demands of a grabber novel opening, so folks may review it differently if they know its intention.



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    Mostly a combination of giving people here a taste of what it will be like, if they choose to read it, and also to see if I might have missed an opportunity and didn't notice.


My advice then, is to write at least three chapters/12,000 words then go back and revise chapter one before posting. In long-form prose you will inevitably have a better grasp of your style and story a bit further in and it will demand changes to your opening.


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      In the middle chapter of the current UT trilogy, Liu Xi doesn't use her powers at all as far as I recall. Everything she does is intellect and character driven.



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    That should completely confuse her enemies.


I was concentrating of the other side of Liu Xi's demonstrated personality, a selfless tendency to put her own troubles aside and support her friends.


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      I don't know that I'll be returning to that series any time soon.



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    I mean more to avoid confusing people reading both at once, and trying to make sense of the timeline difference. I did notice that happen before - when I posted something too far out of time with other posts on the board, people started questioning how can this person be here and there at the same time.


People ask that about comic book series too. Then again, how many places can Wolverine be in at the same time?






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