Recent Posts

Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »
61
Berkley, a division of Penguin Random House, is about to make an open call for novel manuscripts. (It was scheduled to begin today, but it is currently having technical difficulties.)

Quote
We are looking for full-length adult novels in the following genres: romance, women’s fiction, mystery, suspense and thrillers, horror, science fiction, and fantasy.

The window is only open for the first 1,000 applicants. Writers must not currently be agented, though if Berkley decides it's interested, an author can retain an agent at that time. Works which have already been self-published or in which AI was involved in the creation cannot be submitted.

For more details, go to https://sites.prh.com/berkley-open-submissions-2024

(This is one of the tidbits which I got from Substack, which I'm currently trying out. There is more than one Substack that aggregates various publishing opportunities, not only for trad presses but for online literary magazines that might be of interest to short story writers. Some of them even pay!)
62
Starting something new is almost always going to take some time. What you're talking about doesn't sound like an unreasonable investment to get direct sales.
63
Quill and Feather Pub [Public] / Re: This is just a good site to learn new things!
« Last post by writeway on March 18, 2024, 12:03:38 PM »
This forum was created after Kboards was sold. That used to be the most popular self-publishing forum for years but went downhill after the sale because probably 80% of the authors there left. That used to be the place to be a long time ago. This and Absolute Write seem to be the only non-social media writing forums still around. Most forums died out years ago and authors moved to communities on places like Reddit and FB groups where you get tons of activity and information. Those are the sites where I go to regularly. Threads seems to be a popular place for writers too but I'm not on there. I'm not a social media person. I just use it to keep up with the industry, not personally. I don't come here much. It's a nice forum though but not as active as other places.
64
Quill and Feather Pub [Public] / Re: Do you purchase your own ebooks?
« Last post by writeway on March 18, 2024, 12:00:04 PM »
No. I've gotten a couple when they were free and downloaded one in KU by mistake.
65
There is a lot to do to set up the Story Origin/Lemon Squeezy store option. Anyone with their ebooks already on Story Origin for promos will probably have an easier time.

For new people, I created a universal link for each book, then I created a direct sales link.  After that, I added them to collections...then made a custom link for each book.

I'm sure there are probably faster/easier ways to do this, but it seemed to work for me. 

For the Lemon Squeezy side, I had to create a store, get it approved, add all my ebooks as products (although we don't need the epub/mobi files if we're going with Story Origin), and then connect the books on Story Origin to Lemon Squeezy.

There are tutorials for everything, but I still got lost a few times.  I'd create a direct sales link then realize the retailers weren't showing up (I wanted them on the same page) so I went back to create the universal link page and add it to the direct sales page.  There's actually an easy way to do that, but you need both pages set up.

Much like Payhip and BookFunnel, the more I worked on them the easier it got, but it does take some time. 

Again, I added PDFs to all my Story Origin direct sales links in case people had trouble with the epub or mobi files.  I read everything on my desktop, so I thought if I can't figure it out...assume at least one reader might not either. LOL
66
I'm not sure about this pirating issue in regards to direct sales.

As others have mentioned DRM can be broken.  I don't know how easily as I've never tried or had need to do so, but it can be done.  If someone is determined to pirate a book, DRM isn't going to stop them.

Watermarks aren't going to do it either.  Bookfunnel, for example, will add a line(s) to your EPUB saying that the book was "prepared for john@example.dom."  And how is that going to prevent piracy?  John can open the EPUB in an EPUB editor and strip those lines out.  On a PDF, each page can have the buyer's eMail embedded.  Okay, so take a PDF editor and strip that out.  Or, copy and paste the book content from the PDF into a new document.  Either way, watermarks on a digital document aren't going to stop a dedicated pirate.  It might not even stop sharing.  If your friend knows your eMail address, is it going to bother you to share a file with them that has your eMail address embedded in it?

So, the possible lack of DRM and/or watermarking with direct sales shouldn't be a factor in holding you back from doing direct sales.  The implementation of either certainly isn't going to hold back pirates.
67
Yes, I meant watermarking...
And DRM.   :n2Str17:
68
Okay, got one another big concern with direct sales:
Bookmarking to prevent pirating.

Do you mean watermarking?
69
Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: What the heck happened?
« Last post by Post-Crisis D on March 18, 2024, 07:08:39 AM »
If the issue is lowered impressions, ad blockers could be playing a role.

I never used to use ad blockers because an ad here and there never bothered me.  But, now, so many sites are just littered with ads.  It's crazy.  I mean, even on sites you'd consider reputable, sometimes they have more ads than actual content.  And that's not to mention the sites that are just set up to generate ad impressions and/or clicks.  Like sites that have a supposed news story or whatever, but then they spread the story one or two sentences at a time over ten or twenty or more pages.  I've learned that game.  I suspect others have as well.  I either ignore such links or have learned how to speed through them to minimize ads loading and all that garbage.

Again, a few ads don't bother me.  I know sites need to make money.  In the past, I've run ads on my own sites.  But, these days, the ad to content ratio is so out of whack on so many sites, it is like screw you, I'm blocking the stupid ads.  And, if I get that, oh, turn off your ad blocker because waaa waaa waaa, then it's like, screw you, I don't need to visit your site anymore.

Granted, I'm just one anecdotal case, but I suspect others do the same: use ad blockers and/or avoid sites that are laden with ads.  Also, lots of times, I just have Javascript turned off because that shuts down a bunch of ads and other garbage too.

So, that could be another reason for fewer ad impressions and, thus, fewer sales.
70
Yeah, it's hard to see what the advantage would be. I think some authors have adopted the throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach.

Not quite as disturbing is the people who entered so many promos at once that it's difficult to see how they publicize them all appropriately.
Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »