Wow self-publishing is pretty great

Not crazy at all. More agents and publishers are willing to take a risk on a writer that has the drive and fortitude to get their own train started. It's easier for them to hop on, make some money and hop off when they're ready or the train stops because they didn't have to do all the work.

Also, an agent just requested full manuscript. Good times. Off to send more queries now. Also, I can use my goodreads and Amazon reviews as additional incentive for them to take a second look. I've heard first hand they prefer that because it's better than just managing an ever growing slushpile

>tfw writing a short story on torrented 2010 Microsoft Word

I-is this ok?

I have no idea what you're asking. Word is fine

>220 dollars

Is this bait.

Not op, but thanks, that's pretty cool

Nice dubs.
Having a series is actually one of the best things you can do in self publishing right now. By selling the previous books at a discount or doing giveaways, you can garner extra exposure from aggregators because it's in their best interest to sell more. Many people won't buy a book until there's more from the author. They want to be sure the author has enough material for them to invest their time in. It's harder to just sell one. Book 1 is out now, and I'll discount it to sell 2 when I release it in a few weeks, 3 comes out in Nov/Dec. and 4 in approx. March. Those four will be made into the ACT I box set and then I'll repeat the process using book nub and book blast to promote new works because as said before, they make more when you sell more.

If I wanted to have a novella up on Amazon, am I allowed to set it for free, or .99? Or do they choose the price?

so is this thread telling me that the days in which self-publishing "didn't count" are over?

Is this like the writing version of rappers putting songs on soundcloud?

Can novellas have multiple points of view?

Wait, people make money with self-publishing? On Amazon? How? Are you marketing at all?

haha "I've written 20 novels and here is my lucky complimentary piss jar ;)"

Yes.

theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/02/adam-croft-self-published-her-last-tomorow-story

>series
What's the genre? It's not gay dinosaur porn is it?

A novella should garner 1.99 if it's quality. No offense but you're likely an unknown like me. Step one: get a Quality cover. That's the killer for self published authors. Go to Fiverr.com and find a chick called pro_covers or something. For 10 measly dollars you can get a good cover. Second, edit your work or pay to have someone edit it. Again, Fiverr. Then once you've got your product, upload to Amazon. Sign to KDP select for the 90 days. In exchange for the exclusivity you'll get some promotional kicks. But KDP is like an abusive relationship. You'll get less than the other person. Do the 90 days, get some reviews, don't renew Select, and then "go wide" with Kobo and Draft2digital.

Why couldn't they?

Quality always has a place.

How does one get into creative writing? I love literature, and I feel like I have stories to tell, but I know nothing about form and structure other than what i've noticed from other writers.

Take two years off and get an MFA, preferably at some prestigious place like Iowa

just write stuff, structure it later

He means the ethical dilemma of using a pirated copy of a word processor to create a work for profit.

>it's not okay
>if it makes you money, pay for it

Yeah, don't be a stealing shitass

Given that Windows 10 was straight up spyware, I wouldn't feel too bad about pirating some old program that a developer has long since been paid for.

Alternatively, don't be spooked out of your mind like these two tripfags.

> open office
> free
> 1,000,000,000% compatible with word and shit
> Fuck Microsoft in its tight, hemorrhoided butthole

Most successful self-published books are for plebs, with spaceships and vampires and shit

Yes, but they are making $$ and I am not.

Fuck. I forgot to add a spaceship full of vampires.

What's wrong with spaceships? Vampires, admittedly, need a sabbatical after the shittings of Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer, but they used to be good too.

They were never good. Rice is on par with Stoker.

>>I have written twenty ~10,000k novellas in one month and made $220 dollars

you made $220 for a month's work? that is far, far less than minimum wage.

Well, you're doing better than I did with Amazon.

I really need to get into this novella shit instead of writing 60k pieces that are edited thrice over.

I reckon the real market is in the erotic literature, but I cannot for the life of me write a decent sex scene.

I just bought a kindle paperwhite

how badly did I fuck up?

I don't feel even an ounce of remorse at all

You have a market where any product you sell can, by inherent design, be copied and distributed infinitely at near zero cost, by literally every single potential customer.

You decide you are going to make a lot of money by producing content for this market.
You then see your content selling very little yet being copied and distributed quite a lot.

What you have failed to do are a cost/benefit and supply/demand analysis:
- Near infinite supply inherently decreases the price of sale to near-zero
- It costs more to produce for this market given the above logic than you will ever make from it

Thankfully human irrationality intervened to save the day: White people, particularly those who are affluent enough to have money available to spend, are willing to pay money for your work, even if they can get it for free. You end up making enough to actually be quite well off, in spite of the fact nobody actually needs to pay you.

However, being a greedy bastard with other greedy bastard friends who aren't satisfied with simply having a decent and livable income, you decide to collectively pool money together and create Artificial Scarcity:
- Digital Rights Management so that your product cannot be copied or distributed without paying
- Copyright police who, with the blessing of government sanctioned violence, prosecute and persecute anyone who copies/distributes your product without paying

You dramatically decrease the supply and only moderately decrease the demand. Your margins rise, and you get filthy rich.

Here is how artists can increase demand of their products without using violence to create artificial scarcity:
- Make it better, somehow/someway to purchase from you, rather than pirate.

Being that the majority of the economy exists on exploitative corporations with no moral or ethical character, I do not personally see any reason not to follow suite in response to them, except for the low risk of violence from the government for doing so. Few artists even provide any incentive to purchase, and most actively attack their customers.

For reading? Or for writing?

I've never heard of editing software for Kindle Paperwhite.

reading

wouldn't use something like that for writing

Find a book (or better, books) you've enjoyed reading. Now go and read them critically, paying attention to the underlying mechanics. Why did you enjoy this particular scene, or that particular character? What was it about such and such a description that made it stand out for you? Once you've done that, the rest is just diving in and doing it. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Your first draft will be ugly and shit-stained. Fuck it, that's what editing is for. The most important things to do are WRITE, READ, and WRITE MORE. You don't need a college education to do this, just a willingness to learn, experiment, and do.

Yea, 220 bucks ain't bad when you just published your first novel (Is 58-59k still considered a novel?) and the only one who's bought it is you...

Goddamn Facebook ads didn't do shit for me

>Facebook ads didn't do shit for me
Who is your target audience? Kids 16 and younger aren't using facebook as much any more, if it was YA.

Not YA. I have trouble figuring out the genre of the book DESU, and I'm shit at marketing. I'm sort of calling it a fantasy novel, because it's about political upheaval in a setting that's unlike our world, but it's not exactly traditional fantasy.

When I told a friend of mine what it was about, he described it as Hobbesian. I have never read Leviathan so I was confused, but he says the ideas I express in the book (Or at least intended to) are somewhat similar.

You made a perfectly valid consumer choice.

Now purchasing ebooks at market value...thats a fuckup

They were good in old country but Stoker ruined them.

>purchasing ebooks at market value

Self-publishing saturates the market with derivative garbage. It happened with books thanks to Amazon and video games thanks to Valve.

Unfortunately with books, it's way harder to weed out the trash and find something worthwhile.

I wish I could write as much as you. I can't even keep a consistent journal.

derivative garbage is normal

after a few years the good stuff filters out

this goes for literally every form of media

I agree, but I think it'll be longer than a few years. More like a decade or two.

It takes dedication. Plan to write in the same way you'd make plans to go see a movie. "At 7:00 I'm going to be at my desk writing" repeat. If I can do it, you can

What's your genre? With all those books, are you doing a Knausgard or a Tingle?

He writes YA scifi shit.

I only really learned about the ease of self-publishing recently and have been looking into this a lot lately. I've always wanted to write books but the difficulty of making a huge novel, getting publishers to like it, and dealing with all the other work to get it out there was all really intimidating to me.

Honestly I'm probably going to break into it all with erotica and a throwaway pen name. Looks like an easy way to get some practice with writing and publishing while making a little side income. To top it off, I'm one of those degenerates who writes a lot of ERP for fun all the time, so I'm pretty confident in my abilities to write smut that can match the average on there if not surpass it.

Still, I'd really like to branch out and pursue some more serious work as well. Would anybody happen to know what other fiction genres have a lively ebook market?

I think your best bet might be to label it fantasy for now. Fantasy is popular at the moment (especially if it's about politics, see GoT) and just see what bites. You could label it low fantasy, which I think means there isn't a lot of fantastical elements. Keep researching, I'm sure there's a name for what your novel is.

>Self-publishing saturates the market with derivative garbage

That's because people always loved reading garbage. Best selling genre is romance.

Pretty much. Filter or no filter, the traditionally published market has been saturated with garbage for about as long as publishing has been an industry. Self-publishing just accelerated the process.

you keep spamming around at Amazon in every little corner and tell people to read your childish stuff. it's disgusting, desu.

>Any tips / advice?
I'm pretty sure you're already doing far better than two thirds of this board.

Gaskun, I may not entirely agree with you, but I must say that I miss the threads you would make.

Tell you what, you make another one and I'll post in it. The current critique thread sucks, so maybe make one of those.

I don't think I'd have anything to offer in a critique thread but thanks. In other news I just got a response from a guy who would like to give me a second interview for a branch manager position with a pharm company. I almost shit myself when he said "you're going to have a ton of free time here while you're waiting for contractors to make their deliveries." #jackpot writing on the clock? oh my Jesus I write faster when it's on someone else's dime. If that plays out the way I want, I can knock out my whole new series in a few years. Plus some other shit I've been wanting to write. There's a hacker trilogy and a WW1 book I've been itching to write. Boss here is a prick and I'm tired of his little "I'm a moody little Emo shit and if I'm not happy everyone has to know about it. Blessed DFW deliver me from this asshat and to a job where I can make a decent salary to write on company time

I'm writer . . . ?

wtf I hate gatorade now

>When I told a friend of mine what it was about, he described it as Hobbesian.
>a friend of mine
>won't bother to read your book
>friend

Uhh. I have an alternate theory about why your book doesn't sell.

Sad but true.

>don't want to write erotica
>it's literally the biggest market
>all those childless over 40 pleb women schlicking in unison when another shit erotica novel comes out with a picture of a shirtless man on the front

Has anyone here hired an editor to go over the stuff they want to self-publish? How do you know which ones are good?

Do you wear a bluetooth headset? You remind of those people who drove brand new Ford cars, and always have a takeout latte, that always look like their schedule is taken up. Not you shitting on you or anything, good luck with it all dude

I'd say don't bother. The people who read these things aren't worth it.

Depends if you're writing something serious. If you're writing for money I wouldn't worry about it.

>>I have written twenty ~10,000k novellas in one month and made $220 dollar
What the fuck, I make more from drawing Pokemon for people.

DRM is such bullshit

I do the opposite desu. I structure stuff a priori, write a draft without paying too much attention to style (with tons of parenthesis inbetween sentences saying "with this I mean that", "this is shit, notice it") and then I do several rewritings, which are the proper writing. In these rewritings, most of the times, I change my mind about the sense of the story or come up with new things to add.

No Bluetooth headset. No Starbucks. Thanks for painting with a wide brush, guy.