Perfectionism

>Promotional stuff
I'm still wrapping my head around it myself but you can do a 'free' promotion for 5 days (you can decide if they're all together or spread out or whatever) in a 3-month period, because your KDP contract per book lasts 3 months. For this time period, your book is free, and can be downloaded by people with eReaders. There's also Kindle Countdown which I haven't tried yet, but basically it's at a discount for a while. Let's take my book 'Living amongst the Dead: Dark Days' for example, it's at $2.99 for Kindle. Let's say I put it on discount from Apr 26-27, which I think I'm going to end up doing. On the first day, Apr 26, I can set it down to $0.99. Then, on the 27th, it goes up to $1.99, and then after the 26th when the promotion ends it's back up to $2.99.

Anyways, free books is good. It gets people reading your stuff, perhaps if they like it they tell friends, or make a blog post about it, or mention it in a Youtube video, or whatever. It gets people trying your stuff out, and that's good, even though neither you nor Amazon gets money from it.

>$50
That's for all my books in total, but most of the money is from LatD and LatD:DD which are easily my 'best-selling' books. It's only in March, for all books combined.

>Full-time job or University?
Sadly neither; in a bit of a hard spot in life right now, but things are improving. I should have myself a little job in the next 2-3 weeks I hope, knock on wood. Just something to pay the bills. I'm going all-in with this writing thing, and the way things are improving and at the rate I'm writing, I honestly think I can become a full-time writer within a year or two. I'm not doing it for the money though, I'm doing it because I love it. I mean even though I made practically NO money between December-February I still wrote and worked on books, and even in October-November I earned barely any money. In truth I haven't yet received a cent, though I should have had $4.17 sent to my account recently for the months of Oct/Nov/Dec. Then at the end of June I should get the $50-55 or so that I made in Jan/Feb/Mar. I expect to make decent money through Apr/May/Jun so by the time my payment comes for those months at the end of September I should end up with theoretically over $180 for those 3 months. Doesn't sound like much, but it's steady progress, and I like progress.

>Living amongst the Dead
Yeah, that's my first book. Then "When her No means Yes" is sort of an erotica I tried out, "Firearm Valhalla" is an action novelette, "Another One Please, to Dull the Pain" which I mentioned is a drama, and then recently "Living amongst the Dead: Dark Days". I'm now working on a third LatD book, and it's about 30-40% complete now I figure. Around 29,000 words? Today is actually the first day in a LONG time that I neither wrote nor edited. Pretty crazy. I did a lot of editing for LatD:DD because I wrote it back in August/September RIGHT after the first book. Grammar issues.

About 4,000. I started a few weeks ago, and to be honest I haven't been very diligent working on it.

>tfw perfectionist but also lazy
I'm not satisfied with anything that isn't perfect and I also refuse to put in enough work to make it anywhere near perfect. The worst combination desu.

Literary life as fuck, to be honest. Keep truckin', man. And keep posting.

>About 4,000.
definitely just keep going then and dont stop till you hit 70-90k words. get all the ideas out now. worry about perfection later. dont use perfection as an excuse to remain stagnant.

>2 reviews
Yeahhhhh, surprisingly enough those are from a couple fellow /k/ommandos. Very unfortunate, but if it's their honest opinion then so be it. I'd like to talk to the guy who wrote the first comment. I mean, I have NO intention of editing my book, but I'd like to hear him out 'face to face' as it were, to hear why he disliked it so much. Seems to me that it boils down to him thinking I wrote the firearm stuff straight from Wikipedia, and also he disliked the sex stuff. I can't say I understand why he thinks I introduced the female character 'too quickly', but the sex does have some impact on the story and certainly a BIG impact on her as a character. His assessment that it's just put in there as a quick fantasy is, well, it's his opinion and he's entitled to it, but I don't agree with it.

Anyways, I'm making no effort to have them removed and I also don't intend on asking them to change the reviews, but I WOULD like it if that first guy gave the book another shot, to actually read through it, and to see how Tiffany progresses as a character. I've gotten quite a few reviews on Goodreads and they've been generally pretty favourable. So in all honesty, I think those two 2-star guys from /k/ either a bit overly critical of it, perhaps having high expectations that were far removed from what the book actually was. Perhaps hoping to have a bunch of /k/ memes in there, a drunk Russian named Ivan shitting on the AR design over and over, include a 'Dindu' with a Hi Point pistol who calls it his "Glock .40 Problem Solver" or some BS like that, etc. In Firearm Valhalla I included a character who is nicknamed Ivan, and he does make an Ivan-like comment about the AR 'shitting where it eats' or something, but it's not entirely a /k/-style Ivan. I do think I'll make an action-comedy one day that's entirely made for /k/.

Well, I hope some of this stuff helped. It'd be awesome if you bought one of my books but do keep in mind that I'll be putting my first 4 books for free probably around April 26th, and then will have LatD:DD for Kindle Countdown (my first experimentation with it) on the same date if I can remember to do so, and I'll probably have my 3rd LatD book (6th book in total) finished within 2 weeks. In order to use Kindle Countdown, your price can't have changed for 30 days, so that's why April 26th. I self-published LatD:DD around March 26th or so, and it needs 30 days before I can do the Kindle Countdown. I think instead of doing 2-3 day promotions, I'll make them only 1-day promotions so I can do them more often. I particularly love seeing how many dozens of people get my books when I do the free give-aways. Very fun! People have gotten eReaders of my books in US, UK, Canada, Brazil, Denmark, Japan, Italy, and Australia! Unsurprisingly, Japan's favourite one is "When her No means Yes" which of course does address the issue of rape lol I found that pretty funny.

Art is a living thing. Meaning it's influence spans throughout lifetimes in different ways, yet takes from techniques done by cavemen on walls. Art has a DNA strand, so to speak, and artists are the RNA--copying bits of information to recreate their own strand.

Dude, it gets worse. Not gonna lie, I'm in a fucking homeless shelter right now. Good thing too; when I came to this city I was entirely ready to live on the streets, but thankfully I found this place. It's actually quite amazing; got my own room that locks, got a key to keep my stuff safe, the bed is small but soft AS FUCK (seriously, if anything it's TOO soft for my liking; I'm used to stiffer beds), dresser, night stand, a small closet, desk, chair... it's amazing! Three square meals a day plus snack at 9PM. The meals aren't the best in the world, usually, but sometimes is downright delicious! Though there's been two occasions now where it was practically inedible. Anyways, beggers can't be choosers, I'm just glad that things are going the way they are, save for some drama I'm having with other residence who have been here longer than I have. Lots of jail vibes, they think I've been 'ratting them out' on shit, and if you know anything about jail then you mean that's some heavy shit. One of them also mentioned the word 'goof' which is LITERALLY fighting words. If you want a scrap, you use that word with someone who has been locked up. I've unfortunately been in such a situation before so I know this all too well. It's all just bad timing, bad luck, and compounded by the fact that I get along with the staff here quite well so I enjoy talking to them. It's really unfortunate that some of the people here have to bring in this 'us vs them' mentality, like we're prisoners and they're guards. Very sad.

But yeah, I'll keep on keepin' on, man. Sure it's not exactly easy being technically homeless, but I'll be moving very soon. Renting a room from someone, social services taking care of rent initially, but I have some GREAT resumes and there are some stores nearby. I will get a job in no time, get some income, and then quickly start paying the bills myself. I have no intention of being a leech on the system like so many willing single moms out there who left the father just so that they can get child support from him. While I work and pay the bills, I will write, and I will keep writing. Perhaps it's naivete, it's entirely possible, but I think I can be a fulltime writer within 1-2 years. I look forward to it, and I look forward to trying different genres and things to see what I'm capable of as a writer. Very much looking forward to taking a stab at historical fiction! Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series helped get me out of a pretty dark place before. I refer you to my earlier reference towards being 'locked up'. Found Sharpe's Trafalgar, and I fell in love instantly with his work. Heavily inspired me to try my hand at writing someday. Took years, but the day finally came in August 2016.

I also like how not only is art different from artist to artist, but also different from person to person who experiences it. Take a painting, show it to a thousand people, and have them do their best to describe how that painting makes them feel or what they think of that painting in, say, a thousand words or less. Each and every damn one, at least to some extent, will be different. Whether it's videogames, movies, literature, paintings, sculptures, or what have you. Even minute things can affect what you think about things. Whenever I think of the sequel to that Mummy movie from the 90s, I think of Clodhoppers because I tried them for the first time that day back in 2002-4 or whatever it was, and I loved both that snack and that movie. It was a great night. Then there's the movie Dazed and Confused, one of the characters in there reminds me of a younger version of one of my uncles, and I love it... but one of these days that uncle will sadly pass away, one of the funniest and just generally most awesome guys I know, and I probably will never be able to watch that amazing movie again without feeling sad. Luckily he's only in his 50s yet, seems to be quite healthy, so hopefully it'll be at least a couple decades before he goes, God love him.

By not being a shitty writer. Write to write. There will be time to edit after. Don't get literary ED - go to completion, then take stock.

I think this is important, even though it's a bit crassly given. Write first, THEN edit. Don't write a bit, then edit it, then write, then edit, etc. The only editing I do while writing is if I spot a small typo, I fix it, but otherwise I'm focused on writing rather than fixing. An interesting thing about writing though is that there's two basic methods. There's different ways of approaching these methods, but ultimately there's two basic ones. "Discovery writer" and "outline writer". Discover writers get an idea, and start writing. They don't know where it will take them, they just keep pumping out the writing as the ideas come to them. Outline writers get the outline first, the major plot events, and once they know the beginning, middle and end, they fill in the blanks as they write. Personally I'm definitely more of a discovery writer. EVERY writer should try both at least once, and I have, but discovery writing just feels more 'right'. Sometimes I get an idea that's a bit down the road so I have to write my way to it, but it's all on the fly. Feels great when I get a tingle down my spine at a particularly cool idea popping to mind, especially after a brief bit of writer's block where I just don't know how to proceed.

But look what you're doing here. This ranting--the overly excessive responses oozing with personality--is probably how you really do write. But you're too caught up in the thought of needing the coolest idea or the most meaningful messages. You need to have a metaphor or story arc in mind. Start writing, and the good ideas will precipitate into the events in your writings.
>"-This- will happen here instead of -this-, because it's more relateable to the underlying thematics"
or
>"Dick will think about this particular scene like -this- instead -this- to bring to light an irony which reflects his personality better"

But you can only get to that point once you have a project in motion(once you're experienced) or a completed project which you can edit later. Trying to edit every so often will throw your flow and voice off once you return to progress. Just let what comes out, out. That's how you write.

Big surprise, huh? A little lame, and certainly cliche. But if you overthink your writing, you just like the idea of writing well, but you don't like writing or you aren't confident in yourself. But big words don't make a story great. The story does. Good word choice is just pleasing on the 'ears'.

Whoops, just realized you aren't OP. Ignore my rant.

All good, but yeah, you're more-or-less right even though you told it to the wrong person. Don't break the flow by editing when you should be writing, and big words don't make a story great.

On the note of author self-confidence, I hear it's fairly common even amongst big-time authors in some cases that they feel worried about their writing. They're worried they'll be found out to be a 'hack', that their stuff isn't as good as people might think it is, and that WHILE writing something they're worried about whether it's being taken in the right direction or if certain decisions were smart or not. Also, if you have an idea of how to progress but you don't think it's quite right so should put it off until later, write it anyways. Make a note to check it later, and when you do, you'll probably find that it's just fine; you were being paranoid. So it all comes down to "just write!" Don't overthink shit. Just WRITE! I feel kind of guilty for not having written today, but I've seriously been going beast-mode on it at LEAST since March 14th, so yeah, I think I've earned my little day off. Perhaps tomorrow will be a day where I load up on coffee and write more. No wait, I have to pack my stuff and make sure I'm ready to leave... bugger... well we'll see. REALLY looking forward to checking this place out though! I hear that one of the rooms in this house is being rented by someone else who is a writer! Can't wait to talk to him and see what he's all about, or perhaps she... never know; might be one of those rare writers who have a vagina. Maybe even a boob or two to go along with it, wouldn't that be something!

Perfictionism is not bad. But it should not prevent progress. It's a nice thing to have as an editor. For composition, you just pretty much shit it out and refine before a "real" release.

I've been almost obsessively trying to have nigh-perfect grammar in all manner of life for years now, for some reason. Call it a sort of OCD or high-functioning autism if you like, but probably since I was around 13 years old I've been trying too have perfect grammar whether it be for Youtube comments, texts, chatting with friends online, etc. Thanks to this my 'rough draft' really is quite clean. Seriously if I have 1 typo that gets by per 10,000 words, I'd be surprised. I'm pretty good at spotting typos and fixing them as I write, especially with the simple built-in spell-checker. So even though I can pump out literally 2000+ words an hour when I'm on a roll, it's quite high quality stuff in terms of grammar. As for sentence structure, I've been told by a retired English teacher who is a traditionally published writer that I'm quite good at it, however as for story structure/arc, I dunno. For all I know I might SUCK at story. Just going to take more reviews I guess. I do hope to have my stuff checked by a professional editor someday, but I think I'm doing very well on my own, all things considered. I look forward to finally getting this promotion on the go so that I can bring them up here on Veeky Forums and over on /k/ so that my fellow anons can get some free books to check out if they want.

Ah, speaking of which!... the art of marketing, or in more modern terms, shilling. In short, don't be obnoxious about it. Sounds simple, but like trolling, there is an art to it. When you shill, don't ask. Also before you shill, PROVIDE something. In my case I find the easiest way to provide something is by putting books up for free. "Got some free books here, take them if you want them, oh and by the way I also have this book on discount and another book that I recently finished, however, it's still full price but I'll have it discounted in a month's time."

For shilling without giving away free copies of books, provide a comment that has lots of good content, one that's easy to read, perhaps gives some useful information that is topical to the discussion at hand, and IF you have a book that might be related then you can mention it briefly at the end. Best not to even provide a link to Amazon. Just mention it, and if anyone read your whole comment, liked it and might be interested in one of your books, then they'll go ahead and look it up. If you just go around online saying "Look at my book!" "Click this link for a great book!" "Buy my book, it's only $0.99!" Or bullshit like that, people will come to hate you REAL quick. Speaking of $0.99, yeah, you only get $0.35USD per sale. BUT, you WANT people to get your books, to give them a try. My first 4 books are only $0.99 and I give them away for free whenever possible. Only my most recent one is $2.99, and soon will be on discount while my 6th book will be $2.99 once finished, and perhaps in 2-3 month's time or so I'll knock $1-2 off LatD:DD. I think I'm developing a good rhythm here.

>You shouldn't be posting
>Is a trip fag.

>implying anyone is not mimicking in any field

mimicry is one of the primary ways humans and apes learn methods of doing

Orwell is a garbage writer. He is at best a novelist, really more like a columnist.

>Orwell.
>Great.

Since the subject of shilling has come up (though admittedly I was the one to bring it up), I feel the need to bring up this post for two reasons...
Firstly, I did not mention my book for the purpose of shilling. It's topical to the discussion so I brought it up. Though that said, as it turns out, it IS a very good example of shilling done right. It has to do with the comment, I believe the comment is well written and easy to read, the title of the book is quite well hidden so you'll only really read it if you read the whole comment, and even once the title is read it's easy to just forget about it. There's no obvious link in there begging for people to click it to check the book, I don't try to talk about it too much or try to 'sell' it even though I did truthfully mention that at least one person has read it and TRULY surprisingly he loved it even though he's not into drama. The guy loves my LatD series and got that book strictly as a test to see if I can write non-zombie stuff as well, and turns out he enjoyed it.

Anyways, these are all tricks of the self-publishing trade I've picked up over the months. The learning curve is ENORMOUS, and yeah it makes me feel dirty to even talk about shilling, especially on Veeky Forums, but Amazon isn't going to sell your books for you. Or at least won't market it for you. It's up to YOU to get people to check out your stuff, and the best way to do that is keep it cheap, give it away when you can and when you DO point people in the direction of your books, don't do it obnoxiously. There's also ways to get more reviews, like doing give-aways on Goodreads or using some other method, but from what I've seen that usually requires money. On Goodreads you need to give away physical copies it would seem, and on Book Barbarian you legit have to make sure your book is cheap AND you have to pay the site money. Personally, I don't have much of any disposable income, so yeah... can't really go about using either of those routes. I have to do things on the cheap, and I think I'm developing a system on how to do that. A big part of it is giving away eReader versions as often as I can.

Specifically, I think the system I'll be employing goes something like...

>Give older books away
>2nd newest book for Kindle countdown discount
>Newest book(s) for full price

By doing only 1 day at a time, I can have a promotion every 2.5 weeks or so. I've also been looking into other sites where one or multiple of my books might be relevant. Wait for the promotion, give the free ones away, and if they like what they read then maybe they'll buy more sometime and/or tell friends about the book(s) and they will end up buying it. In the end though, it's all reliant on my books. If they're shit, they won't do well. They NEED to be worth talking about, or at least worth reading more so they get the sequels. 6 books in, haven't received a penny, but I have every intention to keep going. Can't say I'm only writing for money!

Sometimes people are too lazy to correct their mistakes. And that's a bad thing I suppose. I don't really care about typos. Shows me a person wrote it. Anyway if you want to make money writing, just write some good YA with good prose and plot. It's usually either/or, well fuck who am I kidding, I've only seen YA movies, but hey they seem to sell entire trilogies worth of fangirls.

I do hear often that YA stuff is great for cash grabs, but I'm only going to write things that will interest me in some degree. I'm not going to start writing about vampires, werewolves, mermaids, or shit like that because I'd feel like a sellout who's only in it for the money and also I'm just not interested. I guess since I'm into zombies I TECHNICALLY like sci-fi, but honestly I'm just not really into typical fantasy/sci-fi stuff. Sure I enjoyed Harry Potter as a teenager and Lord of the Rings seems pretty badass, but I have no interest in going out of my way to read more of those genres. I don't much like those kinds of games either; I like FPS, survival-horror, and stuff like that. Yeah the Elder Scrolls series is AWESOME, but generally I'm not into fantasy RPGs. If you ever see a book starring and elf and it's written by J N Morgan, then you know I've sold out and I'm only interested in making money, because at this point in time I have no interest in writing books with elves, and I wouldn't enjoy writing such.

Who knows, MAYBE in several years something will suddenly change me and I'll come up with this big expansive fantasy world I've created in my head, but I doubt it, I highly doubt it. But hey, people change, who knows. As of right now though, me writing a book specifically for fantasy YA crap, it would be nothing short of an attempt to make money, and I don't want it to ever be about that. I want to write stuff that I like, and if other people like it enough to buy it, then fuck yeah. My 'fanbase' of sorts and I will have very similar views, similar tastes, and that'll be pretty damn sweet. If I wrote stuff that would end up with Twilight fans buying it, then really I don't think I'd want anything to do with them besides the money they'd be taking out of their purses to buy the books... and that doesn't feel right to me. I dunno, I feel tired, I'm probably not making ANY sense what-so-fucking-ever. Gonna go to bed soon, but yeah, Twilight seems very stupid even though I'm proud to say I've not read any of the books or watched any of the movies. If I ever do end up being a big-time author, going to conventions, and interacting with my fans, I'd rather not deal with Twilight people. I'd want to be able to talk about survivalism with fans, and firearms, and how cancerous 3rd wave feminism is, or how fucked-over men get in divorce court, etc. Similar personal interests. That sounds fucking awesome.

I hope you make it big user. You got more drive then most of the fuckers here. Keep on truckin' like the other guy said.

Fuck yeah, I have every intention to carry on. Thanks a lot for the support, user. I'm at a new low in life right now but I see great things in my future. I do see the potential to make it big, as you say, but honestly all I want is enough money to pay the bills, to regain the firearm collection I'd lost, enough money to spend on ammo from time to time, and enough money to get drunk a couple or a few times a week. I'm not a stoner anymore, I never was a tobacco smoker, I don't do drugs; drinking is the only vice I want. I don't think it's too much to ask. Besides, isn't it a prerequisite to drink excessively in order to be a writer? Joking of course, but no, I love to drink, and I can't wait to move into that house tomorrow.

Going to be a lot better than this shelter; sadly there's a few people here who take great pride in having been in jail, and they see the people who work here and provide everything for them as guards. This gives an 'us vs them' mentality, and it's so fucking childish. Anyways, it'll be good to be around some grown adults again, which is sad to say because I'm probably the youngest person in this fucking building right now. I'm not even 30 yet. Cheers, and thanks again for the kind words. Already made nearly $50 total in one month, and one I get this routine under way of steadily promoting/marketing and steadily self-publishing more books, I can only see that number going up. Most self-published authors don't make $100 in their first year. I've gotten halfway there in just one month's time. Fucking incredible... feels great!

Conrad is worse than Orwell though

I don't compare myself to anyone and I try to write the whole thing out first before going back and editing it. Writing a few perfect sentences is a waste of time if they don't all hang together properly, which is best achieved by knowing how they'll fit together first. This scales up, too. Your paragraphs and chapters need to be finished to be put in the right order and written to best effect.

>All these posts about cash grabs, self publishing and shilling
This is a Veeky Forums board not a /howtomarketcheaptrashundertheguiseofbeingliterature/, guys.

>Someone on Veeky Forums whomst'd've thinks lowly of self publishing
Golly gee, I didn't expect a twist like this, Scoob!

You wouldn't go to a forum explicitly for couple's sex tips and ask for masturbation advice now would you?

Masturbation is not sex, but self-publication is still publication. Now how many threads crop up regularly, not in regards to what's already been written, but in regards to what's in the process of being written? If you'd like to strictly stick to what's been published rather than what's GOING to be published or HOW to publish something, perhaps you should start popping into all those threads as well, and tell people to stop talking about things they're writing and instead focus on things they're reading.

Another valid option is, when people are talking about self-publishing and marketing/shilling, you can leave the thread. As for 'cash grabs', that's already pretty much been shot down. Another example of a 'cash grab' is pumping out short story eroticas, putting them up on Kindle Unlimited, and then gain money from horny single moms or housewives who want something quick, short, and steamy that they can shlick to. I don't take part in that either, however, because I only write things that interest me. Though I'm learning HOW to earn money through my writings, I do not write only to make money, but the opportunity is there so I go for it.

tl;dr

Your example is shit. If self-publication is masturbation, then Veeky Forums is a site specializing in all forms of pornography, including the kama sutra to help couples learn different methods of having sex and threads about STDs/STIs to make sure you're keeping things clean.

>tfw been writing one paragraph for a month

It will be epic.

It's still only the morning but I've already written over 1500 words.

I'm kind of lost in your metaphor, user

Alright, so let me lay this out for you.

1. You should always complete your work. This will train you to complete something. The only way you get good at finishing something is by finishing many things. Start with short stories if you have too. Maybe try poetry. Just keep finishing.

2. Do not edit until you are finished. Edit your work regardless. Your first finished works are not worth publishing. You're still an amature. Edit the work to practice editing.

No one wrote their work as well as they did the first time around.

3. Write everyday for as long as possible.

Thanks man, that sounds like good advice

develop your own voice faggot
don't rely on others

No one posting on Veeky Forums will ever be as good as the authors you have mentioned.

Itt : a compulsive writer stopped writing for a day

Or that's what he thought so

...

Basically, it's wrong to call self-publishing 'masturbation' while traditional publishing is sex. I also believe it's wrong to suggest that Veeky Forums is strictly about what's already been published, and is not at all about what people are writing or working on publishing or self-publishing. The inclusion of the Kama Sutra was added in regards to 'sex tips' and the 'STD/STI' bit was supposed to be an analogy of sorts towards critiquing writing. You get your writing critiqued when you want to becoming better at writing, similarly if you want to become more experienced with sex but don't want to suffer any lasting consequences you make sure you keep free of STD/STIs. Yeah, a bit sloppy, but I think it makes sense. In short, like I said, the sex/masturbation thing isn't a fair comparison to traditional/self publishing.

Self-publishing is a very legitimate way for new writers to get a start in their craft, especially if they've already got lots of experience in writing, which I kind of do. My writing is quite clean, (relatively free of grammatical errors) I'm proud of my ability to be descriptive, and I'm also quite a fast writer so I can get a lot of work done in a short timeframe as long as the ideas/imagery are constant.

Beautiful wallpaper. Rather curious as to where it is. Considering the mountains in the background, I think my guess is gonna be Switzerland, but I'm probably way off. Can't really make out the buildings. Could be a small Scottish hamlet for all I know.