Using Lit to create interest in a story that you want to move to a pay platform

[CarmineBlancheJr]

OK... so the subject may be wordy, but I have a two-pronged question for all you Lit veterans out there.


I am working on what looks like it could be a novel-length work that I am going to post here. My beta readers and several of you have read the first part, and part two tells me that it is terrific, which motivates me to press on.

The questions are:

1. Have/Has anyone here posted a piece and used the overall opinions of the readers here to move that piece of work into a novel form eventually, then put it for sale on something like D2D or SmashWords (obviously removing it from here in the process)?

2. If you have, how successful was this, and what was your overall experience?

 

[ElectricBlue]

1. Have/Has anyone here posted a piece and used the overall opinions of the readers here to move that piece of work into a novel form eventually, then put it for sale on something like D2D or SmashWords (obviously removing it from here in the process)?

You don't need to remove your content from here.

I've got print on demand and ebooks in the marketplace, and the same content is still here on Lit. People confuse "content" with "book" all the time, and keep perpetuating the misunderstanding. A book (print or electronic, it doesn't matter) is a product, you can buy it, take it away and it's yours. It's a saleable thing. It's got a cover, you own it.

You're not doing that on Lit. There's no saleable product from Lit, there's nothing you can buy, there's no cover, there's no book. Therefore, there's nothing that "can be sold for less", which is always what people keep thinking and repeating.

People haven't read the small print closely enough.

You also need to understand what "publisher" means. If you use one of the sites that gives you a free ISBN, you're not the publisher, the entity that gives you the ISBN is. You lose all rights to the book, you no longer own it, but you get royalties on sales. But if you own the ISBN, by buying it and registering it in your name (it has to be your true name), you own the book, and the sales platform is only the distributor or bookshop, and they charge a fee for service (ie, selling your book). You get what's left over.

2. If you have, how successful was this, and what was your overall experience?

Not worth the effort unless you keep on churning out content regularly and spend time marketing (which translates to money). There are writers who have built on the back of success on Lit, or have had success on their own, but not many, and if you look at those who do, they have a large number of titles being sold, and get content out there regularly.

If you've only got half a dozen titles, it's a learning curve more than anything else, and might get you coffee and a pizza. Factor in the cost of decent covers, the extra time you need to get excellent copy and a professional looking book layout (many, many hours looking at a screen), the cost of ISBNs if you go down that path, the cost and time of marketing etc...

I've got a nice set of books on my shelf, though (I went to the effort of preparing print on demand files), but I'm still in the red in terms of dollars, let alone whatever value I put on my time.

Be realistic, do your homework, read the small print very closely and make sure you understand it properly, do your maths, and have a day job. Good luck, but make sure you have that day job first.

 

[8letters]

My impression is that there are very few Lit readers also buy erotica on D2D or Smashwords, so building an audience on Lit gives very little help to selling books on other sites.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My impression is that there are very few Lit readers also buy erotica on D2D or Smashwords, so building an audience on Lit gives very little help to selling books on other sites.

With so much free Lit content nowadays, why go elsewhere? I get a few books bought as a tip jar kind of thing, from my most loyal fans, but I reckon if folk are buying erotica from book sites, it means they've not found Lit yet.

Audience building from Lit might have worked ten or even five years ago, but would it work now, for someone just starting out? I suspect it's much harder now, because there are so many more writers thinking, I'll give it a go, this looks easy. That's not even pondering whatever impact AI might be having in the marketplace - those sites must be drowning in junk.