Publishing for money: tips from people who have done it please?

[sun_sea_sky]

I know some of you authors are making money self-publishing through Amazon, etc.

Can you share some tips please? I know I can read the fairly extensive documentation on the publishing web sites, but they don't answer all the questions. Such as:

• Would you republish something you have up here, or submit a new unpublished story?
• Amazon seems to want a front cover. I'm a writer, not an artist. Can you get away with (say) plain text on a colour background?
• Is there any word length that seems to work best? Say, 5000 words? More/less?
• What sites would you recommend? Amazon? Smashwords? Others?
• If you submit to multiple sites does that increase the number you sell?
• If you republish a story you had up here, would good reviews/votes/view counts be an indicator the story will sell well?
• Would you say the effort involved (making covers, uploading, etc.) is justified by the amount you earn?

 

[BONNIEBREA]

The give you my views on your questions, in order.

Both. I now have four stories up here. I had another seven here a while back, but unpublished those last spring in favor of republishing them at smashwords.com. I felt those seven stories (which comprise a larger whole story - the combined work is called Taking Chances - and the seven individual stories are published as volumes of that work) were much stronger than the four I have left here, and the fact that they are grouped together as a longer whole, with the individual stories containing continuing characters and interdependent plots, made them a good choice (I felt) to publish at smashwords. I republished them at smashwords under a different pen name: BEThalia. My choice is to not have something published here at the same time I have it published at smashwords. Although I may change my mind on that. The first volume of the work is a free read at smashwords, and I may (if I can find the time) publish it again here, as I wouldn't be giving away free a story that isn't free somewhere else.

Amazon (and I suppose most other e-book retailers) wants a cover. At smashwords you can have one or not. The only issue is that for your book to be placed on smashwords's Premium List it has to have a good cover. If your book doesn't have a cover it can still be published at smashwords, and be available for purchase (or free download) at smashwords. Inclusion on the Premium List requires a cover. The Premium List is the smashwords listings that are made available through their affiliated retailers (and they are significant retailers - Amazon kindle, Apple Store, Sony Reader, B&N, kobo, and a bunch of others). Actually, a cover can be done yourself (I do all of mine) and doesn't have to be expensive or difficult. I see some books on smashwords that have just text on a plain background, and I think (but I'm not certain) that they qualify for the Premium List. You can go to smashwords and look up my books. Remember to look under BEThalia and deactivate the adult filter. If you take the trouble to look, the covers you're looking at were done with non-royalty stock images purchased from BigStock for under 10 dollars. I just imported them into Word Paint and applied the text. Really quite easy.

Books are published at every conceivable length, and there are readers for every conceivable length. So my view is to write the story you want to write, and don't worry about finessing some length that might be attractive to a broader audience - there really is no such animal. The seven individual stories in the series I have published at smashwords range from a novelette of about 12K words to a novel of about 140K words (and in e-book publishing I think that would have some sort of special name like 'mega-novel' or 'gigantor-novel').

I think smashwords is the best site. At first I tried publishing at Amazon kindle, and it was an OK experience. But that effort only gets my stories out to the kindle market. If you go to the little bit of extra trouble and expense to have a cover and do the other minor things to get your book on the smashwords Premium List, then you're making your book available pretty much through every major e-book retailer, while only having to go through the publication process once.

Again, if you want to submit to multiple sites do it through the smashwords Premium List. It's a great deal less effort than trying to publish separately through numerous sites. Usually you have to format your manuscript for each site you're going to publish through. Smashwords has a program your manuscript goes through at the time you submit it that automatically converts and formats the manuscript for all the major reading devices. The program is not perfect (it tends to unpredictably screw up ToCs, but it's just a matter of staying with it for a few passes, and the manuscript will make it through with an intact ToC in all formats).

I didn't find that vote counts, comments, or page view counts here had any effect or predictive feature to how the story would do at a site like smashwords, or kindle, etc.

I think whether it's required or not (like with the smashwords Premium List), the minor expense and effort to cook up a cover is very worthwhile. The cover is the first impression a reader will have of your book, and images create powerful impressions.

Another matter you didn't ask about. On smashwords you can set your own prices, offer discounts if you like, or hold a sale on some or all of your titles. The royalty rates are good. If I'm remembering right you get 81% of the sale price for sales directly on the smashwords site. If the sale is made through an affiliated retailer, you get 60%. You also have the opportunity to offer affiliated retailers a larger cut to motivate them to feature your title(s) more prominently.

Hope that's all helpful.

 

[sun_sea_sky]

Thanks very much. I've downloaded "Ellen's Story" and am a 1/3 of the way through it. Interesting story idea. I notice that chapter two expands on something mentioned briefly in chapter one, and you charge for that. I can see people being tempted to pay to see "what happens next". Does that work for you?

Also, what image size did you find you needed for the front cover? I'm guessing now from the Smashwords style guide that a 2800 x 1800 image, suitably cropped, would probably be OK. Cost, around $9.

 

[BONNIEBREA]

Thanks very much. I've downloaded "Ellen's Story" and am a 1/3 of the way through it. Interesting story idea. I notice that chapter two expands on something mentioned briefly in chapter one, and you charge for that. I can see people being tempted to pay to see "what happens next". Does that work for you?

Also, what image size did you find you needed for the front cover? I'm guessing now from the Smashwords style guide that a 2800 x 1800 image, suitably cropped, would probably be OK. Cost, around $9.

It does. Obviously, I get many more downloads of episode 1 than of the others, simply because it's free (human nature is to be a taker rather than a giver). But many readers get into the series, and if the first episode appeals to them they move on to the others. E-books by indies like me are extremely affordable. The whole series (which is over 350K words) can be bought for under $20, and for about $16 when purchasers use the discount codes on my author page,

For some of the smashwords covers I've used 600x900px images and they look entirely fine. More recently I've been using images in the vacinity of 1200x1600px, just for the sake of a bit higher resolution, although I don't think it's really necessary. I think the episode 1 and 3 covers were 600x900, and the others the higher pixel dimensions, but I can't see any quality difference.

 

[Pure]

Do any of these places secure a US copyright, or is that up to the author?

 

[lovecraft68]

Do any of these places secure a US copyright, or is that up to the author?

No, you would have to do that yourself. Most don't which can cause problems especially with Amazon, who if they think the story is not yours can and will shut your account down.

 

[BONNIEBREA]

There isn't any 'securing' a copyright. As a writer pecks away at a keyboard and words appear on the monitor screen, he/she automatically owns the copyright to those words. There is an option to register a work with the federal copyright office (there's a modest fee involved). However, you don't have to register in order to hold a copyright to the work you create. That's automatic. What registering the copyright does is it confers on the copyright holder the standing to sue (and to collect damages) should someone infringe that copyright.

One similar issue is the issuance of an ISBN tag. To go on the smashwords Pemium List a book has to have a unique ISBN. This is the 13 digit tag you find on all books. An author has to have a unique ISBN for every version of a work. That is, if you publish an ebook version of your work it has a unique ISBN. If you publish the same story through a paper printing process and end with a conventional hardcover or softcover book, that version of the work would have another unique ISBN. If you then published the work in audio book/podcast form, that version would have its unique ISBN.

You can get your own ISBNs. The usual (only?) place is bowker.com or myidentifiers.com. Purchased in that way they are somewhat pricey. A set of 10 costs $250. But Smashwords has several different options for assigning an ISBN to your ebook. They are slightly different, and off the top of my head I don't remember the details. But I know one of the options smashwords offers is the application of a free ISBN. There is also the option to purchase one from smashwords, and the purchased ISBN has some distinction from the free one, but I don't remember what it is just now. But even if you used a purchased-from-smashwords ISBN the cost is much less than purchasing your own from Bowker (that is because while you might have the need to purchase 10 at a time for $250 - $25 per - smashwords buys them in lots of a thousand, and a thousand can be bought for $1000 - $1 per.)

 

[lovecraft68]

There isn't any 'securing' a copyright. As a writer pecks away at a keyboard and words appear on the monitor screen, he/she automatically owns the copyright to those words. There is an option to register a work with the federal copyright office (there's a modest fee involved). However, you don't have to register in order to hold a copyright to the work you create. That's automatic. What registering the copyright does is it confers on the copyright holder the standing to sue (and to collect damages) should someone infringe that copyright.

One similar issue is the issuance of an ISBN tag. To go on the smashwords Pemium List a book has to have a unique ISBN. This is the 13 digit tag you find on all books. An author has to have a unique ISBN for every version of a work. That is, if you publish an ebook version of your work it has a unique ISBN. If you publish the same story through a paper printing process and end with a conventional hardcover or softcover book, that version of the work would have another unique ISBN. If you then published the work in audio book/podcast form, that version would have its unique ISBN.

You can get your own ISBNs. The usual (only?) place is bowker.com or myidentifiers.com. Purchased in that way they are somewhat pricey. A set of 10 costs $250. But Smashwords has several different options for assigning an ISBN to your ebook. They are slightly different, and off the top of my head I don't remember the details. But I know one of the options smashwords offers is the application of a free ISBN. There is also the option to purchase one from smashwords, and the purchased ISBN has some distinction from the free one, but I don't remember what it is just now. But even if you used a purchased-from-smashwords ISBN the cost is much less than purchasing your own from Bowker (that is because while you might have the need to purchase 10 at a time for $250 - $25 per - smashwords buys them in lots of a thousand, and a thousand can be bought for $1000 - $1 per.)

Jeez, where's Pilot when you need him?

This has been argued over and over again. If you put something up be it here or amazon, sw wherever, just putting the little copyright symbol means nothing.

If someone for instance takes your lit story and tosses it on amazon, if you go to them they will usually remove it for fear they have stolen property, but its no guarantee and how do you prove it?

The fee for an e-book copyright is $35. If you have that, you can at least send someone a copy of it. I recently had some of my work pulled from a story site using it. I told them I was the original author, sent the link to the lit stories which predated the date there and it was "Yeah sure, okay"

a week later the stories were still there. I then sent a scanned copy of the copyright, they pulled them down within 24 hours,

The "its yours the second you type it" only works if dealing with honest people, it won't hold up anywhere else.

 

[R. Richard]

Would you republish something you have up here, or submit a new unpublished story?
If you want to submit a story for paid publication, remove it from Literotica. Amazon will catch it immedisately, Smashwords less immedfiately.

Amazon seems to want a front cover. I'm a writer, not an artist. Can you get away with (say) plain text on a colour background?
Only if you don't care much about sales.

Is there any word length that seems to work best? Say, 5000 words? More/less?
Ir's a matter of what the story says, not how long it is.

What sites would you recommend? Amazon? Smashwords? Others?
Amazon is easier to publish in, Smashwords is more difficult. I get more sale in Smashwords, other in Amazon.

If you submit to multiple sites does that increase the number you sell?
I submit a story to only one site, save that my publisher, Club Lighthouse, si=ubmits my work to Ficrionwise and a few other sires.

If you republish a story you had up here, would good reviews/votes/view counts be an indicator the story will sell well?
Not in my experience.

Would you say the effort involved (making covers, uploading, etc.) is justified by the amount you earn?
In my case, yes.

 

[sun_sea_sky]

Judging by the Smashwords FAQ you can use their free ISBN, which registers them as the publisher, or buy one from them for $9.95 which registers you as the publisher. I presume you are still the author. Actually their next FAQ point makes it clear that the purchased ISBN is really just a "vanity" ISBN which most people won't need.

BTW Smashwords seems to have a similar policy regarding under-age sex, and rape. Their policy is a bit more clear-cut. Rape, sadism and pedophilia are strongly discouraged, and prohibited if their purpose is to arouse the reader. No mention of bestiality, interestingly. Although the terms of service prohibits things which "advocate illegal activites".

 

[lovecraft68]

Judging by the Smashwords FAQ you can use their free ISBN, which registers them as the publisher, or buy one from them for $9.95 which registers you as the publisher. I presume you are still the author. Actually their next FAQ point makes it clear that the purchased ISBN is really just a "vanity" ISBN which most people won't need.

BTW Smashwords seems to have a similar policy regarding under-age sex, and rape. Their policy is a bit more clear-cut. Rape, sadism and pedophilia are strongly discouraged, and prohibited if their purpose is to arouse the reader. No mention of bestiality, interestingly. Although the terms of service prohibits things which "advocate illegal activites".

I know pedophilia(underage) is out, but the rape may be fairly new. Then again I don't write it so never paid close attention.

SW is one of the few publishers who will carry real incest and those do well there. SW is far smarter than amazon and will take that money and not care about some pretentious moral stance.

For the record amazon might claim no rape, but its everywhere.

Want to see something scary? In their very vague policies, amazon states "no explicit sexual situations"

Now they have tens of thousands of erotic books so they obviously aren't following that, but if there ever comes a day, they feel the need to cave to censorship, they can kick everyone one of those books out and claim its because we were breaking their rules.

Scary.

 

[sun_sea_sky]

If you want to submit a story for paid publication, remove it from Literotica. Amazon will catch it immedisately, Smashwords less immedfiately.

Why, though? I read an article by Cory Doctorow (I can't find it right now) where he makes his books (some of them anyway) freely available on his own web site. But he adds something like "if you like this please support me by going to Amazon and paying for a copy." It's like Shareware. You try it and if you like it you pay.

Why would Amazon and Smashwords care if you also have it available here? You are hurting yourself if that reduces sales. And its mere presence here would indicate who really is the author.

The other thing is, that for longer stories anyway, it's quite an effort to download each page, combine them, somehow keep the bold and italics, convert it for an eReader, upload it to your Kindle, etc. All to save maybe $1 or $2.

Anyway, what do other authors do?

 

[BONNIEBREA]

Jeez, where's Pilot when you need him?

This has been argued over and over again. If you put something up be it here or amazon, sw wherever, just putting the little copyright symbol means nothing.

If someone for instance takes your lit story and tosses it on amazon, if you go to them they will usually remove it for fear they have stolen property, but its no guarantee and how do you prove it?

The fee for an e-book copyright is $35. If you have that, you can at least send someone a copy of it. I recently had some of my work pulled from a story site using it. I told them I was the original author, sent the link to the lit stories which predated the date there and it was "Yeah sure, okay"

a week later the stories were still there. I then sent a scanned copy of the copyright, they pulled them down within 24 hours,

The "its yours the second you type it" only works if dealing with honest people, it won't hold up anywhere else.

Granted, people can steal work and they do. That's unfortunate, but it's a different issue than the existence of a copyright. Owning a copyright, registered or not, will not stop the dishonest from stealing the work of others.

When you say 'The fee for an ebook copyright is $35' that's not really correct. What you're filling out the form and paying the $35 fee for is to register with the federal copyright office a copyright that you already own. As I mentioned above, registering just gives you legal standing and makes possible an award of damages should someone infringe your copyright and you decide to file suit.

But whether someone registers or not, under the copyright law a copyright exists for a written work when the author hunts and pecks at his/her keyboard (and under the copyright law works in progress have every bit as much copyright protection as completed works), when an artist applies a brush or pen to a canvas or piece of paper, or when a photographer pushes the shutterbutton and creates an image on film or digital photo receptors (and there's a funny scene in Robert Altman's film Pret a Porter about just that issue, although it's unlikely anyone but a photographer or copyright lawyer would get it).

 

[emap]

Why, though? I read an article by Cory Doctorow (I can't find it right now) where he makes his books (some of them anyway) freely available on his own web site. But he adds something like "if you like this please support me by going to Amazon and paying for a copy." It's like Shareware. You try it and if you like it you pay.

Why would Amazon and Smashwords care if you also have it available here? You are hurting yourself if that reduces sales. And its mere presence here would indicate who really is the author.

The other thing is, that for longer stories anyway, it's quite an effort to download each page, combine them, somehow keep the bold and italics, convert it for an eReader, upload it to your Kindle, etc. All to save maybe $1 or $2.

Anyway, what do other authors do?

Amazon will pull a story that is already posted elsewhere because it suggests that what they have to sell is copied off someone else. Since appearance is everything when you are talking sales, they err on the side of caution. Not that it actually matters that much, many of the readers on here don't buy erotic novels. I don't really blame them, I mean why buy something when you can get thousands right here?

Conversely a goodly number of the buying public don't come here. Mostly because to them going online and looking for stories is theft. Torrents are mostly what they think about when you say online story sites. Some will figure it's nothing more than fanfic sites. Don't ask me why but there is actually not much of a correlation between reading on lit and buying erotic novels.

Before anybody says otherwise us authors tend to have a little more brains. I know that many of ya'll read the stories on here and buy novels elsewhere. I've thought about it once or twice, Literary Guild isn't the greatest for erotic content.

 

[lovecraft68]

Why, though? I read an article by Cory Doctorow (I can't find it right now) where he makes his books (some of them anyway) freely available on his own web site. But he adds something like "if you like this please support me by going to Amazon and paying for a copy." It's like Shareware. You try it and if you like it you pay.

Why would Amazon and Smashwords care if you also have it available here? You are hurting yourself if that reduces sales. And its mere presence here would indicate who really is the author.

The other thing is, that for longer stories anyway, it's quite an effort to download each page, combine them, somehow keep the bold and italics, convert it for an eReader, upload it to your Kindle, etc. All to save maybe $1 or $2.

Anyway, what do other authors do?

Smashwords does not care that I have ever seen.

Amazon are like the nazi's of the e-world.

First off there is the kdp select program. Do not join that! It means you can't have it anywhere but their site and they can let people borrow it and not pay.

the schtick is they allegedly have this fund that when ever anyone borrows it for free you get a small amount tossed your way.

I have heard nothing good about this program and it makes you exclusive with them.

Now beyond that Amazon has a policy that it can't be sold anywhere for less than it is on amazon

I had an issue with a title because its $2.99 on amazon and I forgot it was $1.99 on Smashwords so they lowered it to 1.99 and gave me ten days to fix it or they would pull the title.

I did as they wished, so no big deal, but lit is free and you can't make it available for less than free.

Now here is why its really tough to take anything down from lit and then go to Amazon.

Theft. How many stories are lifted here daily? So even if you pull a story here on lit, it may be on a dozen sites that you don't know about.

Now what I have heard is that if you publish on amazon first, then after awhile you can post it here because they don't keep going back and looking, but they do for new titles.

 

[sr71plt]

First, it's not an either/or issue with Amazon and Smashwords. Put the books on both and everywhere else you can too. The more distributors and platforms you hit, the higher access to/sales of your books.

Second, the short version on the copyright issue: what the hell good is holding copyright to you if you can't take legal action on it? The copyright's yours from inception, yes. It's just toilet paper in the United States without a formal registration to back it up. The U.S. has done this on purpose; it's not an oversight. They count on people not "getting it" so that the courts don't get clogged.

 

[evanslily]

Having been through the fun of publishing on Amazon recently, I thought I'd just share that when I first submitted the stories I got an email back from them within a few hours querying whether the stories were mine because they'd found them available on the Internet for free (i.e., here on Literotica. ). All I had to do was confirm that I was the author, which was a fairly straightforward thing to do - they just wanted evidence of all the places where my stories were already available, which basically boiled down to Smashwords and here.

On the one hand, it was irritating (because it took another 2 days for my stories to post on Amazon), on the other it was pretty reassuring, because it meant it was less likely (though not completely unlikely as I've heard it's happened to others) that anyone had borrowed my stories and tried to sell them on Amazon.com as their own.

My stories remain here on Literotica - I haven't taken them down because having them here actually leads directly to people buying them from Smashwords or Amazon. The versions I have on Amazon and Smashwords are the tidied up, slightly better edited versions.

 

[leannaharrow]

I...

Hi...I'm new here and don't know if this will help but I publish on Createspace. I have an account on odesk.com (under my real name) and have a graphic designer there do my covers for around $50...he's awesome! Just a thought...

 

[RodenAddison]

......

 

[sun_sea_sky]

I just wanted to thank all the people that helped me with advice here (and in PMs). I've uploaded 3 books to Smashwords and made 4 sales! Woohoo! I now have ... let me see ... $7.68 in my account.

Of course, so far that just about covers the artwork for one front cover, but it can only go up, right?

I haven't yet worked out how to get my hands on that money, but we'll just let it grow, huh?

Also, so far, the books haven't yet hit the major retailers (eg. Apple, Amazon) so (maybe) once they do sales will go up.

Anyway, thanks again for all the support and guidance. If it hadn't been for this web site I wouldn't even have heard of Smashwords.

 

[sr71plt]

Congrats. May it blossom from here.

 

[R. Richard]

I just wanted to thank all the people that helped me with advice here (and in PMs). I've uploaded 3 books to Smashwords and made 4 sales! Woohoo! I now have ... let me see ... $7.68 in my account.

Of course, so far that just about covers the artwork for one front cover, but it can only go up, right?

I haven't yet worked out how to get my hands on that money, but we'll just let it grow, huh?

Also, so far, the books haven't yet hit the major retailers (eg. Apple, Amazon) so (maybe) once they do sales will go up.

Anyway, thanks again for all the support and guidance. If it hadn't been for this web site I wouldn't even have heard of Smashwords.

What you see in your Smashwords account is what's sold in Smashwords. Smashwords also sells via other distributors and you may see some more money, from time to time.
Smashwords will pay you, via PayPal, you do need a Pay-Pal account. There may be a minimum amount, before they pay, not sure.
Smashwords has been trying to get their books in Amazon for quite some time. Last time I checked, they were still waiting.
Good luck.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

ISBN's for Canadians must be obtained from a Canadian Publisher or you can apply directly to the ISBN agency. Smashwords does not provide them for Canada. Canada gives you access to an automatic generation system. You can register with them as a business and get your numbers.

Copyright in Canada is bogus. It IS about being able to prove that it's your writing, at least here. It costs $35 (last time I checked) to register a copyright. They don't want the book, they just register the Title and you get a nice certificate with a Maple Leaf on it (Woohoo!), All anyone would have to say is 'Where's the proof you wrote it' and you're right back to square one anyway.

The National Library of Canada will issue an ISBN at no charge. You deposit one or two (depending on how many copies are being produced) copies with the Library, and that is more than just a title. Copyright in Canada is established by creating the work, and a number of different ways of proving authorship are acceptable. None, however, are fool-proof. The simplest (and weakest, perhaps) is simply to mail yourself a copy of the work with a dated postmark over the envelope's seal (they will do this for you at a regular post office). A legal deposit at the Library will establish a firm date for your work, and anyone challenging your rights would have to present stronger proof of an earlier production date.

 

[sun_sea_sky]

Smashwords will pay you, via PayPal, you do need a Pay-Pal account. There may be a minimum amount, before they pay, not sure.
Smashwords has been trying to get their books in Amazon for quite some time. Last time I checked, they were still waiting.

Thanks for that. I think the minimum is $10 or so, but you have to sign some sort of tax form which they need to physically mail to you.

I believe they are dealing with Amazon but there is a delay (weeks, maybe) while Amazon (or Apple, or both) check your book to make sure you aren't trying a fast one on them (eg. underage sex, rape, etc.).

Also I believe Amazon doesn't like nudity on the cover, but from what I've seen at Amazon, you can get pretty close to nude and get it through.

 

[evanslily]

No, they're not publishing through Amazon yet. That's been a 'coming soon' feature for at least 18m, maybe longer. I think Mark Coker's still very much in the negotiating stage.

As for payment, I get paid via PayPal and can recommend that route as a non-US author. You get paid quarterly so long as you've accrued more than $10 but Smashwords withhold 30% of your earnings - it's called 'withholding tax'. If you want to get paid the full amount you have to apply for that tax form you're referring to but it's a long drawn out process involving passports and trips to the US embassy and I soon decided it wasn't worth the hassle.