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Writing-GAF: Writing, Publishing, Selling |OT|

Okay yeah, looks like Book Gorilla works. It's barely been a few hours and it's already nearly doubled my total sales. Not sure if I'll get my money back after paying extra to get it starred, but this is damn reassuring.

Will post the final number once the sale is over.

Sweet! Great to hear of a solid site to add to marketing options. Even if you don't get your money back, you'll have more mouths to talk about and spread your book, so still good in the end.


I haven't heard about this place, there are so many out there it's hard to keep up. I'm really interested to hear your results.
I need to work on getting more reviews so I can advertise on more sites. I've only got a couple and one was recently taken down (no reason given) and I got my first one star. I'm having a hard time getting reviews legitimately, but then I haven't done any advertising yet either. I'd much rather write than market.

I feel ya. I've had lots of great one-on-one feedback, reviews on the publisher site, and twitter mini-reviews, but I'm still waiting for more Amazon reviews before I pay for advertising space somewhere. I would love even just a few more star reviews there. It seems poor form to beg people who were already nice enough to buy your book, though, so it's tough. :D


Woo, #37 in the supernatural mystery thriller category! Damn satisfying to see that even if I'll be back in the 100k area within a few days.



http://www.bookgorilla.com/advertise

Wow. Congrats! That's hella good. Thanks for sharing the link~
 

FelixOrion

Poet Centuriate
Say I wanted to compile and publish a book of my poetry, how do you suppose the process differs from novel writing, if at all?
 
On my fourth and final edit of my book, and I've gotten to the point where every hour I spend on it is this mini heart attack where it sucks and then doesn't suck. I'm going crazy, but this fucker will be done before the month is out.

Next book I write, I think I'm gonna aim for three drafts. Four is just confusing me at this point.

Has anyone else ever gotten ideas from dreams?
All the time.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Was there a particular reason for making a new thread? I mean, I guess it's all right, especially since the old OP was a self-promoting jerk who really only made the thread to advertise his personal site, then pretended he'd made it because everyone else had asked him to. (Still annoyed about that? Still annoyed about that.)

Is that what he got banned for? I don't see anything in his post history of the last day or two that screamed "BAN ME."

Anyway, Chuck Wendig's "write 300 words a day, damn it" post should be in the OP IMO.
 
Most of what I've read says when you're starting out the best marketing you can do is write and publish more books. It increases your visibility and makes you easier to find. Plus writing is more fun, most of the time, than marketing.

That's the plan! Hope to get 1-2 books out per year, though the post-writing stuff is always going to be a big headache that could hinder that. At the very least, I could get step 1 done and over with twice a year.

Sweet! Great to hear of a solid site to add to marketing options. Even if you don't get your money back, you'll have more mouths to talk about and spread your book, so still good in the end.

I certainly hope so. I've heard that with sites like these (Book Gorilla, Book Bub, etc), it does little as far as sustaining a fanbase goes and once your feature time is up, you're right back to the usual meager sales.

That being said, I am happy so many people have it now even if many won't finish or even start it. Just seeing it in the top 100 for the genre (up to #25 now) is pretty damn cool.
 

Soulfire

Member
Anyway, Chuck Wendig's "write 300 words a day, damn it" post should be in the OP IMO.

Great post, that's where I got my daily writing goal from.

l8erKQs.jpg


Here's a link to the full post if anyone is interested.
 

sirap

Member
Thought i'd write a report about an experiment I did with KU.

I mainly publish in Amazon, and when they rolled out Kindle Unlimited I decided to create a new pen name and series aimed specifically at taking advantage of how KU's royalty system works.

With KU, there's a set pool every month that gets divided and distributed to every author based on the amount of borrows they have. To qualify for a "borrow", readers will have to borrow your book on Amazon, and read at least 10% of it. Last month it was around $1.50 per borrow.

You can see how amazing this is for authors that write short fiction. In fact, I believe 5-10k books is the magic number for KU. Why? Because they're easy to pump out, and you get the same amount of royalty as those who write massive 50-150k novels. Remember, volume is the key with KU. You want as many borrows as you can, which is not hard. A 5k book is what, around 30-40 pages? As long as people read at least 3 pages, your golden.

So here's what I did for my experiment. I chose a specific niche that works REALLY well with shorts, and wrote a series (not serial!) of 10, 5k books. I wrote 2 books every day, and that includes a single pass of edits for grammar and formatting. Covers were made by hand from stock photos bought from Depositphotos. Published all of them consecutively (not really necessary, but I wasn't sure how Amazon's algorithms worked in KU) in mid October.

After 18 days, I've made roughly $1,823 in royalties. Around 70% of that was from borrows, while the rest was from regular Amazon purchases. Bear in mind that this was under a new pen name with 0 promotion. Not bad for a weeks worth of writing. I haven't even tried bundling yet, and I predict I'll be able to easily reach $3k once I do that.

And to give you guys an idea of what's possible, I know an author that has >100 shorts in her catalog, and regularly makes 40-50k per month. Some even make that much with less, but hers are new adult books that are slightly longer (15k)
 
Thought i'd write a report about an experiment I did with KU.

I mainly publish in Amazon, and when they rolled out Kindle Unlimited I decided to create a new pen name and series aimed specifically at taking advantage of how KU's royalty system works.

With KU, there's a set pool every month that gets divided and distributed to every author based on the amount of borrows they have. To qualify for a "borrow", readers will have to borrow your book on Amazon, and read at least 10% of it. Last month it was around $1.50 per borrow.

You can see how amazing this is for authors that write short fiction. In fact, I believe 5-10k books is the magic number for KU. Why? Because they're easy to pump out, and you get the same amount of royalty as those who write massive 50-150k novels. Remember, volume is the key with KU. You want as many borrows as you can, which is not hard. A 5k book is what, around 30-40 pages? As long as people read at least 3 pages, your golden.

So here's what I did for my experiment. I chose a specific niche that works REALLY well with shorts, and wrote a series (not serial!) of 10, 5k books. I wrote 2 books every day, and that includes a single pass of edits for grammar and formatting. Covers were made by hand from stock photos bought from Depositphotos. Published all of them consecutively (not really necessary, but I wasn't sure how Amazon's algorithms worked in KU) in mid October.

After 18 days, I've made roughly $1,823 in royalties. Around 70% of that was from borrows, while the rest was from regular Amazon purchases. Bear in mind that this was under a new pen name with 0 promotion. Not bad for a weeks worth of writing. I haven't even tried bundling yet, and I predict I'll be able to easily reach $3k once I do that.

And to give you guys an idea of what's possible, I know an author that has >100 shorts in her catalog, and regularly makes 40-50k per month. Some even make that much with less, but hers are new adult books that are slightly longer (15k)

This... is really interesting. I've been kind of dithering on writing more since I finished the first book because another 50k+ is kind of daunting when I have a ton of work-work to do, but the itch to write a bit is there. I never thought that writing shorts would actually be profitable. Aside from a potential to actually sell some, the format really interests me too. I've banged out 10k+ a night when I absolutely had to, so mini-books would be no drain if I did one in a week and see how it went. Designing my own cover sounds really fun too.

Thanks for this. It's a lot of food for thought. Might pick your brain more on it later.
 

Soulfire

Member
Thought i'd write a report about an experiment I did with KU.

I mainly publish in Amazon, and when they rolled out Kindle Unlimited I decided to create a new pen name and series aimed specifically at taking advantage of how KU's royalty system works.

With KU, there's a set pool every month that gets divided and distributed to every author based on the amount of borrows they have. To qualify for a "borrow", readers will have to borrow your book on Amazon, and read at least 10% of it. Last month it was around $1.50 per borrow.

You can see how amazing this is for authors that write short fiction. In fact, I believe 5-10k books is the magic number for KU. Why? Because they're easy to pump out, and you get the same amount of royalty as those who write massive 50-150k novels. Remember, volume is the key with KU. You want as many borrows as you can, which is not hard. A 5k book is what, around 30-40 pages? As long as people read at least 3 pages, your golden.

So here's what I did for my experiment. I chose a specific niche that works REALLY well with shorts, and wrote a series (not serial!) of 10, 5k books. I wrote 2 books every day, and that includes a single pass of edits for grammar and formatting. Covers were made by hand from stock photos bought from Depositphotos. Published all of them consecutively (not really necessary, but I wasn't sure how Amazon's algorithms worked in KU) in mid October.

After 18 days, I've made roughly $1,823 in royalties. Around 70% of that was from borrows, while the rest was from regular Amazon purchases. Bear in mind that this was under a new pen name with 0 promotion. Not bad for a weeks worth of writing. I haven't even tried bundling yet, and I predict I'll be able to easily reach $3k once I do that.

And to give you guys an idea of what's possible, I know an author that has >100 shorts in her catalog, and regularly makes 40-50k per month. Some even make that much with less, but hers are new adult books that are slightly longer (15k)

Wow that's incredible and I'm not just talking about the royalties. Do you mind if I ask what genre you're writing in?
I've published a six episode series with each episode about that length but it's fantasy and I don't seem to be getting many downloads. Last month was my best month and I made less than $20.
Also, do you know when they release the amount earned from borrows? Thanks
 

sirap

Member
This... is really interesting. I've been kind of dithering on writing more since I finished the first book because another 50k+ is kind of daunting when I have a ton of work-work to do, but the itch to write a bit is there. I never thought that writing shorts would actually be profitable. Aside from a potential to actually sell some, the format really interests me too. I've banged out 10k+ a night when I absolutely had to, so mini-books would be no drain if I did one in a week and see how it went. Designing my own cover sounds really fun too.

Thanks for this. It's a lot of food for thought. Might pick your brain more on it later.


You definitely should!

In the long run, "traditional" books will net you more profit. It's easier to build a fan base with novels, and they tend to have longer legs compared to shorts.

But for quick and easy cash? Nothing beats writing shorts and sticking them in KU. Research is very important though, you need to write for the audience that craves these books. The easiest is of course, erotica. But you can do well in other genres too, you just need to find the right niche. An eye-catching cover + a solid blurb + laser targeted keywords is important.

Wow that's incredible and I'm not just talking about the royalties. Do you mind if I ask what genre you're writing in?
I've published a six episode series with each episode about that length but it's fantasy and I don't seem to be getting many downloads. Last month was my best month and I made less than $20.
Also, do you know when they release the amount earned from borrows? Thanks

I write erom, which is a pretty much erotica with a lower heat level + some romance :p

Not sure when they'll release it for November, i've been told it'll be on the 15th (this is my first month on KU)

Sorry to hear that about your shorts. Fantasy can be a tough nut to crack especially with shorter books. The only success I've seen are from established authors in that genre (Rothfuss, Sanderson etc)
 

Soulfire

Member
I write erom, which is a pretty much erotica with a lower heat level + some romance :p

Not sure when they'll release it for November, i've been told it'll be on the 15th (this is my first month on KU)

Sorry to hear that about your shorts. Fantasy can be a tough nut to crack especially with shorter books. The only success I've seen are from established authors in that genre (Rothfuss, Sanderson etc)

I wrote a sci-fi erom once and that's the only thing that made back all the money I put in. Maybe I should try to finish the series. I stopped because fantasy was just too alluring, but it can't pay the bills and I really want to buy Fantasy Life. lol

Thanks for the answers I hope you continue to see such amazing success.
 
You definitely should!

In the long run, "traditional" books will net you more profit. It's easier to build a fan base with novels, and they tend to have longer legs compared to shorts.

But for quick and easy cash? Nothing beats writing shorts and sticking them in KU. Research is very important though, you need to really write for the audience that craves these books. The easiest is of course, erotica. But you can do well in other genres too, you just need to find the right niche. An eye-catching cover + a solid blurb + laser targeted keywords is important.



I write erom, which is a pretty much erotica with a lower heat level + some romance :p

Not sure when they'll release it for November, i've been told it'll be on the 15th (this is my first month on KU)

Sorry to hear that about your shorts. Fantasy can be a tough nut to crack especially with shorter books. The only success I've seen are from established authors in that genre (Rothfuss, Sanderson etc)

Haha. Of course it's erotica. :D Funny enough, I've been poked to write something in this direction by a few people recently. Those with an in on the indie publishing side to varying degrees also said the same as you, that there's consistent demand and profit to be had there. I'm very tempted to try my hand at it now. I could use some novelty (ha) in my life right now.

Do you have any thoughts on which pairing works best? And which setting (urban, fantasy, sci-fi, etc.)? I presume hetero dominates a fair bit, but I also know that quite a number of women and men are really into guy-guy fodder.

For the traditional novel route, it definitely seems a slow burn, but hopefully it'll keep chugging along. Shame I can't really connect both under my Amazon author profile if I did do it, though. I'd have to set up a pen name account. <-- Did you do this?
 
Thought i'd write a report about an experiment I did with KU.

I mainly publish in Amazon, and when they rolled out Kindle Unlimited I decided to create a new pen name and series aimed specifically at taking advantage of how KU's royalty system works.

With KU, there's a set pool every month that gets divided and distributed to every author based on the amount of borrows they have. To qualify for a "borrow", readers will have to borrow your book on Amazon, and read at least 10% of it. Last month it was around $1.50 per borrow.

You can see how amazing this is for authors that write short fiction. In fact, I believe 5-10k books is the magic number for KU. Why? Because they're easy to pump out, and you get the same amount of royalty as those who write massive 50-150k novels. Remember, volume is the key with KU. You want as many borrows as you can, which is not hard. A 5k book is what, around 30-40 pages? As long as people read at least 3 pages, your golden.

So here's what I did for my experiment. I chose a specific niche that works REALLY well with shorts, and wrote a series (not serial!) of 10, 5k books. I wrote 2 books every day, and that includes a single pass of edits for grammar and formatting. Covers were made by hand from stock photos bought from Depositphotos. Published all of them consecutively (not really necessary, but I wasn't sure how Amazon's algorithms worked in KU) in mid October.

After 18 days, I've made roughly $1,823 in royalties. Around 70% of that was from borrows, while the rest was from regular Amazon purchases. Bear in mind that this was under a new pen name with 0 promotion. Not bad for a weeks worth of writing. I haven't even tried bundling yet, and I predict I'll be able to easily reach $3k once I do that.

And to give you guys an idea of what's possible, I know an author that has >100 shorts in her catalog, and regularly makes 40-50k per month. Some even make that much with less, but hers are new adult books that are slightly longer (15k)

What did you price the books at? $0.99?

Of course erotica has to be the genre to do it :/. It's not something I'm confident I could actually write even if I did have the motivation for it.

Think a short zombie series would work with that system? Got one of those in my writing backlog that I need to get to.
 
That's really interesting. I have a few ~5-8k stories sitting around for writing challenge entries that spiraled out of control, and I'd been thinking I needed to save them for a short story collection or something of the sort.

Maybe... not?

I guess the one fear I have is -- how much of those rules only apply for romance/erotica? Then again, I guess there's only one way to find out!
 

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
Alright, I could use your help guys and gals.

So my dad wrote a novel about twenty years ago(or maybe in the process of twenty years, he was pretty vague?). It's a love story of people with the same birthday, and it's told mostly via receipts from flower shops. He wants to try and publish it and wants me to edit and help him. I am saying he could make this into an E-Book, but he is so certain it has to be a coffee table book. He wants to make an indigogo to help fund it, and I don't think he fully understands what self-publishing is.

Anyway to the point of this post. How do you guys think this should go? Do you think it can work as an E-Book? Or does it need to be printed? Or do you have any other weird ideas?
 

sirap

Member
I'll write a longer post with replies and some tips on how to find a profitable genre soon (its dead easy)

Gonna watch Interstellar now!
 
Alright, I could use your help guys and gals.

So my dad wrote a novel about twenty years ago(or maybe in the process of twenty years, he was pretty vague?). It's a love story of people with the same birthday, and it's told mostly via receipts from flower shops. He wants to try and publish it and wants me to edit and help him. I am saying he could make this into an E-Book, but he is so certain it has to be a coffee table book. He wants to make an indigogo to help fund it, and I don't think he fully understands what self-publishing is.

Anyway to the point of this post. How do you guys think this should go? Do you think it can work as an E-Book? Or does it need to be printed? Or do you have any other weird ideas?
CreateSpace
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Alright, I could use your help guys and gals.

So my dad wrote a novel about twenty years ago(or maybe in the process of twenty years, he was pretty vague?). It's a love story of people with the same birthday, and it's told mostly via receipts from flower shops. He wants to try and publish it and wants me to edit and help him. I am saying he could make this into an E-Book, but he is so certain it has to be a coffee table book. He wants to make an indigogo to help fund it, and I don't think he fully understands what self-publishing is.

Anyway to the point of this post. How do you guys think this should go? Do you think it can work as an E-Book? Or does it need to be printed? Or do you have any other weird ideas?


Has he edited it? I know you're saying it's "via receipts from flower shops." But at the same time, those do need slight editing. Has he shown it to anyone besides you as well?

I'd say get some feedback and editing done if you haven't yet before doing the E-Book or Self-Publishing route. Though you can publish on Amazon pretty easy if I remember right.
 
Seeing as my feature time is over, might as well post the Book Gorilla results.

Freeze Kill got 102 sales and 2 KU/KOLL borrows. Its overall Kindle store rank jumped from nearly 1,000,000 all the way up to around 1,800, making it to #18 in the Supernatural Mystery Thriller category.

With it on sale for $0.99, the royalties only came out to around $54. As I spent $50 for the listing and an extra $100 to get it starred, I still lost money. The sale is still going on until the 11th, so that may change but I'm not expecting it.

Might take a while to see if it was worth it, but I imagine I'll get more reviews at the very least and hopefully some word of mouth going.
 
Alright, I could use your help guys and gals.

So my dad wrote a novel about twenty years ago(or maybe in the process of twenty years, he was pretty vague?). It's a love story of people with the same birthday, and it's told mostly via receipts from flower shops. He wants to try and publish it and wants me to edit and help him. I am saying he could make this into an E-Book, but he is so certain it has to be a coffee table book. He wants to make an indigogo to help fund it, and I don't think he fully understands what self-publishing is.

Anyway to the point of this post. How do you guys think this should go? Do you think it can work as an E-Book? Or does it need to be printed? Or do you have any other weird ideas?

I think the ebook format works best for ordinary, continuous text. If your dad's book includes lots of images or clever typography to remind people of flower shop receipts, he may have a frustrating time working that into the ebook format.
 
Seeing as my feature time is over, might as well post the Book Gorilla results.

Freeze Kill got 102 sales and 2 KU/KOLL borrows. Its overall Kindle store rank jumped from nearly 1,000,000 all the way up to around 1,800, making it to #18 in the Supernatural Mystery Thriller category.

With it on sale for $0.99, the royalties only came out to around $54. As I spent $50 for the listing and an extra $100 to get it starred, I still lost money. The sale is still going on until the 11th, so that may change but I'm not expecting it.

Might take a while to see if it was worth it, but I imagine I'll get more reviews at the very least and hopefully some word of mouth going.
Wow that's great.
Gonna check this out.
 
Oh, happy day~ Got another review. :D A few more and I can start fiddling with some paid advertising stuff and see where that goes. With Christmas coming up that leads to some nice promotion opportunities too. Know most of you aren't really keen on the marketing stuff, but some of it's kind of fun, right?


Say I wanted to compile and publish a book of my poetry, how do you suppose the process differs from novel writing, if at all?

Mmm... Probably not too different publishing-wise (getting it on Kindle, then amazon, etc.), but I think your lead up would be different because poetry is so specific and a really hard sell (in my mind). I'm just going off what I think you'd have to do to get any legs on it, but it seems you'd want to circulate bits of it in poetry circles or magazines/collections, THEN publish your own book. That way you'd have an audience or a foot in the genre door, so to speak.


Seeing as my feature time is over, might as well post the Book Gorilla results.

Freeze Kill got 102 sales and 2 KU/KOLL borrows. Its overall Kindle store rank jumped from nearly 1,000,000 all the way up to around 1,800, making it to #18 in the Supernatural Mystery Thriller category.

With it on sale for $0.99, the royalties only came out to around $54. As I spent $50 for the listing and an extra $100 to get it starred, I still lost money. The sale is still going on until the 11th, so that may change but I'm not expecting it.

Might take a while to see if it was worth it, but I imagine I'll get more reviews at the very least and hopefully some word of mouth going.

That's great! I know just looking at raw $$ numbers it looks unbalanced, but selling 102 books is amazing! Hope you got a screen cap of you #18 spot too, because that's terrific. I'd say it was worth it. Cheers for sharing the info.
 
That's great! I know just looking at raw $$ numbers it looks unbalanced, but selling 102 books is amazing! Hope you got a screen cap of you #18 spot too, because that's terrific. I'd say it was worth it. Cheers for sharing the info.

Missed the chance to screen cap it at 18 since I refreshed, but I did get it at 19 last night. That's on my other computer though.

Just took a screen of its current rank at #26.

 

Relix

he's Virgin Tight™
I am struggling. I put my novel on hold because of job/business and some gaming taking the remaining time (not counting social stuff). I will finish it before this year is over, I swear (at least the draft). Then I want to write a serial :p.
 
Missed the chance to screen cap it at 18 since I refreshed, but I did get it at 19 last night. That's on my other computer though.

Just took a screen of its current rank at #26.

That's really impressive, cosmic. Congrats!

I'm due for a KDP deal, so I'm going to look into tying it to a BG promo. Is that what you did?

The other question is the starred review. How does that work? I have 7 reviews averaging like 4.8 stars, so I'm wondering whether I should cough up the extra $100.
 
That's really impressive, cosmic. Congrats!

I'm due for a KDP deal, so I'm going to look into tying it to a BG promo. Is that what you did?

The other question is the starred review. How does that work? I have 7 reviews averaging like 4.8 stars, so I'm wondering whether I should cough up the extra $100.

Really couldn't tell you how much it makes a difference. It might be better in the long run which is why I did it with no hesitation, but it's probably also a case by case thing. If you think the extra sales outweighs the cost, then go for it.
 
Is that what he got banned for? I don't see anything in his post history of the last day or two that screamed "BAN ME."

Anyway, Chuck Wendig's "write 300 words a day, damn it" post should be in the OP IMO.

Heh. No, he was banned for something totally unrelated. I think the posts got deleted.


I like that advice. Though I've noticed writing for a specific amount of time works better for me than writing to a specific word count. Too easy to game the word count. :p

Great post, that's where I got my daily writing goal from.


Here's a link to the full post if anyone is interested.

Added to OP. Thanks, folks.
 

Soulfire

Member
It really gives me a kick when I need it. 350 words isn't much, most days, if I'm serious about writing I should be able to find some time in my day to write at least that much. Especially with Office on my phone.
 

AlteredBeast

Fork 'em, Sparky!
Getting major writing motivation reading these last couple pages. Thanks fellas.

In fact, all of a sudden, self-publishing my end-of-the-world serial sounds like a totally plausible scenario.

Got some major work to do, but cranking out 30-40 pages for each perspective is insanely easy to think about, in fact.
 
Hi all,

A few months back, I came here asking for help on writting a script for a shortfilm I was doing. Fortunately some people responded and were very interested in participating in this project. I am now happy to share the final product with you all. It has been a great journey and an adventure, filled with emotions, met some great people, and had the pleasure to make this incredible collaboration with everyone involved that believed in this project, to bring out a shortfilm Im happy with. There were some drawbacks, sound being one of them, the budget (around 100€), but it came through in the end. I am already planning on doing another shortfilm (maybe try kickstarter to help with the budget) in the near future.

Let me know what you guys think, hope you enjoy it.

https://vimeo.com/111478234

Special thanks to user Vincent Alexander who actually wrote the script for it.
 
I've been fleshing out some of the Dead Endings stuff online of late doing mini-blogs and whatnot, and I thought I'd see if there were other GoodReads fellows out there. I've already added some Gaffers I know from the NaNoWriMo thread and here, but if you're on there as well and want to be buddies, let me know~

Here's mine


Getting major writing motivation reading these last couple pages. Thanks fellas.

In fact, all of a sudden, self-publishing my end-of-the-world serial sounds like a totally plausible scenario.

Got some major work to do, but cranking out 30-40 pages for each perspective is insanely easy to think about, in fact.

You can do it! All things are possible if you just get it out there~


Hi all,

A few months back, I came here asking for help on writting a script for a shortfilm I was doing. Fortunately some people responded and were very interested in participating in this project. I am now happy to share the final product with you all. It has been a great journey and an adventure, filled with emotions, met some great people, and had the pleasure to make this incredible collaboration with everyone involved that believed in this project, to bring out a shortfilm Im happy with. There were some drawbacks, sound being one of them, the budget (around 100€), but it came through in the end. I am already planning on doing another shortfilm (maybe try kickstarter to help with the budget) in the near future.

Let me know what you guys think, hope you enjoy it.

https://vimeo.com/111478234

Special thanks to user Vincent Alexander who actually wrote the script for it.

Congrats on getting it done!
 
I've been fleshing out some of the Dead Endings stuff online of late doing mini-blogs and whatnot, and I thought I'd see if there were other GoodReads fellows out there. I've already added some Gaffers I know from the NaNoWriMo thread and here, but if you're on there as well and want to be buddies, let me know~

Here's mine

Mine. Not really up to date as far as personal reading goes, but it's something.
 

Mully

Member
Has anyone else realized how much a certain work of fiction has influenced your own work after completion? As I finished my plot outline yesterday I realized how similar it is to Catcher in the Rye and War Junkie. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. I'm not calling back to them. In fact, most of the plot points are from my own experiences. They're ripped from my memory and given a new character who's extremely similar to me.

Am I doing this wrong?
 

Shengar

Member
Mine. Not really up to date as far as personal reading goes, but it's something.
That certainly nice photo of you there
Has anyone else realized how much a certain work of fiction has influenced your own work after completion? As I finished my plot outline yesterday I realized how similar it is to Catcher in the Rye and War Junkie. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. I'm not calling back to them. In fact, most of the plot points are from my own experiences. They're ripped from my memory and given a new character who's extremely similar to me.

Am I doing this wrong?

Sometimes, because we feel like that because we know source of inspiration behind our work. So have you tried asking some of your friend whether or not your work resembling Catcher in the Rye? I don't bothered too much being quite "blatant" of what work inspired mine, as long as I'm not making derivative version of it. Depends on your own unique, personal touch, the similarity might be a differentiating factor that could sell your work.
 
Mine. Not really up to date as far as personal reading goes, but it's something.

Aaaaand added. At 56 books, you're still way ahead of me. ^_^


Has anyone else realized how much a certain work of fiction has influenced your own work after completion? As I finished my plot outline yesterday I realized how similar it is to Catcher in the Rye and War Junkie. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. I'm not calling back to them. In fact, most of the plot points are from my own experiences. They're ripped from my memory and given a new character who's extremely similar to me.

Am I doing this wrong?

Mmmm, I tend to try and go against a lot of what I read (try, anyway), but it's inevitable that you'll be influenced, often pretty unknowingly. Best you can do is be aware of it, acknowledge when you're borrowing heavy, and try to move away from that, I think.
 

Woorloog

Banned
Has anyone else realized how much a certain work of fiction has influenced your own work after completion? As I finished my plot outline yesterday I realized how similar it is to Catcher in the Rye and War Junkie. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. I'm not calling back to them. In fact, most of the plot points are from my own experiences. They're ripped from my memory and given a new character who's extremely similar to me.

Am I doing this wrong?

I know my worldbuilding is heavily influenced by my favorite works of fiction (be they games, books or films). Perhaps too much so, i often start from scratch when i examine my plans and realize they're kitchen sinks made up from my favorites.
The end result might not be bad, or even unoriginal (because the combination may be fresh or unusual) but it feels too much like copying things. Might be just in my head really then? Of course, nothing i do is final in any way.
Unfortunately things i try to make up without/with minimal outside influences do not feel good. Perhaps i'm just very critical of my own ideas.
My plot ideas are also strongly influenced on my favorites, often i see possibilities in certain points. "What if...?", and "This could have been done better".

In any case, i feel it is natural to be influenced by other media, other works. Everyone does this. I'd argue this may even be a good idea, one could take the same premise another work has but build it to another direction. Similar worlds, like the "over-represented" "medieval European fantasy world" are easy to make and are easy to approach for the writer and reader alike. Some classic plots are kind of timeless, if done right (like the Hero's Journey, Star Wars being excellent example of it, while not being the first to do it). As long as plagiarism is avoided, and the new work has something fresh in it.


As for "author avatar" type character, i'd warn against such. There's a risk they become a mary sue, or some kind of wish-fulfillment thing too easily if they're strongly based on the author, people do like making idealized versions of themselves (Naturally, there is a place for these in certain genres, i think (i'd imagine erotic and romantic works run on these, and may be profitable too, looking at this thread)).
But as long as one is careful and critical, this should't be an issue. And smaller elements of self may be good even, if you're aware of your quirks, they might suit some characters easily.
But this is just my take on this, and i will reiterate that i merely warn against the dangers of this. (Also, as a reader, i really don't care for mary sues and wish-fulfillment. But perhaps that's just me.)
 
That certainly nice photo of you there

Thanks! I always felt I look kind of stupid in it, but never really cared to change it.

Aaaaand added. At 56 books, you're still way ahead of me. ^_^

Eh, a decent chunk of that is manga, comics and a few bad light novels. I just threw in a bunch of stuff to get to 50 because I thought I needed that to edit my own novels. Misunderstood the system, so yeah >_>



While we're on the subject of inspiration/influence, is anyone influenced by awful real-world events and if so, feels guilty about it? Sure, terrible wars and stuff like that are common settings, but I don't necessarily mean world-changing stuff like. It could also be something lower scale like truly heinous serial killers or people that commit terrible acts of depravity in general. Something like a recent thread that was locked because of how disgusted people were.

That's kind of where I am right now with my 3rd book (just passed the 40k mark). I'm still sticking to the plan, but it does feel weird to take inspiration from the real-world suffering of others.


Edit: Oh right, might as well mention the final stats of my sale since it ended last night. I already mentioned I sold 102 on the first day when Book Gorilla featured me. Over the course of the week, I sold 44 more copies, bringing the total up to 146. That brought my royalties up to $85.26. I also sold 2 physical copies, so that's an extra $3.00 right there.

So yeah, still in the red after paying the $150, but there's now quite a few people that have the book. Maybe they'll like it and I'll get some word of mouth going. Maybe they'll hate it and forget about it within a few days. Maybe they won't read it at all. Kind of betting on the first one, but again, I'm pretty happy so many people (based on my low standards) were interested enough to pay actual money for my book, even if it was only $0.99.
 

Mully

Member
Thanks for the help guys!

I'm specifically nervous about the internal rambling of the main character. He tends to launch into them when he's on his own. The monologues lean towards the language seen in noir fiction, but the main character's traits are similar to Caulfield.

It's still very early, so I'm glad I'll have a lot of time to figure it out.
 

Fidelis Hodie

Infidelis Cras
Been on a great little kick this week so far, averaging a good 1k words a night or so. Currently at 67pgs/ 21k words (if my memory serves).

And then I noticed that my outline was like 22 pages long and thought to mysef I may have a procrastinate-the-actual-writing by making-ridiculous-outlines problem . . but I want everything going forward to be so inherently planned out, it has helped a lot.
 
Grimløck;135782617 said:
i feel like what i write is clichéd and not good enough. i'm a technically-sound writer with a background in literary criticism but i feel like i'm lacking creatively, more so the longer the project is. that's why i usually stick to poetry for my creative outlet; its brevity allows me to avoid the pitfalls i make when i try to write narrative prose.

i think every writer, at one time or another, has felt that their story is trite, i think that goes with the territory of working on the same thing everyday for long spans of time
 

360pages

Member
I think it's alright to write a cliche once in awhile. Especially if it's you first book or story you want something with a little more focus to see what works and doesn't work.
 

Collete

Member
Do you guys ever have the thoughts that maybe you shouldn't be a writer?

I'm asking cause, as I write my novel for NanoWriMo (and my dream is to become a writer) and I look back at my work and really think, "Will anyone actually care about this?"
I know I should technically write for myself, but I like to share what I create with others, so naturally I want people to actually notice my work. Though, as I reread what I written, I can't feel like someone would want to care about this. Then the thoughts of self doubt creep to make me think I was not meant for this at all. That I'm nothing more than a shadow of what a writer should be.

I think I'm just rambling, but just I'm just genuinely asking.
 

Mike M

Nick N
I seem to get constant encouragement that I could be good enough to publish if I just "did a little more" (though what that entails remains nebulously defined). Only in the past few months have I actually allowed myself to believe it and start sending stuff out for submission. Nothing but one rejection and no responses thus far, but I'm making a go of it at least (well, things are on pause for NaNo, obviously). I have a modestly popular website that I'm in the process of revamping for use as my own platform, but I feel really self conscious about the possibility of having my stuff out there for public consumption by the internet at large.
 
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