Purgatory's Pit of Doom

I'm handing out the ones that don't make it down my gullet.

Oh, Tracy, the gods wouldn't laugh if it weren't so funny. Glad you got agent notes, though.

LOL, DVI. The gods do have a sick sense of humor.

So Red, are you purchasing any damn thing you want or did your boss finally give you a list of what she needed?

I thought when you write a sequel you're supposed to identify all the previous characters with a short explanation of who they are. The book should stand alone, not cause confusion if you haven't read the one before it. That reader certainly won't be reading her first book, Soul, and if I ever am tempted to fight back after a horrific review, please oh please, email me a smack in the head!

Thanks for the link, kell. Will be helpful when I eventually get a website/blog.

Chelsea, I'm the same way. I have this story I want to get into and it's a story I wrote years ago and...it's weird to think of how my ideas have evolved since then.

And like Ink, I think I'd rather work on SNIs/WIPs than the sub/ would-be sub. I guess the problem for me is that I can't figure out which SNI I want to work on.

I agree Steve, publishing is way behind when it comes to how to make their own process more efficient. And the culture surrounding publishing is that everyone involved wants to keep things the same - and most writers are just happy to see their name in print that they don't care either way.

whoot KELLION! Fingers crossed it turns into something good.

Ah Ink. The universe. It does tend to mock.

OOhhh yes Cat. If you ever were like 'NOW to tell that reviewer off!' I'd DEFINITELY email you that link again.

I've read some books that don't do a 'recap' in the next book in the series. It gets confusing. But it's a catch 22 because if you do a recap (like the HP series tended to do) once the books are all released if a reader reads them back to back the recap can be annoying. OTOH if an author doesn't do a reacap (like in 1n$urg3nt which I'm currently reading) and it's been a while since the reader read book one and waited around for book two to be released, the lack of a reminder can lead to confusion in book 2 because we've forgotten some of what happened in book 1

I have google analytics. A few publishing houses show up as the publishing house. Mostly I get NYC hits which I later know are publishers because there will be a NYC hit minutes before I response of some kind.

SteveCordero said:

Trad Pubs deserves their criticism, but the ultimate criticism is the bottom line and how they deal with the current landscape.

I still maintain that the Trad Pubs biggest problem is that they haven't found out how to make the book production process less expensive, from the cost of paper to warehousing to delivery services. In every other industry, companies find ways to lessen manufacturing costs. V3r0nica R0th had a great blog post awhile back about the step-by-step process of how a physical book gets made from when the author turns in the draft until the book hits the shelf and you can see that, "Wow, they have to find a way to stream line this and make it cheaper."

Click to expand...

KKR, somewhere in her series about the industry, talks about how corporations enter long term contracts which often seen like a good idea at the time, but when something changes, they're stuck with the contract-- like those contracts with printers and binders, and real estate contracts. I guess Random House, for a while, was paying bazillions of dollars every month on NY real estate that they weren't using because they laid off all the people who used to work in the offices. Now some of the majors can't get out of their long term print and binding contracts without paying heavy penalties.

The anti-traditional pub ranters think publishers are evil when maybe they are corporate entities without a lot of freedom to maneuver. KKR gives the analogy that a bigger boat has a harder time making a quick turn.

Says Teriann, shameless fan of KKR. Come on folks from way way upstairs in the self pub forum. Come throw darts at me because I like KKR and learn a lot from her even though she's too stupid to know how to the word "Indie" correctly. (Still ranting)

Adding: I sort of like the anti traditional publishing rants, though, but I prefer the ones that are balanced and intelligently written because I don't think it's bad for publishers to realize that if they treat writers badly it will be all over the Internet.

hester said:

(((Cricket))) (((Chelsea))) (((Ink)))

My feeling about self-pubbing is that it's a great option for some--if you have a built-in readership, if you're willing to put a lot of time into marketing, etc. I have a couple of books I'd thought about self-pubbing but I'm holding off for now, since I have neither of the above .

Click to expand...

Two misconceptions above - 1) you don't need a built-in readership and 2) you don't need to do a lot of marketing.

Remember, a self-pub book can be a greater success for the author because the royalties are so much higher. If 2000 books gives you $10,000/yr to keep, isn't that better? 2 more books doing the same and you can live a frugal but single living.

K. Taylor said:

Two misconceptions above - 1) you don't need a built-in readership and 2) you don't need to do a lot of marketing.

Remember, a self-pub book can be a greater success for the author because the royalties are so much higher. If 2000 books gives you $10,000/yr to keep, isn't that better? 2 more books doing the same and you can live a frugal but single living.

Click to expand...

How many SPs sell 2000 a year, though?

That's the dilemma, and that is where the "built-in readership" and "marketing" issues come into play. So I don't see it really as a misconception. It's simply a concern.

It's an extremely crowded marketplace where it is hard to stand out to get a dependable readership. The same is true for tradpub, but there is the difference of front end and back end money.

I did, and that's just one book. It really isn't hard to do, Steve. Good cover and a good blurb. And that's *just* my Amzn sales and royalties. Including all the other retailers that book has brought me around $15K by now.

And if a self-pubber can't move 2000 copies/year at $2.99 or less, they're doing something wrong. I have a 99cent novella that moves 350-400 copies/month just at Amzn US, and it's for a pen name I last wrote for in 2010.

K. Taylor said:

I did, and that's just one book. It really isn't hard to do, Steve. Good cover and a good blurb. And that's *just* my Amzn sales and royalties.

Click to expand...

But just because you did it doesn't mean that's the norm.

In other words, your success with AMZN is not necessarily indicative of what the sales of the majority of SPs are.

It's like if an AWer says: "Hey, I got an agent after only 5 queries so that means everyone else should get one just as quickly too."

Ktaylor, I always worry that you'll set people up for unrealistic hopes by not reminding them how long you've been at this.

SteveCordero said:

How many SPs sell 2000 a year, though?

That's the dilemma, and that is where the "built-in readership" and "marketing" issues come into play. So I don't see it really as a misconception. It's simply a concern.

It's an extremely crowded marketplace where it is hard to stand out to get a dependable readership. The same is true for tradpub, but there is the difference of front end and back end money.

Click to expand...

One reason I wanted to try it for myself was because I'm suspicious of everyone else's numbers.

My numbers are very very very modest by any standards. Mine seem to suck -- until you add up the past 8 months. Then they sort of stop sucking (except nobody is going to offer me a 7 figure deal, trust me)

I did a comparison which has no statistical validity at all. At about the same time I selfpubbed a book, a person self-pubbed a book through her agency-assisted-self publishing program. She self-published her book with huge fanfare. To give an example, in the first day, she had a bunch of reader reviews. I still don't have a single reader review for that book. It took a month or two for the sales rank of that other book to settle down. Within 6 months, my sales rank was consistently higher.

Again, this doesn't prove anything other than my one personal example leads me to believe that my favorite guru is right when she says heavily promoting a book causes a temporary blip and no more.

Nobody really knows anything other than their own experience (it's all too new) and no two books are alike so nobody's experience can really guide anyone else.

But almost every single day I have at least one sale, with no promo whatsoever, and this has been consistent. I have no idea how people find my books, but they do, so I personally believe that if a book has legs eventually it will run. "Eventually" is the key here.

Maybe self publishing is like putting a manuscript into a bottle and casting it out to sea. (well, bad metaphor, but you know what I mean.)

ETA: But sales numbers are a distraction from my original point, which is no, you don't need to be a name and do heavy promo to move e-books. A poll among writers I know turned out just this week that most were doing just fine despite practically no marketing and putting work out there either as an unknown or with an unknown pen name. Those pursuing trad. publishing have this assumption that heavy marketing is required for self-pub and cite it often as a reason to not do it and it just isn't true. It's a misconception and an excuse. E-books business doesn't work the same as a store release. You don't need to dump all the attention on the first month in hopes your book won't disappear, because e-books are forever.


Teri, my pen name with my successful novel debuted in Jan. 2011 and not in the same genre as the novel. I introduced myself to romance readers in April 2011.

I don't just speak from my own experience, though - I know a lot of self-publishers and most are doing more than me after 1 year and way more after 2.

Diversification helps rack up those numbers of copies. @pple sells to 32 countries. Smashw0rds sells to the entire world. If a person can read English, they can get my stories.

If you put up a cover that can be read in thumbnail size and is genre-appropriate, if you price well according to the market you're entering, if you have at least one loss-leader piece as an intro to your work, e-books will move. I'm dead serious. The people that aren't moving at least the 99cent copies of their adult fiction are doing something wrong. And if you're moving 1/day of a $5 book, that's $3.50/copy that's yours, for $1277.50/year. Just for 70% of 1 book/day. Any good (entertaining) writer should be able to average out to 1 e-book/day from 7 billion people on the planet.

Statistics don't tell you that the SPer had a crappy cover, put the book in the wrong genre, had formatting errors, bad grammar or spelling, tried to sell bad porn, etc etc. They poll amateurs that think they can be the next K1ndle millionaire and have never taken this seriously.

Can you hire someone to write your query? How can I suck so bad at writing 200 words about a story I've slaved over and know inside and out? I've been trying to write the query since the story was only 15,000 and I still can't get it right. I don't think I'll ever get published because my queries are so stinking awful. Kill me now. If I was still a drinker, I'd be well into my second bottle of wine. I can't even get brand new agents to request my junk.

*end rant

edited to add that at least seeing new Harry in my post cheered me up a bit

Beth, I'm in the same boat. I suck at queries. I'm also not afraid to say that QLH didn't help me all that much, probably more my fault than anything else. I'm revisiting the problem mms again on agent request. That means I still have to come up with a killer query for her to use in pitching.

I've written and sold one novel since I trunked the problem child, with a query that had good follow-through. I hope I've learned enough to help with the first book.

I'm terrible at queries too. Or maybe my premises aren't good, because I've gotten terrible results.

Cricket18 said:

OMFG, make it stop!

Five rejections today.

Click to expand...

OMG Cricket so sorry!

Filigree said:

I think I'd have a heart attack if an 11-year-old read my work and commented about it. Any of it. Even my mainstream stuff is not meant for children.

Then again, the little terrorists are growing up faster these days. And even at age 11 in the 70's, I knew about some things I'm sure my mom didn't want me to know about.

So, okay, kid, read it if you can get your greasy little mitts on it. Just don't *tell* me you read it. 'Cuz I really don't want to know.

Click to expand...

When I wrote really bad smutty fan fic, I had a big following of 13 year old girls in Ireland. They were all like "ahhh, so great so hawt" I was grossed out. I also laughed that teens wanted to read about adults having sex and us adults are all into YA now. Grass greener I guess.

Kell, that sounds really promising.

I am going to hire an editor and self pub next year if things don't work out for me. So K Taylor, I may be beating down your door with questions.

thanks for the empathy Fil ((())) to you

Oh, Beth, it was just a site visit! It just means that something I said made them curious enough to visit my site. But this particular press will not answer if they are not interested, so all this tells me is that thay have read my query.

kellion92 said:

Oh, Beth, it was just a site visit! It just means that something I said made them curious enough to visit my site. But this particular press will not answer if they are not interested, so all this tells me is that thay have read my query.

Click to expand...

I respectfully disagree. They don't visit the sites if they aren't at least interested in the idea. But I'll try to be less enthusiastic seeing as we're in the pit.

On a more pittish note, Ent@ngled didn't even request to read my new book. I got a form from Heather's assistant this time. I guess they're moving up in the world or my query was just that bad this time.

(((Beth))) I hate what this business does to us!

Oh, Beth, I'm sorry to hear that, too.

We are really in the pit this week.

Beth, Ent@ngled rejected me this week, too! Just 5 pages and a query. *sigh*

ChelseaWriter said:

Beth, Entangled rejected me this week, too! Just 5 pages and a query. *sigh*

Click to expand...

Ugh, they are fast becoming agent only I think.

Even without advances.

ChelseaWriter said:

Beth, Entangled rejected me this week, too! Just 5 pages and a query. *sigh*

Click to expand...

I can join this club--pages and query fast kick out the door. I blasted off another book to them. And I was under the impression that they paid advances. Yeah, I have it marked that way in my spread sheet. I might be wrong, though. I know they have some type of distribution in place, and they get the big media reviews. For relatively new, they've got some damn influence in the industry and I haven't been able to figure out why and how yet.

tri

Weren't at least one of their editors pretty well known when they started? I think that's part of it.