Yeah, the title says it all. I was looking for new brushes the other day (mostly bizzare textures I can use for rocks/brainstorming) and I discovered that the better packs were all for sale. After a little more poking around, I figured out that they'll allow for sales of finished products as well as resources.
Including things like comics and ebooks.
It doesn't look like a huge venue, but it IS a venue, and I would like to gather thoughts on things and put it up so that y'all can discuss it.
The way it works...you put together a deviantart page for the book (usually by uploading your sample text+cover if you have permissions to do this. Here's what I did) you package the book as a .zip file, you upload it in the Premium Content stages, and you set the price using "points" (basically, cents that you can withdraw later) in intervals of ten. It's a 20/80 split in your favor.
I will be the first to admit I do not know the value (or lack thereof) of a given venue, so all I'll do is bring up the pros and cons that I can see:
cons:
-sales don't "count". It's more like selling e-books out the back of your e-truck.
-You don't get help. You need to have the formatting for the book DONE, Mobi and epub files and whatever format you plan to offer in hand.
-Literature isn't very popular on DA.
-It's not the most professional place in the universe. Most of the people there are more interested in Fan Art and sparkledogs (...if you have to ask, don't. Trust me.) than they are in...uh...other things.
(...uh...I kind of expect the more experienced people to take it apart for me and explain why selling ebooks via DA's Premium Content system would be bad. Those are all the cons I've got)
Pros:
-You can put other stuff in the .zip file. I've been wanting to do bonus stuff for readers for MONTHS. I've stuck a wallpaper from the cover in the linked .zip file, and I can probably do other stuff while I'm brainstorming.
-DA is full of the kind of fans who talk about the things they like. You probably won't get as many casual readers, but your chance of hitting that person who tells everybody including the mailman, dog and dentist about your book probably go up.
-Lit isn't very popular on DA. Meaning that part of the site is ALMOST a ghost town and there's a greater chance of quality work standing out.
-It's an 80/20 split. You get the eighty. One dollar book? You get eighty cents. Ten dollar book? Eight dollars. Ten cent book? You get eight.
-DA offers special site-wide advertising for its membership. I've used it before and gotten relatively good results (albeit that was for my own vanity and not aimed at selling things). Admittedly, it's impression based, but everybody on this site is already conditioned to click on anything that looks pretty.
Yeah, it doesn't look like a huge venue, and on an impress-the-world-with-sales-numbers it's not the greatest in the universe (and no. I haven't sold a copy of the book on DA yet) but if you've got an artistic bent, you can use both the account and the sales opportunity to your advantage.
It probably wouldn't be for everybody, but it's a place to put your books up for public consumption and get money back in return, and I figure that's probably worth discussing in a self-publishing forum.
Including things like comics and ebooks.
It doesn't look like a huge venue, but it IS a venue, and I would like to gather thoughts on things and put it up so that y'all can discuss it.
The way it works...you put together a deviantart page for the book (usually by uploading your sample text+cover if you have permissions to do this. Here's what I did) you package the book as a .zip file, you upload it in the Premium Content stages, and you set the price using "points" (basically, cents that you can withdraw later) in intervals of ten. It's a 20/80 split in your favor.
I will be the first to admit I do not know the value (or lack thereof) of a given venue, so all I'll do is bring up the pros and cons that I can see:
cons:
-sales don't "count". It's more like selling e-books out the back of your e-truck.
-You don't get help. You need to have the formatting for the book DONE, Mobi and epub files and whatever format you plan to offer in hand.
-Literature isn't very popular on DA.
-It's not the most professional place in the universe. Most of the people there are more interested in Fan Art and sparkledogs (...if you have to ask, don't. Trust me.) than they are in...uh...other things.
(...uh...I kind of expect the more experienced people to take it apart for me and explain why selling ebooks via DA's Premium Content system would be bad. Those are all the cons I've got)
Pros:
-You can put other stuff in the .zip file. I've been wanting to do bonus stuff for readers for MONTHS. I've stuck a wallpaper from the cover in the linked .zip file, and I can probably do other stuff while I'm brainstorming.
-DA is full of the kind of fans who talk about the things they like. You probably won't get as many casual readers, but your chance of hitting that person who tells everybody including the mailman, dog and dentist about your book probably go up.
-Lit isn't very popular on DA. Meaning that part of the site is ALMOST a ghost town and there's a greater chance of quality work standing out.
-It's an 80/20 split. You get the eighty. One dollar book? You get eighty cents. Ten dollar book? Eight dollars. Ten cent book? You get eight.
-DA offers special site-wide advertising for its membership. I've used it before and gotten relatively good results (albeit that was for my own vanity and not aimed at selling things). Admittedly, it's impression based, but everybody on this site is already conditioned to click on anything that looks pretty.
Yeah, it doesn't look like a huge venue, and on an impress-the-world-with-sales-numbers it's not the greatest in the universe (and no. I haven't sold a copy of the book on DA yet) but if you've got an artistic bent, you can use both the account and the sales opportunity to your advantage.
It probably wouldn't be for everybody, but it's a place to put your books up for public consumption and get money back in return, and I figure that's probably worth discussing in a self-publishing forum.
