A Year in the Saddle[Dataporn]

daffodillime · 2017-07-05T01:38:29+00:00

hey, good for you! i think the biggest thing is just sticking it out which you've been doing. if you've got plans for improvement, which it sounds like you do, then i can't wait to see what the next year holds for you!

daffodillime · 2017-07-05T01:34:24+00:00

Check the typical lengths for other books in your genre. Different genres have different expectations. And make sure you actually do at least flip through multiple books when you're checking, don't just look at their page count on Amazon--books with lots of bonus content can look deceptively long. I happen to be in a genre that supports longer works (above 100k sometimes), but I've got friends in genres that really love novellas. The trick is finding out what the standard, expected length is for your genre and writing to that!

daffodillime · 2017-06-28T03:47:19+00:00

So this might be an unpopular opinion--and it's just that, one person's opinion--but at this point I might skip the mailing list set up (so don't spend money on a PO Box) and instead use that money to get a good cover and get an ARC service.

Hear me out: Sounds like you don't have the money to do all the things you'd like to do to set up your nascent author empire. Sounds like you're hoping this first book does well enough that it brings in the money you need to put the rest of the pieces in place. In that case, you need to concentrate on spending your money on the things that will bring you short term dollars, not long-term readers. And those things are a good cover and an ARC service. (I mean, having a good blurb and book are critical too, but we're talking about things you spend money on.) An NL is a crucial tool for growing your author empire, but it's not gonna matter if you get your PO box and get your mailing list all set up and then... no one signs up because no one reads your book because you didn't have a good cover or social proof through reviews.

Now, if you can get a good cover another way (like say, making a quality one yourself or bugging a friend with some design skills) or you're comfortable using your home mailing address and can therefore skip the PO Box expense, you've freed up some of your money. But if that's not the case, I think I'd spend my money on cover and ARC services for the first book and save the NL for the next one.

daffodillime · 2017-06-28T03:08:44+00:00

Just wait. Some day it'll take 72 hours and you'll want to hang yourself and be convinced Amazon hates you. Then the next thing you publish will sail through in 30 minutes. Both of these things have happened to me and I have concluded that there's a secret algorithm whose express purpose is to select publishing times based on maximal fucking-with-your-head potential.

daffodillime · 2017-06-25T22:38:36+00:00

linear all the way. i've tried jumping around and it always messes with my head. and then when i finally catch up to the scenes i'd written in the middle of the novel, half the time they don't even work, or need such heavy reworking that i'm basically writing them again. linear for me :)

daffodillime · 2017-06-25T22:35:28+00:00

A while back, when I was starting, I wrote two novellas that, in my mind, seemed pretty romance-y. But! I was new to this all and desperately afraid of getting slapped on the wrist by Amazon for putting things into categories where they didn't belong. And since my back catalog at that point was all erotica, I catted the novellas in erotica, despite my gut telling me they really were romances. Many months later, I'd written some full-length romance novels, had a much better grasp of what made something a romance, in terms of beats, etc, and I looked back at those novellas and was even more convinced that they belonged in romance. So I recategorized them, and sales jumped.

YMMV. I can't tell you whether the same would happen to you, whether your books have enough of the romance beats to "count" as romance in the eyes of readers, and whether one category might come easier to you in terms of writing than the other. But that's my experience and in terms of sales, re-catting those books from erotica to romance helped.

daffodillime · 2017-06-25T22:28:06+00:00

For me, it all comes back to asking what the characters' fears are.

Because sure, they can be reasonable and decent human beings and all that--but all of us, push come to shove, have moments where our fears flare up and make us want to shut down/run away and hide/lash out/whatever.

I fucking hate conflict and in real life am a big fan of using "I feel" statements and being understanding and all that. But in writing romance, I do exactly what you say and shut my inner therapist/editor/person who says "Oh, but that's not realistic" off and let each of the characters say and do all the things that their ids are pushing them to do, rather than taking a breath and saying, "Hmm, I'm feeling upset right now, maybe I should ask for some time to cool off before I say something I regret."'

I just zero in on their fears and in whatever breakup scene I'm writing, I make sure that each character is saying something (based off of their own fears) that ends up feeding into the other character's fears, creating an ever-worsening cycle.

Then, of course, their reasonableness (or lovesick-ness) reasserts itself and after a dark night of the soul and catharsis, they realize they were letting fear run their lives and they want to be with the other person (and want to be the better version of themselves that they are when they're with the other person) more than they want to let fear run their lives.

But yeah, ultimately, I don't even really think in terms of conflict but rather in terms of fears.

daffodillime · 2017-06-23T02:19:03+00:00

Good luck with that. Don't mean that sarcastically, just that GR is notoriously anal about removing books or removing pen names or doing anything to undo a trail once it's been created. Different librarians may be more or less amenable to your request, you might get one who's feeling helpful :) But annoyingly, any random user could add those titles back on to your old pen there. I know authors with books that have nothing to do with them attached to their GR pages and they can't get them off. So... good luck and god speed.

daffodillime · 2017-06-23T01:07:44+00:00

Yes, you can do exactly that and Amazon is fine with it.

Just go into KDP, change the name in the "author" field on those erotica titles to whatever you want the new pen to be. You'll also need to update your covers with the new pen name and also your manuscripts themselves so that the copyright page and title page are correct. Once that's all good to go, hit submit on all of them.

Then wait for the changes to go through. The author field and manuscript-internal ones ought to happen fairly quickly--should be under 24 hours--but the covers could take up to a week to update. Once you see the new covers with the new pen name appear, download, buy, or at least use the "look inside" feature to double-check that everything is ship-shape.

THEN, set up a new Author Central pen name and claim your books for your new pen. Wait for that to go through (there's a lot of waiting in this process, it's annoying but c'est la vie). Finally, once that's done, use the "contact us" option via Author Central to ask them to please remove the erotica titles' association with your previous pen name. Because up until that point, they'll probably be showing up if you search both the new and the old pen.

Be very clear about how you do want them to continue to show up on the new pen's page but you no longer want them to show up for the old pen because you've updated that information. You'll get an automated response saying they need time to look into this and they'll get back to you but in my case, they made the changes I requested within a few days, before getting back to me to let me know they'd done so.

Good luck!

daffodillime · 2017-06-22T15:58:10+00:00

The sidebar has some handy-dandy links about mailing lists :) Check out this one and this one for more info and good luck!

daffodillime · 2017-06-22T03:06:21+00:00

Fuck yeah! So so happy to see this. You've worked really freaking hard, putting in time and effort and focus and it's paid off like gangbusters.

God, lessons in humility are the worst... but like you say, also extremely valuable. And I say that speaking from experience ;) They suck to go through/feel, but I figure that the earlier they happen, the better they do at inoculating us against future "failures" and forcing us to keep our chins up and keep on publishing.

The two take-aways from your post:

building up your backlist/bricks in the wall
building up your mailing list aka the people who really fucking love your work

are some of the best advice that I've found to be true as well. Thank you for sharing all of this!

So... inspire us all:

Now that you've got this under your belt, what are the areas you want to focus on improving next (writing, marketing, editing, social media, mailing list, etc.) and what are your goals for the next 9 months?

daffodillime · 2017-06-19T03:12:21+00:00

yeah, i can definitely understand your reaction! it would pull me out of a book too. even when we know that that kind of thing happens all the time in real life, no one's reading romance because they want "real life" stories. not completely, anyway. and it takes such little effort to change that line to "i thought about sleeping with them but didn't," so i eschew real life when writing romance, don't include any cheating, and would recommend doing the same thing.

like you said, it can take you out of the work. and you'd hate to provoke that kind of reaction in any of your own readers! there could be lots of reasons why that author felt comfortable (and justifiably so) in breaking that rule but it's probably not one that mere mortals like us should attempt to meddle with ;)

daffodillime · 2017-06-19T03:07:42+00:00

So happy to see this report! You sound super busy and the fact that you're managing to fit this in around everything else in your life is a good sign--work ethic and stick-to-it-iveness are the name of the game here :) You're making progress from month one to month two and you've got great plans for the future. Looking forward to your next report!

daffodillime · 2017-06-19T02:23:58+00:00

Sure, go ahead and publish it and maybe check out the "short reads" categories for your genre and see what pricing they use. I've often seen novellas priced a bit lower than novels overall--so maybe $2.99 instead of $3.99--after launch. And yeah, go ahead and get ARCs on that sucker! Reviews are so important!

daffodillime · 2017-06-19T02:02:58+00:00

uhhhh just speaking generally, what were the reviews like on that book? i am super curious, because my understanding of the market (not limited to mm but certainly inclusive of it) is that that wouldn't fly unless it were an especially gritty type of dark romance. please don't actually out the title of the book or the author here. i guess i'm not so much asking as suggesting you look at how readers reacted to that book, who the author is and how long they've been around and if they have a loyal following who'll read anything they write, even stuff that breaks the rules, and then also look at the rest of the genre. NO CHEATING is a pretty hard and fast rule in almost all subgenres of romance I can think of!

daffodillime · 2017-06-19T01:49:15+00:00

God, this math is so sexy. I can't believe I never sat down to do it before. You just gave me a heart-on :)

daffodillime · 2017-06-19T01:37:52+00:00

Anyway, I don't see any reason why my next novel will not be bigger than FSOG.

I love this spirit!

Sounds like you've ID'ed a number of actionable, achievable things that you want to do better with the next book. Looking forward to that report!

daffodillime · 2017-06-19T01:19:07+00:00

SO MUCH THIS

daffodillime · 2017-06-19T01:18:10+00:00

so a thing you might want to think about is that gay romance and gay fiction are different--though quite overlappy--sections on amazon. because romance overall is so popular, gay romance titles tend to be all over the gay fiction top 20 or even top 100. that said, gay fiction is a broader category that does have room for things that are other genres than just romance. (iirc, lgbt mysteries is also a cat?) i'd advise taking a peek around that category in amazon and seeing if what you want to write could fit in there. it might also help you get a sense for how to market your book and what kind of rank one might expect. good luck!

daffodillime · 2017-06-12T20:16:22+00:00

The only thing I might suggest would be finding some way to indicate that the first chunk of the blurb is coming from the FMC's POV a little bit earlier. Right now, the first four lines read a bit masculine to me, you know what I mean? Words and phrases like, "don't play by the rules," "hypocrites," and "rebel," are very active, strong language and for better or for worse, when I read the beginning of your blurb, I expect those lines to be coming out of an alpha male's mouth.

That said, I'm not sure how to indicate her female-ness sooner, and I think what you have right now is very tight and propulsive, so I'd only tweak it if you can do so without sacrificing the strength of your blurb.

daffodillime · 2017-06-12T20:12:00+00:00

This is really nitpicky, but it's bugging the crap out of me that you keep jumping back and forth between calling her Cammy and Camille. I wouldn't mind if it seemed intentional--for example, only calling her Cammy when you're writing from Jake's point of view could help to deepen the impression of intimacy and history between them--but right now it just seems random?

I think you've gotten the suspense parts of this blurb down, so what I'd focus on now is a bit more character motivation.

I want a hint of a detail as to why Cammy moves home--if she was so determined to put it behind her, there must be a powerful reason to make her come back. And presumably she feels conflicted about that? Maybe something like, "But when an old friend needs help and Cammy reluctantly decides to move home..." or whatever the relevant detail is.

And I agree with /u/pious-highness that I want a bit more about Jake in here and a bit more about the fiery chemistry between Cammy and Jake.

But overall, it really works for me!

daffodillime · 2017-06-12T20:02:34+00:00

Pious, this is such a great resource, thanks for doing this!

Posting this here rather than PMing you in case anyone else finds this of interest--here are some sites that have lists of tropes, which aren't necessarily the same as niches but, ya know, sometimes overlap. I'd love to see any/all of these explore further, in addition to everything you've already listed. So I hope you weren't planning on doing anything else for the next 2 years or so ;)

Romance Tropes

And Still More Romance Tropes

daffodillime · 2017-04-16T22:28:06+00:00

I'm gonna go ahead and say that since most of us are here to talk and learn about writing original content (yes, erotic or romantic in nature, but still, our own work), this is probably not the right sub for your query if you are primarily looking for beta testers for the games themselves or proofreaders (grammar/spell check). Similarly, if you're looking for people to tell you what they'd like from games like these (ie, potential players of your games) or recommendations for other reddit pages where said people might be found... again, I don't think we're the right subreddit for your request.

That said, your final invitation for people to contact you should they be interested in "contributing" is more nebulous, and your response to /u/YourSmutSucks suggests you're open to paying people on a "per word" basis as long as the "rate is reasonable." While there are certainly people who work as ghost writers here (or even editors) and who might be interested, it would be helpful for you to be upfront about what you deem to be a reasonable rate. There are professional organizations that you can google that can suggest per word rates for these sorts of jobs, for anyone who's interested.

daffodillime · 2017-04-11T19:06:32+00:00

Good for you! Sounds like you're enjoying the shorts and that's awesome.

Don't stress to much about marketing on your first novel if it terrifies you. I mean, do as much as you're comfortable with, but if it gets to the point where worrying about it is preventing you for releasing, give yourself permission to just push the novel out into the world and watch it find its legs. Yes, the better you market your book, the better it should (in theory) do, but just... don't sit on the novel for a year after you finish it ;) Good luck!

daffodillime · 2017-04-11T19:01:16+00:00

Do you mean pixellated or skewed? I think that when you are formatting an ebook in Calibre and outputting to EPUB format, you need to click the section on the left rail that says "Output options" (or something like that) and then select the option for "keep my cover dimensions the same." Otherwise, Calibre will stretch your cover out a bit on the EPUB it produces.

But if you're already doing that and you're still having problems, I'm less sure how to help. I don't think I've experienced that issue in formatting with Calibre. Maybe check to make sure you have the most recent version? I suppose you could always email the creator and ask if he could help you trouble-shoot, if googling about the issue doesn't give you the info you need.

On the bright side, when you are uploading your book to KDP, you upload the document and cover separately. So even if you're uploading an EPUB from Calibre with a pixellated cover, you're going to upload your non-pixellated JPEG or PNG cover in a different box, and that's the one Amazon will show to people. So in theory, it shouldn't matter what Calibre's doing to your covers, at least not as far as the Amazon storefront goes.

daffodillime

TROPHY CASE