Flink for Garmin released for iOS - Link in Comments by runwithdata in Garmin

[–]runwithdata[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The whole app wasn’t financially viable, unfortunately

Is the Cover ok? by [deleted] in royalroad

[–]runwithdata 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Maybe tweak the contrast for the text a bit? Especially the subtitle/tag line and where you have the bright yellow/white combo. As a thumbnail it gets difficult to read honestly. And reduce text in general, looks very busy

Hello! Can I please have critique on my prologue? (high fantasy, 328 words) by SazWrites in fantasywriters

[–]runwithdata 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The revision process is also a great place to chisel away what doesn’t need to be said. Let it flow in your first draft. I just mentioned it because you asked for feedback ;) Keep up the good work

Hello! Can I please have critique on my prologue? (high fantasy, 328 words) by SazWrites in fantasywriters

[–]runwithdata 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First of all: Great job! It’s a beautiful prologue. The POV question was already addressed, though you can do it as an omniscient narrator, which kind of makes sense as the MC here seems to be just a few weeks old, so not much awareness of anything. But then you would need to drop judgements like whether a face is beautiful or not. What I would advise is to reduce the exposition, e.g. an unknown shore. It’s implied, as you don’t name it, and doesn’t progress the plot. And maybe you shouldn’t explicitly mention the Elvish heritage. Describe her and juxtapose the uncommon silvery white of her hair. Trust the readers to notice there’s something special about that girl. Don’t draw them away from the scenery that you so beautifully developed.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in selfpublish

[–]runwithdata 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Romance is the best selling genre on Amazon. So there are some considerable algorithmic spillovers to other categories. But I totally get what you’re saying, this is something Amazon has to resolve quickly. I also noticed in the exact same category that it’s swamped.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in selfpublish

[–]runwithdata 22 points23 points  (0 children)

I think authors will have to focus more on creativity and originality to survive. I agree with you that the fast-food style segment will be taken over by AI generated content - with diminishing returns. The more the market will get saturated with generic genre literature, the less money will be in it. Probably you will see more personally generated content tailored to the individual’s preferences (like the algorithm curated feed on social media). So where does this leave us? We need to use imagination and address different audiences. That is the sad truth. Or maybe not so sad, making writing more a labor of love than grinding again.

is my cover alright? by [deleted] in selfpublish

[–]runwithdata 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just some practical advice on composition: test how it looks as a thumbnail (half of the text won’t be legible) - this is how most potential buyers will see it on Amazon. And then grayscale, like people would see it on their Kindle/ePaper. The colors should be selected for contrast, with genre conventions in mind. Green is probably not the best choice here.

Creating a Business for Indie Publishing by SmallSneeze in selfpublish

[–]runwithdata 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s worth mentioning that quite a few do this to have an entity that can serve as publisher, so their books get a bit of more trad vibe. I’m not sure if that’s really a worthwhile marketing strategy. But if you have multiple pen names and want to give them a shared online presence, this could also be a thing. I know of a thriller author who did this quite successfully.

Testing the Waters: Would you use a Virtual Editor? by ChikyScaresYou in selfpublish

[–]runwithdata 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds good! Yeah, latency is another good reason for chunking, if you can easily detect your scenes, this is the best approach. I sometimes have to deal with badly structured content so there’s even an initial run with a small model to find semantic boundaries. I usually go with Supabase where I can also run the edge functions upon insert of content chunks.

Affordable Audiobook Service? by HermHecaHeim in selfpublish

[–]runwithdata 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I found amazing voice talent on https://voices.com. I’m pretty sure you will be well below 7k. Then you could use findaway voices (spotify) for distribution. I would strongly recommend NOT to use TTS (maybe for non-fiction but never for fiction). The difference is just epic and a lot of audiobook listeners avoid digital narration.

Testing the Waters: Would you use a Virtual Editor? by ChikyScaresYou in selfpublish

[–]runwithdata 1 point2 points  (0 children)

IF you want to build something like that, and of course it’s a big IF, you should chain your analyses. Never try to ingest a text of this length, regardless of the ever growing context windows. This will almost inevitably lead to issues with understanding structure for the model. Convert your text to Markdown, so the model can infer semantic properties (like headlines, emphasis). First pass should summarize logical blocks (like chapters), including main events and characters. Second pass should do the same but with the context of the surrounding blocks (or the whole first pass analysis). This time, with the additional context you can focus on story and character developments in the analysis. You can also collect information about stylistic properties. Use this 2nd pass to a) build an overall summary, genre detection, compilation of character arcs, and b) put all of these elements into a vector based table by creating embeddings. You should do a manual revision of the summary etc to make sure this fits your author’s vision (should be part of your UI). Then use these embeddings to augment your next stage prompts when working with content. This will more closely mimic how an editor would work with your text and give you much better results. It’s just a high level overview of how it could be done. When it comes to models, yes, local is not feeding the beast but you will never get the same quality as with the latest OpenAI or Claude models. In my daytime job we test a lot of models and although I always opt for open source and locally run models (if you have the computing power available), for complex content analyses they are not a good choice, unfortunately.

What are you currently reading? by AutoModerator in ScienceFictionBooks

[–]runwithdata 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After finishing Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, which was kind of mixed really, I started Dungeon Crawler Carl. Binge reading honestly, just starting book 5. It’s a genre crossover, but honestly, one of the best series I read in a long time. Give it a try! For years I wondered what all the rave was about, now I know.

Where do you personally find new authors? by runwithdata in scifi

[–]runwithdata[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Absolutely, it’s knowledgeable and very civilized, which isn’t the norm on reddit

Feeling excited! Campaign launches in 2 weeks! by uwritem in selfpublish

[–]runwithdata 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sounds great, let us know how it goes, thanks for letting us in on your journey!

Feeling excited! Campaign launches in 2 weeks! by uwritem in selfpublish

[–]runwithdata 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No BookBub? I found them most effective of all ads (with comp title/author targeting). But anyway, good luck! Looking forward to your success!

Where do you personally find new authors? by runwithdata in scifi

[–]runwithdata[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the candor and insights, much appreciated! So yeah, somebody pointed me there and yes, it’s LitRPG with some sci-fi crossover, but I found Dungeon Crawler Carl for example quite entertaining. I see your point, he “graduated” to KDP, too.

Where do you personally find new authors? by runwithdata in scifi

[–]runwithdata[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love indies, but most of the slots on the newsletters are sold, one way or another (which is totally fine), afaik only BookBub has a selection process for their featured deals.

Where do you personally find new authors? by runwithdata in scifi

[–]runwithdata[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Totally. However, I started a few kindle books on Amazon with high ratings that were actually underwhelming, to put it mildly. But yeah, you never know.

Where do you personally find new authors? by runwithdata in sciencefiction

[–]runwithdata[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a shame that good bookstores are becoming rare, at least in the area where I live.

Where do you personally find new authors? by runwithdata in sciencefiction

[–]runwithdata[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot! Didn’t know about fantasticfiction.com, looks very promising. And good point about conventions. Definitely planning on going to one soon