Tomas’s Comments (group member since May 15, 2018)

Tomas’s comments from the Support for Indie Authors group.

Catherine wrote: "Hi there,
Am offering my book up for reviews to a select group of reviewers."
1) wrong section and thus off-topic
2) no link rule broken twice
3) self-promotion
post removed.

Since I got to try writing out of nowhere, I just went with the idea I had. Considering the length, it was clear to be a series (at that time I thought 3-4 books, I now know it'll be a trilogy) and now I am doing my best to put it together. I have some other ideas in the same fictional world if I want to keep writing when this is done.

What will happen when I'm done with the ideas I have for this world? No idea. It's not going to be a relevant question for at least a decade anyway.

L.K. wrote: "If you're not sure how polished your book should be before you send it you could maybe ask your editor for their advice"

That's actually a good idea. Send a few chapters and ask. If they tell you it needs work, you can resume editing. If they tell you it's good enough, send the rest.

If all you correct in your self-done edit pass is just a few words per chapter, I think it's okay. It's pretty much impossible to catch everything and if you were re-reading it until you find nothing, it could take forever.

I really love what you posted about the "average UF".
Anyway, the reason why they are all so similar is because someone busted a jackpot with that concept and many others wanted to take a bite on it as well.
You could probably find different stuff but it might need a lot of searching. And yes, the fact indies go for something else when they want is a nice change of scenery. You never know what you'll find - and it might be a hidden treasure even without the hype mainstream stuff gets.

Yeah, forcing page numbers for e-books makes little sense.

I've given my fair share of advice in a different topic but I'll gladly rewrite it here.

First and the most important advice: NEVER list your e-mail address in any way visible to the public, that's asking for spam.

A website is not a bad idea, you can do well building the base (such as some info about you and your books) and then not much on top of that (just add info about the next book when it comes out). If you want to add stuff over time there (such as drawings of characters, additional information, deleted scenes,...), no problem with that. A website can also have a "contact me" form that'll allow people to message you but not display your email (so spambots can't easily flood your mail with nonsense). A blog works for some, not so much for others - but blogging is a time sink (I post 2-3 articles per week and it's a lot of additional writing) and you'd need to keep it running to keep the readers interested. Plus, it takes a lot of time to gain an audience through blogging with questionable results (even if they like what you blog about they might not be the target audience for your books).

Mailing list: similar to a blog but on a smaller scale. You're not expected to send something too often (that'd lead to people either not reading them or even un-signing if they were so often to be spammy) but if you post nothing but "my next book is out" once per a few months then it's barely efficient.

Goodreads "ask the author" allows people to ask you questions (obviously) when you turn it on - so this might be a good way to give people a chance to ask you about writing or the books. Goodreads, however, is not efficient for a longer one-on-one conversation but you can discuss stuff with a group of people (like you are just doing here).

As for social networks: that depends on what you feel like. I have minimal (well, practically none) experience with them but I believe IG is more for photo-related stuff. Twitter might be good for short questions or announcements (discounts, pre-orders of a new book, etc.). FB, I guess, can be used for anything but will take a lot of time - and tempt you to procrastinate, if what I've heard from some other writers is true.

I hope what I said helps you at least somewhat. If not, feel free to ask questions here, I'll do my best to reply sooner or later.

Molly wrote: "Two are rough drafted. They need an overhaul because they are a series that links together and I have some big changes to make. the 3rd in that series is 90% done but sitting on the back burner at the moment."

When I started writing, I (foolishly) believed that writing a series is writing one book at a time and publishing them like that, so I thought I'd have the first book in 2018, second in 2021 and third in 2024.

I am glad I strayed from that idea before the first one was in a complete first draft. Interweaving the editing #1 and early drafting of #2 and #3 help each other and if I just finished the first and then realized something's not working well towards #2 and #3, I guess I'd be screwed. So, I plan to work on it like this with the plan of releasing the trilogy with year-long gaps (which is definitely better than three-years-long gaps). The current plan is to have #1 released in late 2019 or early 2020.

And, as said, the pace is dependent on many factors, including length. I think that what I'm about to do is decent for someone having writing as a hobby with 180k-ish word count (for each book of the trilogy).

Molly wrote: "even if you only write 20 words today, that's 20 more than the guy sitting there wishing he was writing a book"
The motivational line of the month! Always keep the bright side in mind.

Link to FB is something I don't see a problem in.
As for e-mail, I'd be VERY wary about putting it anywhere public because then spambots can see it. If you want to be in contact with your readers, I can see three ways that feel safer to me:
1) Goodreads 'Ask the author' for questions related to your books or writing
2) If you are active on FB, that could possibly work as a communication channel (can't say myself, I don't use FB, might be better to ask a writer who does)
3) have a website which often offers a 'contact form' - this does not display your e-mail directly and goes through a spam filter before a message is even sent to you and the person will only know your email address if/when you answer them.

Ofc, you can use all of the three above or choose just some. You can try any other way as well - I believe some people use Twitter, Instagram, and whatever else is there.

I can say that if I ever used paid beta and they quit in half, I'd only pay the half they've done. In fact, I'd probably go with some system like 5-chapter blocks paid when each of them is done.

David wrote: "When it is exclusive, is that for the whole work or every part of it?

What I'm asking is, could I publish one story out of a collection on my site for free, or would that violate the select terms?"

I think you can't have the individual stories wide while having the collection in KU. If that was possible, then I think some people would cheat the system by having a book in KU and having it split into several "episodes" elsewhere (let's say, by 10-chapters).
I am not sure what would happen if you had one of the stories on your personal website as a "sample" because KU allows samples as long as they are less than X% (10, maybe?).

David wrote: "I haven't heard a compelling reason NOT to use Google Docs"

It was incredibly laggy for me once the file was more than 5 chapters (some 15k words).

Based on what I was reading over the past months, romance (I am not sure which exact subcategory) is the most affected. The main factor is the popularity of a genre. Another factor might be seeing how well is some cliché working - by what I've been reading, most of the 'stuffed' books follow the very same pattern from the base story to cover style.

As for DRM... DRM is useless in stopping piracy. More often than not, it'll hurt the paying reader more than a pirate. E-books are pretty much hypertext (not sure if HTML, XML, or what exactly) files in a wrap (the actual ebook file) and the DRM is nothing else than a few lines of code that check whether or not the account purchased the specific book. As David Gaughran said: "any hacker worth his salt can crack DRM in five seconds" because all it takes is to get into the book file and remove that code.

About possible solutions: I think the only way would be to completely change how Kindle Unlimited works. At this point, the money from KU reads is what drives these cheaters, not actual sales. Amazon made a few ban waves but these are not really efficient if the cheaters just make more accounts - more so if they buy false IPs or use false names.

And finally, about the chances of genuine writers: they are always small in very popular genres where the competition is the fiercest - and where the cheaters are because the popular genres give the best theoretical chance for profit, should you make it to the top (or cheat to the top, in their case).

(edited for typos)

I agree with Dwayne and Jim and their comment on the first paragraph. Especially if all of that will be in the very beginning of the book to set Tessa up.

Axe the clichés and redundancies from the other paragraphs (as Dwayne suggests) and the second+third will make a solid base for a shorter (and hopefully stronger) blurb.

Good luck!

Keep the "no links" rule in mind, please.

I've found another one yesterday as I check it before the next editing stage:
...they left their horses to grate...

anyone wants a grated horse?
(obviously was meant to be 'graze')

Edit: I found another jewel: 'surrogate bother' instead of 'brother'

Edmund: I haven't had that problem myself, but I had some others that seemed weird. Most of the time I took it as a hint to rewrite the sentence to make it clearer.
What I know is that Grammarly struggles with names containing apostrophes and possessive forms of custom names (more so possessive forms of custom names containing an apostrophe), even if you add it to your personal dictionary.

Maybe you could save on a full-scale paid edit by looking up some advanced grammar-checking tools. Do some research on which one is worth it, make an editing pass using the free version to weed out the most glaring issues and then consider the paid version. I presume many of these services are subscription-based so you could just buy a one-month subscription (or what's the shortest option) and set a day or two aside to edit this way.

Probably not outright evil though I feel sorry towards the two characters I did not plan to have killed.

I am working on my first book the fourth year already, so if I get it done this year, I'll be at 0,25/year mathematically. On the other hand, I weave that with working on the sequels so I can then release them with yearly gaps (I presume they'll all be around 180k words which is 600-650 pages I believe).

I'd suggest you find a pace that suits you. If you rush your work, it'll suffer.