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

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

Not sure if this will be helpful as my writing method is... pure improvisation, especially in the first draft. I edit later when I see (or am shown) something is not working but when it comes to the first draft, I can't say I have any strategy other than "see where my ideas take me".

Dwayne wrote: "His love interest has two names: Nadia (meaning "hope")"

A bit late reply to that: I've used this one as well, as the inspiration for Princess Nadyenne.

My latest idea is that I might use google maps or something and try looking at the names of Greek towns. Maybe those will help for some ancient-sounding name inspirations.

It's something I'm considering. Maybe genre affects this as well - I guess people are more likely to expect sexual scenes in romance (and obviously erotica) than anywhere else.

What I'll do for sure is to detailed mention of possibly offensive content on my website where I list the work-in-progress books. By "detailed mention" I mean something like a list of this kind:
15+ recommended
cursing: minimal
nudity/sexual content: a few explicit scenes
drug use: none
(how it'll actually look is what I'll decide over time)

Since I'm writing fantasy, I think it's obvious to be pure fiction.

Please respect the "no links" and "no self-promotion" rules. Post deleted.

Since I am the only one in my family who can speak (let alone write) in English, this would not work for me. But I've used something from my life for inspiration: the MC lives in a house that has layout inspired by my grandfather's house. There's a character whose name is inspired by my first love (confession/plot twist: I've started writing to push her out of my mind when it became obvious that my feelings would stay unreturned).

Since those were the people who first encouraged me to go on with writing, there are a few characters named after World of Warcraft characters of my game buddies.

I'd speculate the reason was to limit the use of freshly-created bot accounts for selling reviews. A small group of relatives is probably not as large problem as the potential of thousands of bots reposting whatever someone would pay them for.

Since I have trouble with naming characters, I am not killing them without a reason and each death has at least some impact on the story (unless they are faceless and nameless cannon fodder minions).

Back in high school, I struggled even with single-page essays. Now, my to-be debut is around 185k words (and the first drafts were around 240k). So, I can give you one simple advice: just try it. See if you can do it. If not, try something else.

(Also, moving this to appropriate folder)

I've heard mentions of some entry barrier being added in the form of some amount of money spent (I've heard $20 but no idea). The only "solution" I can think of now is to come back to write the review once they passed said barrier.

When my parents visited my uncle in the USA, he was (supposedly) like "feel free to chat with people at the cash desk or such, it's normal here".
Now, let's ignore the fact that father's English starts and ends with "hello" and mother's English is the very basics. By their own words, he was the only one talking to random people like that and most of them were surprised by it.

To Frances: "AMS ad" means ads on Amazon. My best guess is that the AMS means something like Amazon Marketing Services or something along these lines.

Wrong section - check.
Self-promotion - check.
Link - check (even if in the heading)
---
Post deleted - check.

Justin: maybe the point is that I don't really care whether they'll be known. It's just something I did for my own silly joy.

Yeah, David Gaughran makes a lot of posts about these scams. I've seen his list of those companies, and it was a long one.

Zoltan: yes, it's very close (if not) high fantasy and I'm missing a few elven names in this specific case, though hints for anything in general can be useful - for more than just me.

Jay said it right in the last paragraph. In short: If they ask you for money, it's 99% a scam.

Be aware of any paid services from such 'publishing' companies. More so if they ask for hundreds (let alone thousands) of dollars.

To Micah and Wayne: Yeah, the $3 - $6 range is what I see for the usual 200-500 pages range. Longer books make sense to cost more. My WIP is currently at ~185k words (around 600 pages, I guess?) and in the early drafts was reaching as high as 240k - for which staying forever at $3 seems like undervaluing my own 'work'. The metalhead in me is still tempted to price it at $6.66 at some point as an experiment, though I know I'll start at the base $3 for the launch month at least.

Micah, I'm there with you on the fact that I hate names that are difficult to read, let alone to try pronounce. That's not just a lot of Z/K/X and ' but also special characters for me (so I avoid ¨,´,ˇand whatever else you can put above a letter). I want the names to be something that won't confuse the reader and should be easy to read (and hopefully easy to pronounce as well).

Anyway, thank you again for sharing your opinions - and I hope more people will come to add theirs.

Ben wrote: "Sometimes, I'll just use placeholder names until the actual names come to me, then I'll replace them all."

Yeah, I do that too. Unfortunately, the book is being worked on for 3 years already and I'd prefer to have more than placeholders now. The characters I'm looking to name now were originally to appear only once (maybe twice) so I did not intend to name them but eventually decided to use them in the sequels and so I realized a name would be good.

Baby names are something I might use when naming human characters but not so much for elves.

I haven't read the specific article but I've read something else on that matter (as per group rules, I won't link the work). In a model case of a paperback costing $10, around $5 are print-specific costs (printing, storage, transport). Price-matching e-books with print while not sharing these costs is a d*ck move on the publisher's side.

So, about indie pricing: I think $1 is too low (unless it's a short story) but the usual price range I see on full-scale novels ($3-$6) is completely okay.

As for why the publishers do it, there are some theories:
- encouraging to buy the paperback/hardback, as you said. That's their main business, the stuff they understand. Yes, they might not be fond of e-books for various reasons but they don't even understand some aspects of it, shown by their insistence on DRM (for example).
- making up for losses of poorly-selling books (I've seen a guesstimate that one of five books that are accepted the traditional way is a success, two break even and two fail)
- filling their pockets (of the extra $5, the author gets minimum, if anything)
I'd personally say it's a mix of all of the above.