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

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

Sorry for the late reply - I was on holiday. I didn't have any issues with setting up X-ray personally. Also, the count will drop a lot when you merge duplicates (typical First name alone, First name + Last name, etc.) and cross out things you don't really need.

And yep, you may need different descriptions for individual books if they may be spoilers for later books.

By what I've heard, it's because authors were doing review swaps and it's hard to guess what's a genuine swap of honest reviews and what's favor for a favor. Unfortunately, there are so many disruptive elements to reviews that it had come to quite a trigger-happy approach.

Justin wrote: "Hmm..I may look into this. I know I thought about using it for my crime thriller set in Shanghai. I used real places so I could've used x-ray to describe the places in more detail."

For real places and names, you can have X-ray pull Wikipedia entries (it uses the summary at the very top, which is usually a paragraph-long, just the right size)

To Linda: I don't know about a direct way, but there's nothing preventing you from copy-pasting the X-ray definitions from one book to another.

To Justin: it's very useful for people who tend to forget names/places, especially of minor characters or less-important things. It's way better than the old approach of glossary at the back, because you can highlight a name right in the text to get a hint. It depends on the reader - I tend to use it, in the rare case the writer bothers to set it up properly.

For me, Calibre creating e-books is quite easy and does what I want if I input a HTML file... but I couldn't make it produce a decent print file. I couldn't get the page numbers and headers/footers right.

Yeah, Expanded distribution allows Amazon to sell the paperback in other stores, though at a larger price cut. Since I don't expect to sell paperbacks, I enabled it and had to up the price to $25 (700-page book) to get above negative royalty for Expanded while the minimum for selling it on Amazon is around $16.

It's always better to upload to Amazon directly and use a platform only for the other retailers. Yes, you'll need to deal with two set-ups instead of just one, but you'll get better support on Amazon that way. My direct upload paperback was updated relatively fast.

A site where you can hire people to do stuff for you, mostly IT type of stuff or digital art. There's a lot of people doing book covers or book formatting there.

Formatting the e-book isn't that hard, in my opinion, if you can work with a guide and basic HTML. Paperbacks are worse because of all the headers, footers, page numbers, and other nonsense e-books are free of.

Yep, the royalty from expanded distribution sales is lower and the ceiling is higher. For me (170k words, 6x9 paperback), the break-even point (just cover printing cost and seller cuts at $0 profit) is $15 for Amazon sales and $24 for expanded distribution.

B.A. wrote: "In fact, my local B&N won't handle a book without an ISBN. I asked for a paperback I saw online and it wasn't in their database. When I checked, the book had an ASIN which is exclusive to Amazon, not and ISBN."

I've just set up a paperback on Amazon, and it has both ASIN and ISBN. Amazon actually gives you a free ISBN if you don't have your own.

If you know someone who can read that rough draft and give you honest feedback, that would be the best.

I think the old version was too text-busy, something the new version helped a lot.

Murphy's law work well here. If you leave it for the last moment, you're guaranteed to see massive delays.
If you set it up a few days ahead, the price change will be processed in minutes.
Better safe than sorry, I would say.
I don't know how fast Ingram is, but a trick that tends to work, if Amazon is taking their time and other sources are updated already, just report a lower price yourself, they'll be quick to price-match.

B.A. wrote: "like the Eragon series which were 300+ pages for each book"

Yep, Eragon is a hand-killer in paperback (I believe you meant 800+?) but each book has its own climax, even if lesser, until the end (as far as I remember). What I mean to say is that you can't just split it up in half anywhere - the split needs to respect plot structure.

Gail wrote: "Mystery solved!! I heard back from Amazon - I just had to ask them about this. Their reply: Per Terms & Conditions, they reserve the right to discount paperbacks based upon different factors, which they did not elaborate. BUT (most interesting), the lower price does not alter author royalties for the book on any of the their sites, including international sales."

Maybe they got a cheaper deal on paper or ink? :D

I wouldn't be surprised if the production costs were set up at some failsafe number to account for price fluctuations, and if the related commodities are cheaper due to lower demand (blame COVID for everything!), it may be an option.

It's definitely not new.
Amazon can match the lowest world-wide price anytime, but I doubt they manually check every single book out there. They may actively check "the big fish" but, most of the time, they do it when someone reports a lower price.

Are you publishing it through a platform that then distributes it to many retailers, or a direct upload? And if yes, can you check the prices on each retailer - Amazon matches the lowest price for "wide" books, so maybe the conditions changed somewhere beyond your direct reach.

Well, what I said to the cover designer was a "680-page PDF, so that *should* be 340 pages".
Anyway, I've sent her a screenshot with the dimension Amazon wants, and will wait a day or two for a fix. I'm just surprised and looking into the reasons to make sure I don't repeat the mistake with the eventual sequels.

Okay, I'm back.
The book is 679 pages long.
So, naturally, as books tend to be printed on both sides of a page, I divided that by two (so 340 sheets) and told that to my cover designer.
But the Amazon UI is now giving me an error regarding the dimensions, as if it actually wanted 680-page thickness.
The preview appears okay with print on both sides of a page, so...
what the hell?