Marie Silk’s Comments (group member since Jan 03, 2017)

Marie Silk’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

Great read, thank you for sharing!

Good idea :) I went through the thread and followed everyone's Facebook pages. I recently set up a Facebook author page myself and would be grateful for your follows!

https://www.facebook.com/Marie-Silk-1...

Upfront costs are going to depend on your narrator's hourly rate. You pay for each finished hour. My 43K word book ended up being 4.6 hours long. This is from the ACX site:

"On average, most performers narrate about 9,300 words per hour. Divide the total number of words in your book by 9,300 to find out approximately how long your finished Audiobook will be. When you create a Title Profile on ACX, the length is automatically calculated for you, based on the word count you provide."

So once you have an idea of the number of finished hours your book would be, you would muliply that by narrator's hourly rate which could be between $50 and $250 per hour.

I've used Book Gorilla for promotions that turned out okay-ish, but haven't tried the author page. I didn't see much purpose in it since the main function of Book Gorilla is the email newsletter.

Here is ALLI's directory of awards. They rate "New Apple Book Awards" as "caution" instead of recommended.

https://selfpublishingadvice.org/alli...

Congratulations on the new book, Anna :)

Oh dear :(

Bar Codes: I've never had to purchase a bar code for my books. The cover designers just leave an open space in the corner where Createspace or Lightning Source add the bar code.

ISBNs: Buying individual ISBNs is way more expensive than buying in bulk. I bought a pack of 10 but soon ran out and kicked myself for not having bought the 100 pack. You need a separate ISBN for each format (epub, mobi, paperback, hardback) and edition (first, second, third) so that a single book could have 5 or more ISBNs. If you are planning to publish more in the future, maybe consider buying a bulk pack to save $.

If you publish with Createspace instead of Lightning Source, Createspace will provide you with a free ISBN that can only be used through them.

Copyright: Registering copyright is not necessary but could add slightly more protection if the book is involved in a lawsuit. I do Mandatory Deposit (sending 2 copies of the book to the Library of Congress) and a copyright page in my books, but I have not done the official registration.

Heartbreaking news. So sorry for your loss, Carole.

Sorry about the Radish frustrations, Alex. Congrats on getting your fourth book out, though! I certainly understand the "releasing the next book of the series" nerves. Hope you get some great results!

Thank you for the link about going wide, MaryJane!

Even the big book stores aren't making it anymore. In our town, the two biggest (and only) book stores, Hastings and Borders, are now gone after "going out of business". I did notice that much of the merchandise at these stores, and Barnes and Noble in the next town over, had become non-book stuff.

In Ted's scenario in the first post, the prices and requirements seem reasonable enough to me. Unfortunately most indie books will not break even with that model, so there doesn't seem to be much point in trying. That being said, I have paid more money on different marketing schemes for only mediocre exposure, so $30 does not seem bad in the grand scheme of things, if one's goal is to get books into a physical store.

I don't have first hand experience with Bookbub ads, but one of the authors I follow uses them and seems happy with the results, reporting that she at least breaks even.

I pretty much loathe every version of my bio that I've put up over the years ha. I don't know that author bios really matter all that much for fiction writers. To be honest I never read them until I became an author.

I like your bio, except I think the sentence about your book seems out of place. The rest sounds great to me.

Thank you for this info. I'm planning to publish one of my books with D2D next week so this is helpful. Do you know what kind of delay there is between the actual sale and it showing on the dashboard?

I did fill it in but was surprised when the survey stopped abruptly after the question about how much promotional money goes into my books. Also it was a sloppy question imo because it did not give a time frame, like how much do you spend per month or per year. Without asking how much one would spend on a Goodreads Giveaway, or how much value one puts in a GR Giveaway, how was there any point to that survey? Alex had it right by not filling it in!

Alexis wrote: " I’m just afraid that whatever I write will be pure crap that no one will truly enjoy.

Anyone ever feel like that?"

Every time. Sometimes you don't know how your book will be received until you put it out there. Some people say my book is the worst they've ever read, some others enjoy the books enough to email me messages of thanks and questions about when more books are coming. The rejection was really difficult to take at first. It still is. Sometimes I feel too discouraged to write anything else for fear of rejection. I have to remind myself that my books won't be for everyone, but they will probably be for someone.

I'm wondering if they started a new batch of review deletions recently. Bloggers definitely noticed it happening months ago when Amazon published the guidelines including the $50 minimum. Many stopped reviewing altogether :(.

Amazon's review system has some serious issues. I was just looking at a book on Amazon this morning, The Far Side Gallery 2, and almost every review on the page was about fly and mosquito repellent!

The $50 requirement has been in effect for a while...I believe it started at the beginning of this year. The article is mistaken when it suggests you can't leave reviews on free downloads. I get reviews on free downloads every time I run a promotion. The highlighted portions in the article are saying that you are not allowed to write reviews on Amazon if you have never bought anything on Amazon before. This weeds out fake accounts/fake reviews. Unfortunately many legit ARC bloggers/reviewers who weren't necessarily Amazon customers had their reviews removed when this change was implemented.

Congratulations on the new publish, C.L. :) I can sympathize with the being stressed about sequels thing. I think it's because we want to produce a book at least as good as the last but never really know how it will sit with readers until the reviews come in. Not sure if this info helps, but I found that most of my sequel sales came from new readers, not necessarily from those who had read the first book at an earlier date. I think there is a tendency to lose interest if the next book is not readily available. But if I remember right, I think you have built a nice foundation with your email list. Wishing you lots of sales and reviews from new and existing readers!!