Aspiring and Self-Published Authors & Writers

[CW Author]

Hello RPG

After a long time of lurking during my years-long hiatus from the guild, I noticed that many of you have mentioned writing your own original work outside of roleplaying. So I thought maybe it would be good to have a discussion thread for not only those of us who have released books but also those who might be putting ideas together for a writing project in the future. Hopefully, this can be a good resource for advice and feedback too.

I'll start with my own work. I'm a self-published author who has released two books in a Post-Apocalyptic series called 'The After-Skirmish'.

Here are the covers.

@Stormflyx and @Jabberwocky

(Thank you for both showing interest!)

I'm currently working on the next in the series but also looking to branch out into cyberpunk and horror as well.

What are you working on or hoping to work on?

[Hank]

Those are wonderful covers, @CW Author!

I don't know if this is too private a question to ask, but I've always been curious. How successful has your self-publishing venture been thus far in terms of sales? What's Amazon like when it comes to exposure? Do you have to do all of the marketing yourself or is there some kind of recommendation algorithm you can try to game, like YouTube has?

[CW Author]

Those are wonderful covers, @CW Author!

I don't know if this is too private a question to ask, but I've always been curious. How successful has your self-publishing venture been thus far in terms of sales? What's Amazon like when it comes to exposure? Do you have to do all of the marketing yourself or is there some kind of recommendation algorithm you can try to game, like YouTube has?

@Hank

Great question, Hank.

I can say that in my experience the toughest part is the 'start up costs' paying for a cover artist and an editor specifically. The sales process is mostly trying to make back the money you spent to release the book, which also is burdened by any money you spend on promotion (ads, etc).

I can say with my book I got very lucky on the editing side, and was able to save a ton of money and I was pretty good at shopping around for high-quality artwork that didn't break the bank, so to speak.

Without going into hard numbers I can say that I've made a couple hundred dollars profit after all my expenses over the span of about 7 months. So a great hobby to make some spending money but nothing in the way of 'making a living' at least not at my level. But then I'm fairly new at this and I'm still building my mailing list and doing promotion where I can.

I know some folks who write addjacent to my genre make up to 5k a month mainly just by being very consistent, writing to market and putting out a LOT of content consistently. People really like series in the E-book world.

[CW Author]

@Hank So are you writing something at the moment? Got something in the works?

[POOHEAD189]

Self Publishing is extremely hard for me, because you need to do your own advertising and I do not have the capacity to go "Look at this amazing thing I did, now pay me!" I can hardly do that to one person, much less doing that to a dozen people a day like I know some self published authors do. I'm not criticizing them, mind. They should do what they need/want to do. It's just not something I'm good at, and I'm not claiming I'm that way out of humbleness either. Partially it is that, but it's also partially pride. I can't bring myself to beg, I guess, which is what I feel like I am doing when I do that.

But self publishing is more than just shilling your work, or it takes more to sell one than simply that. You need at least 3 things.

• You need a cover. Even if it is an ebook, you need a good cover to catch people.
• A good, gripping title.
• Research the market. If you can find the right market, you could more easily get sales. No one is looking for a 45,000 word stand-alone space opera except me. People tend to enjoy romance novels, children's books, horror novels. Anything past those, like Space Opera/Epic Fantasy/Grimdark Anything, they need to be in a certain word range. Epic Fantasy is usually above 90,000 words for instance. Almost no one buys a 50,000 word story of anything. It's too long for a novella and too short for a contemporary novel. The only time publishing a story like that would work is if you hire an agent, or make it something a large market would eat up like romance.

[Dolerman]

"You need a cover. Even if it is an ebook, you need a good cover to catch people"

@POOHEAD189

Way ahead of you there

:D

But yeah this all sounds like good advice.

[CW Author]

Got a new cover in the works, will need your opinions on it! :)