Up and Coming Authors discussion

Authors:

SPAMMING: This is permitted under the Spamming Folder. You are only permitted to promote yourself/your book ONE TIME PER MONTH in this folder. And you must be a member. This is to prevent overwhelming posts which may detour our non-author members.


BOOK SELECTION: Please submit the book you would like chosen as a group read by the 20th day of the month to be put into the drawing for the following month's reads. I will need the following information with each submission: TITLE, GENRE, PAGE COUNT
I will randomly select 4 books every month...seperating each drawing by genre so there is only one/two of each genre for every drawing (when possible).

BOOK PRICE: The purpose of this group is for you to get read, not make sales. With that in mind, while your book is listed as our group read, you must gaurantee our members a discount of at least 10% off your normal rate. Shipping can stay at the normal rate. Please include the website where they can purchase directly through you so they can receive this price.

RATINGS: Please understand that ratings under 3 stars are only discouraged. Unfortunately, I cannot prevent our readers from giving a bad review. Please keep that in mind as you put your book out for view.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: For every book that you request to be read, you are required to read a book. If you have not read and reviewed a book by the time your book is read, you MUST read one that is or has been selected as a group read during the month your book is selected. You are encouraged (but not required) to continue to read at least one book per month before and after your book is chosen. Those who actively participate beyond what is required will be the ones chosen to have their books selected as group reads a second time whenever our inventory of new authors runs low. We need to support each other!

POSTING YOUR REVIEW:
You CANNOT just post 3-5 stars to support one another...the book MUST BE READ and a review MUST BE POSTED! If you feel the author does not deserve 3 stars, then please send me an email stating this and explaining why so I know you at least read the book. Also, this is NOT a "tagging" type group. I want real reviews given for the books you have read...5's accross the board are unrealistic for any author.

If there are any questions or something you think I may have forgotten, please send me an email.

Hey Mel,
I sell my book through PayPal on my site too. I just set up a second "Buy Button" (I actually have about 4 for various offers (Free shipping, 2 for 1, half price, $7.00 books) I made a duplicate web page from my "Buy Here" page using the "$7.00 button". If my book gets picked, I will just post a link to the special "Goodreads Page". It all took me about 4 minutes to set up.

Thank you, G.H.

Does that help, Mel? I can also post the EBook option..I'm all for those since they are less expensive. I haven't updated the rules on that yet, but I wouldn't want those to be any higher than $4 for our members, since there is no shipping/handling. We want to give our members every reason to want to read our independent books. High prices may discourage them from your book and our group.

G.H. , I overlooked answering the international shipping and handling...how much can that range from? I've only shipped from US to Canada, which us usually only $1 more. Would $5 for ship/handling internationally cover that expense?

Hi Sherry,

I just joined your group. Thanks for listing me. $7.00 seems fair.

Sheila

Sherry wrote: "G.H. , I overlooked answering the international shipping and handling...how much can that range from? I've only shipped from US to Canada, which us usually only $1 more. Would $5 for ship/handli..."

I only ship to the U.S. because I had no idea how to ship anywhere else or how much it would cost. I was lazy.

This is a great idea for a group, I'm surprised no one had thought of it before...

I can only offer my book in ebook form for $5, so I'll have to pass on this. I would drop it to $4 but the illistrator has set her price.

But, I'll enjoy checking out the other authors and being a reader here.

If you haven't already, you can list it under the Author Advertising once a month!

Hello all, I'd be willing to offer my book at $7, but you may have trouble getting authors at that rate. It's not that they wouldn't want to participate but for paperback or hardcover, the cost just to produce books will probably exceed $7 with many companies and that's not including how much it costs to ship it to the author so they can in turn ship it to the reader. Then to have to absorb that cost for everyone in the group, that's a lot for a broke author who's not getting the big advance from a large publisher. I'm not belly-aching, but I just want you to understand the full logistics of it. The E-Book option, I think, is a great, inexpensive alternative.

K.L. wrote: "Hello all, I'd be willing to offer my book at $7, but you may have trouble getting authors at that rate. It's not that they wouldn't want to participate but for paperback or hardcover, the cost jus..."

If it costs them that much, they are with the wrong POD companies.

If it costs them that much, they are with the wrong POD companies.

I wouldn't call Lightning Source a "wrong" POD company, but my longest book at 320 pages costs me $5 plus another $1 in shipping, and then the cost to ship to a reader is another $3, so that makes my cost $9, which leaves me $2 in the hole. I would consider the $2 loss a promotional cost except that I would need to know ahead of time how many I would need to send out.

Catherine M. Wilson

http://www.whenwomenwerewarriors.com/
http://www.catherine-m-wilson.com/

Hi Catherine, I'm using lightning source and createspace, and they are just about the cheapest in the POD industry in terms of cost per book (and I'm talking production, set-up, layout, printing, distribution, etc.) And I have researched all the major companies. There's no flat fee and prices vary depending on book length and other fees some printers tack on. So some people may have a 150 page book that costs only $3 bucks to produce. While someone with a 250 page will pay $4, and 300 plus pages costs $5. Like I said, not belly-aching, just putting that out there. So, I'm like Catherine, I'm willing to eat some of the cost on a promotional basis (or provide access to Ebooks) as long as I know upfront how many I'll need to provide.

K.L. wrote: (or provide access to Ebooks)

Yes, e-books would work for me, as I'm already giving away Book I of my trilogy as a free download from my author website. If we could elect e-books only, I'd be fine with that.

Catherine M. Wilson

http://www.whenwomenwerewarriors.com/
http://www.catherine-m-wilson.com/

Give me a little time to see what i can come up with as a happy medium on price...I think the biggest problem is that self-publishing has a higher cost to create per book than regular publishing. And if I may complain here with all of you for a moment...it's hard for us to compete with the mass market because of this. I see many self published novels selling for 11.95 and higher when the normal novel is $7.99...How do we compete??? I tried pricing my chapter book at $4.99 and basically making no profit just so that I could get it sold, but createspace wouldn't allow that because they needed their costs covered. The lowest they would allow me to go with was/is $6.10 for a book that should be priced at 4.99! Very frustrating!!
So, I know where you all are coming from. And what I'm trying to do is Knock us down so the readers in this group won't mind giving us a chance! With that...I will try to think of a medium. I have one in mind, just need to play with it a little :) Unfortunately, depending on which publisher we've gone with, I don't think I will be able to make everyone happy, but I will try my best.

All my children's books are available as digital downloads on Lulu.com for $1.25 - I would prefer for everyone to just get a digital download - the books are from 44 to 80 pages, so it is not to much volume to load into your computer, but paperbacks cost from $7 to $8 plus shipping. I can get a few with my authors discount, have people pay me $7 through PayPal and mail them out to everyone in US, but I would want to know how many copies are needed - I would have to cover shipping costs and that could add up. Could the digital download work for everyone?

Hi, Sherry
I just joined the group and I'm a children's author. Can I suggest one of my children's books for the group ;to read?
Thanks for starting the group!
Sandy

If u r an idependent (self published) author, u can submit it to me for a group read drawing.

My books aren't self-published, so I guess that means they aren't eligible. What about my contributing a book for a free drawing or do you have any other ideas?
Thanks,
Sandy

Unfortunately, this group is to support self-published authors only. I have seen other authors create their own group for give aways. As well, GR has a giveaway section that you s/be able to list your book on....look under "advertising" at the bottom of the screen. Good luck to you. And you are more than welcome to stay in the group as a reader, we would love to have you :)

Thanks for clarification and the suggestion!
Sandy

Just to say we all appreciate the very amazing job we each have done, in giving our time, our hearts and our hard earned own money in the art and the story we try to tell each other.
I love the idea of being kind to each other in here, because it is a great cushion from other frustrations we go through. Great big heart to each of compassion!
love, Sharon

This sounds pretty cool!
I'd like to submit my book:
Title: Angel in a Fur Coat
Author: C.L. Enuton
Genre: Fantasy Fiction Children's novel
Page count: 212
website: http://www.Gooberella.com

That's great, Cynthia. Welcome to the group!

This is not the correct area for submissions, though. Please delete this message and send all the above info to my email here on goodreads, which is where i keep track of everything.

I'd love to submit my book, The Case of Billy B, but the problem is that even though you can buy it from my website, if you click on the link it opens my Amazon estore so I don't have control of the price. Also, I live in Tanzania so it's going to be impossible to ship to me from Createspace and then for me to ship to wherever in the world. If you can let me know how to get around these probs, I'd be in!
Cindy