Inkshares Community discussion
Nerdist Contest Discussions
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Contest Catharsis
Mod
I entered the contest on a whim with no expectations, and I'm very happy with how well it went. I've learned SO MUCH about the self-promotion side of publishing, and I'd like to think my skills have improved. I didn't even have an author's bio going into this, so I've come a long way.
I've really enjoyed the camaraderie of this group and hope the connections I've made last far beyond today.
Next on my agenda:
- Finish writing my book!
- Create a blog (it's long overdue)
- Touch base with a few of you about that Dark Fantasy Collaboration project I posted about
- Maybe a vacation? (I know, what the heck is that, right?)
I'm pretty happy with how the contest went, overall. I think my writing improved as I received feedback, and that was always my foremost goal when I decided to throw my hat into the ring. I do feel that I could have done better, but it looks like I'll be taking 24-26th place when all is said and done, and that isn't awful considering how poor my original manuscript was when I uploaded the incredibly-rough first draft. I also had a non-existent social media presence, though it's certainly arguable how much my twitter and other outlets contributed to my overall standing.
Going forward, I'm feeling both confidant, and overwhelmed. I think the story is in a strong place (for the most part,) but I'm not sure how I can maintain sales to hit 1,000 by early November. There's a couple interviews and various blog-type-stuff lined up, but that doesn't seem to translate to more than a couple hard sales.
At the end of the day, I think the experience was an important one for me. The Inkshares community improved my writing, improved my book, and gave me a good deal of confidence I didn't previously have in my own abilities as an (aspiring)author.
Mod
Mod
While I often like to joke about the difficult aspects of promotion(to the point that I may come off as sounding bitter rather than the goal of funny), I'm quite happy with the progress so far.I came into this having severely neglecting marketing/pitches, so that I had to start from scratch for all intents and purposes. While my marketing ability is still far from where it really needs to be, I do see it getting better, albeit slowly.
I've gone from someone who could not talk about his writing to someone who actively does so, though admittedly that is primarily online and still only rarely through spoken word. I have recently broken through my shyness enough to get an interview with a podcast, just waiting on a finalization of the date, so hopefully that will help me to further break down that mental barrier when it comes to verbalizing about my work.
And in many ways most importantly to me, I went from having almost no community(there was only 1 person before this that I would talk to on a regular basis about writing/my work/trying to get my work out), to now having a community through this group that I can look to for insight, support, and so on.
So yeah, great experience now that I read back through all of that, and its not over since my campaign is running through 11/21 if I remember dates correctly.
I wrote this to my Facebook page.. Joe and Avalon are forcing me to post it here too... ugh... work."'A God in the Shed' did not get in the top 5 on the The Nerdist collection contest on Inkshares. I'll write a blog about this experience. It'll be rad.
First I want to say a word to my fellow participants: Stop sending updates about your book 'failing' or 'not being successful'. The contest is a highlight of the funding campaign. To 'fail' you'd need to give up and allow your book not to fund and then never try again. You still have time to get readers and pre-orders. Ask those who were successful for their secrets or to send you some readers. Rethink your strategy. Ask Inkshares for an extension to your campaign. Do anything... but don't give up. Don't walk away having learned something unless that thing is that you shouldn't walk away. Take a few days off and get back on the horse.
Look at These Old Bones. Andrew 'failed' his first campaign but he got back on it and tried again and now he's getting published. He might even be in the Nerdist collection.
Failed... Five of us got a publishing deal and a great opportunity and we're all happy for them, but this isn't the end. The time has come to ride their coat tails. To benefit from the attention they brought to Inkshares. Their victory is our victory. Already there are more people who participated as writers and readers in this even then the previous. This is a good sign.
Check out the Inkshares Writers group on Goodreads. Connect with other writers. Share tricks, tips, readers. Sing right along with the echo of this contest.
Get your god damn book funded."
J-F wrote: "I wrote this to my Facebook page.. Joe and Avalon are forcing me to post it here too... ugh... work."'A God in the Shed' did not get in the top 5 on the The Nerdist collection contest on Inkshare..."
Absolutely. Could not possibly say it better myself.
I'm relieved the contest is over, truth be told. I submitted the idea to Inkshares a little while before the contest began. It turned out to be eligible, so I threw it into the contest before any of that idea had been turned to written chapters. (I wouldn't have submitted it without the encouragement from Matt, Avalon, Jeremy, and the other folks at Inkshares, so thank you for that!) So, I entered the contest and, based on the merit of the idea alone, I received tons of support. I was rocked by that support, and invigorated, and ready to write.
And while I'd *love* to continue funding it, the fact of the matter is that it doesn't exist! It'll a tough story for me to tell, I think, since a lot of it will hit close-to-home, and I want to do the right thing in telling it. I have other stories to tell, and another idea on Inkshares that I think will do well. Simply put, the time for "One" isn't now.
(Follow The Taking Kid, by the way. It's my other idea.)
But that doesn't mean I'm giving up on "One" or the hopes of publication. To the contrary: I want to write something worthy of publication before making the effort toward that secondary goal. Maybe once I'm established I can sell pitches, but that time certainly hasn't come yet.
Congratulations are due to every single person who submitted something. It takes a special kind of courage to put your writing out there for the world to see.
You are right, JF. None of us "failed." Some of us just succeeded more than others.
;)
Not gonna lie, I was a little crestfallen to have only netted about 20 readers in the whole thing, but then I remind myself that that's about 17 more than I had when I started.I'm also really happy to have connected with other awesome people and talented writers (invaluable) and we will hopefully keep up with each other even after this thing is over.
My inkshares for Signs in Steel is still running through to March, but I kind of doubt I'll be hitting 1000 preorders. But hey, the whole ordeal cost me nothing, so I'm still ahead.
Not to mention, the contest has rekindled me on my project. I'm no John Robin who puts out 100 pages every weekend, but I'm slowly creeping through my 80 or so pages, revising as I go, and I plan to pick up the path and write new pages once I get to the end of what I got.
Sincerely, good luck to all of you fine folk on your future endeavors and plan to see me again for the next contest :)
Mod
I didn't win, but the easiest way to deal with that was by giving up hope a long time ago, HAHAHAHA.
"Hope is a mistake." - Max Rockatansky
You know it, Max.
I'm in this for the long haul. Some Real Life Events have taken away a lot of my concentration for the last week and a half, but I'm in it. I want to work with Inkshares. I think they're cool and interesting and different and I want to try.
I also, man... I just really liked making that coloring book and I want to make another one. I want to record radio theater performances of scenes from our books. I want to start a youtube channel where we post our promo videos and updates and contests and interviews. I want to see our scenes animated, or drawn as a graphic novel, or both! I want to know every project on Inkshares and I want to be able to hook people up with similar books to cross-promote. I want to celebrate project milestones and I want to rally whenever someone needs orders or reviews or space at a convention table. I WANT OUR OWN CONVENTION.
I'm into this whole thing. I like it and I want to stay.
(Uh oh, I'm starting to hope, oh no...)
Mod
Hi everyone. Tony Valdez here, author of Dax Harrison. I literally just heard about this group about 20 minutes ago. Haha. Great to see everyone supporting each other!Well, I joined the contest fairly late in the game, so I had no expectations of being in the Top 5 (although that would have been AMAZING). I figured I was in it for the long haul from the start.
Reading some of the updates from the winners and other folks who came close, I was amazed to hear how some campaigns were getting 20 or so sales per day, maybe more. Whereas I've been lucky to grab 1 or 2 so far.
I've been trying to get the word out with all my contacts, friends, family, coworkers, etc, and they've been a good help so far. But I gotta ask (and sorry if this has been answered in other threads already), how does one make that jump into double-digit sales??
I've heard a few details from a few people. I saw Jamison had his booth at Baltimore Comic Con for ROTA, which was awesome! Another author told me he snagged an interview with a website which helped. Anyway, if you guys have any tips for me, I'm all ears. :)
Thanks everyone. Glad to be a part of this ongoing community.
-Tony V.
Mod
Double digits in one day is something I never managed to achieve either, but there are definitely some methods that work.
Crankybolt/Richard has some great advice here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
And the topic is discussed at length here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Good luck!
Oh man... ::Pant::... I live... that was really friggin hard. Now... I work on the rest of the part and look to unload and support a bunch of other projects as well.
One of the interesting things about a model like Inkshares, especially at this stage of the game, is that success for anyone is success for everyone. The plan right now is to bring readers into the ecosystem. The larger the variety of writers getting published in different genres, the larger the net is cast to capture readers. Getting published is all well and good but then there's also moving copies.
We didn't do much of that after the last contest because we didn't have this community going, but now that the Nerdist thing is coming to a close, it's good to ask ourselves "what's next?".
That's why I love that line of Richard's "...unload and support a bunch of other projects as well." and I'm curious to see how we can push more books to their funding goals and promote books already in production.
In a purely selfish way, I want to see all the books get super popular because that means more eyes on my own book by association.
J-F wrote: "One of the interesting things about a model like Inkshares, especially at this stage of the game, is that success for anyone is success for everyone. The plan right now is to bring readers into t..."
For sure! Definitely going to be sitting down this weekend and recommending my fellow authors books that I haven't got around to yet. Gotta earn them credits! Already exchanged pre-orders with quite a few people but my budget can only sustain that for so long. haha
Mod
Could Inkshares be the online platform for writer's groups to use as a sort of base of operations? You can post your writing and receive critique, which would be really helpful for this group I attended. They don't have anything like Inkshares.
This will bring in new writers at many different points in the writing process. It won't necessarily bring in readers, but if a person starts their draft on Inkshares and gets critique there and finds followers as they go, they might end up with dozens of followers when they're ready to start funding instead of zero (like most of us had).
We could advertise on college campuses where there are tons of writers looking for ways to get their writing out into the world.
We could also ask for a board on Inkshares similar to the collections page, but for critique groups. Maybe Inkshares can't or won't expand their functionality to host the groups themselves, but they could at least provide a page for group leaders to post their group's interests, open spots, and contact info.
Hmmm...
The last month and a half has been a very exhilarating and draining experience. I stumbled on the whole thing on the 16th, having never heard of Inkshares before. My manuscript is only 75% done, maybe a little more. Then I have to go through editing. That was the thing that really made me take the jump. A good editor can cost thousands. I ended up being pretty disappointed in some of my family, but that's behind me now. I'm going to keep spreading the word and keep writing. Once I'm done with the manuscript I'll see where to go from there. If I somehow hit the 1000 goal then I'll be happy to get editing help from Inkshares. If not then I'll be going through the long process of submitting a chapter a week to my writing group and get editing done that way. If I can't get through the Inkshares process with publication then I'll move on to self publishing my own kindle. I have a story to tell. I think it's pretty great if I do say so myself, and nothing is going to stop me from getting it out there.
Quickly dropping this in here:http://www.jfdubeau.com/babbling-eloq...
A quick blog post about my experience with Inkshares as well as answering a few questions about what it's like to go through the publishing process with them. I hope I didn't make too many mistakes...
JF
J-F wrote: "Quickly dropping this in here:http://www.jfdubeau.com/babbling-eloq...
A quick blog post about my experience with Inkshares as well as answering a f..."
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
J-F wrote: "Quickly dropping this in here:http://www.jfdubeau.com/babbling-eloq...
A quick blog post about my experience with Inkshares as well as answering a f..."
great post very informative. Was your book finished when you won the contest?
Yes. Which I should have mentioned. It was finished and had been edited professionally, so that smoothed the process significantly. I expect it to be more work for writers coming in with incomplete books.
J-F wrote: "Quickly dropping this in here:http://www.jfdubeau.com/babbling-eloq...
A quick blog post about my experience with Inkshares as well as answering a f..."
AWESEOME. Thank you :) This is really useful. I also hadn't thought about the pre-order money, and offered a couple NFPs locally to donate to them my $5 share of any preorders they got. Luckily, they didn't get many preorders that I now have to pay them for! ;)
Mod
I think introducing writing groups to Inkshares would be a good thing. It is a great way to develop your novel while also building support.
Well I was feeling a bit down for the first few days after it ended, but then today I felt like doing some email outreach. So I scoured scifi blogs and scifi author blogs and assembled a list of emails for the ones I wanted to contact (individually, no group stuff).Got about 50 in before I noticed there was a reply from one of them. For privacy reasons I won't say who it is or what they said.
All I'll say that there are polite ways to say no, and there's the way this person did it. They could have just as easily not replied to the email at all, but instead chose to degrade me and what I was trying to do.
It's a shame that some people find it easier to be rude than to be nice or even just indifferent..
I have been pretty crushed by this experience, but I was crushed for weeks. Watching other books gain readers when I got none, and then hearing them complain about not getting more readers when I couldn't break 50 was rather heartbreaking. It was even more rough when I realized that my book, already completed and professionally edited, was getting even less viewership than those who were still in the idea stages. I keep questioning whether or not the book is good. I mean, if it was good the other authors would like it too and promote it in their updates thereby creating more interest, but that simply didn't happen. So maybe this is a sign of things to come with the success of Shadow of the Owl.
However, as I've been writing and rewriting this book since I was 12, and I've already put nearly two grand into its production, there's no way I can pull out of the novel selling business now.
So I signed up for a book convention next weekend, and I'm preparing the book for presale through KDP. It's high time people actually saw this book, and the only way that's going to happen is if I publish it myself. That's my reality, I knew it before I rushed into the Nerdist contest, and that reality hasn't changed.
Good to point out that it's a crapshoot, there's a whole slew of reasons dictating traffic and sales. I've seen dozens of pretty strong stories that haven't gotten nearly the hype they deserve. It all boils down to luck, and presentation. There's another thread that highlights a lot of this, and raises some good points about how much you have to sell yourself as much as your book.
Is there any way of trading your soul for luck? Well, I'm not a satanist, but damn, the day drags by with no sales. Kind of depressing. Also, I am SERIOUSLY not going to kill any lambs or ponies in a sacrificial ritual to satan. uh, don't call the police on me. :)
I'm seeing a lot of people who entered this contest and are now disheartened by the experience and that seems terrible to me. I understand it and I think it's natural but also an inaccurate way to go about it. So here are a few things to keep in mind before you get too hard on yourself:1. It's not about the quality of your book or the quality of your writing. These contest, both Nerdist and Sword & Laser was a race to hustle. The top spots went to those who managed to get the most attention for their projects. While it helps to have a good book and an attractive campaign, you could be sitting on the next Game of Thrones but if you were unable to get eyes on your project you will still have lost.
2. It's the worst time to fund. There were over 300 entries in the contest towards the end. That is not a normal number of books to have funding at the same time. Getting attention on your project when there's that much noise is extremely difficult.
3. The system skews towards the top. People are naturally more inclined to support winners. If you're already in the top 5, you aren't just more visible, you're a more attractive project to support. On top of it, the top 10 got extra visibility from blog posts on Inkshares and the Nerdist almost every week.
4. Inkshares isn't about contests. In fact, I'm sort of hoping they move away from that model for a while and let some dust settle. Contests attract a very superficial and ephemeral type of readers. While I'm sure several will become regular visitors to the site and supporters of the platform, in many cases it won't. If you came here just for the contest then I guess this may not be the platform for you, but you should know that attracting readers isn't limited to publishing on Inkshares. There isn't a publishing platform that won't ask you to build a fan base.
5. Look at what the winners did and do some of the same. Even if you've decided to move away from Inkshares, take a long, hard look at the winners and how they did it. They didn't win because they lucked into it. They won because they rallied hundreds of people to their side and got them to order their book. Whether you're on KDP, CreateSpace, iBooks, whatever, if you want a readership, you'll have to do the same and you too will want to start with friends and family, then get media attention, go to conventions, etc.
I know it doesn't jive with the romantic notion of being discovered by publishers and fans alike to be whisked away on a cloud of advances to a life of endless pumpkin spice lattes and conferences at literary conventions, but Inkshares is a reflection of how the publishing world works most of the time; you either walk in with a pre-built audience or you learn to build one quickly.
I've been on both sides of the situation: I won the first contest and thought "man... that was a lot of hustling!" and then I lost this one and after the disappointment thought "Man... I should have hustled more!".
Lucky for me, and for anyone who wants to put in the effort, there's still plenty of time to hustle some more.
And I plan on doing just that and I hope many of the promising books I've seen who weren't in the top five also give it a shot.
The thing is... no matter how much you hustle, people may still not notice you... and that's not your fault. Nor is it an indication of the quality of your book. I am not letting my 'Not Top 5' place finish to keep me from publishing my book, and none of you should either. The winners worked hard, yes of course they did. But they also got lucky. and maybe they happened to have a more enthusiastic support group. I have a really big family and I thought that would help me, but in the end much of my family just did not respond. and that's not may fault... or even theirs really. it just is. Deal with it and move on.
Sean wrote: "The thing is... no matter how much you hustle, people may still not notice you... and that's not your fault. Nor is it an indication of the quality of your book. I am not letting my 'Not Top 5' pla..."That's kind of my point: you don't let the 'Not Top 5' stop you. If not winning a contest stops you, then how are you supposed to power through a crowdfunding campaign? Being rejected by publisher after publisher? Seeing the sales on a self-published book linger at barely nothing?
That's what I want those who are tempted to quit to understand: Quit Inkshares if you feel you must, but don't quit trying to get published and don't think it's about the quality of your book.
J-F wrote: "Sean wrote: "The thing is... no matter how much you hustle, people may still not notice you... and that's not your fault. Nor is it an indication of the quality of your book. I am not letting my 'N..."That's pretty much why it doesn't faze me that much. You're going to have to hustle no matter what approach you take, and you're going to have to face rejection/lack of response no matter the approach as well. What matters is how you keep pushing ahead, even if its a slow, grinding, and sometimes seemingly futile progress. Just keep pushing on.
One thing I should clarify: When I say 'It's not about the quality of your book', I don't mean 'write garbage and it won't matter'. The quality of your writing is of utmost importance and will be critical in the long run. However, very few people will read all your samples and materials. They'll be interested in your concepts and ideas but generally at this stage you want engagement. Which is the most difficult pill to swallow, at least for me, because every minute I'm trying to convince someone to take a look at my project is a minute I'm not working on my writings, but alas, that's how it has to be.
Who needs sleep anyways.
As the top 1 loser of this contest :-) (I came in 6th place) I just want to say that luck has nothing to do with this (or maybe really little). I actually think that is quite dismissive to say that the top 5 made it there because "they got lucky" crowdfunding is a skill. It takes hard work and a special kind of personality, especially to reach the numbers the top 5 did. You have to be willing not only to ask people, but to shamelessly nag people until they buy your book. It took me a long time to get my friends and family invested in this project. It wasn't just an e-mail, a phone call or a Facebook post. It was 600 personal messages to every one of my Facebook friends explaining to them why this was important to me. And then a second round of personal messages to those who didn't answer to the first one. It took several more reminders to get those who committed to buy the book to actually do it.I stood outside of comic book stores and engaged strangers. I took time off from work and spent it in the break room talking to every single person who works in my building.
If anybody is thinking in doing this again, you need to stop believing that luck has anything to do with it.
I probably sold 10 books, to people I didn't know or had a one-on-one conversation with. I had no luck getting people to just read my chapters and fall in love with them; that came later, when they had bought the book already and probably thought "I should check out what I bought." Most people actually bought my book without reading a word. they bought it because I told a compelling story.
Being an independent author is hard, and it takes a special kind of person to make it out there. Believe me, when your book get published people will not run to bookstores to buy it no matter how good it is; you will not become the next Stephen King by getting lucky.
I didn't win and I was crushed. But now I passed my 750 pre-orders. So there is hope for all of us, don't give up. But know what it takes.
Ricardo, I respect your efforts and I congratulate you for what you did accomplish, but let me be straight with you. No one in this contest worked harder than me. Nagged more people than me. or has a better written book than me. Not in meaningful quantities. I'm not talking in absolutes, I'm just talking in general orders of magnitude. We ALL worked very hard so don't push that crap on me. Effort is not enough.Crowdfunding is a LOT of work, but it also has a LOT of luck attached to it. If you don't happen to get in front of people with whom your story resonates then you don't get sales no matter how much you nag.
That is statistically invalid. If the best written book in the contest was submitted to the most potential reader, then it should, logically, resonate with a larger percentage or that larger crowd and thus have more success.
One of these values has to be incorrect.
So fine, let's assume there's a lot of luck attached to it. Hell, my own campaign had several high stakes gambles that didn't pay off, asking for help form high profile individuals which didn't have the impact I hoped for, so I get where you're coming from. However, luck only goes so far. If I roll a die once I have a one in six chances of rolling a six. If I roll it a hundred times though...
That's what's meant by making your own luck. It's not just about the book resonating with the right audience, though I'm certain that helps a lot. It's not just about nagging people until they buy. It's about skewing the probabilities in your favour by replacing accuracy with volume where you have to and vice versa when you have the opportunity.
Yes, in the end there were only 5 (6 after the facts) spots to win this contest but winning the contest is just the backdoor to funding on Inkshares. While it might require more luck to get into the top because you're comparing your results to the results of others and a bit more luck on their part can push them higher on the rankings, that no longer applies to the long term goal of 750 pre-orders where the only person you're competing with is yourself.
Mod
Luck is also impossible to measure. The reality of Ricardo's effort is not diminished by anyone else's lack of success. Your own effort, Sean, isn't diminished by his effort or his success.
It's not helping anyone to argue this way.
What we could do instead is discuss what strategies worked and what didn't. We could refine our pitches and alter our approach to get the most follow-through from the people we contact. We can help each other. We're not enemies, here.
My point is that Ricardo attempts to diminish the efforts of every single other person that didnt do as well as he did when he claims luck has nothing to do with it. All of us worked very very hard on this. I haven't read every single entry to know what the quality levels of everybody's work is, but I can confidently state that no one here has a book that is 10 times better then mine. Nor did anyone here work ten times harder. Yet Ricardo has 750 orders and I only have 77.... So ... no J-F it does not necessarily follow that a larger population will lead to greater numbers in sales. It's not absolute with genre fiction until the numbers get into area where it is not possible to go face to face with so many. If you get in front of 1000 people there's a half way decent chance that only 10 or 20 of them read genre fiction. On the other hand there is also a half way decent chance that you hit the right group of 1000 and it's closer to 500-600 who read genre fiction. That is luck. If we can reach 10's of thousands things start to reach mass averages. Even that's not a guarantee though. I went to Rose City Comic Con. There were 10-15k people there and I talked to as many of them as would stop for two minutes with me. I still didn't get that many bites. I'm sorry if that comes off a little heated but I get really irritable when someone claims the reason I didn't win was because I didn't work hard enough.
Well it is heated, it's also wrong. That's not luck, that's skill and effort. You went to a comic con with 10-15k people and got a few nibbles. I went to a comic con with 1000 people and sold 50 books. Maybe I'm just better at talking to people and pitching to them. Maybe smaller conventions were a better marketing choice by me. But neither was a facet of luck.
Luck is randomly getting picked up by a major news source out of the blue and skyrocketing ahead...
Only the three people that had press that won the contest, all three reached out and set up their own interviews. Again: Not luck.
Here is the funny part: You and I are both engineers. We can crunch the numbers and find the most effective avenues.
You could have ALL of the effort in the world behind you. You probably did. CLEARLY you tried. It just wasn't effective. It's not luck that Riccardo got his 600 facebook friends in a final dash that almost caused him to win, he just was more effective in reaching out to them.
When you say luck: You dismiss everyone elses efforts.
Another person in the contest, who didn't win, but is well on his way to making his goal hit another comic con. He sold 200 books in one weekend.
Luck? Or is he just more effective at shaking hands.
Nobody even ONCE claimed you didn't win because you didn't work hard enough.
"If you get in-front of a 1000 people there's a half way decent chance that only 10-20 read your genre".
You say this is luck.
I say it's bad planning. Don't go waste your time standing in-front of 1000 football fans unless you write about football.
Well, I missed a brilliant discussion. I wish there's more I could add, but there really isn't any. The best to say this is: Don't give up, go gather up all of your fans and pray for some small luck. Sure, the winners of the Nerdist contest may not be there because of they are lucky, but it sure as hell doesn't hurt to be lucky. Quality doesn't matter if your readership is small. I don't have a large readership, and i haven't had a angle sale in DAYS. Don't get discouraged and keep doing what you love.
Pep talk out. Good luck.
Mod
1.) We live in a grey world. This or that's aren't productive.
2.) This is the catharsis thread. A place to get things off your chest. You might not even mean them two minutes later. Let's not ruin the safe-space by turning it into a debate.
Sean wrote: "No one in this contest worked harder than me. Nagged more people than me. or has a better written book than me.""I haven't read every single entry to know what the quality levels of everybody's work is, but I can confidently state that no one here has a book that is 10 times better then mine. Nor did anyone here work ten times harder."
I'm sorry but that is a terribly arrogant attitude to have, especially in this sort of environment with what we as a group and Inkshares are trying to do.
You can't put yourself on a pedestal and claim that you're better or have a better book than everyone else without anything but your own opinion to back it up. For the most part we're all on the same level here, sure there's some that have reached the golden goal and are in, but for the rest of us we're all just trying to make this work the best that we can.
Sure Ricardo has 600 Facebook friends...so what? I only have 70, and only about 15 of them ever replied to the messages I sent them, and only 9 of those bought a book, but I'm not angry at other people for that, I have no right nor a need to be. I've still managed to sell 232 copies despite being very limited in what I can do to promote.
We're all in this together and we're all doing the best we can. Some people may be better positioned to sell a book to people while others aren't and that's no ones fault and it has nothing to do with luck, it's just how it is.
I have a laundry list of excuses why I wasn't in the top five. None of them is bad luck. None of them reference the quality of my book. None of them are mentioned in public forums. They're founded on facts and have been crippling hurdles on the road to funding.They do not stop me from aiming for my goal.
They do not undermine my confidence in my product.
They do not keep me from learning what worked for others that I might use for myself.
If all goes well I'll be at a small con in a week and half. I expect it to be underwhelming. I don't have props and a costume and a very outgoing attitude. I'll do my best to make it work for me but if it doesn't I'll study why and try to improve upon that for next time. There will be a next time.
One day I hope I'll share a convention table with a fellow Inkshares writer because, like Paul says, we're all in this together. If we can keep from jumping down each other's throat this is going to be a lot more fun than going down this road alone.
Sean wrote: "My point is that Ricardo attempts to diminish the efforts of every single other person that didnt do as well as he did when he claims luck has nothing to do with it. All of us worked very very hard..."I don't think Ricardo is attempting to diminish anyone's effort. But I do agree with him in that it was not a matter of luck for anyone who has gotten large numbers. I would say its not entirely a matter of effort either. Its a matter of skill.
Regardless of how skilled a writer you are and how much effort you put into promoting your product, it takes a certain skill set to promote effectively. I came into this with none of that skill set, and am not much better today which is why my book has such low numbers.
Is my writing of a quality to make my book desirable? I certainly believe so. Do I put in significant effort into pitching and other such attempts to get people to my book? Yes. However, my pitch is weak. I have always had a hard time talking about my work, especially when trying to do so in a small number of words designed to entice. That sort of brief sales pitch is exactly what one needs for this sort of campaign though. My ability with such things has been growing throughout the process, but its still nowhere near where it needs to be. I'll keep going on, taking my lumps, and getting better at it.
Not saying your frustration is invalid, because I entirely understand the feeling. I'm just more with Christine in that I don't think arguing with one another is productive. I just feel its better to vent, get it off your chest, and move forward without assuming people are trying to belittle you. I'm going to shut up about this now.
Richard wrote: "Well it is heated, it's also wrong. That's not luck, that's skill and effort..."No Richard. That's skill, effort.... AND luck. I'm not saying what you, or anyone else, did was all luck. I'm saying some of it was luck. We ALL worked very hard. If you say that it was all due to your effort then you are telling me that you worked harder than me. That you put in more effort than me. And I know that's not true. Not ten times harder than me. That's all I'm saying.
Paul wrote: "I'm sorry but that is a terribly arrogant attitude to have, especially in this sort of environment with what we as a group and Inkshares are trying to do."
Paul, please go back and re-read what I said. I did not say that everyone else here sucks. I said that no one here is ten times better than me. If that's arrogant then excuse me for not being a wet blanket. I'm not angry at other people for getting sales. I get irritated when they say it's because they worked harder than me. That's all.
I am an author. I am writing something that I think people will want to read once it gets published. I am certain that it's better than some of the fantasy out there that I have read in the past.
For goodness sake, Dennis McKeirnan(sp?) got published and he plagiarized almost the entire story of Lord of the Rings from start to finish. I still have no idea how he did not get sued by the Tolkien estate.
I'm going to be exposing myself to the slings and arrows of (hopefully) 10's of thousands of people(hopefully more). Of course I'm confident. You have to be a confident person to be an author. Confident that what you have to say is worth being read by other people.
So if you think that my saying you aren't ten times better than me is arrogant... I don't know what to say. I can only repeat that I am not saying I'm better than you. Like you said, we are all probably fairly equal around here. I'm only saying no one is so much better than me that effort alone got them ten times more sales than I got.
In the end my point is that none of us should be discouraged if we don't place in the top five, top ten, or even the top twenty. Each and every one of us, I'm sure, put our hearts and souls into this effort.
I was talking to people every single day. I had cards so that they didn't even have to remember my website or the name of my book. My pitch was less than two minutes. I contacted local media. I contacted blogs. I got a blurb from the Geek League of America guys on their Facebook page. I got lots and lots of smiles and 'cool I'll check it out'. I worked my ass off and I still only sold 77 copies.
But I'm not letting that stop me from forging ahead. I still think my book is pretty damn good and it's only getting better the more I work at it. When it's done, whether I get funded here in Inkshares or not, I'm getting it published. I'll shop it around to publishing houses first, because I would love to get professional editing. But even If nobody bites on my book I'm still going to publish and I'm going to bust ass every single day to sell books. And eventually I'll be lucky enough to get in front of the right people who will love my stuff AND also have friends that they will tell about my book AND those friends will also buy my book. That's a LOT of 'ands' and each one of them requires just a little more luck. That's all I'm saying.
Sean wrote: "Paul, please go back and re-read what I said. "sure
Sean wrote: "No one in this contest worked harder than me. Nagged more people than me. or has a better written book than me."
That's putting your effort and your work above everyone else's. Yes the second post changed the qualification slightly, but it was the initial one that irked me and came across as arrogance instead of confidence.
If that wasn't your intention, fine, I'm not going to argue the point any further and have no interest in doing so, but that's how it read.
We all know that the internet can be a fickle mistress when trying to get a specific thought across through text alone.
Let's look at the whole statementSean wrote: "No one in this contest worked harder than me. Nagged more people than me. or has a better written book than me. Not in meaningful quantities. I'm not talking in absolutes, I'm just talking in general orders of magnitude. We ALL worked very hard... "
That's not putting my work above everyone else. That's saying exactly what it reads. Order of magnitude is equal to a factor of ten. I said no one produced ten times more work/quality than me. But a good sized handful did get 10 times as many sales than I did. My point, right there in the text, is that we ALL worked very hard. We ALL, I'm assuming, have a good piece of fiction. Otherwise we wouldn't be trying to get it published.
Therefore to say that one's effort is what got one to 750 when I only got to 77 is saying that one worked 10 times harder than me, produced something ten times better than me, etc. I don't believe that. Not for an instant. I can't. If I did then it would mean that I am not worthy of publishing. I won't believe that.
None of us have any crowdfunding experience, besides maybe a few (for example Andrew Ainsworth, author of These Old Bones, was in the last contest with that very book. So he did come into this contest with not only crowdfunding experience, but Inkshares experience in a contest format, and he still only placed 4th. that's not to say that 4th place is an "only" sort of designation. It's super awesome and I'm happy for him. What I'm saying is that he had a HUGE leg up on all of the rest of us and he still didn't get first place.)
So to say that one has more skill in crowdfunding within this group, outside of those very few with real experience, is not correct. In fact most of the winners did not have any prior experience in crowdfunding. Some were more successful in their crowdfunding effort. It may even be (tongue firmly in cheek) that they used better techniques than I did. But that's not because of skill(except in one case). Skill comes from experience. We all tried various techniques. Nobody has time to try them all. Some obviously work better than others. I evidently did not find the successful ones and others did. But to say that was because of skill and not luck is incorrect(except in one case). The next time around, THEN it's skill.
Again, I'm not saying it's ALL luck. I'm just saying it's a factor.
Sean wrote: "That's not putting my work above everyone else. That's saying exactly what it reads. Order of magnitude is equal to a factor of ten."okay, so I've identified the issue, and it's with me. I didn't realise 'order of magnitude' meant by a factor of 10. I can't say I ever actually knew that, but if I did it was 10 years ago in high school and I've forgotten almost everything from high school maths...
so that's a comprehension/knowledge issue on my part and I apologise about that.
Andy and I were right there together in the last contest, we finished 9th and 10th respectively, so we both had that prior experience going in, we both went in with 200+ followers already in place. Now obviously this time around things went rather differently for the both of us with him winning in 4th and me sitting back in 18th.
There's probably a lot of reasons for the difference, but at the end of the day I couldn't get the people together to place higher. I personally only asked maybe 80 people, and I had 2 or 3 other people that asked others on my behalf. I just don't have 5-600 people I can ask to buy my book.
So that's circumstance as a factor as well.
Sean, sorry my message offended you, it was not the intention at all and I did not intend to diminish your efforts. But I stand by my point, luck has little to do with this. I am glad you are confident about your book. If we don't believe our book is the best out there then how are we going to sell it right? best of luck.
Come on in and blow off some steam. Celebrate, forget, laugh, cry, do what you need to do and if whether you are one of the five, or one of the 300+, discuss what your plans for the future are.