Fantasy discussion

A thread for general book and industry discussion (and other things too, I suppose).

Drifting from the topic is allowed.

Moved from the welcome thread.

Jabotikaba wrote:

Being both a good author and a good salesperson must be very difficult. Writing a book and selling it both require talent, but they are two very different skills. It seems that a successful indie author needs to be a modern-day Renaissance person.

I think its important to build a skill stack. If you can master one thing, and then pick up another, you can multiply, not just add to, your ability. If authoring is your future, it should be worthwhile to start picking up skills in the other areas. If you have no intention of that, then have a friend who will, or pay a professional.

My sense is, even if you pay people, you will still have to do a lot of it. Maybe even then you will learn a skill.

IRL, I would suck as a sales person. I am very introverted. If I can do all my pitching and talking online (in written text), I would be okay at it. But...there is only so much energy I have to spend. I am gonna work on getting book 2 out and getting book 5 written. After that...marketing.




Kristana wrote:

Maybe it's not a realistic situation, when an author steals another author's manuscript, but Kuang made a thrilling story out of it.

Getting a book stolen is almost a given today. If you become popular and start to take off, its a certainly your book will show up on a pirate site, and maybe even on amazon. If you find it there from some lowlife, Amazon will not be too helpful is helping you deal with it. It is a problem in the industry.



On the subject of Sales Marketers, and people offering their services to help you succeed...of which many are sketchy.

I dont trust any of them. Especially those who send me rando messages on face book, or email saying that my website sucks, or I am missing some market. Unsolicited pitches is not the way to reach me. I have my own ways of finding the team I want to help. So...sorry, but I will never be interested.

Jabotikaba wrote:

If you can spot a pyramid scheme, that makes you smart and them bad salespeople. It is evident that they are incapable of selling anything, at least to you.

I've sat through some pitches in the past, and my radar is pretty much up for these. The last one was actually a church, but it was very pryamidy to me.

What hurts is I have had more than a few friends over the years who really believed in these, and it was hard to listen and say to them that I thought they were on a bad path. They believed it so strongly. One was someone I very much cared about and it was hurtful to watch it. But.... Maybe they made it work. I dont know.

Mathew wrote

As an indie author myself, I've discovered that the thing indie authors lack (including myself) is a strong sense of salesmanship. That's pretty much what traditional publishing provides: salesmen.

Yes, trad publishing offers taking all the back office stuff away from you. They will produce the book, edit it, get the cover, market it...only...

Some of them are scams (dorrance...), and many of them still put the marketing back on you.

The marketing is the hard part. Its really something we all have to gain some ability at.

Unless you write smut ;) That may sell without marketing.

I'm sorry, are you telling me your writing isn't a thin veil for your dastardly kinks? Are you even an author?!

P. Pherson wrote: "But...there is only so much energy I have to spend. I am gonna work on getting book 2 out and getting book 5 written. After that...marketing."

This. I understand marketing is vital when self-publishing, but it takes a lot of energy indeed, especially if you can't afford to run some ads from time to time...

I also find myself a bit lost, since I'm not much of a social media person, and I feel like most sites I used to use are now a bit abandoned! I've heard that TikTok kind has it going for books, though.

I'm sorry, are you telling me your writing isn't a thin veil for your dastardly kinks? Are you even an author?!

I plead the 5th...

Okay...if you are reading my books for the smut, you will probably be disappointed. I am a fade to black kind of writer.

I also find myself a bit lost, since I'm not much of a social media person, and I feel like most sites I used to use are now a bit abandoned! I've heard that TikTok kind has it going for books, though.

I dont know that I can do TikTok, I already hate being on facebook.

So far, my marketing has consisted of buying ads on Amazon (with very little success), and being noisy in forum groups like this.

The number of readers I can point to as a result of my own efforts is very small. I have sold 100 or so copies, but I think most of those were people just sucking it into the library cause it was free for a day.

It dont matter, I wrote book one knowing it would mostly be a freebee. Its purpose is to sell book 2-5. Then it can stop being mostly free.

P. Pherson wrote: "I already hate being on facebook."

I cracked up out loud because this is so true... I ended up deleting it altogether some time ago but I am sadly considering going back...

I also see what you mean about book 1 being mostly free. I'm planning on doing the same as I work on the following ones, though I also thought about writing some shorter stories related to my book's universe that don't fit the main narrative to also make myself a little bit more known. I've heard about Royal Road and Wattpad to be good sites to do this, but I haven't researched enough yet.

I have written some pieces that are part of the big story, those I save for my website. You signup for my newsletter (and so far I have 1 subscriber :( ), you get a free short story about an event on my world.

I am also planning on using snippets like those for other marketing ideas. But...book 5 first.

Ohh I love those! How can I subscribe to your newsletter?

And yeah! My main intention is to have them on my website first, but I gotta get people there... that's always the hard part!

https://www.pphersongreen.com/

Everything there should be working :)

Done!

Just gonna say...I don't put a lot of energy into the newsletter cause I don't have anyone signed up. So....it may be a while.

But you should have gotten the story 'The Pond', which is about an early event in the story.

P. Pherson wrote: "But you should have gotten the story 'The Pond', which is about an early event in the story."

Got it! And I enjoyed a lot! You have a great style.

Thanks. Ive been working on mu writing voice for many years.

If you follow the series, the pond probably wont seem to fit in until book 3 or 4. But…it will seem really cool when it does.

Thanks for reading.

Moved from the Welcome Thread
Jabotikaba wrote: I would also like to recommend Midnight in Everwood.

I'll put it on my TBR )

If salespeople are trying really hard to sell their courses and services to you, but just not managing to do so, then they must be bad at selling.
I'm resistant to salespeople as well. I ignore tons of email messages.

Kristina wrote: "Moved from the Welcome Thread
Jabotikaba wrote: I would also like to recommend Midnight in Everwood.

I'll put it on my TBR )..."
It's definitely worth a read! )

P. Pherson wrote: "Jabotikaba wrote:

If you can spot a pyramid scheme, that makes you smart and them bad salespeople. It is evident that they are incapable of selling anything, at least to you.

I've sat through som..."
At least you tried to warn them, and that's something.