More Sleeping Prince Stats (Because I still think this is interesting)

I don't know why I'm so deranged, but because I am, I'm going to post how my readerships are enjoying my new scifi novel, 'Sleeping Prince'.  Enjoy!

So, these are sites where it is free to write and free to read.  Let's start at the bottom!

#4. Quotev - I got slapped with an M rating and this story will never recover from an M rating.  Most of the readers on Quotev seem to be well under 20, so they're too young for the system to let them access my book.  It's doing so poorly that I have short stories that are posted on Quotev that have higher hit counts.  I started releasing 'Hidden Library' there, so we'll see if that perks the place up, but this book will not win the day on this site.

#3. Booknet - These guys aren't doing too bad.  I'm simultaneously releasing 'If I Tie U Down' there and it's doing much better.  They'll both do better once I'm finished posting them.

#2 Inkitt - I got slapped with some lowish reviews, so that looks bad.  A reader can give star ratings for four different categories: overall rating, plot, writing style, and grammar and punctuation.  I have actually never received such low reviews on Inkitt.  Usually, I get showered with five-star ratings.  I actually don't mind getting slapped with lower ratings for writing style, plot, and the overall rating.  Those things are subjective, so that's fine, but when I get slapped with a low rating for grammar and punctuation, I wanna draw blood.  That is not subjective, that's technical... and technically wrong to give me anything lower than a four.  Not only that, but these are prose, not technical writing, so... yeah... I can hear my own blood pounding in my ears.  HOWEVER!  Inkitt has been so good to me in the past that I will overlook this treason and continue on.

#1. Royal Road - This is a HUGE surprise.  Royal Road hates romance, girl things, falling in love, and all that jazz.  However, they do love outer space, chase scenes, hiding, sneaking around, abuse, trauma, torture, spaceships, and unnecessary surgery.  So, I'm winning there.  I compliment them all the time.  It's amazing.  Reviews there are few and far between, but I got a very flattering one and that's helpful.  

It's also interesting to note that of the places where my books are available for download, I recently noted that GooglePlay has been kicking Amazon's pants for download figures.  That's weird.  GooglePlay is also kicking the crap out of Smashwords.  Now that is really saying something because my Smashwords account covers AppleBooks, Barnes and Noble, KOBO, and a huge handful of other download locations.  

I also recently decided to give Wattpad another chance.  It's hard to say how that's going to go.  Whenever I go to their site, they're always promoting the same stuff.  It seems like it's really hard to get noticed there.  

Welp, it doesn't matter much anymore which way the cookie crumbles.  We'll see how it goes.     

Getcovers

 

Hi Ink Drinkers,

Normally, I design my book covers myself.  But, I had seen millions of ads for a design company called Getcovers, and their covers were totally decent.  So were their prices, so I decided to go ahead and hire them for a cover for a novelette I plan to release on OBOOKO.  Here is the finished cover.  It took them two days to finish the order.  

First thing, they had me hit a stock photo/illustration site to choose a central image.  On the site, I made a vision board that had a bunch of pictures of glass bottles, terrariums, crystals, and the like.  Then I grabbed my daughter, who is wise beyond her years, and asked her which of the pictures she thought was the most impressive.  She did not choose this image, but she chose one by the same artist that was part of the same collection.  I told her that this picture was my choice and she said this one was better because it was more purple and less orange.  Normally, buying a license for an image like this goes from $1.50 - $20.00 depending on what your plan is.  You can buy plans that let you download hundreds of files per month and then the price for a single image drops.  However, I am not going to use hundreds of files in a month.  Using the sort of plans I usually buy, an image like this one would cost approximately $13.00.

Then I sent the designer this image with a note attached as to what sort of thing I wanted.  My description was that I wanted the title in black flourishing text with the image in the middle and my name on the bottom.  I wanted a gold geometric border and possibly grey smudges in the background.  It was going to be a hopeful romance.  I wished them luck.

Let's cut it apart and talk about it.  

If I bought a license for the geometric border, it would be part of a geometric bundle with a bunch of different shapes in it.  It wouldn't matter that it came with a collection of other design assets, I would probably never have a use for the other shapes.  The bundle would cost another $13.00.

There are three fonts.  The one used for my author name and the subtitle would not have cost anything extra.  Those fonts are free for everyone to use.  However, the font used for the title is a little more complicated.  This font effect could be achieved in two different ways.  Either it's a cheap font that has had those flourishes added, or it's a font that just looks like that.  If it's the font, no one gives that kind of font away for free.  Free font letters don't get in each other's faces like that.  Each letter keeps to itself.  If I had to buy the fancy font (that I would only have been able to use once), that's another $13.00.  If the flourishes are added, then they are part of a flourish pack that again costs me another $13.00.  OR the graphic designer was a careful girl (they had a girl's name) who knows how to make up symmetrical swishes like this on the fly, then they may have been free.

If I was a betting girl, and maybe I am, my bet is that it is a cheap font that has stolen flourishes from a more expensive font pack they had on hand.  I really like it.  I certainly would never have thought to mash up a serif font with a flourish.  One of the benefits of working with a company like this is that they can reuse certain design assets, so it costs them a lot less to produce something like this than it would cost me.

Lastly, I asked for grey smudges and they gave me pink.  The pink is better.  Those would have been free.  

So, if I made this exact cover, it would have cost me $33.00 (approximately).

With taxes and everything, working with Getcovers, I got it for $13.00 (and change).

That is exceptional.  

The most they probably had to shell out for use of the image was probably $1.40 and the rest of the stuff would have been assets they had lying around.  Given the instructions I gave, it probably took the designer ten minutes to put this together.  Maybe less.  All the same, I really like it.  

I'd hire them again.

As for the novelette, it's not ready yet.  Later.

Free Books

Hi Ink Drinkers,

One of the keenest frustrations of my life has been my inability to turn my writing career into what I have always expected it to be.  I never expected to rake it in like Stephen King, but I did expect to make a little scratch so I felt validated.  Yeah, that has been really hard for me.

I'm frustrated because I'm blocked.

One of the reasons for writer's block is that there is a gap between what the author imagines versus the kind of writing the author is actually able to produce.   That's in regard to a particular piece we're working on, not our careers.  The way to break writer's block is to give up what you initially wanted and to work with the reality in front of you.  The more you work on it (that particular piece and other writing projects afterward), the more you're able to create things that match your expectations and eventually exceed them. 

But what about a career?  That's not something you can do on your own in the same way.  I wrestled my demon for long enough.  In this case, the demon is the image of what I have always wanted for myself as a novelist.  The way to break the block is to let go of what I wanted.  It's over now.

Goodbye, Emily Loring.

Goodbye, Anne Rice.  

Goodbye, Victoria Holt.

Goodbye, Monica Hughes.

Goodbye, Margaret Atwood.

Goodbye, L.M. Montgomery.  

Goodbye to the novelist of every book I ever cracked a spine on and looked at their list of books and thought that I would one day be like them.  I won't be joining them in the halls of the bookstores of our times.  I have already published a book that had ten other book credits in it.  I wrote them all.  That book and the other ten books didn't make much money, so I'm done.  

This feels like a suicide note... and in a way, it is.  For months, I have felt that there was change in the air.  How would it come?  What shape would it take?  How would I be reformed?  

From now on, I will no longer try to make money as a novelist.  

I went on Smashwords and reduced all my fiction to free.  Then I did the same on Draft2Digital, DriveThru Fiction, and GooglePlay.  I went on Wattpad and Fictionpress, and started releasing chapters for books I never intended to give away.  I put If I Tie U Down on OBOOKO and Free-Ebooks.net.  I had someone message me on Facebook asking where they could buy one of my books and I directed them to a place they could get it for free.  

I'm not sure if I can give away all my books for free on Amazon without bringing an angry amazon down on me, but I'll try to find a balance there.    

In any case, it is time to do the same thing I would do with a story that wasn't cooperating.  I will examine it objectively and make decisions based on reality, not fantasy.

The reality is that in August (a hard month to peddle books), I had close to a thousand downloads and over eighteen thousand views for my free books.  That's when everyone is out enjoying the good weather.  No one is reading in August.  I need to build on that because that's reality, not some dumb idea of mine.    

*Yawn* Honestly,  I wanna go quilt something.  More book-making can wait for another day.