What I've learned from self-publishing so far

I must say, I'm not a fan of the interview. In principle, it's a nice idea, but effectively you're saying:

The start of this novel is a bit weak, but give it a go and read the rest, you'll like it.

"I was so self-conscious about properly introducing the characters and world that I don't think the opening chapters flow as naturally and confidently as later ones."

Then to compound that, you're saying. You may think this book is weak compared to the later, but go on, give them a go, you might like them.

"Although I've worked with my editors to produce the best book possible, it doesn't have the emotional highs and lows that are coming in the series. So I'd say GATHERING is great, but the next books are better!"

I'm not even a huge fan of saying how long this took you to write as well. Are readers going to wonder they won't get Book 2 until 2036?

IMHO, I'd remove it, or have more positive questions in the IV.
 
I feel i have missed something... What interview?
 
Ralph and Stephen are right. I blogged about this once. Never, ever show anything other than full confidence in any project. When Abendau's Heir came out I was hit with wanting to explain why it got so dark and justify it, even though I knew what I was doing with that storyline and why. I didn't (in the main) and am now very glad I didn't. The trilogy speaks for itself. No apologies, no telling us what might or might not be weak, just belief in what you have written.
 
ralphkern said:
IMHO, I'd remove it, or have more positive questions in the IV.
Click to expand...

Good call - done. I hope! Might take a couple of days to update properly.

Quellist said:
I feel i have missed something... What interview?
Click to expand...

I added a Q/A to the "From the author" section on the Amazon.com listing, then copied it over to Goodreads.

I will learn to talk less!
 
Brian, self-deprecation*. Self-depreciation sounds more like a currency reference ;)

It can be awkward blowing one's own trumpet, but I think that's just another kind of writing. (Like avoiding the word 'try'. Do or do not).
 
Brian G Turner said:
So that's another lesson learned - no British self-depreciation on an American website!
Click to expand...

This is a far more difficult thing to pull off, I think, than many people realise, especially if they're not British (but even if they are). My own natural stance is one of self-depreciation and lots of humour, but even the most Brit-philic Americans don't get some of it. Teresa Edgerton warned me about it in one of the book videos I made a few years ago. As a consequence I mostly write, PR and promo for a non-American audience, which isn't an ideal situation for an author. The one good thing I will say about having a back-list and twenty years behind me is that at least I've got independent evidence to call on. When you're starting out, you don't have that. :/
 
Something I'm finding frustrating about Createspace is that there appears to be no option to set a publishing date - so I've updated the original post with 2b, about trying to work with a publishing schedule via Createspace.
 
Brian G Turner said:
Something I'm finding frustrating about Createspace is that there appears to be no option to set a publishing date - so I've updated the original post with 2b, about trying to work with a publishing schedule via Createspace.
Click to expand...

Yes, this is an option Createspace really need to add. I hope it's something they're working on...
 
Incidentally, I've read elsewhere that Ratsy's understanding of Amazon pre-order period sales is correct, but the contrary is true of other sites (Kobo, Barnes & Noble etc). So, a long pre-order period makes sense for the latter but a short one for the former.

Let's say you get 2 sales a day for a 2 month pre-order period. On Kobo, that gets lumped together and you get credited with effectively 60 (or so) Release Day sales, just from pre-orders.

For Amazon, you'd get the diminished results of 2 every day (as if the sales were after the release date) so, all else being equal, your Amazon sales rank would be much poorer than your Kobo (et al) sales rank.
 
Createspace - why are you messing with my book title?! It's designated as:

Gathering (Chronicles of Empire 1)

but they've published it to Amazon.com as:

Gathering (Chronicles of Empire 1): American edition (Volume 1)

What the ... ???
 
I spoke with them on the phone a couple times, and they were actually really helpful. They can probably fix that up I would assume.
 
Yeah, it looks as though it's getting sorted out, but it's frustrating that there's a problem when it comes to feeding information from Createspace to Amazon's own systems, specifically:

1. Inserting additional & unwanted information to paperback titles
2. Stripping out line breaks from book descriptions, so that text ends up crushed together in a single paragraph

I'm not sure what's causing the problem, but it does mean Amazon support is left to clear up what appears to be a couple of simple software errors.
 
You might have just a tad of bad luck there, Brian, we didn't have any issues at all with CS. In fact, the books exceeded my expectations.
 
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