The woes of Self Publishing

@VictoriaKaer I'm sorry, but you are not putting your efforts into things which are likely to produce a result. Yes, it's essential to have a website, but it has to be one with good SEO. That means your website needs constantly changing content with strong keywords, and need to provide information that readers want with good quality links.

Your website doesn't have that. There is nothing in it that is likely to make a browser bookmark the site or any of the pages in it. On a technical point, writing in all caps is tiring for the reader and there are grammer errors.

Ask yourself why the reader would want to be kept updated on what you are writing?

Second technical point. I thought you paid for the cover art? If so, it should belong to you.

However, I really do feel that the cover does you no favours. Other people have pointed out why it doesn't catch the eye and how to improve it. As a potential reader, I don't care how accurate it is of a scene in the book, I want something that will grab my attention and make me click on it.

Forget the print books. The CEO of Lulu.com is on record as saying that the average copies of books sold is 50. Basically, it's your friends and family who are buying it because they like you. The fact that none of them are willing to write a review means that they either haven't read it or didn't like it and don't want to tell you.

For practical purposes, the print books are a loss. What you need to concentrate on is the e-books. You can take down the e-book, do an edit to reduce some of the italics, pov shifts and over-sized paragraphs, then reformat and put it up with a revampe, or even a different cover, at 99c.

By all means, put a mention on Facebook and Twitter that your revamped book is now on sale, but don't spam. Instead, go to websites with heavy traffic and see if you can make a casual reference to your book, with a link.

Comment on popular blogs with a link to your book. Hold competitions with a book as a prize.

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@Ctyolene I did not publish the book or do the formatting myself, I did it through Createspace. To redo any of the processes, formatting, editing, cover, I HAVE TO PAY MORE TO THEM TO REMOVE AND RESTART THE PROCESS, I am not talking about the actual cover art, yes that belongs to me. I'm talking about dealing with the publishing part of Createspace. They charge you! Why is no one listening to me? Then I would have to pay on top of that to have someone redo the artwork simply because I can't draw to save my life. Either way I'd have to fork over more cash all the way around.

Right so forget it. All right?

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@VictoriaKaer You can take the book down from Creataspace, edit andf format it yourself, and put it up, for free on Amazon. It will cost you nothing but time. If you are not prepared to do that, then there is nothing I can say that will help you.

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And P.S. they have read, I've gotten emails from most of them telling me what they liked and disliked about the book. They either don't understand the Amazon review thing or are simply too lazy or forgetful to do it. My daughter also gifted several of her teachers with copies of the book near the end of the school year. And they told her they enjoyed the book as well. You guys got mad at me saying I was attacking people, so don't go attacking my family and friends and insulting them and their intelligence or integrity. Trust me if they didn't like something they would tell me. (and have throughout this entire process)

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@VictoriaKaer Cytolene is only trying to help you. No one is attacking you, they've all been trying to help you improve the sales and overall quality of your book. She didn't tell you to waste more money on the createspace thing - She merely said to take it down from there, re-work the cover and a few other minor things, then put it up for FREE on amazon by yourself. You may have wasted money with the createspace thing after you take it down, but, if you follow the advice in this thread, it's more than likely you can make up the difference by the increased sales you'll get from a new cover and such. You don't even have to necessarily pay for a new cover. Several people in this thread have offered to help.

Cytolene is an amazing writer herself. She gives out A LOT of writing advice on wattpad, as well as publishing and querying advice and most of the time she gets bashed for it. She doesn't get anything out of it. No one attacked your family /friends. Cytolene has a lot of experience in these areas, you would do well to listen to her.

This is the only time I'm going to post anything in this thread, but it's just been irking me. Please don't attack people trying to help you because you don't like their advice. It only makes you look immature and unable to accept that your book might not be 100% perfect.

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@Ctyolene I have no clue how to do that. I can't do a cover on my own. I can't draw to save my life, which is why i hired an artist. I so excited when he got my vision of how the main wyvern looked. Ug, I just so want to cry now, it seems all kinda stupid. Why get it visually right if people hate it? Why bother being true to the book and the way I have visualized the characters?

I can't take it down, I can't redo the whole thing. I can't start over. I've been working on this entire project for over two years. I lost so much time and money with stupid LuLu. At this point I'm just very done, frustrated, and slightly depressed with it all.

(Oh and I don't remember who was talking about the book description up on Createspace and Amazon, but I did pull it down and I put the alternate one up. Which is shorter. The one that was up there is the one that is on the back of the book. That was originally all I had. The alternate one I only came up with recently and I totally forgot I had the shorter one. I also did put up the prologue on my stuff, if I didn't say that already. I can't remember)

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@Skyhuntress I never said she was attacking me. I said she was attacking my family and friends, basically calling them kinda uncaring for not reading the book when she doesn't even know about it at all. Look I'm kinda over everyone smashing my cover to bits that's all. Especially when I've said over and over I can't afford to redo it. I understand that no one likes it, all right? Fine, I understand the point, you guys don't need to keep bashing me over the head. I was hoping for some other ideas for marketing when I posted this, I'm not getting that. Instead I got repeated over and over, "Take your book down and make a new cover" Ok, while that might get a few peoples' attention I'm still stuck with no marketing plan on how to get the book out there. THAT is what I wanted help with. Pretty much everything I have tried, even things I was told by another author at some stupid marketing workshop, haven't worked.

When I originally wrote the manuscript i was scared unto death to have anyone read it, that it would totally suck. I gave it to a friend to have her daughter read it, since I don't write under my real name we didn't tell her I wrote it. My friend just gave it to her and asked her to read it for someone she knew. Her daughter freaked over it, and trust me the first draft was horrible compared to what the final book was, she had all her friends read it. As soon as it was published she bought it and read it again. So it is just kind of a total let down to have such a great response from a group that was basically my target audience and then I just can't get the book out there any way.

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@VictoriaKaer You know what? People were telling you that you could've gotten it done for free. Heck I was going to do it for you for free! (I have free access to stock photography) even the dragon I showed you before. But since you're so adamant about not changing it. Fine. Sigh.

And believe it or not? The cover is the first thing people judge a book by, whether you like it or not. It's like a make it or break it factor. JA konrath even said on his blog that for some of his books, he changed their covers five times! He's a best seller so I think that gives credit to how important covers are.

Sorry. I'm just really grumpy after a long bad day at school. Ugh!

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@VictoriaKaer I feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall here, but here goes.

Your cover sells your book. Or makes sure no one buys it. Show this thread to your artist and point out to him that not only does the cover not do you any favours, it's not doing him any either. On the basis of this cover, he's going to lose business. It's too late to do anything about the print book, but give him a chance to redo it for the e-book. If he won't, perhaps one of the nice people on Wattpad might make you a better one.

Next up: your blurb. It's one 325 word paragraph. No child is going to read that. I didn't want to read it. It's badly edited with several grammar and punctuation mistakes. And it's far too long.

"When Chandra is attacked by a (insert name) and is rescued by a man on a dragon, she discovers that she might just be the sorceress who will save the dragons from the violent wyvern. That is, if she can survive the drop-dead gorgeous boy who keeps trying to kill her."

Move all that stuff about you to a separate author page, and consider if it is the image you want to convey. Do you really want a potential agent reading that you think high top Converse go with everything?

I would take out the "book one" thing. Readers are far more likely to buy a book by an unknown author if it stands alone than if it's part of a series and they may be left with an unfinished story.

Put the table of contents at the back of the book, so that people who click "Look inside" can get to the good stuff quickly.

Dump the prologue. It's confusing and there is rampant pronoun abuse.

Start the story with Chandra. Watch pov shifts and lengthy paragraphs. Watch punctuion of dialogue.

I notice that in spite of a lot of words, you never actually describe the wyvern or dragon properly. I'd much rather hear about that than the road to the hospital.

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@VictoriaKaer I feel your frustration and now understand your reactions to the comments on this thread. Digest all the advice and do what's right for you. But keep in mind that if you do nothing and proceed with a marketing plan, and your marketing is successful, the points being made might affect those people who check out your book. So all your hard work to get potential buyers to look at your book cover thumbnail and read your blurb might be for naught.

Since money is an issue and you cannot change the cover, you can work on the blurb using @Ctyolene's suggestions. She's really good at this. By the way, have you contacted the artist? Maybe he will be willing to make a quick change for no cost, such as changing the color of the book title.

Marketing is not my strength, but I've read articles on the subject. These are some of the things I remember:

1. Be active on sites that cater to your genre's audience, mentioning your book when you can.

2. Have a blog that will attract your potential readers, and keep the blog updated with information they'd be interested in. Also, design it so search engines find and list it. You'd advertise your book on that blog.

3. Pay for banners on sites that cater to your genre's audience, but since money is tight that's not an option.

4. Lower the price to attract more potential customers.

5. Give the eBook away for free so that you can build a following that will buy your next book (or maybe buy the print version of this one).

Here's a link to a pretty good article on self-publishing. Within the article there's a link to how to self-publish an eBook. Maybe it will help.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-10119891-82/self-publishing-a-book-25-things-you-need-to-know/

And here's a link to a free book by the Smashwords founder (Mark Coker) called "The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success."

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145431

Some day you will, hopefully, look back at this experience and laugh. Best of luck.

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@VictoriaKaer One more thing.

Yours is the first bad experience I've heard with self-publishing. People have been disappointed with sales, but I never heard of anyone losing money by self-publishing. In an author's group I belong to, many publish on Lulu.com and it's never cost them a dime. Some day, when it's not so painful, I'd appreciate a thread in this club on why it cost you so much money to self-publish.

Again, good luck.

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@Blayde I already gave her that link!! >.< and I was thinking this!!! "I feel your frustration and now understand your reactions to the comments on this thread. Digest all the advice and do what's right for you." I swear get out of my head!!!!!!! We're getting close to our boxing match I swear! DX

@VictoriaKaer Take a break and breath then come back and look at the material with a different eye, take what you need. Like I've mentioned before you have to open your options don't put all of your eggs in one basket.

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@lilkolo91 LOL

Well, great minds think alike.....

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@Blayde THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!!!!!

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@Ctyolene the really sad part of that is I paid to have an editor go over my manuscript through LuLu because I KNOW spelling and grammar aren't my strong points. See what I got? Lulu is the worst thing ever, I think they only care about how much money they can suck out of people. The editor was like $1800 by itself. Then they messed up the formatting and put the prologue BEFORE the table of contents. I was like who does that?? Since they had to fix that I asked my coordinator if I could fix several spelling errors that i discovered that the wonderful editor missed. He said fine. When I resubmitted the manuscript they didn't fix anything I had changed. When I asked why, my coordinator told me they can't resubmit a new version of the manuscript they have to use the same one. I was a little stunned after he ok'd me making the spelling changes. He said he had no idea what i was doing and didn't ok anything. (I had all emails back and forth between us as proof he knew exactly what I was doing) Once I started asking to speak to a supervisor they stopped communicating with me completely. Since LuLu only talks to you through email and have no customer service phone number I was left in limbo without a finished book. I am so not a computer savvy person, I can't format or do any of that stuff which is why I paid to use their services instead of doing the whole free put it up yourself thing. I also don't have any friends who are computer geeks. I don't know anyone who can format a book for print or for ebook. So I pretty much had to pay to use a self publisher's service. (and I tried to find a local editor here to work with and had no luck, before I went with the option of using LuLu's lame excuse for an editor)

And I know what you mean by never hearing of anyone else who has had a bad experience with self publishing. I asked a lot of people who they used before I picked LuLu and a lot of people really liked them.

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Also, I would also have no idea how to go about changing the wording inside the book if I changed the cover. I'd have to remove the thing giving art credit to the current artist. createspace sends you back PDF's for all your final stuff. I already tried once to convert the manuscript, it messed up all the formatting, and you couldn't read the manuscript.

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@VictoriaKaer I know how to format one... I made mine into a half-completed ebook for fun.

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@VictoriaKaer Work from your original Word documents. There's a website called Grammarly.com which does very thorough spell and grammar checks. It's a paid service, but you get a free week, so you could join, do your book and cancel before the week is up.

Look at paragraph length. For a YA fantasy novel, aim for an average of about three sentences per paragraph. Watch for POV shifts. Your POV charcter can only know what she can see, hear, smell, feel. She can't know what other people are feeling or thinking.

Every scene must advance the story in some way. Never have a scene where nothing changes in some way.

Once you are happy with the story, go through it and strip out all non-printing characters (tabs etc) and then format it according to the instructions on Amazon. It's a little fiddly, but you don't need any special technical skill.

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Sorry I went missing there, my computer attracted a lovely group of viruses and had to go visit the Geek Squad at Best Buy, so $200 dollars later, that I really couldn't afford, I'm back. (so much for virus software, gah, seriously why have it?)

My original documents I have left are so so waaaay far off from the finals I have from Createspace I'd spend hours going back and forth trying to figure out what stuff was different and what was missing.

As for the three sentences per paragraph, I don't buy that. I've read a lot of YA stuff. And while some of it may cater to that (and lord I'd not read some of it again) I prefer the more well thought out stuff, and frankly these are the ones my daughter also prefers. She's almost 13 and reads at high school level. If I'm moving along with a description or thought and it's meant to be a paragraph then it will be. I try and break my paragraph as much as possible because I know long ones kinda suck to read. But they do happen in books, they are a fact.

And I have no clue how to remove the non-printing characters, sorry. I seriously just learned how to move to the next page without hitting enter a trillion times, while going through this whole process. And I finally figured out this month how to set Word so it indents the first sentence of the paragraph. Like I said before I am so NOT a computer person. I honestly hate Word most days cause it seems to hate me first. lol. I'm first to admit I don't know much about grammar and spelling, I suck at it. I just love to write. I was hoping the editor would help me with all that, and that turned out to be not very much help at all. I was seriously disappointed with LuLu and the editor and just everything they did.

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@VictoriaKaer Off topic, but you could have called Microsoft for help with your virus for free. They'll try to sell you a premium (I think that's what it's called) service for $100 (I think that's the cost). I actually bought that once since it was an awful virus and it was off hours (I think I got that virus on wattpad. I clicked on a thread in a club and, presto, I lost control of my system).

Anyway, the phone number of the Microsoft Tech Support is 1-800-642-7676 or 1-800-936-5700 (I have both written down on the same sheet of paper)..

If I remember correctly, don't select the virus option. That brings you to the purchase one. The technical support person takes over your computer and fixes the problem while you watch and are on the phone.

Their hours are (Pacific time):

5:00 a.m. - 9 p.m. M-F

6:00 a.m. - 3 p.m. Sat and Sun

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@Blayde omg thats exactly what happened to me! (Well my daughter, she was looking at stuff on my account reading things and presto, virus. But weird thing was she didnt click any links) i couldnt do a stinkin thing, whatever i got it blocked everything, even the internet. And my laptop has a warrenty through best buy thats why i went there, had no idea it dint cover the virus stuff. Now i know. (P.s. if i am not capializing and stuff its cause i am on my nook and its just too much of a pain, not because i am being totally lazy)

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And for some stupid reason the nook insists on double posting as well

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@Blayde @VictoriaKaer Hi! I'm here again being nosy!

ugh! don't ever use best buy's geek squad again. (I know you have a warranty) I always go to staples which is the cheapest store for virus removal. But I usually get the virus off myself, you can put your computer in safe mode and then find the suspicious little bugger. It's usually in the program files on your hard drive I believe. (that's where I check for mines first when I have one) You guys can get a free antivirus software called Avast it may not do much but it'll help protect you. I used it for a while but I have norton 360 which I love.

and I'm leaving again...

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@VictoriaKaer Google is your friend. You can google stuff like how to remove non-printing characters etc.

You are not Henry James. Just because [[ insert name of famous author ]] does something and gets away with it does not mean you can, or should. If you have long paragraphs with solid blocks of text, you will lose readers.

Your blurb was 325 words of solid text. If I were browsing, I would have clicked on to the next book as soon as I saw that.

Look, you came on here looking for help. You've been offered a lot, including offers to do free cover art, formatting, editorial help, marketing help, and you have an excuse why you can't do any of those things.

If necessary, go back and rewrite the book, fixing the things I've pointed out. Yes, it's a lot of work and will take time, but it won't take money and at the end you may have a book that sells. There is no magic formula. No one is hiding a secret way to become a best seller. The basic ingredient is a book that people want to read.

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@lilkolo91 I've bought and used Norton. I hated it and uninstalled it. I did the same with McAfee.

Then I used the free version of AVG for a long time. I liked it, but I had a bad virus and had to hire someone to fix it (ironically, he's the one who told me about Microsoft's free service). He uninstalled AVG and installed Microsoft's free Security Essentials. That's what I've been using ever since.

But whatever anti-virus you use, there are two other products you must have to scan your computer -- SuperAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes. They find stuff the others don't and they're free. Just make sure when you install them that they aren't in your start-up. When two anti-virus programs run together they can cause problems.

So I run Security Essentials, but once a day run a scan using either SuperAntiSpyware or Malwarebytes. They also catch cookies that are legit but track what you're doing.

And there's a free product from Norton I used once. It's called Norton Power Erasor. But it's really powerful. It deleted some installed programs like Adobe Photoshop Elements. I have no idea why. But it was the Microsoft tech who actually ran it on my computer.

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