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RE: How You Can Grow a New Account Radically Fast on Steemit Using Multiple Part Posts and What Happened When I Did it
Some great tips in this one that I can put to work right away. In fact I was just working on the first installment of a multi-part post today. Its a novella that I'm posting a chapter at a time. I see you mentioned not to do this for fiction but I'd already let the horse out of the barn before I saw this post.
No, you may have missed the point. I meant sharing several parts back to back on the same day in fiction. I share lots of long form fiction under@markrmorrisjr but one piece per day. I may try it soon.
@dolphinschool, any wisom on whether posting chapters of a book here disqualifies the book from Kindle Unlimited?
Technically? Yes, but they have yet to mention it to me. LOL I don't make much on Amazon anyway. Too much competition and no audience building tools, heck, you don't even get the email addresses or names of your readers, unless they review you.
Yes. You get payouts through Steemit, but once it's posted here, it belongs to Steemit. However, you can keep editing your Steemit post all the way up until you receive the full payout from it. I also have to agree with @dolphinschool that Kindle publishing is pretty worthless, especially if you're a new author.
I've never seen anyone succeed at self-publishing on Kindle unless they were already an established author with thousands of subscribers/readers FIRST.
New authors drown in Kindle like quicksand. Just keep refreshing the "new releases" page of the kindle ebooks store on Amazon, and you'll see what I mean. Last time I checked, it was almost a whole page of new books every second that I refreshed.
AND self-published ebooks on Kindle have gotten a REALLY bad reputation now because it's so easy to do it that everyone IS! Most of these new authors haven't gotten anyone else to even read or critique their book besides their parents. In the traditional publishing world, it takes years to release a book for a very good reason: the book has to be really good first. It's supposed to go through multiple editors and be tested among readers from different genres to see where it fits. In the future, traditional publishing will become more important because these are the gatekeepers sifting through crap to find quality stuff.
No one wants to preview 100 self-published ebooks for free on Kindle and hope they find one good one. The average reader doesn't have patience for that anymore. They want a book from a trustworthy source (like a publishing house) that they know they're likely to enjoy reading. A lot of reviews on Amazon are fake these days too, and some bad marketers buy their reviews under the table -- so now, even the social aspect of Amazon is suffering.
Beware and choose wisely when self-publishing. I personally do not support anyone to self-publish on Amazon because it greatly devalues the work of their authors.
Good luck!
@joylovestowrite I'm glad you've been successful working in trad pub! My hat's off to you. But you sound bit biased, not to mention uninformed. To imply that there are no good indie-published books, or nobody making money with it, is just plain incorrect. I'd estimate that over half of the books I read are from indie authors. Of those, I think about half of them are damn good, the other half varying degrees of OK to good. The bad ones, and yes I'll admit there are a lot of them, I don't read. I can tell just within a page or two of the sample, and I don't bother downloading them. Now, with traditionally published books, I'll admit the ratio of quality is slightly higher. But I think that's partly due to the fact that most of the trad-pub books I read are from authors I've been following for years, and already like. When I take a chance on a new trad-pubbed author I haven't read before, I've found there's still some damn good ones, some OK, and yes, some that are shit. I weed those out similarly. The point is, the almighty "gatekeeper" you speak of (the publishing houses with their armies of tastemakers, editors and marketers), isn't really the authority on what I'm going to like. And I kind of resent the implication that I don't know a good book so I need some big publishing house from New York to decide that for me. That's just absurd. And yes, there are indie authors making a great living, just like there are many trad-pubbed authors who are starving.
BUT, we can disagree on that! We're both authors, and we're both on Steemit (though I'm admittedly a bit green with both), so I think that makes us both special. I look forward to checking out your work when I get a chance :)
Thanks for your honest reply. I understand what you mean. I do like a lot of indie authors, and I do know that they can make money on Amazon, and some do. I understand that the traditional publishing houses do miss out on some great authors too ... but I just had to bring up the dark side of self-publishing on Amazon. Most people dive into self-publishing with way too high of expectations, and I'm annoyed with Amazon for the way they market themselves as if they're the self-publishing answer for everyone when they take so much advantage of new authors. What other online booksellers take the work of thousands of authors for FREE when they upload their work and profit from it the big numbers of titles they can boast ... when in many cases the authors get nothing? I know a bunch of authors who tried selling on Amazon and got a whopping $7 per year in sales, and others nothing at all. And these were writers I liked who worked at least a year on their books! But because they lacked a big marketing platform before uploading their book, their work just gets lost like everyone else's.
Self-publishing has its place, but it deserves better platforms where authors get paid if they're going to put in the extra work. That's my main point.
And I'm still learning too because this industry is changing constantly...
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@joylovestowrite @dustysharp, this is a great discussion and @dolphinschool, thanks for creating the opportunity for it! :)
I too have a similar opinion to both of you regarding self and traditional publishing. I read a great book on both called A.P.E. by Guy Kawasaki, plus spoke to a couple of authors and heard horror stories from them about the publishing world.
That being said I also found similarly about Amazon, that everyone and their dog can publish a book there (and on iBooks and the other guys. BUT... there are some really good indy writers. The key is that self-publishing has become one of those almost dirty words because of its access and a percentage of its content, just like Youtube. There's great content there, but the access also allows excruciating content, which is probably the majority by sheer volume.
Regarding publishing @dustysharp, I found this site about it and agents (gatekeepers), maybe you've seen it already but if not, have a read if ever you're interested in it. http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/agents-advice.html Very helpful!
But I too would like to publish some fiction here; you don't get the 'prestige' but you can get a following I think and if you're fortunate, some livelihood, and it's a great social-tech experiment. So I appreciate super @dolphinschool for the article above! Definitely on the money!
@dustysharp Encouraging to see people posting fiction a chapter at a time here! I want to do the same thing down the road, but, crawl first, walk later :) My first day on Steemit.
Super post, @dolphinschool ! Thanks for the linkage and multi-part article lore.