Posted on 08/05/2013 9:42:58 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It's been called a "cure for rejection-letter fatigue."
Amazon on Thursday released new details about the success of its program for authors who want to self-publish on its Kindle e-reader devices. The company, which unveiled a suite of new e-readers and tablets at a press conference in Southern California on Thursday, says 27 of the top 100 Kindle books were created using a system called Kindle Direct Publishing.
That system allows authors to bypass traditional publishers and instead deal directly with Amazon, which claims to be able to publish their books digitally "in hours."
The authors receive 70% of the royalties from the sale of these books. And some of them are doing quite well.
"Most of my months are six-figure months," said Hugh Howey, a 37-year-old Florida author whose "Wool" series of digital books was highlighted by Amazon. "It's more than I ever hoped to make in a year."
The company says some authors, including Theresa Ragen, who appeared in a promotional video during the Amazon event, have sold hundreds of thousands of books.
During the event Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos displayed a quote from Kathryn Stockett, author of best-selling novel "The Help," in which she lamented being rejected dozens of times before a publisher accepted her.
"What if I had given up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60?" she was quoted as saying......
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Yep. My next book will be self-published. My first book was bought by a major publisher and took a full year to publish from the date I handed over my final manuscript. I was told my book was on the “fast track”, and it actually was.
The big publishers, in particular, can’t seem to wrap their heads around all the changes that have been occurring in their own field.
Start writing, dude. It’s hard to have good ideas. I have good ideers for beginnings, and then nothing. Every day, too. I read an interview with a Spanish author recently, having a big 500 page bestseller all over Europe, as we speak, and he said that when he starts out he doesn’t know what the book will be about. Some work that way, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Others plan it from beginning to end before writing down a word.
There’s an inside joke among Writers Guild members about a writer who’s approached at a party by someone who wants to partner with him. The guy says it’ll be really easy because he has the whole story all worked out and all the writer would have to do is just the easy work of putting it on paper. The writer replies, “I have an even better idea. I have a bunch of great story ideas, why don’t I tell them to you, and you can do the “easy” part”.
I read my ebooks easily 4 or 5 to one. I have a handful of paperbacks left. I love having my tablet upstairs, read, go downstairs, pick up my kindle, pick up where I was upstairs. If I am out, pull out my droid, keep going. No books to haul around.
And some of us have a good beginning, a good ending... and jack for the middle. - LOL
My characters and stories will go off in unplanned directions, sometimes it annoys me. lol
I have my own similar book in the works. Seems like every 4th prepper does.
I love short stories, but it’s not what I do.
I wake up with my tablet under my pillow.
Seriously, lots of authors say the same thing, that is that characters and events get away from them, gain a life of their own, and again, there is nothing wrong with it.
Many people have smart phones and even my late mother had a computer. Those are the people I want to reach. Those that have neither are probably not interested in what I plan to publish.
You beat me at my current stage, I have no endings, only beginnings. Clever ones, too.
Perhaps you missed my point. What my friend’s son sent me were not completed short works. They were the first page of forty, or four hundred.
Heads up.
Years ago, my writing partner and I had a shot at doing an episode for a TV show. We were one of two teams being considered, and ultimately the successful one. I was feeling pretty good about our talent when I asked the producer why were chosen. He hemmed and hawed around a little, then said the primary reason was that our competitor's script had been submitted in hand written form.
Kinda took the wind out of the old sails, but you take ‘em any way you can get them.
It has my attention too. My book is finished and ready to go...
I’ve already done it, although my returns are far from six figures. I actually have two versions of the book, a paperback and the Kindle. I composed the Kindle version myself and published it through Amazon. My sales of the Kindle far exceed those of the paperback. But while the paperback retails for $16.95 and the Kindle for $2.99, I actually earn more money on the Kindle version.
Yes, this article implies how easy it is to make money by self publishing through Amazon. However, out of the three cases mentioned in the excerpt above, two of the authors had promotional help from Amazon. So it seems you still need marketing and promotions to have a good shot at making money there.
And the dead stops. Man, so many of them. Start a story and just lose any and all interest in it.
RANDOM PIECE OF NOTHING
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It had been a decade since the Great Divide had split the country into two parts, one of the emerging nations rejected the idea that governments main role is to take things from some and to give to others. The other had taken this idea to it’s fullest extent, now that they no longer had to worry about opposition to their plans.
The war had been quick and brutal. Touched off by riots and protests across the country and the federal government responded with heavy-handed force. The violence that followed tore the country into pieces. It was quickly obvious that a separation was necessary. The hard working middle-class had revolted against paying such high taxes to fund such a generous welfare system that they were worse off than those on the dole.
The divide was not a straight line and some cities in the “free zone” were actually part of the other country. Both countries still claimed the mantle of being the official United States of America but neither of them accepted the massive debts of the former United States government. This caused problems on the international front, especially with China.
Neither of the countries placed their new capitol cities in Washington DC, which was left a crumbled mess after the war. The “Eastern” US placed their government in New York City (officially) while much of their bureaucracy was located in Philadelphia and Boston.
A decade ago the economies of the two had been devastated and their refusal to honor the debt piled up by the old United States had shut off much of the remaining international trade. While the “Eastern” United States continued membership in the United Nations, the other did not.
The socialist “Eastern” United States had attempted to continue their overly generous welfare programs but found that this was no longer feasible. Their government no longer had the trust to be able to borrow money and most of the productive people and business had fled to the “Western” United States where work was not punished and where idleness was not rewarded.
The welfare state could not work without the ability to extort huge sums of the money from the productive classes, but there were no longer enough of them to support anything like the old welfare systems. Public housing was replaced by seized properties being given to the “needy”, while the food stamp program was replaced by a ration system that gave bread, corn, potatoes, rice and beans to the masses. The government no longer provided cellular phones to the poor but instead installed wireless phone booths that accepted phone cards that were given to the poor, this limited the cost of the program.
Sustainability was the new moniker, this was a practical reaction now that reality had slapped them in the face. Trade with most countries was now almost on a barter system, trading goods for goods. The new countries had no credit with the rest of the world.
The “Eastern” United States had accepted the “downtrodden” from the “Western” US as a propaganda ploy for the first couple of years. This is when it started to become apparent that this was a big mistake. The EUS was full of unproductive and shiftless people who had grown up dependent on government for everything. They could not really shut the border between them but they did place the first guards and gates along major highways and roads on the border.
The “Western” United States did not try to tax people and businesses out of business. They did not have a government that was hostile to productivity and private investment. This allowed the economy to prosper as people found work rewarding again.
True, a lot of the consumer products were now either gone or a complete luxury. The cheap fast food was no longer so cheap and the dollar stores full of Chinese-produced goods were a thing of the past. People found that they did not miss them as much as they had thought they would. The WUS was self-sufficient in oil & gas, produced a large surplus of grain and other food items and their federated government was headquartered in Oklahoma City officially but the legislative sessions that took place every 2 years rotated between the state capitols. These sessions were limited to 60 days, one month to debate the budget and a month to consider other items.
California was divided, much of its coastal cities were part of the “Eastern” country while the inland, more rural regions were WUS. Some of the southern United States had become part of Mexico while Alaska was independent for all intents and purposes. Hawaii had gleefully declared itself a nation before realizing it was about to become another third world country.
A decade later much of the Eastern United States was mired in a deep depression. Although the movement to plant fruit trees and “survival” gardens had helped the food situation somewhat, this simply invited an overbearing government to tax these gardens.
“As soon as it looked like the survival gardens had saved the day, the government stepped in to punish the people” One WUS Radio commentator noted, confiscating ten percent, at first, then twenty percent of the crops - leading people to lie about how much they had harvested. It was no longer strange to wake up and see your neighbors gardens had been picked clean during the night, and only sometimes was it hungry thieves.
“It is only a matter of time before they inspect the pantries to make sure that some families don’t grow more food for themselves than the next house” Observers predicted in WUS media outlets, this proved to be prescient.
…
In a small dingy apartment in a New York highrise that was now considered a tenement by the residents, Jacob Maritz sat at the wooden table in the kitchen and looked down at the People’s Daily propaganda newspaper. He was trying to read between the lines, to discern the truth from the lies. He had a small radio, the thing was probably more than thirty years old, which he had dug out of a closet.
Sometimes at night, if he was careful, he could pick up one of the WUS radio stations. He could tell they still had freedom because their commentators did not say the same things, they were free to disagree with their government, they were free to have and state differing opinions. Nobody ever dissented in EUS media, this was not tolerated, it was considered hate speech.
His wife Alyssa had found some work sewing and mending old clothes, she also helped take care of children when this was available. She was paid in food most of the time, other items when this was necessary. Jacob had a job, of course, but it paid in currency and this was hardly worth the paper it was printed on. You needed ration coupons and permits to buy anything with them and this was sometimes hard to get for those without connections.
The People’s Daily counted two folded sheets, 8 pages. It had five columns of densly packed and sometimes hard to decipher text. This was considered the newspaper of the “intellectual” in the EUS while its sister publication the Times was a rag that was written in slang and short simple stories, hardly more than headlines but always with lurid photographs and the latest celebrity gossip and sex scandals. It never had a different opinion on real matters and it was put together in the same place, but Jacob knew it was a waste of time to read the brainless smut.
We have regressed as a society, he thought silently, but this time it is worse because we have large classes of people not above bashing your brains in to steal a bowl of rice. Jacob and Alyssa always made it a point to get home well before dark, it was far too dangerous to be outside when the “wild things” were in control.
He turned on the radio. The click caused his wife to look up at him with a look of concern on her face. He knew better than to turn it very loud because if the neighbors reported that he was listening to WUS radio stations, he could be fired and find himself without access to ration coupons and lose his apartment, even though it was not technically against any law. The EUS liked to pretend in front of the world that it still had freedom of press and speech and the like. Of course everyone on Earth knew better.
“Try to get some bread and cheese tomorrow” he said, remembering that the bread and dairy stores would be open. They were usually open about three days each week. The bread would likely not be fresh and if she could get a stale one cheap, this would be a plus.
“Alright, honey” Alyssa responded absent-mindedly, busy with her work mending other peoples clothes. He thought of old man Javitz downstairs mending shoes, not sneakers of course but real old-fashioned leather shoes. Society has regressed, technology has regressed and sometimes it was not all bad. Any families that were still intact after all this rot were probably stronger than anyone could imagine. But such families were rare in the east.
He thought of fleeing to the west, as he often did. There was a place where a man could work for a living without it being stolen by the government before payday and thugs on the way home afterwards. There was a place where the government respected the people who worked for a living and where thugs could be gunned down in self-defense. That was a place he and Alyssa would actually want to bring children into the world.
He found it. A western radio station calling itself “Voice of Liberty” with the callsign WORK-AM was airing a talk show.
“From all the reports we have seen it looks like a good year for the crops, yeilds are higher than last year. This goes for grains and vegetables alike. It might not sound like much, or wouldn’t have in the old days, but this means prices of food could come down, this means we can trade for more foreign-produced goods and/or resources we cannot find in this country. Production is what makes this possible, not diplomats at a table, not nice-sounding theories espoused in the press” the host was telling his audience “Would crop yields have been higher if farmers and food production companies were punished with confiscatory taxes? Of course not, we might all be wondering where the next meal is going to come from if that happened. Why did farmers increase their production if this would lower prices, you might ask? Because they have decided this benefits them and when people, all people, work to improve their lot in life, and not someone else’s, they are more likely to work hard. Would you work extra hard if you were paid the same as sitting on your rear end? Human nature says no”.
Jacob felt better just hearing it, logic. Not feelings, not wishes, not lies of the government and its media. In the last decade Jacob and Alyssa had realized the hard way that when a man offers you food, shelter and everything else in exchange for some extra power that he was really offering you a nice cell in a prison. Looking around the tiny apartment which had once been only one bedroom of a large luxury unit, he knew it was his prison.
He felt guilty because he had believed the lies in the beginning. He had always believed the crap they spewed. He was angry at those “Constitutionalists” for opposing the righteous socialists and he was even angrier at them when the war broke out. How dare they start a civil war out of greed, he had thought at the time. Of course, now he didn’t think the west had started the war either. Everything else his government said had been a lie, that might as well be too.
“You should get some sleep, Jacob. You know how long it takes to walk to your work” Alyssa reminded him. She was right, of course. The EUS could not afford fuel for its buses and had launched a campaign to encourage the residents of the city to accept this with a smile. The 4W’s campaign.
“We’ll win with walking!”
Jacob cringed every time he heard it or saw it painted on the wall of a building in the socialist style. It was confirmation to him, at least, that the old tyrant standby of declaring all your problems were the fault of some foreign hostile power. Every tyranny did this, it seemed from the history books. “Win what?” he wanted to scream “We aren’t at war. Nobody bombed our factories, nobody plowed under our farms. The only thing holding us down is socialism!”
He didn’t scream it out loud of course. He felt it inside though. From all outward appearances he was a good believer, like he had been a decade ago. E would remain that as far as the rest of them were concerned, the truth was not welcome in the east. The lie was praised and worshipped while the truth was a sin here.
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The “East” became an impoverished socialist nightmare and the “West” -which was hit just as hard- is a free nation. I am not sure where I would take this story but I think that is a good setting.
With so many people self-publishing, how on earth do authors get any attention for their work? How do you get people to even look at so many titles? Isn’t it like finding a needle in a haystack?
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