# This May Be the Worst Selling E-Book Ever



## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

We've followed the advice. And this time, it ain't the cover, and it ain't the blurb. 

You know, one might think that by launching a new book, we might get a little bit of a sales blip.

http://www.amazon.com/LadyStar-Legion-Comics-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00805567Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1336436040&sr=8-2

But I think this will be just the most recent title to sit at zero sales for weeks at a time. It apparently didn't show up on anyone's "new books" list. Oh, and this time we have a hand-drawn cover because... well... it is a comic.

*NOTE: THE REST OF THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT THE COMIC E-BOOK. IT'S ABOUT THE NOVEL PUBLISHED OVER A YEAR AGO.*

We changed the blurb. We changed the cover. Four times (cost: well into the thousands of dollars). We have a web site with... (checking Analytics) 34,000+ unique visits (that's 2k to 3k a month) and 190,000 pageviews since the first book launched. About 70% of the pageviews have a big colorful animated ad for the book.

We've sold a grand total of fewer than *50* copies.

Now I'm not going to complain about this. I've been doing Internet marketing for a long time. But this I believe is a truly unique situation. Here we have characters with ten _years_ on the web. 800 people a week visit our site (we haven't updated since last Halloween.) We've got comics, apps, audiocasts, manga, games, on and on and on. This book has been presented to over 500 reviewers.

And I'm not going to say this is the greatest story ever written but I will say this: we've gotten zero bad reviews in 16 months. In fact, we have two five-stars. Then again, there are only four dozen people on Earth qualified to say whether it's a good story or not. Almost 20% of those people wrote us a good review. heh.

Maybe people just don't like the characters. But why do they come to our site? (We haven't run ads for our site for well over a year)

Maybe people _do_ like the characters. Then why don't they buy the book?

I'm going to launch into a second dimension to this discussion because I think it might have bearing on the original questions. People have long complained that they can't figure out our web site. We've done everything we can possibly think of to fix this. We've combined all the material into one site, and people complained it was too complicated. Then we broke everything up into separate sites (creating a maintenance nightmare). People stopped complaining but it didn't do much to generate any kind of real engagement with the characters or the story. Then we started getting sporadic complaints people couldn't "find anything." We got the occasional comment and e-mail, but nothing significant, and certainly nothing to match the amount of traffic we were getting (we went from 1500 to 9000 direct visits a month from 2008 to 2010). After changing the main landing page to nothing but color icons pointing at our books, I've long since given up on the web site.

My guess was (and it's all guesses, even from the experts) that LadyStar is too complicated. Maybe it's overwhelming? But there are legions of other story universes at least as complex as ours and while they may not be bestsellers, they certainly aren't epic zero-sales-for-months failures. Maybe it's confusing because there's just a lot of material? But isn't that what readers crave? Detailed, well thought out universes with a lot of material to digest and explore? Do we really need to worry each time we add a new character that we've overbalanced the scales causing readers to throw their hands up in exasperation? Do we really need to worry if words have more than six letters? How can anyone write that way?

As long as we kicked out a new $200 comic page a couple times a week, everything was nice and quiet and peaceful. Traffic increased, sort of. We did some pretty generous ad spending to go with it. We were going into the red to the tune of $1500+ a month, but at least the crowd was happy. Right? The minute we stopped updating, traffic plunged, and during the updates, some of which lasted for months on end, we sold precisely ZERO product. Not one book. Not one t-shirt. Not one sticker. Nothing. Our ads (the ones we were publishing) didn't even do that well, as people showed up to see the update, then left through the door they arrived at. Nobody wants to pay for an ad nobody clicks on.

Thousands of visits a month, thousands of man-hours of work, and there was absolutely nothing we could do to wring a single dime out of it. I know it's cliched, but the old Internet marketing adage seems to apply here: "What audiences want is better products for free, and they take price tags personally."

It seems we've found a number of innovative ways to spend money, and few ways to make it. I think this is instructive, since by all appearances, we're doing everything right and getting not one molecule of traction. I have a number of ideas for new stories, but it's tough to get inspired to write when it's likely I'm pouring a million words down a sinkhole before someone says "you know what? Nobody really likes these stories. Give it a rest, huh?" What bothers me more than anything else is the fact there are 28 people in this studio, and we're being outsold six to one by spammers and bots.

Do I really need to start plowing cash into ads and brute force our way to sales? Or is this really just a waste of effort?

*NOTE*: I am strongly considering taking our entire site off line and replacing it with a single page that makes the following offer: "If this is not your first visit to our site, and you will tell me truthfully why you didn't buy our book, I'll give you a copy for free."

Want to know what I think? I think we'll give away fewer copies than we sold.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

I'm very sorry about your situation.  I had a book that was having trouble selling, so I created a webcomic for it.  The webcomic started getting some traffic, but said traffic never migrated over to paid sales on Amazon.  Now, I know there's been disagreements on this boards about this before, but at least I believe comics are a hard sell on ereaders.  Drawn comics with written word fiction tie in's also seem to be at a disadvantage.  

One thing I've been wondering though is how well your stuff would do it converted into an app in the Apple and Android market.  I think app buyers might skew younger and more towards comic book content.  

Best of luck.  You're not alone.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

I understand how frustrating it is to have a book that just won't sell now matter how many pushes you give it. But you can't bully people into buying and I really think the message you suggest putting on your site (unless you were joking?) would just offend your visitors into staying away. It sounds like you're already doing all the right things for your book, so I'm not sure what more to suggest. Maybe comics just don't sell well in ebook form?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

If anyone knew the answer to this, they'd be out there making millions.

Fact is, publishing something is very much a hit-and-miss affair, and the traditional publishers have been battling this beast for decades (if not centuries).

For a self-publisher, all I can say is that in my opininon it makes much more sense to spend most of your promotional money on your bestsellers. That is--test the market with a budget version and spend the big money only when sales justify it.


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## Sybil Nelson (Jun 24, 2010)

I think comics on eReaders haven't caught on yet. Most true comic book fans want to hold the comic in their hand and feel the pages. I think it will grow eventually, but right now you're probably ahead of the curve.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

The app idea is a good one.... another is call the 6th grade or 7th grade english teacher in an affluent school in your area. Offer to come in and do a talk about being a writer etc. and offer the file to all of the students for free. The teacher my need to read the book first etc. get parent permission etc. Or high school if that's the way it's skewed (probably better) I'd do it now as end of year tests are pretty much done and teachers will be looking to fill that end of year time. Guest speaker and a published author = no lesson plan.  

I taught English for a day at my son's middle school, and those kids ALL wanted my book (but it was grown up, so they couldn't have it). I taught the kids to parts of a story... and they had a blast. Take candy. They love candy.

But many of them had ereaders or cell phones that connected to the internet. Print up coupon codes if you don't want them to spread the file... 

I think you need to go to the kids, because they don't read reader blogs etc.

Alternatively, could you query a few YA blogs? Those readers might relate to a kick butt girl story.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> But you can't bully people into buying and I really think the message you suggest putting on your site (unless you were joking?) would just offend your visitors into staying away.


Whether visitors show up or not makes no difference. We get a bill at the end of the month for bandwidth right next to a zero in the sales column. Our web site visitors have made no effort whatsoever to indicate any interest in the books or anything else. It's like running a store where 100 people a day (yes, one HUNDRED a DAY) show up and not one single solitary sale is made. After a while you have to wonder how you could possibly have accidentally engineered the perfect anti-ad.

I often wonder if the Google Analytics numbers are broken, because I can't believe 34,000 people showed up to a web site that almost never updates.



> Alternatively, could you query a few YA blogs?


That's how we got most of our reviews. Hundreds upon hudreds were contacted.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

You sold 50 copies of a comic? Nope. Not even close to being the worst.  

I don't mean to be insulting, but are you well informed on the independent comic industry? Being an indie comic author is very different than being an indie fiction author.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> You sold 50 copies of a comic? Nope. Not even close to being the worst.


No. We just launched the comic. This is about our novel.

Apparently I'm really really good at being confusing. I should be a rodeo clown. Or a literature professor.


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## traceya (Apr 26, 2010)

It can be very frustrating when your book isn't selling but that can happen whether you're Indie or signed with a traditional publisher - the only real difference is that you can change the story or re-edit it if you feel that's necessary or adjust your marketing strategy and look at other venues like Twitter and Facebook.  It might not work but as an Indie you have the power to keep tweaking or you can just put it on the mental shelf for now and get something else written.  It's amazing how many times a second piece of work can spill over and help sell the original.
Cheers,
Trace


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

Not to sound snarky, but...

If you can give up, like you seriously think you can stop telling stories and still be happy, then you probably should. Because I really think this business can eat your soul alive if you can't find some way to deal with the fact that there is no guarantee that doing x produces y. There are tons of very talented, hard-working artists who will never become even vaguely successful at their endeavors. 

I had a rough patch back a few years ago. I'd written about ten novels, had them all summarily rejected by every agent I could contact. I'd started self-publishing, and I wasn't making any money at it. I had serialized novels on my website, and I couldn't get anyone to read them...for free. And I thought, "Why keep doing this? This is a big suck of my time, and it's not getting me anywhere, and it's depressing to work so hard and still do so dismally."

So, I tried.

It lasted about three weeks. Then I got this really awesome idea, and I had to write it. 

I haven't considered quitting since. I can't. And I had my worst sales month in April in a seriously long time, and it made me physically ill to look at my kdp page, and I'm getting through this time right now by telling myself, "I've gotten lucky before, and I'll get lucky again." That's probably not true, but the only thing it costs me to try to believe it is worry and fear. Which leads to the dark side, anyway.


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

valeriec80 said:


> Not to sound snarky, but...
> 
> If you can give up, like you seriously think you can stop telling stories and still be happy, then you probably should. Because I really think this business can eat your soul alive if you can't find some way to deal with the fact that there is no guarantee that doing x produces y. There are tons of very talented, hard-working artists who will never become even vaguely successful at their endeavors.
> 
> ...


Excellent post. When sales suck (as they so frequently do), I always ask myself, "Well, what the hell else am I going to do? Become an IRS auditor?" And then I go write the next one. It's all I want to do, aside from eating lots of cookies, and I'm pretty sure I can't make a career out of that.

If I was writing 1-2 books a year when literary agents and publishers wouldn't even look at me twice, I can certainly bring myself to write 3-4 books a year if they're selling piddling amounts. Being able to share my book with anyone is marvelous. I get to share the books with more people as I write more, too. But if I had published my first book and waited for the readers to appear, that would have been disappointing indeed.

I am always convinced my next book is going to take off. The next one is when this becomes lucrative and I pay off my house and turn my husband into a kept man (again).

Publish your next few books and things might turn around. Even if they don't, at least you got to write them.  It's as good as it gets.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> If you can give up, like you seriously think you can stop telling stories and still be happy, then you probably should.


Oh, I can always tell stories. That's easy. We have the Internet.

When we can't sell ten books in a month, that's not "oh, we need to do better." That's "we are doing something terribly, dreadfully wrong and if we don't fix it, it doesn't matter how good the story is or whether the cover is hand-drawn or not. It won't sell."

I'd like to know what we're doing wrong. If we aren't doing anything wrong, then I'm going to start plowing cash into advertising until the book sells.


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

Ok, I haven't read the books or seen the website, so this is just guessing, but here goes.

Maybe your characters just aren't suited to the medium.  Maybe they "work" on a webpage where someone can appreciate the artwork in bits and pieces, but they're just not the kind of thing that translates to a book.

Remember the Twitter guy - "Sh!! My Dad Says"?  He was a HUGE Twitter sensation.  But even William Shatner (who was wonderful in Boston Legal) couldn't make it a good sitcom.  It just didn't translate from one medium to another.  

Maybe your target market can click on a webpage, but doesn't have a credit card to order a book.  Maybe their parents just don't get the attraction so say no when asked for the card.

Maybe you can find out more about who is coming to your website and what they're looking for in life by doing some polls there.  Find out gender, age, give them some multiple choices about what they'd like.  Maybe they're a lot more interested in having your characters as a video game than as a book.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> Maybe you can find out more about who is coming to your website and what they're looking for in life by doing some polls there.


If readers would respond to polls, that might be a good option. They don't respond to anything. They show up, look around and leave. Thousands of times a month. We get no e-mail, no comments, no donations, no book sales, no Facebook likes, no new Twitter followers, no merchandise sales.

We really have created the world's first anti-marketing web site. I could announce $1.00 Porsches on our site and our bounce rate wouldn't budge.


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

Ok, then ask yourself this.

If you can't get them to bounce around your site and respond to a poll, why on earth would you think you could get them to click to Amazon and cough up $2.99?  That's a significant action step that takes a lot more pieces and investment in the process than clicking a poll.

So, that takes me back to, you don't have a crossover audience here.  There may be an audience out there somewhere for your book, but this group that comes to your website isn't it.  Unless the website serves some other purpose, maybe you should drop it.  If it just eats money, why are you bothering?

On the flip side, if the website somehow generates money in some way, then maybe you need to focus there and stop worrying about the books that don't sell.  

The third choice is to stop worrying about both the website and the books that don't sell.  Write something else, something different, and focus on that.

Sorry, I know this isn't what you want to hear, but if you've been at it hot and heavy for a year, maybe it is time to shake things up and let go of the original vision and find a new one.


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## David Adams (Jan 2, 2012)

That's... really brutal.

I don't know why it's not selling. I just don't know. It _seems _like you're doing things right, but I've always said. There's no formula in this game. If there were a set of steps that would promise you sales, and all you had to do was jump through the hoops, everyone would do it.

Every great that I can name -- Amanda Hocking, David Dalglish, Hugh Howey -- went for many months/years making a handful of sales, or nothing, until finally being discovered. I asked Dalglish on these very boards how much he made in his first month; $26. Hugh will have a similar story. I'll bet his first month self-publishing he made less than $100. Hocking, if she still posted here, would regale us of the years she spent making nothing, then the months(years?) where she just got laughed at ("My Blood Approves? More like, Baby's First Twilight Fanfiction!" or "Your Blood Approves? I didn't think it even had a vote!"). Now she makes every month what takes the rest of us decades to do. That reminds me, I have to review Hollowland at some point.

I don't think you or I could emulate their success, but if there is a formula for success it seems to be this:

- Keep writing, volume matters.
- Free is important, however you do it... but it's more accurate to say: "Getting noticed is important, however you do it, but free is a good way."
- Don't rely on the income stream until it's clearly a lot.
- Be prepared to work really, really hard for almost no reward for far longer than you're comfortable with.
- Remember, 10% talent, 30% hard work, 60% luck. You can control the first two, but the third won't happen without both, so maximize your chances.
- Smashwords is cool, all the ereader stores are cool, but only Amazon really pushes books in volume. Make Amazon your battlefield (for now).
- Make yourself available to take advantage of luck when it comes.

That last one is strange, so I'll explain.

Every day in self-publishing we roll the dice. At any point I could get a 5 star review, which would bring my average on _Demons _from 3.5 to 4, or I could get a 1 star which would bring it to 3. I could get a positive review from Felicia Day. I could have KDP screw up in the middle of a massive free day with paid ads and get jack. I could get a Hugh Howey quote on my blurb. KDP could close my account.

Those are things related to luck. They're like the weather; they can't be controlled. I can't kidnap Felicia and force her to five-star _Demons _(her guards are too cunning, been there done that), but I can increase my odds by having a relevant, quality cover (I hope ) and having my work edited and checked, and issuing revisions when readers point out mistakes.

But even with the best cover in the world, attached to the best book in the world, I can't force good luck to happen. All I can do is what we all do... do our best, then hold out for a little good fortune.

I know that's not real helpful. Some things that immediately comes to mind... have you tried any of the following:

- KDP Select for your novel? Free day + KND paid ad ($30) almost certainly means post-free sales that make back the cost of the ad; I've bought nine, and only twice have I failed to make back the cost of the ad, with both times I didn't roughly breaking even. The successes I've had more than covered the failures, although I'm not sure how well it'd work these days.
- Selling your freely available webcomic as a book? Yes, plenty of webcomic artists do this (Giant In The Park/Order of the Stick leaps to mind), it works especially if you include things like "Artist's commentary" and extra features, or "deleted scenes" or even the characters lampshading plot holes. Be creative. OOTS's kickstarter raised a hojillion squillion dollars for a reprint of an existing book (and a tonne of bonus content including an original short comic).
- Write a sequel to your novel, setting the first to a discount price/permafree?
- Writing short stories in your novel's universe, selling them at 99c/permafree as loss-leaders? Short stories sell surprisingly well; it's early days, but so far this month I'm going to make more money off _Imperfect_ and _Magnet _than I am off _Demons_. This is mainly because _Demons's _sales are in the toilet, but I wish I'd known about this earlier. If you go free, they _will_ "sell", as will quality shorts at 99c, and maybe they'll hook people in especially if you have a very tasteful ad as the last page of the short ("LadyStar's adventures continue here</link>, now only $4.99!"). Too early to say if my shorts have helped _Lacuna's _sales, but they're new. _Lacuna _isn't even on their AlsoBoughts yet. I'm giving them time. Remember, qualifying shorts can apply for Kindle Singles, too, and shorts get their own set of KDP-Select free days, if you go that route.
- Comic and novel tie-ins? Cameos? This kind of stuff... mesh it all together. _Imperfect _and _Magnet_ are character origin stories and "deleted scenes from another character's perspective" for _The Sands of Karathi_ respectfully, and they all (I hope) help push the main novels. If nothing else, their own Free days push sales.
- Time. These things take _time_. God, I wish _Lacuna _would become my own personal little mint, but frankly I'm not talented enough for that and I've only been publishing since January. Not even Hugh with his peerless awesome got discovered this fast... and I'm much more realistic of my expectations. If I can sell half as much as Rykymus or Joseph Rhea, that'd be a comfortable place for me.

That's all I've got for now. :/ I really hope you do well, and I know it's not for lack of quality. Marketing, perhaps... I don't know. If I knew the secret, I'd be rich!

P.S. One of my should-just-sell-like-hotcakes erotica shorts had a free day, once, and sold 16 copies. Can't even give it away! Ow!


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> If you can't get them to bounce around your site and respond to a poll, why on earth would you think you could get them to click to Amazon and cough up $2.99?


Apparently I can't. 



> Sorry, I know this isn't what you want to hear, but if you've been at it hot and heavy for a year, maybe it is time to shake things up and let go of the original vision and find a new one.


So the answer is we've done everything we can, mostly all the right things, and we've failed, so it's time to turn out the light and move on. If that's the truth, then I'm willing to flip that switch tomorrow.

I know that sounds flippant, but I've got ten years invested in these characters, and if after ten years and a quarter-million web visits I can't get even 100 people to buy and read a $3 book, I'm in the wrong line of work.


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

heavycat said:


> Apparently I can't.
> 
> So the answer is we've done everything we can, mostly all the right things, and we've failed, so it's time to turn out the light and move on. If that's the truth, then I'm willing to flip that switch tomorrow.
> 
> I know that sounds flippant, but I've got ten years invested in these characters, and if after ten years and a quarter-million web visits I can't get even 100 people to buy and read a $3 book, I'm in the wrong line of work.


It isn't that you've failed, it is that what you're doing isn't working so you have to do something else. THESE people, the ones that come to your website, are not book buyers. Divorce yourself from that idea and stop spending energy down that path.

So, if the dream is to sell the book, you have to find the book buyers elsewhere and stop worrying about who comes to the website. And if the website is draining you financially, flip the switch on the website. If it is a small amount, leave it up, it isn't hurting anything.

If you make that mind shift, then you can write more books. Either more in the universe you've invested in for 10 years, and go out and find that audience elsewhere. OR, write different books. You don't have to turn the old ones off, again, they're not hurting anything, they're out there. When/If other books take off, there will be ties to the originals too. John Grisham couldn't give away his first book A Time to Kill either. Until The Firm took off two years later.


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

I gotta ask you one question:

What are you trying to do?

And to expand upon that:

Do you want to write and sell books?

Or do you want to write and sell graphic novels?

Or do you want to do a webcomic?

What are you trying to do?

Here's my next question:

If you had spent zero dollars ($0) on this venture and simply wrote LadyStar as a novel and e-publshed it and sold 50 copies would you be as disappointed?

Maybe. Obviously we all hope that more than 50 people buy our books but it seems to me that your expectations may be exceeding the reality.

You have these expectations because of a few things:

1) You have spent, and continue to spend, a buttload of money on things that don't bring in any revenue. 
2) You seem to think that 10 years and hundreds of thousands of page views entitles you to some sort of guaranteed purchase point on your novels.

These seem to go hand in hand because of how much money you've spent on pulling in hundreds of thousands of page views.

So here's the brutal truth about both of these:

1) No amount of money can guarantee you sales. So stop thinking that the more you spend the more you deserve to get in return. And stop spending money. If you want to keep spending money without seeing a return, go invest in an independent film. 
2) If the hundreds of thousands of people that have been going to your website for 10 years don't buy e-books then those page views and history don't mean shit in regards to e-book sales. you might as well be writing an webcomic for vegans and open up a butcher's shop.

And I know I'll get the one or two anecdotal detractors reply to this who think that because they are the exception to the rule that the rule is then null but the fact is that webcomic readers *DON'T READ BOOKS*. So stop expecting your webcomic readers to turn into sales. Your biggest problem is that you think that you have a built in audience ready to buy thousands of books but the reality is that you're starting at ground zero. But worse than that is that you're starting at ground zero but, rather than working it like a regular noob e-book publisher you're trying to suck on the teat of a fan base that isn't there.

You have two choices:

1) Focus solely on the webcomic and have a strong, built-in fan base and make no money
or 
2) focus solely on the e-book and have no built-in fan base and make no money.


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

Oh, and to be clear, It has nothing to do with your characters, stories and worlds. Not enough people have even bought the book to make that determination, so stop blaming your lack of sales on them.


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## Alex Owens (Mar 24, 2011)

First, you've got some very good KB books in your Alsobots (Lacuna's the first one) so that's good. 

Then I noticed you have no tags on the book... well, you have one tag (young adult) but since that's so broad you might as well have none. It may not help, but it sure can't hurt to add some relevant tags to the book in hopes that it will help more people find your novel-- and get others to agree with the tags to vote them up. 

It also appears the book has only been out a few months, so I wouldn't give up on it just yet. "It's a marathon..." and all that. 

Now, about the website traffic. I'm guessing that your traffic is the wrong kind. One of your reviews mentions the website (manga girls) and how they though the book was manga as well. That could be a very logical reason behind the high traffic/ low sales. Now, how to fix that I have no clue. 

Hope this has helped at least a little!


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

Being an author is often a tough experience where rewarding moments are as random and fleeting as a gust of wind in the desert. The voices you hear on this board are like a pirate radio station broadcasted over your portable handheld stereo. Some of the voices try to tell you how they found their own oasis. Others hype up false indicators and expertise in oasis-hunting when the truth is that they stumbled into one right out the gate.

The only thing you can do is keep listening to the radio, smelling the air, and moving your feet in the direction that your instincts and the advice you trust are leading you.

That being said, here's some advice and ruminations from a blind man walking the desert.

I've had some decent experience doing giveaways on Librarything.com in getting more reviews, and KDP Select has produced some reviews and sales. I've tried putting out more books in series, but the results are far from conclusive. After I finish the third book in the Primal Patterns series, I plan to refocus to a more rigid genre like high fantasy, thrillers, or romance (my wife makes fun of me for being a sucker for romantic comedies that she watches), each of which I believe do better with free-periods and reader retention than the types of books I like to write.

There's a possibility that I'm just not very good at writing yet. But I think as far as "making sure my feet keep moving", I'm going to try switching genres to something more rigid and hopefully less confusing, which will hopefully work better in the giveaway-model. From the reception you're getting with the comic approach on ereaders, I might advise trying a genre switch too.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> you have to find the book buyers elsewhere and stop worrying about who comes to the website.


I don't know if that's possible. It cost us tens of thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of man-hours to generate this audience. It is an audience specifically _for LadyStar_. It's our audience! And yet!

I can't go build a completely separate audience for the book. It can't be done. On the one hand, I don't have the capital and on the other hand I have no idea where to look. If people who are already "fans" of LadyStar aren't willing to buy the book, why would anyone else? This really should be the simplest easiest sale of all time. It's $3.00, and 100% of the people who visit our site have a device they can read Kindle books on, some of them have multiple devices.

This is why I consider putting up a message that says "just tell us the truth and we'll give you a free book. All of you have been looking at this ad for 16 months. Why are you steadfastly refusing to buy this book? Just tell us."

They won't, of course (for the same reason they ignore polls and free Porsches), but it would be worth a try I suppose.



> then you can write more books


How will having multiple books help any of them sell? If nobody visits the page for book #1 (and therefore they don't buy it), why would they visit or buy any of the others? I mean, if I have to write a million words that don't sell to get book 12 or whatever to generate more than $15 a month, that's fine and it's something worth considering (I guess), but what is the magic connection between one book = no sales, many books = sales?


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Are you using Google Analytics? Because many other counters will count bots that troll the internet for websites. It's possible you're not counting REAL people coming.

Oh, I'm not saying you're not getting ANYONE to the website, but if all you get are a bunch of hits but no activity like real people would give, it's possible you're seeing a lot of bots coming and going.

And I agree, web comics probably don't entice people to buy ebooks. They are totally different things. Like putting up a book stand in a video store. You'll have tons of kids coming in buying video games, but how many of them are interested in reading books?

One more thing - Have you run the book through a critique group? I haven't read the book, but it's possible there are issues you can't see, but might be pointed out by a critique group. Book writing is very different from web comic writing.

Hopefully things will improve for you.


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

heavycat said:


> I don't know if that's possible. It cost us tens of thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of man-hours to generate this audience. It is an audience specifically _for LadyStar_. It's our audience! And yet!


They don't read books.



heavycat said:


> I can't go build a completely separate audience for the book. It can't be done. On the one hand, I don't have the capital


FYI: It doesn't take any capital. The joy of writing a book and selling a book is that it costs, virtually, nothing. You don't have to build an audience. They will come.



heavycat said:


> and on the other hand I have no idea where to look. If people who are already "fans" of LadyStar aren't willing to buy the book, why would anyone else?


Current fans of LadyStar don't read books.



heavycat said:


> This really should be the simplest easiest sale of all time. It's $3.00, and 100% of the people who visit our site have a device they can read Kindle books on, some of them have multiple devices.


But they don't read books.



heavycat said:


> This is why I consider putting up a message that says "just tell us the truth and we'll give you a free book. All of you have been looking at this ad for 16 months. Why are you steadfastly refusing to buy this book? Just tell us."


Answer: Because I don't read books.



heavycat said:


> They won't, of course (for the same reason they ignore polls and free Porsches), but it would be worth a try I suppose.


What good is a free book to someone that doesn't read books?



heavycat said:


> How will having multiple books help any of them sell? If nobody visits the page for book #1 (and therefore they don't buy it), why would they visit or buy any of the others? I mean, if I have to write a million words that don't sell to get book 12 or whatever to generate more than $15 a month, that's fine and it's something worth considering (I guess), but what is the magic connection between one book = no sales, many books = sales?


The connection is that 1 book = 50 sales, 10 books = 500 sales. But beyond that it grows exponentially.

But you have to stop expecting people that don't read books to buy your book.


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## Danielle Kazemi (Apr 2, 2011)

Hey, I can add to this! I feel excited. Yes, comic book action style in ebook form is a crappy sale. I have three out and if I sell one a month I am excited. Granted they are in desperate need of new covers but anyway. Raise your price. 3.99 or 4.99. Sounds weird because hey, it's not selling, but it works. I've sold more at that price than $.99. Review sites are okay but KDP free days really helped. There are so few comics that go free you land in the 1st or 2nd spot of the free bestseller list. You can alert all the big sites and see if that works too. Best of luck.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> What are you trying to do?


Establish marketable characters.



> Do you want to write and sell books?


Sure.



> Or do you want to write and sell graphic novels?


I did in about 2004. Not any more. Graphic novel market has come and gone.



> Or do you want to do a webcomic?


Nope. Webcomics are a gigantic money sink and are absolutely worthless as a marketing vehicle unless you plan on parking yourself behind a card table at every convention in North America 12 months a year. I can say that with some level of authority having operated one of the largest webcomic associations in the world for about three years. At this point if we can recover some small percentage of what we spent on the 89 gloriously expensive and luxuriously illustrated color pages six artists spent three years helping me publish, I'll consider us lucky.



> If you had spent zero dollars ($0) on this venture and simply wrote LadyStar as a novel and e-publshed it and sold 50 copies would you be as disappointed?


After 16 months? Yes, I would be just as disappointed.



> You seem to think that 10 years and hundreds of thousands of page views entitles you to some sort of guaranteed purchase point on your novels.


We should be doing better than a conversion rate that goes out to eight decimal places. We have a sustained audience in the thousands of uniques a month. These aren't click and go readers. Some of them have apparently been with us for years. I'd just kind of like to know what they are doing here? Nobody visits a department store 10 times a month for five years and never buys anything.



> If the hundreds of thousands of people that have been going to your website for 10 years don't buy e-books then those page views and history don't mean [crap] in regards to e-book sales. you might as well be writing an webcomic for vegans and open up a butcher's shop.


So the people who visit our site are not particularly interested in LadyStar they are only interested in webcomics? Okay, that's useful. That also means it won't make any difference if the site is replaced with a book page.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> Yes, comic book action style in ebook form is a crappy sale.


We've really made just a terrible horrible mistake in ever releasing a comic based on these characters. We'll never be able to escape LadyStar = comic, will we?

FWIW, the novel is not comic book action translated to prose. I'm fairly certain nobody will believe that, but it's the truth. 

The only reason we put the comics up on Kindle is to try and recover some of what we've spent and also in the hopes we could get a little of the multiple books effect. What I'm hearing now is that I need to write off about 90% of what we've done and start over.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

What's your website?

I went to ladystar.net and didn't see the book on the home page. I did see the old cover of what I'm guessing is a web comic? A real comic? The page doesn't tell me. And the links are dead.


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## MegSilver (Feb 26, 2012)

heavycat said:


> We'll never be able to escape LadyStar = comic, will we?


Why would you want to escape?
The Avengers -- which, as you know -- started out as a comic, grossed 207.3 million in another medium this last weekend.

What I'm getting is that you're frustrated. And as infuriating as this may sound at this particular moment, right now might be a good time to step away long enough to grab some perspective. I mean, this is how the entertainment industry works; everyone has hits and misses. LadyStar is not Ishtar or anything, it just didn't perform the way you'd hoped. So come up with something new that makes you feel good to work on. Hopeful, instead of stewing in frustration, because that's definitely not going to improve matters.

That said, I really am sorry. EVery day in this business is a mad leap of faith. Sometimes we land face-first.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> I went to ladystar.net and didn't see the book on the home page.


The web site is in transition and really isn't being updated at this point. Another reason I can't understand why we have sustained traffic. I really am beginning to believe our Google Analytics stats are a fragrant load. There's no way 3000 people a month visit a site that hasn't updated in seven months.

That would also neatly explain why none of them buy books either. It's probably being visited 3000 times a month by search engine bots.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

I'm confused then. People go to your site and it's not updated and links are dead and they can't even see the book - is it any wonder why it's not driving sales?


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Kids read on their phones and their ipods. How do your comics look on those devices? Is there too much on a page so it's unreadable?  Maybe you need to change formatting to one cell per page to make it readable. I know my daughter skips anything she can't easily read on her ipod.


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

So, I noticed that your novel is not enrolled in Select.  Some other people have mentioned it, but have you tried that route yet?  I know it sounds crazy, but I was selling an average of about 18 copies a month for fourteen months.  I tried dropping the price down to 99-cents and sold a whopping 40 copies across platforms.  And then I enrolled in Select... I ran a two day giveaway (my head was screaming at me it was CRAZY to giveaway my book) but it resulted in 15,000 downloads and 900 paid sales.  The next month I ran a one day giveaway, which resulted in 9,000 downloads and 1,100 paid sales...  I can only imagine the heartache you're going through having invested so much time and energy.  It might just be that you are destined for greater things and that's why this isn't working.  But if you haven't tried Select, maybe give that one three month go before throwing in the towel.


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

heavycat said:


> Establish marketable characters.


I find it strange that your answer wasn't: "Sell e-books." 
Right now "marketable characters" consist of: Spiderman, Batman, Iron Man, Katniss Everdeen, and Harry Potter. There's probably a couple more out there. I think you might want to change your goals to "telling stories" (characters without stories don't become marketable) and "selling e-books"



heavycat said:


> I did in about 2004. Not any more. Graphic novel market has come and gone.


Is that what it's about? The e-book market? The brave new frontier? You heard that it was the hot new market and there were a few millionaires coming out of the bazaar? Are you chasing a trend? Don't be offended by these questions. They may seem accusatory but they're not. If that's what you're publishing e-books for then you have every right to be pissed off because after chasing the graphic novel market, you've missed another trend. My suggestion: Stop looking for the right market and just do what you want/have to do. So what if the graphic novel market has come and gone? If that's what you want to do, then do it. If you want to write books, then write books. But don't boo-boo when you find out the ship's already left the port.



heavycat said:


> Nope. Webcomics are a gigantic money sink and are absolutely worthless as a marketing vehicle unless you plan on parking yourself behind a card table at every convention in North America 12 months a year. I can say that with some level of authority having operated one of the largest webcomic associations in the world for about three years. At this point if we can recover some small percentage of what we spent on the 89 gloriously expensive and luxuriously illustrated color pages six artists spent three years helping me publish, I'll consider us lucky.


I completely believe and trust your expertise in this arena. I have to wonder, though, why you would spend 3 years pursuing something that was such a time/money sink. Especially when your posts here are mostly profit/income oriented. Webcomics are a passion pursuit. The people that make them make them because they like to make them. Sure, there's always the hope that some bigger publisher is going to come by and give you a paying gig but for the most part it's all about the love of sequential art.



heavycat said:


> After 16 months? Yes, I would be just as disappointed.


I can't believe that after 16 months you only have 1 title out.



heavycat said:


> We should be doing better than a conversion rate that goes out to eight decimal places.


Probably true. 


heavycat said:


> We have a sustained audience in the thousands of uniques a month. These aren't click and go readers. Some of them have apparently been with us for years. I'd just kind of like to know what they are doing here? Nobody visits a department store 10 times a month for five years and never buys anything.


I can't say it enough. Your sustained audience doesn't read books.

I visit Target probably 4 times a month, you know how many sets of children's pajamas I've bought there? None. Why? Because I don't have children. You know how many loaves of bread my wife has bought there? None. Why? Because she's gluten free. You know how many bottles or cans of soda I've bought there? None. Why? Because I don't drink soda.

I go to the movie theater at least once a month, guess how many "children's" movies I've bought a ticket to in the last 20 years. None. I go to the movies. I don't go to see children's movies.

Your sustained audience goes to your page to read a webcomic, not to read a book.



heavycat said:


> So the people who visit our site are not particularly interested in LadyStar they are only interested in webcomics?


They are interested in LadyStar as a webcomic. Not as a book.



heavycat said:


> Okay, that's useful. That also means it won't make any difference if the site is replaced with a book page.


No, it probably won't make a difference.


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

heavycat said:


> We've really made just a terrible horrible mistake in ever releasing a comic based on these characters. We'll never be able to escape LadyStar = comic, will we?


That's not it at all. It's not that book readers aren't buying the book because they know it was a comic. It's that you're marketing it to comic readers.

Write a book and sell a book.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> Why would you want to escape?


Because everyone who sees our book cover thinks "comic book." Everyone who visits our site thinks "manga." The first six people who replied in this thread thought I was talking about a comic. In that situation, it's understandable that nobody can understand what I'm talking about because they can't hear or see anything but "comic" even if I'm talking about a novel.

And as long as people think LadyStar is a comic, we will continue to have zero sales. Nobody takes comics seriously. I know this because we marketed a comic for three years that nobody took seriously. It's beautiful, and it certainly attracted a large number of bored people looking for sporadic free entertainment, but as a commercial venture it was a complete waste of time and money.

It was a terrible mistake to draw LadyStar characters anime style and to market them with a webcomic. We're pigeonholed. We have to break out of the comic world now, otherwise nobody will take the characters seriously. At least that's what I'm hearing.



> What I'm getting is that you're frustrated.


Not particularly. I'm just trying to determine what we're doing wrong. To drive enough traffic to fill the Staples Center twice and only sell 50 books. That either takes effort or there is something horribly, desperately wrong that we're doing. If we're trying to sell books to people who don't want books, fine. That saves us a lot of work.

Let's take the Avengers, using your example. Proportionally speaking (take the overall Avengers comic/movie audience and normalize it to our audience over the last four years), do you believe if an Avengers novel were released on Kindle and marketed in the same way that as small a percentage of people would buy it as have bought the first LadyStar novel? If we are to believe that certain fans "don't read books" and many of them probably don't, it would stand to reason their Kindle e-book would do as poorly, correct?


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## David Adams (Jan 2, 2012)

I'm not going to use the word "comic" once in this post below the line! Talk'n solely about ebooks here!

-----

I'm going to reiterate what I said before, because it seems to have been glossed over, and I'll throw in an anecdote to boot.

*Only Amazon, at this stage, is pushing ebooks. No other venue comes close. You need to make Amazon your battlefield.*

On a whim, on these very boards, I started to write a silly Lacuna/Wool crossover. Hugh and others liked it, to the point he gave me something that made my month; he gave the crossover, and fake cover, a front-page post on his blog. The post linked to my website. It linked to my book on Amazon. I was amazed; I was expecting a footnote, but this was big.

Now, just to be clear what I mean by this, my sci-fi book was on the _front page_ on the website of the _best selling indie sci-fi author in the world_.

The audience of his website are:

- eBook readers
- Who read sci-fi!
- Who buy books!

My god, it was like the best thing to ever happen, and not just because I love the hell out of Hugh and all his work. I got ready to take advantage of the post. I dropped Lacuna's price to 99c, I polished up my website, I got ready for a post-free bump without any free; I thought, hey, this is going to be it. This is going to be it. This is my big break. I took the day off work so I could be there to answer the flood of questions I knew I'd get and to manage the fallout. I wanted to take advantage of the big rush as much as I could.

Total sales of Lacuna, at 99c, in the 48 hours after the post went live:


Spoiler



Zero.



Not including two sales by Hugh and Lisa at full price, which technically took place just before it went up.

Don't get me wrong, I was (and still am) stoked beyond belief at the whole thing, but I learned a lot too. I think that really reinforced for me just how much Amazon really matters when it comes to pushing books. Blog as much as you want, tweet into the void, spam every page on Facebook -- nothing's going to sell as much as your Amazon presence, and that's the philosophy I'm carrying forward until the game changes and then something else becomes the big thing.

Your website might genuinely be getting 3,000 unique visitors a month. It's not pushing books, which -- sorry to sound so mercenary -- is what we're all ultimately here for. I'm glad I'm self-publishing, so I can be my own master and sometimes waste time/money on endeavours that don't directly aid sales like posting in this very thread, but my ultimate point in publishing Lacuna was to get it read for profit. While I love having my work read and liked, at the end of the day the column I'm most interested in is "Paid Sales" not "Free Sales".

That's the simple truth for 99% of the authors here (basically anyone who has books available for cost). We love having our work read, and it's very satisfying, but we can't eat satisfaction.

So... I think you might have to make some hard choices in the future. Is your website pushing books? Would you be better served refocusing your efforts on Amazon, using your website as a secondary promotional tool? Could you stand to go back and try some of the things I suggested earlier? If not, why not?

The beauty of self-publishing is that at the end of the day, as long as you can afford the bills, the answer to those questions lay in your hands. What you do is up to you. But I'd advise, at this time, to focus on expanding your Amazon presence (by the methods I outlined in my previous post) however you can.

This is all the advice of someone who makes about $150 a month in sales, sometimes more and sometimes less, so I'm not making bank either. Take it as you will.


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## MegSilver (Feb 26, 2012)

(Please understand that the intent of this post is to make you laugh, not to be taken seriously.)

Avengers novel?

If they put Chris Hemsworth's stomach muscles on the cover, I'm there.


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

KateDanley said:


> So, I noticed that your novel is not enrolled in Select. Some other people have mentioned it, but have you tried that route yet? I know it sounds crazy, but I was selling an average of about 18 copies a month for fourteen months. I tried dropping the price down to 99-cents and sold a whopping 40 copies across platforms. And then I enrolled in Select... I ran a two day giveaway (my head was screaming at me it was CRAZY to giveaway my book) but it resulted in 15,000 downloads and 900 paid sales. The next month I ran a one day giveaway, which resulted in 9,000 downloads and 1,100 paid sales... I can only imagine the heartache you're going through having invested so much time and energy. It might just be that you are destined for greater things and that's why this isn't working. But if you haven't tried Select, maybe give that one three month go before throwing in the towel.


So, this is completely unrelated, but I just noticed that you recently redid Maggie for Hire's cover.

I would make out with that cover. That cover's sexier than socks on a rooster.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Haevy Cat - I went to your site because  you mentioned in a post you design games.  Your avatar screams Manga (literally it looks like she's screaming). If this isn't what you're marketing, you are just confusing everyone.

I assumed you did ebook comics. Why wouldn't I? That's what I see when I look at your site and the way you present your whole brand.


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## Jan Strnad (May 27, 2010)

First, I went to your site, clicked on the book everywhere it was mentioned, and got dead links. Maybe that's new, but at this point your site isn't helping me find your book at all.

On to larger issues!

I'm not quite sure, but I think that Nathan is making the point that people who buy comics and play games (most of your site was game-oriented, it seemed to me) don't read books. Let's look for more anecdotal evidence:

I have a four-issue horror comic series running right now. It's from Dark Horse Comics, the title is _Ragemoor_, it's a gothic/Poe/Lovecraft sort of story. I have a full-page ad in each issue advertising _Risen_, directing people to my website. I have no idea how many copies we're selling per month, but let's say it's 5000. That's 5000 people...reading a horror story...written by me...and the sales bump has been invisible. (Sales have actually gone down dramatically since I started running the ad, more due to the free book glut and Amazon's ever-changing algorithms, I think, than as a result of the ad.)

Another anecdote: I took out a Kindleboards ad, got about 97,000 page views, sold 4 books.

Put this all together and what does it mean? I have no friggin' clue. Except that, whatever it takes to effectively promote a book, I'm not doing it. And apparently, you aren't doing it, too.

Really nice artwork, though! I'm not much into the manga style but I know good art when I see it. You have some very talented people working for you!


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> You heard that it was the hot new market and there were a few millionaires coming out of the bazaar? Are you chasing a trend?


I have a degree in English. Both my parents were award-winning journalists. Writing, for me, is not my admission ticket to a trend. I come by my skills, such as they are, honestly.


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

heavycat said:


> Let's take the Avengers, using your example. Proportionally speaking (take the overall Avengers comic/movie audience and normalize it to our audience over the last four years), do you believe if an Avengers novel were released on Kindle and marketed in the same way that as small a percentage of people would buy it as have bought the first LadyStar novel? If we are to believe that certain fans "don't read books" and many of them probably don't, it would stand to reason their Kindle e-book would do as poorly, correct?


The Avengers target market was never 8 year old girls. That's your demographic. Your story is about a girl hero. Boys don't read that. Sorry, they're just not enlightened, especially at that age. The kids in your book range from 9-14 or so if I remember correctly. Kids read UP. Sometimes across, but never down. So you're marketing to 8-12 year old girls. I don't think you're getting 3000 8-12 year old girls hitting your website a month. You're probably getting high school aged boys that like that style of artwork enough to stop and have a look, but not enough to wheedle a credit card to buy a novel about that universe.

And keep in mind that the Avengers have been building their marketing since 1963 or so. They probably couldn't have sold ebooks of their comics to more than 50 people in the first 5 years either (had such things been available). They've had 48 years of spin offs, tv cartoons, movies, etc. to build to the point where they could put out the number one movie this weekend.


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

heavycat said:


> Let's take the Avengers, using your example. Proportionally speaking (take the overall Avengers comic/movie audience and normalize it to our audience over the last four years), do you believe if an Avengers novel were released on Kindle and marketed in the same way that as small a percentage of people would buy it as have bought the first LadyStar novel?


Yes.

There might be a slightly higher percentage if it was a movie tie-in novel but for the most part there's a reason why there hasn't been a huge market for Avengers novels over the past 30 years.

From around 1984 to 1991 I was a huge Marvel Comic book reader. Guess how many Marvel novels I read. That's right, none. I don't even know if Marvel novelized any of their characters. Why? Because I had no interest in reading a book about The Avengers, I wanted to read a comic about them.



heavycat said:


> I have a degree in English. Both my parents were award-winning journalists. Writing, for me, is not my admission ticket to a trend. I come by my skills, such as they are, honestly.


Good. So write a book. Put it for sale. Then write another one. And another one. and another one. And do it with no expectations that your previous life pimping webcomics and graphic novels will bring any sort of built-in audience to your door.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> Would you be better served refocusing your efforts on Amazon, using your website as a secondary promotional tool? Could you stand to go back and try some of the things I suggested earlier? If not, why not?


I honestly don't believe there is anything else we can do with respect to our Amazon page. The cover is new, the blurb is new (both already reviewed and commented on in separate threads and apparently to the approval of a majority of present company). We have several good reviews and a four-star average rating.

*NOTE*: I don't understand the thing about the tags, since every time I look at the information in our bookshelf there are seven dutifully identical tags in the same box every time (which apparently never appear on our book page for some reason). I also don't understand why our book is listed in the wrong categories, as it has been set to the same categories since it was published a year ago February. I'm not sure I can fix these problems.

I've considered KDP select, but at about the time I was planning to enroll, a series of posts appeared stating that KDP select may have run its course, or that it's oversaturated. I'm not all that sure it would be helpful at this point. I'm willing to be persuaded, but is the KDP select free program sustainable or is it a one-time sales bump followed by a slide back down into obscurity? Not that it would matter at this point.

It would be one thing if we were selling I don't know, 15 books a month. At least that would make it appear there isn't a padlock on the store. It would give us something to build on. But when you go four and five months with zero sales, that leads me to believe there are snakes in the cash register or something more obviously wrong.


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

heavycat said:


> I honestly don't believe there is anything else we can do with respect to our Amazon page. The cover is new, the blurb is new (both already reviewed and commented on in separate threads and apparently to the approval of a majority of present company). We have several good reviews and a four-star average rating.
> 
> I've considered KDP select, but at about the time I was planning to enroll, a series of posts appeared stating that KDP select may have run its course, or that it's oversaturated. I'm not all that sure it would be helpful at this point. I'm willing to be persuaded, but is the KDP select free program sustainable or is it a one-time sales bump followed by a slide back down into obscurity? Not that it would matter at this point.
> 
> It would be one thing if we were selling I don't know, 15 books a month. At least that would make it appear there isn't a padlock on the store. It would give us something to build on. But when you go four and five months with zero sales, that leads me to believe there are snakes in the cash register or something more obviously wrong.


If nothing else has worked for you, you should try KDP Select. If you have had a consistent string of zero sales, you don't have anything to lose.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> And keep in mind that the Avengers have been building their marketing since 1963 or so.


I was not attempting to compare LadyStar to the Avengers. I was speaking proportionally.


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## psychotick (Jan 26, 2012)

Hi,

Don't know a heck of a lot about comics I'm afraid. But I did check out your book page for Ladystar and ticked your 'like' button.

One thing I would say straight off the bat - there's no tags written for it. That means that anyone searching for a book say by typing in the word - 'comic' or whatever other tag your book should have, will never find it. Think of some tags for it, up to nine or ten I think, and add them pronto.

As far as the other stuff goes, sorry - all I can tell you is that it's hard. I'm having a really crud month so far, my sales have fallen off a cliff. I can't understand how a book can have hundreds of sales one month and one the next, and I've got four doing that. But keep your chin up as they say, look to the future as you march on, and try not to fall down a hole!

Cheers, Greg.


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## Douglas E Wright (Mar 11, 2011)

Victorine said:


> Are you using Google Analytics? Because many other counters will count bots that troll the internet for websites. It's possible you're not counting REAL people coming.
> 
> Oh, I'm not saying you're not getting ANYONE to the website, but if all you get are a bunch of hits but no activity like real people would give, it's possible you're seeing a lot of bots coming and going.


I was going to ask the same thing. Try G.A. I have hits coming in on my website and nothing. However, with G.A. you look to see the entry and exit points. On top of that, if you're website is infected, you might be getting hits from people looking for porn. The keywords will tell you that. I had a website a couple years ago that the images became infected with website addresses. The images themselves! Took me weeks to clean every image or delete and upload. When it happened a second time, I took the site down completely. So, it may have less to do with your book and more with infection.

BTW~ I have a few short stories up and one novella and two collections. I have one ultimate short story collection. I'm lucky if I get one sale a month, and usually from a .99 cent short story. So, I know how you feel. Don't give up. I'm writing a novel right now, and have two into small press publishers. I'm not getting too far online, so lets try something old-fashioned, at least until my name becomes a little more known.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> One thing I would say straight off the bat - there's no tags written for it.


In my bookshelf, I put the seven tags I am allowed in the correct field. Those tags apparently don't show up on the Amazon page. Or if they do, I can't find them. I have not added any tags as the section says it is for customers. Am I supposed to add tags there? Am I allowed to?


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## Danielle Kazemi (Apr 2, 2011)

Those are keywords - completely different. You have to input tags on the book page itself. Scroll down a bit, add a few, and when other people do it too, it increases on the recently popular listing. I think it still does. Pretty sure.


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

heavycat said:


> In my bookshelf, I put the seven tags I am allowed in the correct field. Those tags apparently don't show up on the Amazon page. Or if they do, I can't find them. I have not added any tags as the section says it is for customers. Am I supposed to add tags there? Am I allowed to?


You're talking about keywords. Tags are different. Fill in tags on your book page to get the search terms started. Unfortunately, customers aren't really using the tagging interface all that much. I have no idea why Amazon is still basing the search engine on them being present.

My book "Elves and Goblins: Perspectives of a Father's Rebellion" wasn't coming up on "elves and goblins perspectives" until I put "elves, goblins, perspectives" in the tags--even though they are in the darned title--after I had talked to KDP and they informed me that tags actually are influencing search.


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## Danielle Kazemi (Apr 2, 2011)

As for categories, if you can't change them or the category is not available to you, get in touch with KDP support. Have the exact pathway you want your book to appear in. There is a childrens > superhero category (might do well there). I wouldn't take the book down. It sucks not selling - I think everyone stops there for a while - but things get better. Keep searching out for your audience. And the cover with the girl kinda scares me. Makes me think she is the bad guy (is she?). Maybe put a comic style cover on the novel as well.


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## R.A.Library (Mar 23, 2012)

Have you tried posting the first few chapters on Wattpad or setting up a beta-reader or Rpg group? If you connect with your book's audience where they're likely to congregate, you might build a large following in a reasonable time span, and gather valuable feedback for the next books in the series. It would be a shame to see you give up on a universe you've built for at least a decade. 

I co-sign the Kindle Select suggestions posted, as well. From what I've seen on the boards, it can give the book a good jumpstart or at least bring in profits from the lending library.

Blissings 'pon it.


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## Vera Nazarian (Jul 1, 2011)

heavycat said:


> I have not added any tags as the section says it is for customers. Am I supposed to add tags there? Am I allowed to?


Heck yes! Enter your 15 tag items, click the Like button. 

Have you seen the Tag Exchange thread here on KindleBoards, it's what people are doing!


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## Guest (May 8, 2012)

You're not alone Heavycat. My one has similar sales despite the great reviews what she got, despite the marketing, despite anything. In my case the problem is; it's too intelligent and complex for the majority of the western readers (Some readers said, so maybe they're right.). Plus as you're also asking a price higher than $0.99, maybe you won't get sales as Amazon customers are damned cheap these days (I can sell my book everywhere for $8.88, but I can't sell my book even for $4.99, not even for $1.33 on Amazon despite the advertisements what this series got. That's already telling something about how Amazon customers may think.). Tags and likes are useless so don't waste your time on it (My book has more than 1000 in overall and it doesn't help the sales at all.). I also would suggest to avoid KDP Select, because that thingy also doesn't work as some books get a priority there, special thanks to some algorithms, while others won't show up to customers. Also Amazon readers rarely read free books, so this is the other reason why this KDP Select thingy is useless. You give exclusivity to Amazon for 90 days, you give your book for free for five days, than IF you have luck and emphasis on the IF, maybe someone will read your freebie.

Try this; open a tiny webshop on your own website, advertise it a bit and voila, you'll have sales. I already had better sales in my tiny Gumroad sponsored webstore in the first 13 days than what I had on Amazon in the last six month (And unlike Amazon, I already got my better salary via my webstore.). Or use anything else than Amazon, other retailers if you want some true income instead of the charity $0.99 income, or if you want true readers and not some "Hey, that book has 30 five star rating. I don't what that book is all about, and I don't care, but let's buy it!". Amazon has started good, the idea was great, but since this gold rush it has turned to a snobbish joke where books not even get the same chances as some klu-klux algorithm is deciding which book will show up to the readers and which don't. And these days Amazon is all about impulse buys, not about selective purchases.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

This is the only page on the LadyStar site now:

http://ladystar.net

There shouldn't be any further question whether it's a comic or not.


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## David Adams (Jan 2, 2012)

heavycat said:


> This is the only page on the LadyStar site now:
> 
> http://ladystar.net
> 
> There shouldn't be any further question whether it's a comic or not.


I think we can put that misconception to bed.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

It sounds like what you're doing isn't working. That sucks, and it's really tough to say why. Now maybe this is the only kind of story you want to tell, and if that's true, there's nothing you can do but keep plugging away. If not, I'd suggest walking away from this huge time and money sink and trying something else. Write a fresh story, get it up there with a professional presentation, then move on.

There's a lot of luck in this business, but it's a lot easier to get lucky when you have ten lottery tickets instead of one.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

MichaelWallace said:


> There's a lot of luck in this business, but it's a lot easier to get lucky when you have ten lottery tickets instead of one.


This. Try with another book, and another one, and another one.


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

You have not been going that long in terms of publishing and only with two books, so you can't expect mega sales. It's like having all your eggs in one basket. I think you have relied too much on the site to draw in sales and not enough on the basics of getting your word out to actual readers of eBooks.

I wouldn't go with smashwords. The main market for now is kindle. I live outside America and so for me to buy your book would cost me $4.99. If you enrol it on select, then it loses the $2 additional charge to customers outside America and gives you 5 free days to promote to a wider audience. You could at least try it for 90 days. You only get 35% for sales outside America, but for me these sales account for 30% of sales on one book I have on select.

You could get KDP to fix the look inside feature for a start. All that happens when I click the book is that is shows the cover. If they can't sample it, why should they buy it? I really wanted to check out the sample, but I can't.

On the second book with the animated type cover, all the look inside feature shows is the cover and a review. Not much good to people wanting to sample. Again fire off an email to KDP. 

The cover is okay but its not great for the genre. All it is, is an ordinary photograph with the eyes coloured which isn't obvious from a thumbnail. I would have thought something more fantasy focused type of image would be better. There was a guy from deviant art this week on here with a fantastic cover portfolio. $55 for an eBook cover and he uses his own manipulated photo's within the budget

Why not make it available as a print book without the extended distribution through create space. The price would be horrendous but it would show up as a massive saving on your eBook page.

Ticked all your tags for you and the like.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

AndreSanThomas said:


> The Avengers target market was never 8 year old girls. That's your demographic. Your story is about a girl hero. Boys don't read that. Sorry, they're just not enlightened, especially at that age. The kids in your book range from 9-14 or so if I remember correctly. Kids read UP. Sometimes across, but never down. So you're marketing to 8-12 year old girls. I don't think you're getting 3000 8-12 year old girls hitting your website a month. You're probably getting high school aged boys that like that style of artwork enough to stop and have a look, but not enough to wheedle a credit card to buy a novel about that universe.


^ This.

As I said in one of the umpteen other threads you've created, you have a franchise that is of essentially zero interest to the people who read your genre (young boys), of at best marginal interest to your actual demographic (young girls), and now released in a format (ebook) whose consumers are overwhelmingly adult women, i.e. neither of the above. In a sense, the equivalent of a Regency romance written from a male perspective. Them's the breaks. You can blame Google Analytics or your website or your website visitors, if any, all you like, but that doesn't change the fundamental divide between your audience and your demographic.

But let's say I'm wrong. Let's say it really _was_ that expensive illustrated cover that was holding your book back, as you seem to think. It's been two weeks since you cast aside that rusty anchor. What have you done to market the new-and-improved-not-manga-at-all-honest Ladystar novel since then? Sent it off to book reviewers? Sent it off to book reviewers whose websites actually get traffic? (An important distinction, that.) Bought advertising? Spammed Twitter and Facebook and a dozen forums frequented by young girls who like to read? Spammed a bunch of the groups you're in on deviantART? Anything, really, other than moping on the Internet?


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## ChrisVC (Mar 25, 2012)

I'm going to say something that hasn't been said.  

I just got done reading your sample chapters on Amazon.  Almost everyone who buys a book on Amazon from an unknown writer reads some of that sample.

I think your first chapter is a big part of the problem.  I don't know if you want me to go into those problems here in this thread, or if you'd rather PM me.  

Let me know.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

Heavycat, A picture is worth a thousand words. 

I would begin by changing the cover. Cute girl with nice eyes, but it does not convey Fantasy to me. It's just a photo of a girl...really. You want your cover to interest the young (9-14) Fantasy readers. Look at other very successful Fantasy books. What are they doing differently? 

Study them--many are hand painted little masterpieces that draw the viewer into a new world. They have compelling covers in Fantasy no matter what age group. Look at the Avenger's movie poster or Transformers--that is what you are competing with visually. Look at Riordan or Dalgish covers too. Your cover is the quick first introduction to your story for that young reader--pull them in.

I'll stop with that. I'd cut back on all the website bandwidth for now too.


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## GPB (Oct 2, 2010)

heavycat said:


> This is the only page on the LadyStar site now:
> 
> http://ladystar.net
> 
> There shouldn't be any further question whether it's a comic or not.


Blocked by my company's firewall based on categorization "Games."


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

jackz4000 said:


> *I would begin by changing the cover*. Cute girl with nice eyes, but it does not convey Fantasy to me. It's just a photo of a girl...really. You want your cover to interest the young (9-14) Fantasy readers. Look at other very successful Fantasy books. What are they doing differently?
> 
> Study them--many are *hand painted little masterpieces* that draw the viewer into a new world.


This might just make his head blow up.


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## ChrisVC (Mar 25, 2012)

NathanWrann said:


> This might just make his head blow up.


LOL.

Yep. This is ground we've covered.


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

jackz4000 said:


> Heavycat, A picture is worth a thousand words.
> 
> I would begin by changing the cover. Cute girl with nice eyes, but it does not convey Fantasy to me. It's just a photo of a girl...really. You want your cover to interest the young (9-14) Fantasy readers. Look at other very successful Fantasy books. What are they doing differently?
> 
> ...


The new cover is based on a third or fourth redesign. The first three were more manga/anime style in the style of what used to be on his website.

Now, he's just utterly confused and frustrated.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

Rex Jameson said:


> The new cover is based on a third or fourth redesign. The first three were more manga/anime style in the style of what used to be on his website.
> 
> Now, he's just utterly confused and frustrated.


I remember now. This current cover is an improvement over the previous one, yet still has a way to go. Then again, he's been working on this for 10 years.

This seems to be a classic case of not understanding your market, your reader and what they want and how to reach them. It seems he needs to take a long hard look at what he's been doing wrong and make more changes. Maybe add a couple male characters in with all the girls. Winners never quit, quitters never win.

Hang in there heavycat--don't blow up.


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## Kent Kelly (Feb 12, 2011)

How are you engaging with your audience?  Are there Ladystar forums?  Do you tweet and receive fan tweets?  Do you know who these people are, how old they are, who their favorite character is?  Is there a Ladystar fan page?  How does the Goodreads page look for Ladystar?  Shelfari?  LibraryThing?  How many guest blogs have you done about your book?  How do you knowingly translate your website audience into identified e-book readers?  Are you actively seeking a young female audience?  What age?  Is there a reason for lack of continuity between cover designs?  What impressions do your beta readers give you after they finish reading the book?  When they read the book to their daughters?  Have you tried republishing the book with a different title, changing the character names and seeing if the book sells?  Your “other items customers buy” results on Ladystar:  The Dreamspeaker are showing me books by Brian Rathbone, Robert Fanney and Jeff Inlo.  Have you read these books?  Have you read the reviews to these books to see who the readers are and what they are getting out of these books?  Have you gotten any private negative reviews on this book from sending out review copies?  What criticism did you receive?  Is this book in hardcopy?  Do you try to sell hardcopies at cons?  If people pick up your hardcopies and then move on without buying, what other products are they carrying?  If they read for a bit before moving on, who are these people?

The advice you probably don’t want (and I don’t like to give) is:  the market is oversaturated.  Step out for awhile, or write more books with different characters.  If you’re not willing to write more different books while this one sits on the vine and waits for another of your works to give it a tailwind, it might never blossom.  This from the guy who wrote a novel in 7 years and a novella in 2 days, and the novella sells 10 times more than the novel.  Write more different stuff and build an author audience who responds to you, people who have names and faces and chat with you about your life and are interested in your next work whatever it may be.


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## Sakinah (May 2, 2012)

When I saw your avatar Heavy Kat I knew I reconised that artwork. I used to follow your webcomic a few years back from time to time. Sorry to hear about the issues with you're experiencing with your transition to ebooks. Hope things pick up for you soon. 

I doubt you ever heard of my little story driven webcomic I used to update weekly years ago, hehe. Anyway, I found this thread very helpful since I too have made the jump from comics to ebooks.


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## David Adams (Jan 2, 2012)

I know you changed the cover. I just wanted to show you a few things I did in about half an hour with Google Image Search and Photoshop to illustrate my point below.


































What's your expectations of each "cover"? What's the target market? What do you think of the protagonist? What do you think of the world setting? Who's this book for? How much blood is there? How much sex? What's the reading level required?

*If you had to pick one, which would you rather buy? *

Branding is important. There's a reason why all the covers in my sig (apart from the erotica, naturally) use the same font, same stylings, even if they contain different stuff. It's so people look at it and go, "Yep, that's _Lacuna_ a'right". The picture I had for _Demons of the Void_ is serious. That's a modified real-world People's Republic of China Army Navy (yes, it is actually called that) uniform. The ship is pretty cool looking, but it's not covered in blinking lights or brightly coloured. It's dark. Serious. That's the message I'm trying to convey, that I write science fiction where people eat, poop, swear, die, have sex in missile launch tubes and die. Usually not in that order. Sometimes.

What's my target audience with these books? Their titles? Their stylings? Well, I'm hoping for 18-30 sci-fi readers. That's where the bulk of my sales come from. The few under-18s I've shown it to had minimal interest, except one who read *well* above his age and loved it. So I try and market my book towards them. My profile picture is a hideous monster - also doubling as my real self - which again is a bit more serious. Rules can be broken, as one certain Sith-witch will attest, but a "theme" is important.

Anyway. Branding is important, and what you have as your "brand" guides your target audience towards buyers.

I've mentioned it twice now, but you haven't responded. *Have you tried increasing your Amazon market presence? KDP Select? Smashwords giveaways? Sending copies of your book to book review bloggers? Anything like this?*


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

There is some great specific advice on this thread, but I think we're repainting the stained ceiling while ignoring the leak in the roof that is causing the discoloration. In the original post you wrote:



> I have a number of ideas for new stories, but it's tough to get inspired to write when it's likely I'm pouring a million words down a sinkhole before someone says "you know what? Nobody really likes these stories.


1. Unless you think writing talent springs forth fully formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus, you've got to write those million words anyway. Why not get started today? If you like to write, they won't be a waste. If you don't like writing, you should pick something easier and more lucrative to pursue.
2. Is there really only one kind of story you can write? If not, try something else. Look at the types of stories you like to write, brainstorm out some ideas, and then choose from among the stories that interest you the ideas that seem to be the most commercial.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

I'll have to respond to all of the current replies at once here, so look at this post if you replied:



> All that happens when I click the book is that is shows the cover. If they can't sample it, why should they buy it? I really wanted to check out the sample, but I can't.


I can see the review excerpts and the first four chapters or so. I have no control over what is made available as an excerpt.



> i.e. neither of the above.


Your point being that because boys read fantasy adventure and girls don't, and all the Kindles are owned by adult women, that a fantasy adventure story with a young female protagonist cannot succeed? If that's true then a) this entire discussion is academic, b) nearly all of the great female protagonists of the last 20 years were flukes and c) we probably shouldn't be trying to market these books at all, should we?



> As I said in one of the umpteen other threads you've created


I created a thread about the book cover and a thread about sales. Three =/= umpteen.



> Anything, really, other than moping on the Internet?


I'd say that's uncalled for. Myself and numerous others have put many thousands of hours of work into marketing this series.



> I think your first chapter is a big part of the problem. I don't know if you want me to go into those problems here in this thread, or if you'd rather PM me.


Oh, by all means. I would be very appreciative.



> Now, he's just utterly confused and frustrated.


Folks, truly and honestly, I'm not frustrated. At all. I'm looking for answers to very legitimate questions about marketing a book. This is not the first product I've ever marketed on the web before. We've been in business longer than Google. 



> Maybe add a couple male characters in with all the girls.


Yes, of course! It'll be just like Nancy Drew! All Nancy needed was a boyfriend to rescue her from danger. Everything was fine after that. (Sorry, but if you're trying to help, this is the wrong button to push. Jessica Hoshi does not need to be rescued)



> How are you engaging with your audience?


At the moment, we're releasing a series of casual dress-up games on the web and mobile devices which should be rather appealing to girls. All of those games are promoting our books.



> Have you tried increasing your Amazon market presence? KDP Select? Smashwords giveaways? Sending copies of your book to book review bloggers? Anything like this?


I did respond to these questions earlier in the thread. Sorry if you didn't notice. We've made numerous changes to our Amazon page and released a second title. I'm on the fence about KDP select due to the "Dark Side of Free" controversy. We're not on Smashwords due to the advice to stick to Kindle for now. This book has been placed in the hands of nearly 500 book review bloggers.



> If you had to pick one, which would you rather buy?


That's a good question, *HOWEVER*, you left out the most important piece: the cover they are actually using to sell the book. Now, let me turn these questions around, since the Hunger Games is such a great counter example. You have a picture of a Mockingjay Pin and block lettering of a title and author name.

What's your expectations? What's the target market? What do you think of the protagonist? What do you think of the world setting? Who's this book for?

My answers to these questions would be very simple. I have absolutely not the foggiest idea. The actual cover for the Hunger Games *says absolutely nothing about the target market, protagonist, world setting or who the book is for and it sets no expectations of any kind. This cover breaks every single rule of "good" cover design.*

Nevertheless... 

I'm not trying to be contrary here. I'm just pointing out that those questions aren't so simply answered. And, to be fair, if you'll recall, when I did post a thread about our cover design, I received a rather significant number of encouraging comments about the new design and I was further encouraged to change it right away.

So let me answer the questions about our new cover: Expectations? Well, the story is about a girl. That's pretty clear. Protagonist? She's young. Her eyes are unusually intense. She seems rather determined and she is wearing unusual jewelry. Seems rather mysterious, possibly paranormally mysterious? The cover doesn't say anything about the world setting, but it's likely the book might be of interest to girls about the same age as the protagonist?

There are some other advantages to the cover: it's very eye-catching and readable at thumbnail sizes, which I think is vitally important. It is also very simple, which I think makes it more powerful. Perhaps I'm wrong, but there it is.



> Unless you think writing talent springs forth fully formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus, you've got to write those million words anyway.


Already done. They're not marketable manuscripts yet, but I've got enough material on paper for eight to ten new books of varying lengths (novella to novel). They are also not all LadyStar stories. I'm not being flippant. I'm just trying to point out that I'm going about this the right way and making a genuine sincere effort to produce good work.


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## Debra Purdy Kong (Apr 1, 2009)

Patty Jansen said:


> If anyone knew the answer to this, they'd be out there making millions.
> 
> Fact is, publishing something is very much a hit-and-miss affair, and the traditional publishers have been battling this beast for decades (if not centuries).
> 
> For a self-publisher, all I can say is that in my opininon it makes much more sense to spend most of your promotional money on your bestsellers. That is--test the market with a budget version and spend the big money only when sales justify it.


I agree with Patty, and would add that your time would also be better spent creating new work and building up a repetoire. It's funny, but I was discussing the same type of situation with a group of writers on Saturday. Most of those who'd published 3 or more books had one that just didn't sell well, and often the author thought it was their best book. All I can say is don't dwell too much on what isn't working and focus on future projects and opportunities!

Good luck
!


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Are you sure your web site traffic is what you think it is? This is what Alexa says is happening. Do you really think people searching for "pistol action simulation" or "it assistant" are likely to buy your book?

High Impact Search Queries for ladystar.net

Popular queries that are relevant to this site and are actively targeted by competitors advertising on search engines. Click on queries below to discover who is advertising for these queries.
Query               Impact Factor Query Popularity QCI
pistol action simulation 22.44 5 10
it assistant                 13.61 14 15
the best books         11.24 13 20
best books                 7.14  33 29
online adventure         4.18         12 26
online adventure stories 3.66  24 10
arianne                      2.66         21 18
adventure stories 2.09         22 13
optimistic                 1.62  38 11
adventure                 0.40  42 28
ebook download         0.31  38 39
manga ebook         0.08  8 10
download                 0.04  65 17
casual                 0.00         37


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> Do you really think people searching for "pistol action simulation" or "it assistant" are likely to buy your book?


No, but according to Google, since 2006 (when we first installed Analytics) nobody has ever searched for those terms and arrived at our site.

I'm not entirely sure I believe our Analytics numbers. I don't believe 2800 people visited our site last month. Not for a minute. A site visited by that many people for these many months would have comments and e-mails and would be generating book sales and ad revenue. Our site does none of those things. Our audience acts as if they don't exist. Which is why I believe they don't.

But then again, I might be wrong.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

heavycat said:


> No, but according to Google, since 2006 (when we first installed Analytics) nobody has ever searched for those terms and arrived at our site.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure I believe our Analytics numbers. I don't believe 2800 people visited our site last month. Not for a minute. A site visited by that many people for these many months would have comments and e-mails and would be generating book sales and ad revenue. Our site does none of those things. Our audience acts as if they don't exist. Which is why I believe they don't.
> 
> But then again, I might be wrong.


Who knows. I'm not an expert, since I spend very little time marketing. Maybe 1 hour for every 20 I spend writing. It seems to work for me. In fact, if I loved the marketing side I'd probably try to sell something with less competition than books, like stoplights or handmade quilts. Or ginormous gongs. Yes, I'd sell gongs.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> Or ginormous gongs. Yes, I'd sell gongs.


Tell you what. If you get a gong business going, I'll throw in with you.


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

You make it REALLY hard to help you.

We're telling you lots of things about the disconnect between your website, the content of your book, the comic 'thing', the real customer, the customer you want it to be, your cover, your statistics, how you find your customer, what customers you should be finding, etc. It would cost you another ten thousand dollars to pay someone for the advice and analysis on a broad range of related issues you're getting right here, for free.

You come back every time with- but I've spent tens of thousands of dollars. But that's the character I've spent 10 years developing. But that's not what I want to have happen. But that's not what Jessica would do. But I should have thousands of sales because I've got thousands of website hits. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You have to change something if you want to change your current circumstance. Change the goal. Change the website. Change the focus. Change the book. Write a new book. Market differently. Write a better book. Find out if your website is even doing what you think it is. Use Amazon's resources properly. Write a different kind of book. Change the price up. Change the price down. Something. Maybe several somethings.

Bottom line- _a fantasy adventure story with a young female protagonist cannot succeed _ WHEN IT IS MARKETED TO TEENAGE BOYS WHO READ COMICS ON WEBSITES, unless of course you want to age Jessica, add some boobs and draw her engaged in various sexual encounters.

All artists have the artist's soul. We create our vision with words or paint or clay. That's all well and good. When you try to make a buck off it, you have to switch to your businessman's hat. You have to be ruthless to your inner artist and be willing to recognize when they are in conflict. You don't seem to be willing to do that. Maybe you're just not cut out for this.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

If you're losing money, stop. Cancel your paid site, construct your own without the Manga look, (on freewebs.com), contact YA book bloggers, send them a free ebook copy, and start marketing and catagorizing it properly. Since it has a 14-year-old heroine, your market is 12+ on up. Hopefully, the situations aren't too adult or the language too complicated. 


I write young YA (12+, my protag is fifteen) and I'm fairly successful at it. I've been making money since day one. I speak at schools and teen events, that's where I sell my hardcopies. A lot of young kids are given permission to buy ebooks/books (from their parents) using their Amazon and itune accounts. (They're like me, they buy the gift cards, give them to the kids, and it's deducted from their account). 

You have gone about this wrong from day one. I thought your site was Shojo Manga. I thought your book was Shojo Manga. A customer should immediately be able to tell your genre and market from looking at your site. Simplify and target market.


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

heavycat said:


> I'm on the fence about KDP select due to the "Dark Side of Free" controversy. We're not on Smashwords due to the advice to stick to Kindle for now. This book has been placed in the hands of nearly 500 book review bloggers.


Go select. Don't worry about the "Dark Side of Free". You're already exclusive to amazon so you don't have to worry about losing sales on other sites. Go select. Go free. Give away thousands of your books. Get people who read books reading them. And see what happens. If nothing happens then you can take it out of select in three months, by which point you'll have another book out, right?

btw what happened with those 500 review bloggers? I google "Ladystar hoshi" and only your site comes up. (and a few free game sites)


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> You come back every time with


With all due respect, last night I unplugged a group of web sites that are probably worth more in total dollar terms than your house. I have made jarring and seismic changes to our marketing in the last two months, most of it based on the advice I've received here. I think it's unfair to try and label me as quarrelsome and uncooperative. That is, unless you would prefer I sit quietly and wring my hands while a list of our faults are cataloged and ratified.



> But that's not what Jessica would do.


As professional authors, I'm fairly certain you and I can agree that asking for a main character's personality and courage to be thrown overboard is a bit much. I'm also fairly certain I don't have to parade the last 80 years of strong female protagonists through here to prove Jessica Hoshi is by no means a trailblazer.



> Maybe you're just not cut out for this.


Maybe I'm not.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> btw what happened with those 500 review bloggers?


We got about 12 reviews, all of them positive. If you search for "LadyStar The Dreamspeaker" (with quotes) you should be able to find most of them. Excerpts from some are in the front of the book (visible in the sample pages) and a couple were posted on our book page.


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## Guest (May 8, 2012)

The problem is not the cover or the price or the blurb. Before you spend a single dime on anything else, you need a strong content editor. Badly. 

I read the sample. The dialogue is stilted. The narrative voice is unfocused. The characters all feel generic and unengaging, and they behave in a way dictated by the plot instead of a way that feels organic. The worldbuilding is logically flawed and requires enormous suspension of belief without a strong internal mechanism in place to suspend the belief from. The world is not complicated, but convoluted. There is choppy grammar and odd sentence construction. The book is not ready for market, and that is why it is not selling.

Note that I didn't say it was BAD. I've read bad. This isn't bad. It's just not ready for prime time. It needs a professional hand to guide it. You are too close to the content and can't look at it objectively. And this is why you are struggling. 

I also have the impression that the book is still being 'written' as if it was a graphic format. The dialogue, for example, would work if it was supported by graphic elements. Think about the dialogue of comic books. It ain't Shakespeare. But it is supported by the images that do all the heavy lifting. But you can't write a novel with the same writing tool kit that you write a graphic novel or comic. The words need to convey the images and do the heavy lifting all on their own.

You are banging your head against the wall for no reason. Find a good content editor that can help you get this baby ready for publication. There is a market for this type of story, but you have to have the story in marketable format first.


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## GPB (Oct 2, 2010)

heavycat said:


> With all due respect, last night I unplugged a group of web sites that are probably worth more in total dollar terms than your house.


What does this even mean?


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> What does this even mean?


Professionally drawn anime illustrations run between $400 and $1500 a page. We have thousands of illustrations. You do the math.


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

ChrisVC said:


> I'm going to say something that hasn't been said.
> 
> I just got done reading your sample chapters on Amazon. Almost everyone who buys a book on Amazon from an unknown writer reads some of that sample.
> 
> I think your first chapter is a big part of the problem.


Have to agree here, even though I only got through about a page. I think there's some superficial style issues (nothing "incorrect" necessarily) that are pulling me out immediately, namely a preponderance of adjectives and adverbs. Have you read Stephen King's _On Writing_? Excellent overview for anyone interested in writing for money, I think.


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## KateEllison (Jul 9, 2011)

heavycat said:


> That's a good question, *HOWEVER*, you left out the most important piece: the cover they are actually using to sell the book. Now, let me turn these questions around, since the Hunger Games is such a great counter example. You have a picture of a Mockingjay Pin and block lettering of a title and author name.
> 
> What's your expectations? What's the target market? What do you think of the protagonist? What do you think of the world setting? Who's this book for?
> 
> ...


I thought I'd chime in here and say something about THG and book covers since I've read a lot on this subject, and it's discussed to death among trad and indie YA authors and readers alike.

The Hunger Games's cover is not really its biggest strength. THG is a brilliant example of the power of word-of-mouth...the book was already going viral before it was even released...copyeditors and stuff were passing it around the office, telling everyone to read it. So the cover didn't help sell the book so much as hearing every person in the industry (and all your friends) gush and rave about the book did. I picked it up because of rave reviews from blogs and other readers. And FWIW, the cover is sufficiently gender-neutral that more boys may have been into reading it, which I guess is cool.

HOWEVER covers are extremely important if you don't have viral marketing...they are the first statement you're making about your book. A bad cover can sink a book.

The cover you have now isn't BAD as far as clarity, etc go, but if I was a twelve-year-old girl I would not be interested. I liked stuff like this:













Also, link-maker won't let me post these, but all the Star Wars Jedi Apprentice books had really eye-catching covers and I LOVED them as a kid: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=jedi+apprentice+series&sprefix=jedi+appr%2Cstripbooks%2C198

Obviously The Selection, Under the Never Sky, etc are new books that just released this year, but I would have been ALL OVER THOSE as a kid. Heck, I'm still drooling over them, because I still like bright colors and sparkly things and pretty dresses and artwork. But I also like kickass girls and swords and stuff, so I tried to include a range of things I would have found interesting as a kid (hence the Star Wars books, which I adored at that age). I'm not saying you have to put your character in a dress. Far from it. I'm just trying to give you a reference into the mind of me, at least, as a 12-year-old girl or so, who would've been exactly your target audience.

These covers have a kind of theme...they are visually interesting, dynamic, and a mix of color and a technical term I like to call "swirly stuff." It looks kinda magical and fun. I dunno. Heck.

And it's funny, cuz I see people complain all the time about books with "purple covers and limp girls" or whatever, never mind the fact that they are aimed directly at teen girls or people who are teen girls at heart. Sorry, but it's eye-catching and pretty and I certainly like to look at it. You'd better believe my 12-year-old self did too. I had no sense of shame over my love of pretty, colorful things at that age. I liked Lisa Frank and unicorns and Star Wars and video games and rainbows.

I know you've sunk a good deal of money and effort into this already. I'm just trying to give you my perspective. Hope this helps, even if just for future projects.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

heavycat said:


> With all due respect, last night I unplugged a group of web sites that are probably worth more in total dollar terms than your house.


You're awful condescending. You have no clue at to how many successful people are on this site.

Your website isn't worth what you paid for it, it's only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Since it's producing zero results, it's not worth anything. Just ask a business broker if you don't believe me. Anyone can overspend on sites, that's just not smart and adds zero value.

Businesses fail everyday. Losing 1,500 a month doesn't show much business sense. Going into a field, like writing books where very few ever even earn out their advances doesn't show much market research. If publishers could guarantee hits, they would pick their top one in each genre and only publish those. 
Common sense tells those of us that listen, immediately stop doing what isn't working, and do something else.



> I have made jarring and seismic changes to our marketing in the last two months, most of it based on the advice I've received here. I think it's unfair to try and label me as quarrelsome and uncooperative. That is, unless you would prefer I sit quietly and wring my hands while a list of our faults are cataloged and ratified.
> 
> As professional authors, I'm fairly certain you and I can agree that asking for a main character's personality and courage to be thrown overboard is a bit much. I'm also fairly certain I don't have to parade the last 80 years of strong female protagonists through here to prove Jessica Hoshi is by no means a trailblazer.
> 
> Maybe I'm not.


You ask for help, we offer it, and you offer excuses with condescension. What you want is a miracle and it doesn't look like that is going to happen. Start listening to common sense, brush off your bruised ego, and start again.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

heavycat said:


> Professionally drawn anime illustrations run between $400 and $1500 a page. We have thousands of illustrations. You do the math.


If they're worth that much, sell them then on ebay...it's almost free to have a site there.
Otherwise you overpaid for something that really has no value. Stop doing that.


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## GPB (Oct 2, 2010)

heavycat said:


> Professionally drawn anime illustrations run between $400 and $1500 a page. We have thousands of illustrations. You do the math.


So...sell them and quit yer bitchin'.  Unless:

1. You don't own them -- you've only licensed them.
2. They aren't actually worth that much, or anything, for that matter.

Still not sure what your vast reserves of obscure manga art has to do with dude's house or why your three-dollar ebook won't sell.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

heavycat said:


> Your point being that because boys read fantasy adventure and girls don't, and all the Kindles are owned by adult women, that a fantasy adventure story with a young female protagonist cannot succeed? If that's true then a) this entire discussion is academic, b) nearly all of the great female protagonists of the last 20 years were flukes and c) we probably shouldn't be trying to market these books at all, should we?


No... my point is you've:

1, created a book whose primary demographic is young girls. Children "read up", and boys of your target age heavily resist reading books about girls;
2, created a book which for most of its existence - save the last two weeks - likely primarily attracted boys in their teens and twenties. Everyone who's seen it seems to have thought your cover was for a manga/light novel, and those demographics both skew extremely male and are less-than-enthused about novels, regardless of subject (see: Seven Seas, Yen Press, Tokyopop, et al);
3, released the book in a format whose primary consumers, overall, are adult women.

Or, put visually, with some exaggeration for artistic effect and legibility:


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> The dialogue is stilted. The narrative voice is unfocused. The characters all feel generic and unengaging, and they behave in a way dictated by the plot instead of a way that feels organic. The worldbuilding is logically flawed and requires enormous suspension of belief without a strong internal mechanism in place to suspend the belief from. The world is not complicated, but convoluted. There is choppy grammar and odd sentence construction. The book is not ready for market, and that is why it is not selling.


That's interesting. Mainly because nobody else has ever had these observations about this book. No reviewer, nobody in my writing group and no reader (what few there are).

The grammar is choppy? The characters are generic and unengaging? The dialogue is stilted? The narrative voice is unfocused? Odd sentence construction? Convoluted? Logically flawed? Wow. This book is a complete train wreck. How is an editor going to fix this without demanding a complete rewrite?

I really shouldn't be writing at all, should I? Maybe I should take a class or something.



> It needs a professional hand to guide it.


The inference being, naturally, that I'm an amateur?



> Note that I didn't say it was BAD.


You just ripped this book to pieces after reading four sample chapters and now it's "not bad?" I'm really having a difficult time following you.

Don't get me wrong. I recognize the strategy here. I'm a bit too confident for your tastes, so the idea is to savage the book, question my talent/skill/education/literacy and wait for an emotional response.

Once I have burst into tears, then demand I find an editor to bestow some credibility on my work. When I resist, then you can declare me the reason for my failure and make yourself look like a genius in the process. Does that about cover it?

The reasons I ask are relatively simple. I have a four-year University degree in English, so it's pretty unlikely I'm having structural or grammatical issues with my writing. You may not personally like my characters, but I think it's a bit of a reach to call them "generic" and "unengaging." Further, both of my parents were award-winning journalists. My writing has been under the red pen of either a major metropolitan reporter or a city editor since the age of five. I have no trouble whatsoever accepting criticism. But at the same time I do recognize when someone is trying to take me down a peg.

And for all you know, I already have an editor.

All that said, I do appreciate your effort, and I will do what I can to improve.

*NOTE TO ALL WHO HAVE REPLIED*: I'm getting the distinct impression I'm no longer welcome here, and this thread is rapidly degenerating into piling on. People are just taking swipes at our work now, so I'd like to wrap things up if I can. Thanks for your time.


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## Guest (May 8, 2012)

Look, this is going to sound harsh, but maybe you're just not writing at the right level yet for your book to be selling any better than it is. In the days before ebooks, rejections were a right of passage that we all went through before getting that contract and making it big. For all the problems with traditional publishing, I think there was good reason for that. You've got to put in your time--you've got to put in those 1,000,000 words of crap--before you're ready for the limelight.

I used to volunteer as a slushpile reader for Leading Edge, a semi-professional science fiction and fantasy magazine, where we read every submission and gave at least two detailed critiques. I looked over the first couple pages of your book, and I found that it suffers from a common problem that I often saw at Leading Edge. I call it "stuff happens, the end." Nothing about the story really grabs me--it's just a bunch of stuff happening in a way that fails to draw me. I could try to point out the rules you're breaking, but that wouldn't really do any good--the truth is, the writing just feels bland. Like something written by a beginner. Nothing wrong with that, of course--we've all got to start somewhere--but you've got to keep your expectations realistic.

We've all got to put in our time one way or another. The days of accumulating rejection letters have been replaced by weeks and months of painfully low sales. That's the new normal. It isn't just about marketing--if it was, the traditional publishers would have figured it out a long time ago. It's about putting in your time, honing your craft, and getting your writing up to a truly professional level.

I started writing when I was eight years old. In high school, I started and trunked over half a dozen novels, some that had gotten up to a couple hundred manuscript pages. I finished my first novel in college, and for a while, I thought that was my opus. But then, I wrote *Genesis Earth,* realized the other novel wasn't quite up to par, and decided it was better just to trunk it. *Bringing Stella Home* and *Desert Stars* came next, each with their own challenges.

In terms of sales, none of them has really taken off yet, but that's okay--I've got two other novels finished and in revision, and another project that I can't really talk about because it's currently with Writers of the Future. The upfront costs of epublishing are extremely low, and the marginal costs are zero, so I can keep on doing what I'm doing until my books finally grow into their audience.

Each time I publish a book, I always make sure it's my best work--but because I'm constantly learning and growing, each new project is (hopefully) better than the last one. So long as that's true, I'm confident that my day is going to come. All I have to do is stay in the game and keep on writing.


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## Vegasgyrl007 (May 11, 2011)

Sorry to hear about your troubles but the best advice I can give you is to continue writing. All of us have our ups and downs. If you want to hear something really funny, my novella series (which was never professionally edited though it was beta read by various people) continues to outsell all my other novels which are polished and edited and have wonderful covers.

This business is a crap shoot. But hey, I live in Vegas and as I don't gamble in the casinos, might as well gamble with my career while I attend college. 

Don't ever give up hope and remember ABW: Always Be Writing!!!!


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## Guest (May 8, 2012)

> That's interesting. Mainly because nobody else has ever had these observations about this book.


You mean out of the less than 50 people who bought it?



heavycat said:


> The reasons I ask are relatively simple. I have a four-year University degree in English, so it's pretty unlikely I'm having structural or grammatical issues with my writing.


Sweetheart, the world is full of college grads that can't write their way out of a paper bag. Heck, 20% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Your degree doesn't protect you from criticism. If anything, your degree should encourage you to INVITE honest criticism because that is what English majors do. Engage in literary criticism. I too have a degree in English. Guess what? I NEED AN EDITOR. If you saw some of my books before my editor went through them, you would think I was illiterate. Because every writer knows what she MEANT to say and doesn't always see what they actually said. I have an editor because I know my weaknesses, and an editor helps me address them. YOU are not perfect. None of us are. That is why good writers work with editors. You are too full of yourself to see your own errors. You think your prose is flawless and beyond reproach. You're wrong. And I don't care what your two dozen paid readers think.

Insofar as the worth of your manga, there are hundreds of unemployed manga artists on Deviantart. Your illustrations are only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for them.

Get over yourself.

You asked why the book wasn't selling. A lot of very smart people have offered you very smart advice. What did you expect? Someone to inform you that there is actually a conspiracy against you? Because you are so ridiculously talented that the Big Six's secret cabal have invested millions of dollars in destroying your ability to be successful? That you have some enemy out to get you, because this mystery person has absolutely NOTHING BETTER TO DO than destroy your book? Maybe it is one of mommie or daddie's old enemies out to get you because they birthed such a literary goddess.

Geesh, mommie and daddie were award winning journalists? My dad did two tours in Vietnam and was a state police officer. That doesn't mean I know jack about firing a rifle or how to operate a tank. How many second generation musicians or actors suck and just live off their parents' name? Your parents' ability doesn't serve as a shield against criticism.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> Nothing about the story really grabs me--it's just a bunch of stuff happening


Fair enough. Perhaps you can summarize for me what happened in the first chapter without referring to it?


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Let me back up and try a different approach. Why do _you _think your book isn't selling?


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

I've been here around a year and I haven't seen Julie criticise someone's writing unfairly.  She's a publisher, it's her job to know what she's talking about.  Heck, I'm just lucky that she hasn't had a go at me (yet) for the comma-splices that litter my writing until an editor gets to it!

I'd like to see everyone do as well as they can.  As I've said to other posters, if you post on here that your book isn't selling then you are going to get a lot of advice and your book, cover & blurb will be pulled to pieces by people analysing why.  They don't do it to pick on you or to prove themselves superior.  They do it to try to share their theories with the author as to why it isn't succeeding.  In my time here I've seen many people defending something about their book - be it the blurb, cover or lack of editing - and then changing it and acknowledging that they should have done it sooner.

I started reading your sample and I found myself confused.  It was too busy for me, I couldn't keep track of the characters and I found it choppy.  If I'd been sampling it with a view to purchasing, then I'd have tuned out after the first couple of paragraphs because I couldn't follow it.  It got easier, but it still didn't flow for me and I stopped before the end of the sample.  Now, my normal reading material may be romance & light fantasy - but I have read Shakespeare and Restoration Comedies for fun.  I make no claims to being highbrow, but if I (with English Literature at GCSE and A Level and a degree majoring in Creative Writing) can read Shakespeare and follow the gist of it, but I can't follow the start of your story, then it suggests to me that it may also be confusing for your target audience of teens/pre-teens.

I'm sorry if that feels like an attack, it's really not meant to be one.  If you feel that people are piling on here, it's because it seems that you aren't listening to those who are trying to help you.  Along with the vast majority of the people in this thread, I'd like to see you make a success of this book.  I think you would be wise to take Julie's honest advice (and to appreciate someone telling it to you straight, even if it isn't what you want to hear) and look into hiring an editor.  You could get someone to edit the book for the price of one of your pages of anime & they could help you get your story across in the way it deserves to be told.  I'm not talking about a grammar edit - I'm talking about someone who understands the structure and flow of fiction.

You say that you really want to know why people who visit your site don't buy your book, people on here are trying to help by giving you those answers.  If you don't want that help, then it's really best not to complain about sales or post here saying that you don't know why it's not selling.  If you do those things then people will give you answers, whether you want to hear them or not!  

At the end of the day, it's your story, your book & your decision what you do next.  Whatever it is, I hope it works out for you.


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## Guest (May 8, 2012)

heavycat said:


> Fair enough. Perhaps you can summarize for me what happened in the first chapter without referring to it?


You really didn't hear anything that I said, did you?


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## JGrover (Aug 10, 2011)

I just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying reading this thread, it has a wealth of information and I'm learning a lot. The advice given is wonderful and I'm writing taking notes.  My sales are nothing to jump up and down about either, I do make something each month but I'm always on the lookout to improve and drive more customers to my books or to my site or what have you. This is why I come to this board.
The experience here is invaluable, tons of authors are sharing their marketing ideas and their sales numbers and what works and what doesn't work. This whole business has changed with the ebook boom and self-publishing now opening doors that were closed. In this business you have to have patience, learn from your mistakes, read a lot and try, try again.  Nothing is final, nothing is guaranteed, but having tons of writers to exchange ideas off of and trade war stories is great. The stuff David Adams alone posted is great information.  
-John


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## GPB (Oct 2, 2010)

To be more specific and hopefully more helpful:

You've got an issue with stage direction:



> "How can you know that?" Shannon Ka Yoru asked, _brushing her long hair back over her shoulder before kneeling down to get a better look_.
> 
> "Vuran's Wharf? Where is that?" Ranko asked, _looking up at the others_.
> 
> ...


That's just the first page, but it's almost every line of dialog. You have a related problem with adverbitis. This is making the dialog hard to read. Next, it may be intentional but you're head-hopping from one character to the next in the scene. If it is intentional and you're trying to write the story in third-person omniscient, you've given yourself quite the challenge and even if you ace it (you haven't) few of your young readers are going to want to read it.

I also don't get the characters' names. Are they all Japanese-American or American-Japanese? The girl on the front of the book doesn't _look_ Asian, and she's taking (what sounds like) a very basic Japanese class in school. Maybe this kind of thing is a trope in "manga world" but it's rather confusing in the real one.

You can write. However, you've got problems with this book that you need to address. If you do, I'm sure it could be successful, but you're the only one who can decide whether or not it's worth it to put in the work.

Good luck.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> You mean out of the less than 50 people who bought it?


Well there was also the 12 reviews, but who's counting, right?



> Sweetheart,


See, and here people were accusing me of being condescending.



> the world is full of college grads that can't write their way out of a paper bag. Heck, 20% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate.


The inference being what, that I can't write my way out of a paper bag or that I'm functionally illiterate? (For the record, I graduated from high school too.)



> Your degree doesn't protect you from criticism. If anything, your degree should encourage you to INVITE honest criticism because that is what English majors do. Engage in literary criticism.


Literary criticism is one thing. Honest criticism is one thing. Compiling a laundry list of purplishly vague flaws in a work you've read 10% of is something else. I think the hip term is "snarky." And the goal is very clear. You are playing a hunch that the average artist is very emotional and defensive and it's easy to hurt people's feelings by ripping their work up. I get it. Hell, I lived it in school. People dropped out of the degree track over criticism.

But when the best you can come up with is "choppy grammar" it calls into question the credibility of your criticism. It's an off-the-rack swipe one might find in a Rotten Tomatoes blurb. It's not offered to help the writer. It's meant to hurt someone's feelings, and it's deliberate.

Fortunately, I've had enough experience to recognize it and further, I don't get emotional about criticism. At all.



> I too have a degree in English. Guess what? I NEED AN EDITOR. If you saw some of my books before my editor went through them, you would think I was illiterate.


If you have a degree in English then surely you studied hyperbole.



> YOU are not perfect. None of us are.


I never said I was perfect. I'm wondering why you seem to take my confidence in my work as a personal challenge?



> That is why good writers work with editors.


And bad writers don't. Can I ask you a question? How do you know I don't already have an editor?



> You think your prose is flawless and beyond reproach.


I never said that. See above.



> You're wrong. And I don't care what your two dozen paid readers think.


So my reviews are fraudulent now? You seem to be very fast and loose with your accusations. So I'm an untalented hack and a fraud and I paid people to give me positive reviews. Please, do go on.



> You asked why the book wasn't selling. A lot of very smart people have offered you very smart advice.


The overwhelming majority of which I have accepted and integrated into my approach. It wasn't until page four of this thread that people actually opened the book looking for something to criticize.



> What did you expect? Someone to inform you that there is actually a conspiracy against you? Because you are so ridiculously talented that the Big Six's secret cabal have invested millions of dollars in destroying your ability to be successful? That you have some enemy out to get you, because this mystery person has absolutely NOTHING BETTER TO DO than destroy your book?


Wow.



> Geesh, mommie and daddie were award winning journalists? My dad did two tours in Vietnam and was a state police officer.


My dad landed at Incheon with General MacArthur, earned two battlefield commissions and a Bronze Star as an Army Captain and had over 100 front-page bylines in the second largest metropolitan newspaper in the world. My mother was a features editor for 36 years and won 60 awards for journalism excellence in three states. She displayed them in our home right next to my father's nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.

I think it's telling and frankly a little sad that you're belittling and insulting my parents, two people you've never met.



> Your parents' ability doesn't serve as a shield against criticism.


One would hope they would at least serve as evidence of my literacy. Have a nice day.


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## MamaProfCrash (Dec 16, 2008)

I have a PhD in Political Science. That is 12 years of manadtory schooling, four years of college, and eight years of advanced training in my chosen field. I used proof readers and hired an editor when writing my dissertation. I dropped a chapter based on comments from faculty, added a chapter based on comments from fellow grad students, and learned an entire new modelling technique in order to properly develop a third chapter. I hired an editor because I know that even with twenty-four years of school that I could have problems with my grammar and spelling. I wanted my final product to be something I could be proud of so I sucked up my pride and let someone who knows nothing about my field review my work. The good news: She actually grasped about 25% of what I was saying, not bad for someone who has never read or studied game theory, advanced statistics, or causes of internal conflict, and fixed my grammar and spelling mistakes. She was thrilled that it was written so that she could understand the highlights even if she didn't understand the math. I was thrilled that my grammar and spelling didn't totally suck and that she could understand the highlights. 

More importantly, I passed my dissertation defense and completed my degree.

And now, with 24 years of schooling and a PhD, I still use proof readers and editors and I ask people to honestly review my work because I know that it will improve it.

My point? Years in school means squat. There are times that you are too close to a project and cannot see its flaws and how to improve it. That is why you ask for help from people who have a clue, in my case other grad students and faculty members and other academics at conferences, to take an honest look at your work and provide you constructive feedback. You can choose to take said feedback and use it to improve your work or you can complain about the feedback and hold your breath and hope things get better.

In your case, you have asked for help here. It seems to me like many people have offered you some good advice. It is advice that you don't like and you are holding your breath and hoping that things got better. You asked for help, people have responded, and your attitude seems to be that they are wrong.

So why ask?

If you are serious about making this work, take a step back, swallow your pride, re-read the reviews people have given you and take a look at your work. Perhaps try re-writing the sample chapters with what you have been told and see what people think. 

If you are not serious about making it work, continue to respond to peoples advice with the current attitude and pray that you are right and that your four years in college really make you so good that you can ignore honest advice from an unbiased crowd and maybe one day you will accidently figure out why your novel isn't selling. All the while you can continue to toss around thousands of dollars in a vain effort to attract an audience that you yourself have said you don't want (It's not a comic and its not manga so lets invest in custom art that sure looks comicy and mangay) and feel as if you are making your best effort to sell this series.

Or take down the website and start revising the product.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> I've been here around a year and I haven't seen Julie criticise someone's writing unfairly.


She accused me (and my reviewers) of being frauds and took a couple of quality swipes at my parents.


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## MamaProfCrash (Dec 16, 2008)

No one has taken a swipe at your parents. People have pointed out that you are not your parents. They have won many awards in journalism, that is great. That says nothing about you and your abilities. My Dad is awesome at math and science, I am not. I have a laundry list of learning disabilities that made math and science hellish for me. I preserved and ended up teaching statistics for a living, go figure, but I still struggle with math and science.

You do not automatically inherit your parents ability just because you get their genes.

Not to mention that the style used for writing for a newspaper or a magazine, ie a journalist, is very different then the style used to write a Young Adult novel. So even if you inherited the genes to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, you did not necessarily inherit the genes to write a successful Young Adult novel.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> It seems to me like many people have offered you some good advice.


Last night I threw five years of work overboard after taking the advice of people in this thread, Doctor.

Our web site now consists of a single page: http://ladystar.net

It is no longer a comic or a manga.


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## Guest (May 8, 2012)

heavycat said:


> She accused me (and my reviewers) of being frauds and took a couple of quality swipes at my parents.


OH BY THE GODS! Do you work for a politician or something? You seem to be a master of pulling half-sentences out of context to twist to your own agenda.

IN THIS THREAD, you have claimed to have less than 50 sales. Then you smacked down my criticism with a "well nobody else has said any of that" quip. I merely pointed out that* by your own statements* you only have 50 paying customers. That wasn't an implication of fraudulent reviews. It was a statement that you aren't pulling from a big pool to justify your hubris. If you had 10,000 sales under your belt and dozens of reviews, maybe you would have more standing. But you have 50 sales. That isn't nearly enough of a customer base to justify your attitude.

Nor did I take a swipe at your parents. I pointed out that just because your parents can write doesn't mean you can. Go look at my example again in its entirely. Read the entire paragraph in context.



> Geesh, mommie and daddie were award winning journalists? My dad did two tours in Vietnam and was a state police officer. That doesn't mean I know jack about firing a rifle or how to operate a tank. How many second generation musicians or actors suck and just live off their parents' name? Your parents' ability doesn't serve as a shield against criticism.


If you think that was a swipe, then that explains your problem. You have no ability to understand things in context. THAT is why your writing is so convoluted. You have a disconnect in your ability to understand things within context. And it shows in your writing.


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

> You do not automatically inherit your parents ability just because you get their genes.


I inherited my parents' ability because they taught me how to write from the age of five. But that's obviously not going to stop you from lecturing me about my relationship with my parents.

And yes, she did take swipes at my "mommie" and "daddie." After she called me a fraud.

But I suppose this is the inevitable result of any thread asking for advice where the asking party doesn't meekly submit and refrain from offering even a single word in their own defense. Apparently discussion is frowned on here.

It is now completely clear I'm not welcome here so I'm going to bow out now. You all have a real nice day.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

heavycat said:


> I inherited my parents' ability because they taught me how to write from the age of five. But that's obviously not going to stop you from lecturing me about my relationship with my parents.
> 
> And yes, she did take swipes at my "mommie" and "daddie." After she called me a fraud.
> 
> ...


There has been a lot of advice here and yes, some of it has been cutting. From my POV it looks like almost all of it has been said with the hope of giving an answer to your original question. Why is your book not selling? There is a lot of wisdom in this thread if you're willing to set aside ego.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

heavycat said:


> She accused me (and my reviewers) of being frauds...


No, she pointed out problems with your book, and you attempted to wave away those problems by arguing that none of your reviewers had pointed out any such thing... except that at least one of them _did_. Of course, he/she/it could be wrong, or all those obscure bloggers who only hand out four or five stars and whose very vague reviews begin "I don't normally read this kind of book..." might have just been trying to be polite...

For what it's worth, I think the cover with the unicorn-like thing on it from a year ago was better than the one you had a month ago which was better than the one you have now, because it made it much more clear what the book's actual demographic is.



heavycat said:


> It is now completely clear I'm not welcome here so I'm going to bow out now.


Promise?


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## MamaProfCrash (Dec 16, 2008)

> Last night I threw five years of work overboard after taking the advice of people in this thread, Doctor.
> 
> Our web site now consists of a single page: http://ladystar.net
> 
> It is no longer a comic or a manga.


And yet the way you announced that was to tell the folks who provided you with said feedback was that you tossed out work that was worth more then their houses.

One of the problems that I can see is that you don't understand the difference between confidence and hubris.

You came asking for advice because a project that has not worked for 10 years is still stalled. In response to peoples advice you have fallen back on a college degree, something most people here have, your parents and their awards, the amount of time you have invested in this project, and the amount of money you have invested in this project. Based on all of that, in your mind, this project should have worked and you don't understand why it has not.

What folks have said is that the project is confused, something that you have admitted to. They have also said that money and time do not equal a great project. Something you seem to be struggling with. They have said your parents skills and successes do not mean that you will have success in a similar, but different, field. You have taken that as people taking a swipe at your parents. Finally, they have said that a college degree does not mean that your writing is going to be stellar and lead to great reviews and success. You have taken that as people are taking a swipe at your skills.

Your response has been that people who have commented on your style of writing and given you specific comments about what might be causing you problems is that they are jealous of your confidence and are trying to tear you down.

I am suggesting that perhaps a change in attitude might help you see that they are trying to help you succeed and that perhaps the issues that you thought would lead to success (genetics, an education, money to spend, and time to spend) are not a guarentee of success. And relying on those factors might be holding you back. It is not confidence, it is hubris to think that because you have successful parents, a good education, money to spend, and time to spend that you will have success.

Confidence, in this case, would probably look more like "I really like my character and believe in her. I hear what you are saying about some problems with the story and how it is written. After many years of trying to make it work in its current form as failed to bring me the success that I want and not finding it, I will try and listen to what you are saying about the content of the book and try to rework it. I want to maintain the protagonist and the basic outline because I strongly believe in strong female characters who do not need to be rescued by men but I can work on altering my sentence structure and how I write my dialogue to make the book flow better."


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

heavycat said:


> Last night I threw five years of work overboard after taking the advice of people in this thread, Doctor.
> 
> Our web site now consists of a single page: http://ladystar.net
> 
> It is no longer a comic or a manga.


You're not throwing it overboard:
1) You're redirecting it in a direction to reach your target market. Young tween girls. 
2) You can bundle your anime cells and sell them as a comic book, or individual pieces on deviant art, istock, dreamstime, or ebay.
3) You can make sure your links work and start going after your target market by linking to other relevant sites. 
4) You can keep your book up for sale, while you are revising it for a new upload. Get some feed back, find some twelve-year-old readers at your local library (ask the librarian to help you, she'll' know the regulars). 
5) Read the top ten in your genre for homework, forget about the English degree and get an education in what twelve-year-old fantasy fiction readers like.
6) Attend some conferences for writing novels for the younger set. Novel writing skills are different than English major skills.
7) The more novels you write, the better you will get, so write more novels.


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

heavycat said:


> I inherited my parents' ability because they taught me how to write from the age of five.


This is great news! Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, but he's getting a little long in the tooth. This means his three kids should start cranking out some best-selling horror novels any day now, right?

 



heavycat said:


> And yes, she did take swipes at my "mommie" and "daddie."


No, she didn't. She even explained her post in detail so you could better understand it.

She did take a swipe at your maturity by referring to your parents as "mommie and daddie." If you must be offended, at least take offense at the correct action.


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## MamaProfCrash (Dec 16, 2008)

Well, I am 40 and I refer to my parents as Mommy and Daddy from time to time. Then again, I am the only daughter with three brothers and was always a bit of a Daddy's girl. And in most places I refer to them as Mom and Dad and I only call them Mommy and Daddy to their face or on the phone. (winks)


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## ChrisVC (Mar 25, 2012)

heavycat said:


> Oh, by all means. I would be very appreciative.


First chapter problems. Here's the short version. A big problem for any fiction writer when beginning a book, it getting the reader oriented.

Oriented to what? To time, to place, to characters, personalities etc...

First of all, time and place. Is it now? Is it a hundred years ago? Is it in the future? Reading the beginning of your book, I have no clue. You mention the lamp immediately, and it gives the story a fantasy feel. Also, with them being on a magical, old style ship, that feeling is reinforced. But then you use words that confuse the issue, like "Lakeside Promenade". So, now, it feels contemporary. So, contemporary, but where? Your characters have Asian sounding names. But none of the setting seems Asian, so, am I in New York Harbor, or in Tokyo Bay? Still, with all the mystical things...the ship, the lantern, the decorative jewelry box, I still feel somewhat anchored to a traditional fantasy setting. But, then, soon thereafter, you mention that one of the girls is wearing a school lettermans jacket, and I'm back to an urban fantasy feel that doesn't work immediately with the more traditional fantasy feel of what you've already mentioned.

So, can all these various elements be in a good book? Of course. But, this being the beginning of the entire novel, you've got to get the reader oriented and comfortable quickly or they won't read any more.

So, the reader, at this point is still fairly disoriented (for the reasons mentioned above), but some of them might keep reading. The next natural thing for them to do is to attempt to anchor to a character (or characters) to get their footing. Now, another problem surfaces. Although you mention physical features, you don't give the reader enough of their personalities, quickly enough, to keep the reader interested in them. In fact, right when a reader might start to be interested in one of the characters, you pull them away to mention another character, then another, (then a few more...I'm not sure) only giving physical descriptions, generally, and you again prevent the reader from anchoring and orienting to your story.

I could go on and on, but let me cut right to it.

Most reader would not push through to chapter two, which is sad, because I think your story clears up by then. I know exactly what is going on here because I read comic books and manga.

One of the cool things about most manga, is that anything goes. It is hard to even describe it to people who don't read it very much. The closest quick description for lots of it might be (sorry, this is off of the top of my head), "Loose Urban Funny Fantasy". People who read it (or watch a lot of Anime) will know exactly what I'm taking about. But, for everyone else, all those elements thrown together too quickly is going to be nothing but confusing.

I think that is the problem with your first chapter. One fairly easy fix for this would be to keep with just one viewpoint character (strongly...make it very clear) to get the reader oriented. Very quickly show her feelings and thoughts, and some fast personality quirks. Make the time and place clear immediately. Then introduce more varied elements of your world and people only after the reader is connected and comfortable.


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

heavycat said:


> But I suppose this is the inevitable result of any thread asking for advice where the asking party doesn't meekly submit and refrain from offering even a single word in their own defense. Apparently discussion is frowned on here.


You don't defend yourself from advice. You listen to it and decide whether or not you should follow it. If you defend against it, then you stop it going in and you prevent yourself from learning anything.

It's not a question of 'submitting' to advice. It's not some power game with you against the mass of the forum. We're all individuals (waits for obligatory Monty Python quote) and yet several people are telling you the same thing. I'd suggest that you at least think about what we've all said. You don't have to agree with everything that is suggested - but you would be wise to at least take what has been said here away with you and consider it.

It's frustrating to me (and no doubt to others) because you clearly have a passion and a vision - yet you are ramming your fingers in your ears and refusing to be helped - while asking for help. We don't know what to tell you, because we've told you what we think and you aren't listening. Instead you keep asking the same question while hoping for different answers. Keep it up long enough and you might get answers that you're happy with - but they won't help you, because the people who'll be honest with you instead of telling you what you want to hear will have long since given up trying to help you.

Also, trying to help you is not a show of superiority - everyone has different strengths, and this forum can be really helpful when it comes to getting advice about areas that don't form part of those strengths. I'm getting the impression that you feel that listening to what has been suggested would be to somehow admit defeat or lower yourself - that's really not the case. Accepting help is not a sign of weakness - it's a sign of wisdom. It takes strength to acknowledge the need for change even when it's hard, even when it means redoing the hard work that you've already done. The thing is, most of us have been there, or will be there. We understand the position you're in even if you think we don't. That's why we keep on trying to help despite the response we're getting. You're getting a strong reaction from the forum because you've demonstrated such commitment to your project & people respect that. We're trying to help & expressing that with varying degrees of tact!

Don't let it chase you away from the forum - that's not what people are trying to do here. If you don't want advice and want the matter to drop, then just leave this thread to die (it will probably take a while!) and refrain from posting anything else about not understanding why your book isn't selling (or complaining about it not selling - because some people see that as an invitation for critique) & for the sake of your own sanity, if you ever get a one star review, don't start a thread about it - I've seldom seen anyone come out of that unscathed! You'll be fine joining in on other topics.


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## Phyllis Lily Jules (Dec 5, 2011)

Heavycat, I’m going to offer just one thing, since you seem to be backed up in the corner right now:

I’ve tried three times to read your book sampling. Each time I get further, but have to stop. Your writing style is what I call ‘dense’. Meaning that you have a lot of stuff packed tightly into every sentence. Some people have addressed that as adverb issues, etc. For me, it’s like you’re writing while watching a movie in your head, describing everything in the visual range, including all the personal tics, glances, grimaces, sheens off of objects, etc. Your sentences are just too overloaded, especially for your young audience. This is a style issue, I think, combining a touch of literary writing with an adventure story for kids. Not a good mix, I would guess. I became exhausted reading it. There were no resting places for me. But on the other hand, you do know words. I think your style could use some spaciousness. Drop all that superficial stuff that’s packed in too tightly. Let the reader create the missing parts. An editor would help you with that. If you’ve already used one, you need to get another one. 

In my writing group we had a lifelong screenwriter who wrote his first book alot like yours. I could see the movie in his book, but I couldn’t find the book itself. It was a very hard read. He couldn’t see what everyone was saying.  Got mad, got defensive, was backed in a corner of his own making. 

Shift gears, try to see what others are seeing. You’ve hung in here through all these comments, almost all of them helpful, in my opinion. The ones that have riled you up are only blunt. Quick and to the point. Writers can be like that because they know how to use words well. And you’re hanging out with writers, aren’t you?


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

heavycat said:


> No. We just launched the comic. This is about our novel.
> 
> Apparently I'm really really good at being confusing. I should be a rodeo clown. Or a literature professor.


BWWAAHAHAHAHA!!!!!


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

OK, folks, I've read through the thread while it was locked due to the report.  While a few posts came pretty close to crossing the line into personal attacks, I think those issues have been worked out and so will leave them in place.

I have removed a couple of posts that were not on topic at all and that I considered piling on.  This is a serious discussion that several members have said was very useful.  Let's stay on topic, please, and treat each other with respect.  It's the KindleBoards way.

Thanks!

Betsy
KB Moderator


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

I really am going to make this my concluding reply in this topic.



> You don't defend yourself from advice. You listen to it and decide whether or not you should follow it. If you defend against it, then you stop it going in and you prevent yourself from learning anything.


What I'm defending myself against is not advice. A large portion of what has been posted here is not criticism of the work, it's criticism of me, personally. I understand the reasoning, and I've outlined it once before.

The idea here is not to fix the work or fix the writing, it's to break me emotionally so I may be remade in the critic's image. I took an entire series of classes on this in school. Artists are very emotional about their work, and so the key to a popular critique is always to elicit an emotional response in order to get past the author/director/actor/artists's defenses. One no longer needs to think through _or defend_ their criticism when they can point to the sobbing author as proof they were right.

This book has been variously portrayed as an irredeemable train wreck before it was labeled "not bad." There was no criticism there. It was Stream-of-Consciousness: Rejection Letter Edition(tm) stringing together a flailing series of off-the-rack intelligent-sounding "flaws" that at best are as generic as the so-called characters being bashed and at worst, are utterly meaningless (choppy grammar).

What probably happened is someone spilled coffee on the rejection machine and it kicked out a handful of standard form letters. Fair enough. I'm sure there are millions of people in the world who will think this book is awful. Several of them have participated in this thread. I realize this may come as a shock but I didn't write the book for them.

The rest of this board apparently exults in this kind of (as one poster put it) "cutting" criticism, so everyone joins in with their imitations. Read for yourself. There hasn't been a complimentary word said about me or my writing (or the book cover, or the web site, or the blurb) for three pages. Literary criticism, as used defensively by those same cutting critics, is one thing. Being cruel is something else.

Again, fortunately, I don't really care one way or the other because I don't get emotional about criticism. I see hyperbole and florid prose-bashing for what it is. I had a professor invite a class of graduate students to tear apart another student's opening chapters once. It wasn't until two weeks later they all realized they had been gleefully and baselessly criticizing John Updike with some of the names changed. About half the class failed the course. The moral of the story being that people can sound like they have found credible fault with any writing. One simply needs to examine the criticism to see if it is really about the writing or about bashing someone's work because they don't like them.

And yes, criticism, especially literary criticism must be defended. Any learned author can line up professors on five continents to support this fact.

The truth of it is I have been given no credit at all for taking anyone's advice, despite the fact that I have changed the book's cover, blurb and tags and thrown four web sites away at the behest of people on this very message board. Rather, I've been portrayed as belligerent and uncooperative, ignoring everything I'm being told. It wasn't until the Johnny-come-lately criticism of the book itself started that I realized it wasn't really about advice any more. I made the mistake of engaging my critics in a discussion and that, apparently, is simply not allowed.



> It's not a question of 'submitting' to advice. It's not some power game with you against the mass of the forum.


Oh, but it is me against the mass of the forum. Or at least that's what it's become. Mainly because I won't drop to a knee and declare myself, our project and my writing a failure. I'm some flack who fell off a truck one day and landed on a typewriter. I had talented parents who spent 20 years teaching me to write but well, I guess that didn't work out! Maybe I was adopted?



> Also, trying to help you is not a show of superiority


Well, for some in this thread, "help" is definitely being offered to please the crowd. Since it isn't being done for my benefit, it must be for someone else's.



> I'm getting the impression that you feel that listening to what has been suggested would be to somehow admit defeat or lower yourself


Only when those suggestions are meant to defeat me as opposed to being offered in an attempt to help improve the work. When a critic says "you are an inferior writer" that is not criticism. That's cruelty, designed to hurt someone's feelings.

For future reference: when everyone in a thread starts criticizing something and they all agree it's "bad," that's usually a pretty conclusive sign it's not honest criticism any more. It's either about impressing each other or trying to make the artist/author/whatever emotional so they'll run down the hall in tears, which then serves as "proof" the critics were right.



> Don't let it chase you away from the forum


I'll try to avoid the threads where cruelty is being celebrated.  Thanks for your help and time.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Heavycat,

I just read through this whole thread at one sitting.  I have seen much constructive  criticism and I have also seen many positive comments about your writing.  I've seen many people trying to help you.  If you don't feel it's been helpful...that's okay, too.  You are entitled to your perspective.

Folks, I'm not going to lock the thread, but I will be watching it for more piling on. 

Thanks.

Betsy
KB Moderator


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

But when people have tried to engage you, you have deflected or avoided. I asked what _you _think the problem is and you ignored me.

As for criticizing your writing, I never did that, because I haven't looked at your writing sample. It does seem to me that perhaps, in the words of Morrissey, "you just haven't earned it yet, baby." That is, write more, market less, and your work is sure to improve slowly but steadily. This is true regardless of the quality of your existing book. My early stuff sucks, but there are plenty of people who produce at least competent work from the outset. In both cases, the author is best served by the regular production of *new* fiction.


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## ChrisVC (Mar 25, 2012)

Of course, you (or anyone), should take what is valuable to you...

...and ignore the rest.

.

The problems I mentioned in your first chapter are easily fixed.


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## Kent Kelly (Feb 12, 2011)

Lots of energy!  

Write another book.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Let's stay on topic, please, and treat each other with respect. It's the KindleBoards way.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> ...


Totally germane: Your new avatar. It's like . . . I don't even know you anymore.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

Heavycat--Most people tried to help you after you complained that you couldn't sell your ebook despite your 500 reviewers and massive thousands of $$ and hours spent on your website and 10 years in the writing. So people tried to give you advice as to what they thought the problem might be and you grew very defensive and then argumentative and overly emotional. 

Clearly, you are doing some things wrong with your ebook, but you don't want to hear it for whatever reasons. You did receive some very good advice which you construed as insults. If you ask for advice you may not get the advice you want to hear. 

I also read just the first page and I was confused--a 12 year old would be moreso. Honest criticism is hard to take for some. It can hurt, especially if you have been writing for 20 years. But take heart--there is always something new to learn and some things can be done better. Usually we learn that from other people and their input since the author is usually too close and emotionally invested in their book.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

heavycat said:


> What I'm defending myself against is not advice. A large portion of what has been posted here is not criticism of the work, it's criticism of me, personally. I understand the reasoning, and I've outlined it once before.
> 
> The truth of it is I have been given no credit at all for taking anyone's advice, despite the fact that I have changed the book's cover, blurb and tags and thrown four web sites away at the behest of people on this very message board. Rather, I've been portrayed as belligerent and uncooperative, ignoring everything I'm being told. It wasn't until the Johnny-come-lately criticism of the book itself started that I realized it wasn't really about advice any more. I made the mistake of engaging my critics in a discussion and that, apparently, is simply not allowed.


You've taken people's advice only - and then grudgingly - when it has coincided with your preconceived notions. You decided the cover and blurb were bad (and the blurb was), sought _agreement_, and then acted once people here had validated your opinions. You ignored everyone's comments about tags until today, and "threw away" your (half-broken) websites that hadn't been updated in months after people complained that they were broken.

When people suggested a cover with a photograph wasn't the solution, you ignored them. When people suggested you were trying to make over the book to appeal to the wrong demographic, you ignored them. When people complained that your new cover looked generic, you ignored them. When people complained about your new blurb, you ignored them. When people complained about your writing, you ignored them. When people told you you need an editor - and you do - you got defensive and ignored them. When people have suggested that the amount of money you've spent on the project is irrelevant to its success, you mocked them and ignored their advice. When people suggested you'd written something that's inherently difficult to market, you ignored them. When people suggested you actually try marketing/advertising/promoting your book for the first time in months, you ignored them. When people suggested you distribute outside of Amazon, you ignored them. When people suggested you create a paperback, you ignored them.



> Oh, but it is me against the mass of the forum. Or at least that's what it's become. Mainly because I won't drop to a knee and declare myself, our project and my writing a failure. I'm some flack who fell off a truck one day and landed on a typewriter. I had talented parents who spent 20 years teaching me to write but well, I guess that didn't work out! Maybe I was adopted?
> 
> Only when those suggestions are meant to defeat me as opposed to being offered in an attempt to help improve the work. When a critic says "you are an inferior writer" that is not criticism. That's cruelty, designed to hurt someone's feelings.





> Again, fortunately, I don't really care one way or the other because I don't get emotional about criticism.


Thank goodness for that...



> For future reference: when everyone in a thread starts criticizing something and they all agree it's "bad," that's usually a pretty conclusive sign it's not honest criticism any more. It's either about impressing each other or trying to make the artist/author/whatever emotional so they'll run down the hall in tears, which then serves as "proof" the critics were right.


You know, the idea that the masses are inherently ignorant _is_ actually a sustainable and interesting argument, if presented intelligently; some quite good books have been written on the subject. Your theorem that "everyone disagrees with me so they're out to get me, boo hoo", on the other hand, is tedious, hard to wade through, and not particularly compelling...


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

ChrisVC said:


> First chapter problems. Here's the short version. A big problem for any fiction writer when beginning a book, it getting the reader oriented.
> 
> Oriented to what? To time, to place, to characters, personalities etc...
> 
> ...


Heavycat - I understand your point of view. I know you are perplexed as to why this isn't selling. I also have seen some harsh criticism of your work. Some comments I do think were uncalled for, but I'll ignore those.

Just to see for myself, I read the first bit.

I think Christ VC has hit the nail on the head. The beginning of the book is confusing. There is no clear point of view character. The writing isn't horrible, really, but I do think it needs some tightening up. I would put the first two chapters up on critiquecircle.com and see what kind of nitpicking you can get from there.

The cover is improved over the old one, but I'm afraid it isn't as professional as you can get. I am also not sure it's marketing to your target audience, which is not adults. I might try again. If anything, get rid of the blue glow around the letters.

I hope that helps.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

I actually went to twelve-year-olds for my first beta reading. I made stylistic changes based on their feedback. Most are very honest. They'll tell you what's boring and what they liked. I suggest you get feedback from your target market.


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## jnfr (Mar 26, 2011)

Hugh Howey said:


> Totally germane: Your new avatar. It's like . . . I don't even know you anymore.


I'm scared now.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Betsy is going Pepper on us. Where's the quilt cape? 
Rumor: Betsy is in the new _Avenger_ movie; I'm blowing her cover. (Pun intentional.)


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

jnfr said:


> I'm scared now.


As well you should.




LisaGraceBooks said:


> Betsy is going Pepper on us. Where's the quilt cape?
> Rumor: Betsy is in the new _Avenger_ movie; I'm blowing her cover. (Pun intentional.)


I can neither confirm nor deny any rumors. But the quilted cape will be back at some point...

Betsy


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## Phyllis Lily Jules (Dec 5, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> As well you should.
> 
> 
> I can neither confirm nor deny any rumors. But the quilted cape will be back at some point...
> ...


Betsy, I really miss you. The real you. Don't stay away too long...


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## Vegasgyrl007 (May 11, 2011)

Heavycat:

I have read this whole thread and I'm not sure you really want any help. I'm sorry I offered my Pollyanna-esque attitude to you without having read through the pages first but to be honest, you have some very, very (hell, did I mention VERY) talented and successful people offering you SOUND advice and you aren't taking any of it. You have been on the defensive from the first response you have received from this post.

What exactly do you want because it isn't advice or help. 

When we, as authors, put our work out there, we expect criticism, not only from the public but our fellow writers as well. Most of the time, the advice given isn't to hurt anyone's feelings but it needs to be said. 

I was the adverb queen in my first serial (and I still am as I took some out but not nearly enough). My editor tells me I still have a problem with adverbs and she isn't telling me to be mean, she wants to help me become a better writer. 

We all have our failings and no one is perfect. Mine is a potty mouth from hell in my novels (what can I say, I like to curse in my writing...less of it comes out in real life). 

Recognize your issues and embrace them. Then re-read this thread. Then take the advice you have been given, say the "Serenity Prayer" and get to work before one of the moderators end up locking this thread. Okay, I've said my peace... I'm out.


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## Vegasgyrl007 (May 11, 2011)

Sorry if this question has been asked before but...

Is the main character supposed to be white or Japanese? If she's white then what's with the name? Is she Amerasian? Eurasian? A quarter Asian? Adopted by Asians? What? You've got this Anglo looking girl on the cover with a Japanese last name. That could also be young readers for a loop, especially if they aren't into manga. If you wanted a racially or ethnically ambiguous character, why not just go with the whole Hunger Games theme and put some kind of animated plant or animal on the cover?


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

Having been on both sides of these constructive criticism threads, and having even gotten embarrassingly emotional about it while defending someone a few months ago, I really feel like I see this issue from several perspectives, and I wonder if I could ask the board what they think of an idea. (This post is not for heavycat, who's mentioned she's not posting on this thread any longer, but for the rest of us.)

Could we maybe decide together not to say things to original posters like, "You refuse to take our help," etc? I think this is confrontational. I recognize why we do it, of course. After spending ten to fifteen minutes composing a very long, very in depth, and--what we think is very thoughtful--post full of advice, we feel as if a person dismissing our viewpoint is disrespecting our time. But our reactions are very similar, I think, to the reactions of the artist. We're reacting to criticism of our criticism. And this, I think, is where things start to get kind of nasty.

As a person who's gotten defensive when people have begun picking apart my work when I complained about sales, etc., I happen to know that those threads were always painful and always helpful. But they were not a revelation from heaven. I didn't read the advice, turn around, and say, "Okay, I'll change my ways, thanks for enlightening me!" Mostly, I felt ganged up on and overwhelmed. As someone else pointed out, however, these gang-up sessions have actually ended up being quite helpful, but it took some time for the advice I was getting to filter through and for me to examine it properly. Then it took me a little while before I thought, "Okay, I might try that even though I was completely against stock covers on my books." Because it felt to me, after all the confrontation, that I was backing down, and I stubbornly clung to my original ideas because I'd defended them. 

I guess what I'm saying is that we should try to recognize that a person may not be receptive to our advice and suggestions right away, but that doesn't mean what we've said won't be useful to them someday. (Also, we need to all recognize that our advice may not be helpful to everyone, and that sometimes, it might even be bad.) However, by addressing their responses to our advice with, "I try so hard for you, and you don't respect what I've said to you," we alienate them from us and delay them even further from implementing our advice, thus making our advice less helpful.

What do you guys think? (Should I make this another thread?)

A P.S. to heavycat: Julie's like that to everyone, but underneath she's a big softie, I'm just sure of it.


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

Wow.  I was just going to try and encourage the creators of the book to stick with it, keep marketing it and keep putting out new material.  That's what helped me.  

At the same time, I wish we could all get along around here and help each other!


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## herocious (May 20, 2011)

I published a book called The Mosquito Song.

The author lives in Chicago ( I live in Austin ).

I handpress the book and have an ebook for sale.

The handpressed version got some mileage, but the ebook is stagnant for 9 months. 

It has a total of 36 sales, and this is after a freebie day, when 146 people downloaded it.

I'm not sure what it is.

I use TheOpenEnd.com to promote it

This site consistently sees 2,100+ visitors/week.

And I have twitter and fb and all the usual.

Maybe the cover sucks? Maybe my categories are off?

It's a vampire story, but the vampire is laconic and not the usual Twilight stuff.

One book reviewer said it's the Twilight anti-dote.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Tomorrow the book is free.

Peace out.
It's damn good. Solid writing. Really witty and dry and fast-paced.


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## MamaProfCrash (Dec 16, 2008)

Sometimes the greatest obstacle to success is ourselves. We believe so strongly in what we are doing that we do not hear what others are saying. Perhaps you would benefit from doing the following.

Print the posts that provide feedback on your book. Only read those posts. Take a Look through your work and view it keeping those comments in mind. Ask yourself if you can see the book from the same perspective of those comments. Ask you what you can do to address some of those issues and give it a shot.

You have been working at this for a long time. You are emotionally invested in the project and it is hard to hear that others have a problem with your style of writing If you try and see it from someone else's perspective you might see what they are saying and be able to make improvements on your work.


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## David Adams (Jan 2, 2012)

Heavycat, I know you're not reading the thread anymore (you pinkyswore!), but I'll apologize for missing your responses. The thread is moving at a rate measured in pages-per-day, I just missed 'em.

Also, for my previous post, I deliberately picked The Hunger Games because it's a cover that really says nothing about its story. I wanted something that wouldn't prejudice people. 

I took a look at the LadyStar sample and one thing immediately leapt out to me. Use of Japanese honourifics in a fantasy setting (i.e. not Japanese people in Japan) basically screams to me that you are marketing this book squarely at the anime/manga crowd. I mean, not all adults know the difference between the honourifics or even recognise them as such. I wouldn't expect your average tween to know the difference either. Not to say some don't, or that I didn't at that age, but most wouldn't. It's confusing. I mean, a lot of adult works at least explain the honourifics via footnote in the first page... yours dives right in. That to me says, "This is aimed squarely at manga readers" (Even the series name, LadyStar... very 'anime-esque' name). Manga readers who like... manga.

I've read a lot of manga and watched a lot of anime (and studied Japanese in uni), but I've never even once read the novelization of any series, nor would I want to. They're a different experience. One data point, sure, but most series only make a novelization when they're already big, and they're usually only marketing only to existing fans. They're like Star Wars novels. Nobody's going to read them unless they've seen the movies, so they don't have to explain what a lightsabre is or what the Force is. That's the feeling I'm getting from your novel.

ChrisVC had some really good comments which I think are good, but his analysis of the first chapter is (I feel) the most telling. It reads like a generic manga mis-match of things, where seeing a winged alien with a colossal sword and a raygun, while wearing a Japanese schoolgirls uniform on another planet where they've never heard of _Earth _let alone Japan isn't too out of place. In your mind, I think that's where this book takes place... but the thing is, the majority of your readers won't get that.

My suggestion would be to add a prologue which firmly grounds your point of view protagonist, explains (via footnotes, not in dialogue) the honourific system or (better) just remove it. Expose a little of the world in a clear, concise fashion ("It's the year 2014 on the planet Zeegleblarb"), etc, so your readers know where they are and what they're doing. A thousand or so words there will improve this book out of sight. And tweak your first chapter to remove the head hopping.

I agree with Phyllis on your style issues.



heavycat said:


> There hasn't been a complimentary word said about me or my writing (or the book cover, or the web site, or the blurb) for three pages.


*folds arms* A "why isn't this selling?" thread is, I feel, implicitly asking for critique and isn't a place to go compliment fishing. I happen to like your new cover, I think it's generic but otherwise good, but me saying that won't help you sell books, will it? You're not asking what you're doing right, you're asking what you're doing wrong. This thread has drawn a lot of attention from readers and writers alike, and we've provided our feedback.

The exact moment the thread turned a bit hostile was when you said the quip about the manga collection being worth more than people's houses. That's rude, dude, and also a little worrying. My house is worth about half a million bucks AUD as house prices are high here at the moment, so... I actually am curious where someone who graduated with a degree in English (generally not a high-paying field) was financing this apparent colossal money pit that was losing $50,000 a year every year for a decade. That's some serious money. That's someone's full time wage. Who was bankrolling this? And why didn't you budget for a little more editing, consultation, market research, etc? From what you were saying ("I bought lots of ads!") I'm pretty sure this was a one or two man job. Given your operating costs, this is very surprising.

Sometimes good advise is hard to swallow. Recently, my editor told me to turn down my ellipses, as apparently... I use them... too much... making me... seem like... Shatner... when... I write. I instinctively bristled a bit; hey, that was my style he was talkin' smack to! That was my little writer self, my precious flower! My snowflake! My pony talent!

I made my case, but he made a good argument and I accepted it. I told him that I'd work on training myself out of that. And, you know, I was polite about it (thanked him, even) and I knew it was nothing personal. It was a (valid) criticism of my style and I had to swallow this and take it on-board. I mean, technically, I was paying him; I don't have to... but if you get good advice, it should be given due consideration. So now I'm training myself.

Good


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## GPB (Oct 2, 2010)

herocious said:


> I published a book called The Mosquito Song.


Have you experimented with pricing? Book looks good.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

gaaahh, David. I live on the North Shore. My house is worth twice as much as yours.

The point is, why on earth invest any money, let alone as much as the worth of a house (although I've heard that in some place is the US you can buy houses for $1) into something that is not paying back.

New cover, improve writing, bladibla. It does not matter. Everyone on the industry complains about how poorly some bestsellers are written. Something in those books captured the imagination of readers, and they started buying the book in droves. No one has yet been able to define what 'something' is.

Write another book. But first, stop spending money on this one.


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## Danielle Kazemi (Apr 2, 2011)

herocious said:


> I published a book called The Mosquito Song.
> 
> The author lives in Chicago ( I live in Austin ).
> 
> ...


Could you try expanding the blurb a bit? It doesn't really explain much.

And I looked up, out of curiosity, a few novelizations of X-Men which I think most people will agree has a huge fanbase. The novels, from their ranks, look to sell 1 or 2 a month. So if big Marvel can't push them (maybe someone should slip 'em a note to put Hugh Jackman on there), it's not just that the book has issues. Your specific market (preteen girls who like manga novelization) is very small. You have to convince other people who might not be into it to read it. I don't recommend pulling it down completely - but maybe read through it again and see if you can make it more commercial friendly. No offense to your professor but if Updike was alive right now, he would have a hard time selling his book too. Markets change. Julie can be a bit blunt but she does make valid points. I am waiting for MikeAngel and Krista to show up too.

Journalism style is different from commercial which is what you want if you want to sell to the masses. Hunger Games, Twilight, the big names are not great works of literary fiction but they made bank. Most of the Pulitzer prize winners were barely known until their name popped up in the nominations. Even now I am not sure who won the last one but I do know 50 Shades is selling. If you don't want to 'sell out', that's good but don't complain. Everyone is here to help. They've all sold thousands of books so they know the way it works. A lot of them sold less than you but there was no one early on to help so they had to improvise. This is like 4 years of wisdom in one bundle. We want to see you succeed.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

David Adams said:


> I've read a lot of manga and watched a lot of anime (and studied Japanese in uni), but I've never even once read the novelization of any series, nor would I want to.


Adams-sempai no baka desu! (Sorry, always wanted an excuse to say that.) You're missing out on... um... well, one or two good books, somewhere. (Zaregoto and the Book Girl series are all that really come to mind, and neither has an anime or manga, as far as I know. Also, the English publication of Zaregoto has been cancelled...)

I'd love to try and defend light novels - the reason I wrote my first novel was, honest to God, because I'd read the translation of an award-winning one that was so utterly awful I said "Heck, even I can do better than this" - but a lot of them are kind of awful, for various reasons.



> They're a different experience. One data point, sure, but most series only make a novelization when they're already big, and they're usually only marketing only to existing fans. They're like Star Wars novels. Nobody's going to read them unless they've seen the movies, so they don't have to explain what a lightsabre is or what the Force is. That's the feeling I'm getting from your novel.


Yep. And in the English-speaking world, even existing fans of anime and manga just don't buy light novels. Just doesn't happen. There was a big push a couple of years ago, as everyone thought there was this great untapped demand... didn't pan out _at all_. I don't think anyone's introduced a new translated light novel series in over two years now. It's possible more people have copies of my second novel than have purchased either of NisioisiN's novels from Del Rey, who seem to have dropped the rest of the series - and he's the dude who did Death Note and Bakemonogatari, fer cryin' out loud. Yen Press has admitted that the Spice & Wolf books are selling poorly. The Haruhi books aren't selling particularly well, as far as anyone can tell. I don't think Tokyopop ever saw a single one of their series to completion, not even Chibi Vampire. Viz gave up on the FMA novels with a couple still to go. If anything would sell, you'd think it'd be FMA, but, nope. Seven Seas is (or was, they may have expired by now) sitting on the English-language rights to around a dozen series, including Toradora, Strawberry Panic, Zero no Tsukaima, and I think, Toaru Majutsu no Index, and doesn't consider any of them even _potentially_ profitable, which is pretty telling, I think.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> Everyone on the industry complains about how poorly some bestsellers are written.


More accurately, some people latch onto the 1% of poorly written books like a soother, ignoring the 99% of well-written books that put the lie the "good writing doesn't matter" myth.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

David Adams said:


> My house is worth about half a million bucks AUD


Dude. Can I come visit? I'm completely serious. In 2013. Please pencil me in.


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

Here's a bit of advice I don't think anyone has mentioned yet, but I think it's important. *Read someone else's book regularly after you've started writing*. Not mine. For God's sake, that will only confuse you more because I completely messed up the first three chapters of my Primal Patterns series. I would choose someone who is doing very well and gets the kind of reviews you want and in droves.

I'm going to point someone out here, but I'm not going to explicitly name him. I recently read a series by an independent author who was featured as a Kindle Daily Deal that vaulted him into the top 10 paid list temporarily but who has sold well for a long time, without Select, without any gimmicks. I downloaded this 0.99 book and read it a week or so later, asking myself "what is this guy doing right?" And so, I sat down one night at maybe 9 p.m. and thought I would read for just a few hours. At 5 a.m., days before my dissertation was due, I finally managed to pry the kindle from my hands and purchase the next book in the series.

"Wait," I mumbled. "How did he do this to me? I wasn't planning on reading until 1 a.m., much less 5 a.m. before purchasing the next book at full price."

The truth of the matter was that the book had dozens of typos, and it included overused character types (vampires) that I tend to roll my eyes over. But what he did do right was in stark contrast to what I did in my books and he totally hooked me regardless of other flaws. After reading his work I realized that I had majorly goofed in my first series (despite content editing and a rewrite with a qualified editor). I breezed through the typos in this guy's work, on bated breath for the next chapter, because the story was told through a single perspective that involved a lot of telling and random character thoughts that actually made the character more interesting and immersed me in the story quickly. Why's that useful? Because my editor recommended I do none of these things. "No telling. Use multiple perspectives when it benefits the story. Don't do random thoughts." All completely wrong in this guy's case. I realized that if I were to rewrite my story using these techniques from his book, the beginning of my series might have hooked readers much more easily. I learned that if I fall in love with the characters, I can disregard a lot of fundamental problems. I read the book as a reader and took that experience and transformed it into useable author skills. It's knowledge that I hope to use in my future books.

So, my advice? Before you invest any more money into this book, and honestly, before you move onto the next book, read books out there in the genre you want to be in and open your mind to analyze what they are doing right and wrong. I read hundreds if not thousands of books before I started writing seriously, but none of that reading was done the way I read books now. Yes, I still read for enjoyment, but now, I actually analyze what others are doing and try to learn from that. "Why do I feel the way I do right now? Am I confused? Is that the author's fault? What can I learn from that? Why do I love this character so much? How did I get here, to this emotional state, as a reader?" I never would have asked these questions before I started writing, and I've learned a lot since I started writing my first book because of this willingness to read openly and allow my style and crafting to be informed by others. Had I actually done this earlier, I think I would have had much better products for readers at this point in my career. The only good news is that it's never too late to start over. Another author who dropped all of his first books and launched with a blank slate taught me that.


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## T. E. Waters (May 2, 2012)

On the slight chance that OP is still reading this thread...

Try Wattpad. That's probably where your target audience is.

That said, the book strikes me as having a very, very niche audience (geeky young animanga fans). There's nothing wrong with that, but basically it is not the kind of book with a built in readership like most of the "sparkly cover" YA stuff. And you probably shouldn't bother marketing to them, IMO. But that means you also shouldn't expect anywhere close to mainstream success. Imported light novels have generally not done all that well in the US (as I see someone else has mentioned while I was typing this up). Whether that's because the marketing failed or if there really isn't an audience for it -- who knows -- but the point is, it'll take a lot of strategic targeting/patient handselling to even reach "normal" sales standards. (It's not true that popular animanga results in novelizations -- actually usually the other way around. However: you need to realize that the reading culture in Asia is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from reading culture in the US.)

The writing style IMO is fine for this niche. The problem really is that it's not only got that light novel feel to it -- it's also very 80s/90s animanga. So there's another dilemma: most of the folks who would appreciate that 80s/90s vibe are now in their late 20s/early 30s, and the writing style in that case falls flat for the older readership.

Your other problem: young readers are not paying readers. Animanga/webcomic fans in particular are used to reading and watching things for free -- the younger ones in particular will take this for granted. You're not competing against other YA/children's books here -- you're competing against Shounen Jump, Crunchyroll, scanlations, etc. It doesn't matter if your site gets tons of hits (and TBH, 2-3k a month is NOTHING). There are webcomics I've followed for just as or almost as long that I've never paid a cent for -- these are things I keep up with just to pass the time but am not really a _fan_ of, at least not enough to put down money for it. That may sound harsh, but that's the way it is.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Hugh Howey said:


> Dude. Can I come visit? I'm completely serious. In 2013. Please pencil me in.


No Hugh. You and your family can come visit us! We live on the Gulf and have a boat. Or you can stay with us in one of our cabins on our lake up north!

(I want to be able to say the Howeys are family friends, during the golden era of self-publishing.)

I'll even throw frozen pizzas (heated) into the deal.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

herocious said:


> I published a book called The Mosquito Song.
> 
> Any help would be much appreciated.
> 
> ...


I read some of the sample and the prose looks good. I'd suggest two things aren't helping: (1) You're relying purely on the novelty of the apathetic vampire buying groceries while reflecting on how mundane his existence is to hook readers. I don't know if that's enough. (2) The cover says something far more disturbing than the content of the sample suggests. The cover says depressing, soul-crushing defeat; the sample says off-beat humour.


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## B. Justin Shier (Apr 1, 2011)

Freakin' typos.

B.


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

@B: >:|

Jk. You know I heart you.


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## David Adams (Jan 2, 2012)

Hugh Howey said:


> Dude. Can I come visit? I'm completely serious. In 2013. Please pencil me in.


Mate, you know you can. Any time.  For real.

The only issue is, during June/July in 2013 I'm going to be in the United States. If we do a swap, that'll be totally uncool.

I'll get my people to talk to your people.


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## B. Justin Shier (Apr 1, 2011)

I love you too, Rex.



David Adams said:


> The only issue is, during June/July in 2013 I'm going to be in the United States.


Seriously? I expected you'd be on the no-fly list by now. 

To the OP (whom I know is still reading this because whenever I say I'm not going to read something it means that I'm going to read it like three times through and backwards), take a day or so to find some space and then come back to this thread with fresh eyes. There's some good stuff hiding in the weeds. Re-read it all. Jot down all the points that get under your skin. Focus (especially) on the points made by the 3+ posters that have sold well over 100K copies. Discuss these points with someone living, breathing, and objective. Not your mother. Not your partner. Someone objective. And then discuss them with a second person.

The effort might improve your craft and marketing, make you feel worse, or inspire you to take up quilting. The end result doesn't really matter. It's the grabbing ahold of the oars that does. You wouldn't have started this thread if you were happy with the current state of affairs. You're clearly looking to change something. Just recognize that all change comes with a cost, and that cost can be high when it involves something that we care about. We just have to love what we're doing so much that all the speed bumps in the world can't stop us.

B.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

There are two other reasons why I write out advice that I suspect is not being read or considered by the person asking for the advice. First, there are a dozen lurkers in any given thread for every person posting; someone else might read my post and find some value in it. Second, writing down my thoughts can help clarify my _own _weaknesses. That is, participating in a thread about craft or audience I may end up helping myself.


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## Guest (May 9, 2012)

I've told this story before, but I think it bears repeating (because as Mike said, even if the OP isn't reading lurkers can still gain from conversations about craft):

I professionally published (i.e. actually got paid) for the first time while still in college. I had a great deal of early success selling short stories and poetry. I worked professionally for a local newspaper and got paid to write news articles. I did freelance PR work and got paid to write press releases and marketing material. While still in school. I'm not bragging (OK, I am lol). But the point is if anyone had a reason to have the proverbial chip on the shoulder in regards to her writing, it was me.  

Then I decided to write a campaign setting, because besides being a successful writer I was also a hardcore gamer. Again, I had already started building a name in the industry, writing for award-winning industry zines like Demonground and others. I had demo'd the setting at conventions and people loved it. There was no reason a publisher would refuse to buy the setting.

So I sent it off to a publisher as a submission. A couple weeks later, I get back a three page email that begins with the words "I'm not going to tell you what you are doing right. You already know that. I'm going to tell you everything you are doing wrong."

He then spent the next three pages ripping apart the setting I had spent three years writing.

I thank the gods to this day that Facebook and Twitter did not exist then. Because I was so furious that I would have completely embarrassed myself and torpedoed any chances of being taken seriously in the industry. I threw things across the room. I screamed. I cried. I told myself he was sexist bastard that didn’t want to give a woman a chance in the industry. I told myself he was trying to discourage me and keep me down.

A couple days later, after I called down and went back and reread the letter, I realized that I actually AGREED with 99% of his comments. I made the changes and actually had a nice follow-up conversation with him where he actually encouraged me to self-publish the setting because with my marketing background he felt it would do well.

All these years and tens of thousands of sales later, the Neiyar setting is still going strong and we’re in the middle of a major reboot for a relaunch. If Jim hadn’t said the things he said to me, the book never would have been successful. And if I hadn’t swallowed my pride, I would have been another wannabe whining about how sexist the RPG industry is and how women can’t get a chance.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

I don't think there's a market for novelized anime/manga period, whether or not it's well written or how much one spends on advertising. There's just no there, there.


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## herocious (May 20, 2011)

Hey everyone, thanks for the feedback on The Mosquito Song.

I'm hearing several things that make a lot of sense:

*1) Experiment with pricing*

What do you think a fair price would be? I'm open to changing it.

*2) Expand the blurb*

I did a lot of blurb work for my book. And I would quickly begin reworking this blurb. But I hesitate because the blurb for my book is pretty minimal and around the same length yet people are buying it.

~3,500 people downloaded it during the last promo. Compared to The Mosquito Songs ~150.

My blurb: Bridget had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Michael had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two Austin transplants who loved each other so well.

The Mosquito Song blurb: Hunted by amateur assassins, confounded by a mysterious notebook, and vexed by modern technology, a derelict vampire travels west to Chicago for answers. And maybe a little blood.

3) Change the cover

Ah. It is an offbeat vampire story, and the cover doesn't suggest this so much. We were going for an Italian horror movie poster type look, and while I think we nailed it, it may not be best for this book.

I'll be looking into these three things more in depth after The Mosquito Song runs through its 2-day promotion and I see how it fares.

*Yes, it's free right now for anyone wanting to take a look *

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mosquito-Song-ebook/dp/B005QPAUOU

As for the sample, it's solid prose that a few of you seemed to enjoy, however, one of you suggested I sample a different part of the book, something that's more of a hook... The sample pages on all three Tiny TOE Press books start from the beginning. Is it an option to start somewhere else in the book?

Can't thank you enough for all your help!


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## GPB (Oct 2, 2010)

I might test dropping the price a bit. You're at the high end for a novella at $4.95, I think. What is it, around 30,000-35,000 words? Maybe try it at $2.99 and see what happens. I'll definitely go download it at "free."  

I like the cover. I like the opening/sample.

Just my $0.02. If you find the sweet spot for pricing, I'll bet it will do well.


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## AshMP (Dec 30, 2009)

Why isn't your book selling? I guess there probably isn't just one reason that comes with an easy fix but many, many reasons that spiderweb from each other. That doesn't help ... but other writers on this board have highlighted possible missteps in the book that could, if you're willing to look at them closely and take them in the spirit of which they were written, could be beneficial.

What you're thinking of doing something my Mom calls "throwing the baby away with the bath" ... it's a pointless gesture if you're seriously serious about writing. You can do that ... you can pull everything or as you said "flip the switch" ... but why? Because you're struggling with sales? Welcome to the party, girlfriend.

I can share this with you and I think it may relate.

Like you, I pulled no punches with my novel. I went on a huge tour, turned my finger tips hypersensitive pounding out guest blog after guest blog after interview after interview. I never said no to a request, spent hundreds of dollars buying and then mailing out review copies. I personally addressed each novel to the reviewer. I tried to do this whole thing right. I wasn't afraid of hard work and it showed, my publicist has said as much. I poured myself in creating a welcoming website, fine tuning my book, getting ready ... and I thought "this is going to be amazing!" Like when I queried, I had this very green image of how easy it would be to sell my book.

I ran a Goodreads giveaway. I topped Nicholas Sparks on the "most requested" list ... I had over 1,600 requests and hundreds upon hundreds of TBR lists that included my book. I was excited. Thrilled even. It was validation of my hard work.

The reviews rolled in. They were good ... some were glowing. Blog comments were encouraging. I started a HUGE giveaway ... a gift basket I worked out with my publicist. Thousands of entries followed and it's still running. Twitter when crazy, my FB Author Page started getting likes.

I sold _some_ books. Some days were better, others were worse. The BBoS moved in the US, never in any other country and then on May 1st it decided to just hang around with no signs of leaving. Smashwords was worthless, Nook sold a whopping 3 books. And suddenly I was in this place, like you, where I had to get real. Something was wrong with what I was doing ... I had to figure it out.

I had to get really real with myself and say ... okay, now what were my goals? How do I take the facts and face them and then address them. This, that sort of due-diligence is something I did in my past career all the time. When you subtract the emotions of how disappointed you are, you can figure things out.

For me, I think it was a visibility issue. Literary fiction, my genre, is smallish and my sub genre of Women's Fic, even smaller yet. My readers tend to be older women ... are they scouring the blogs frantically trying to find the next good book? No, they are browsing Amazon and the bookstore. They like their Kindles ... but how could I get my ranking up for #3XX,XXX to something more realistic? NO ONE is ever going to sift through 300,000 plus books to find mine.

Knowing that, I started hunting bookstores that would carry physical copies of my book ... and I'm still waiting on that. But I knew I could take Amazon and spin it, that much I could do on my own.

I went Select. Today is my first "free day" ever ... the first time my novel is actually, across the board for everyone, free of charge. It's 11:00am and I've already had 700 downloads and I'm #32 in Lit Fic (free). This is pretty amazing. I know, I know ... the book is _free_ and I'm not making money. But, do I care? No, not really.

This, writing, is a career. I'm the mailroom girl right now. I have to take these lumps. It won't always be like this, maybe or maybe it will. But I write because I love it, I have long, long term goals ... and I have to figure out how to make this work in my own terms. Perfect doesn't exist, it's either hard work or stupid luck.

My advice? Go Select. Then, figure out how to make your name and brand stand out. For me, I take every opportunity handed -- and I seek them out. There is an eBook festival coming up, I signed up for everything I possibly could. I am starting a blog radio show to support other writers. I'll balance everything with writing and hopefully someday it's easier.

I wish you the best of luck, I hope you don't throw that baby away and keep on writing. It's not easy but it's rewarding ... always remember that.


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

Ashely I really hope Select works for you. From what I've seen it is the only way for those without a following to get any visibility. Without it many just sink like stones in the ocean. I bought your book. I think it's great. I hope this is the push it needs to get a strong following for you.


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## AshMP (Dec 30, 2009)

Sweetapple said:


> Ashely I really hope Select works for you. From what I've seen it is the only way for those without a following to get any visibility. Without it many just sink like stones in the ocean. I bought your book. I think it's great. I hope this is the push it needs to get a strong following for you.


Oh, thank you so much! You're very sweet to say that. It's all about figuring out what works and what doesn't ... it's a steep learning curve! And I'm very glad you're enjoy my book!


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

Ashley-  Just a note.  I looked at your book and your blurb once before and I have to say that I'm surprised at how you describe it here.  I had it pegged in my head as a YA.  Probably due to the young girl on the cover and the description about the 16 year old getting her mother's tapes.  What you're saying here though is that it is really more the mother's story than the daughters?

That might be part of your trouble.

Anyway, very good luck with the free downloads.  If nothing else, they'll bring you a bunch of "also boughts" which is always a good thing.


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## AshMP (Dec 30, 2009)

AndreSanThomas said:


> Ashley- Just a note. I looked at your book and your blurb once before and I have to say that I'm surprised at how you describe it here. I had it pegged in my head as a YA. Probably due to the young girl on the cover and the description about the 16 year old getting her mother's tapes. What you're saying here though is that it is really more the mother's story than the daughters?
> 
> That might be part of your trouble.
> 
> Anyway, very good luck with the free downloads. If nothing else, they'll bring you a bunch of "also boughts" which is always a good thing.


It's a book with two parts and definitely, definitely NOT YA ... unless, of course, kids are into reading about death and breast cancer?

The first half is about Jenna and she's dying and the whole half is really tied up in the emotional whirlwind of the end of life. The second half is the smoothing out, and while the protagonist is 16 ... I still don't think it reads YA, what she's experiencing is the ricochet of loss and coming of age.

And HeavyCat, sorry for the threadjack .


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## herocious (May 20, 2011)

GPB said:


> I might test dropping the price a bit. You're at the high end for a novella at $4.95, I think. What is it, around 30,000-35,000 words? Maybe try it at $2.99 and see what happens. I'll definitely go download it at "free."
> 
> I like the cover. I like the opening/sample.
> 
> Just my $0.02. If you find the sweet spot for pricing, I'll bet it will do well.


Thanks again for this suggestion. If the author is ok with it, the price will drop to $2.95 after the promo.

Seems more reasonable.

Hope you enjoy it! Feel free to review it if you do : )


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## MegSilver (Feb 26, 2012)

herocious said:


> Thanks again for this suggestion. If the author is ok with it, the price will drop to $2.95 after the promo.
> 
> Seems more reasonable.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it! Feel free to review it if you do : )


Like you said above, I think the cover isn't doing you lot any favors. The abbreviated description as well.

Side note: I once edited a book very similar in style and subject matter (full-length novel, though) to this one, and the cover marketing kicked back at us missed the mark entirely. (They sexed it up; I was appalled, but couldn't do a thing about it.) You all went the opposite direction with it, but seeing the more horror-based cover struck a real cord with me. I'm thinking books like these, with the real personable narrative voice are just... impossible to do justice to in art. /sigh


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

Italiahaircolor said:


> It's a book with two parts and definitely, definitely NOT YA ... unless, of course, kids are into reading about death and breast cancer?
> 
> The first half is about Jenna and she's dying and the whole half is really tied up in the emotional whirlwind of the end of life. The second half is the smoothing out, and while the protagonist is 16 ... I still don't think it reads YA, what she's experiencing is the ricochet of loss and coming of age.
> 
> And HeavyCat, sorry for the threadjack .


No, I'm guessing from what you're saying that it would never read YA, but that's how your cover and blurb read to me (twice, a couple weeks apart) when I clicked on Amazon. So that might account for some of the disconnect. It should appeal to grown women like me with their own teenagers, but I didn't get past those two things to even click on the preview. And a YA that stumbles over it isn't going to want it because they will read the preview and go- ugh, messy depressing grown up death stuff, ick. Thus no one buying.


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## JacksonJones (Feb 20, 2012)

Dude (the OP - the Ocean Pacific? what does OP mean?), 50 copies sounds freaking awesome to me. You are miles beyond me. LadyStar is currently ranked #196,505 in the Kindle store, plus, it is a righteous #81 in the Graphic Novels>Fantasy genre. My genius work of literature, Attack of the Crazed Environmentalists, is sitting strong at #800,424. I've got your back.


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

JacksonJones said:


> Dude (the OP - the Ocean Pacific? what does OP mean?),


"Original Poster"


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

Ashley, 

I totally thought your book was YA.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Lynn ODell said:


> This is great news! Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, but he's getting a little long in the tooth. This means his three kids should start cranking out some best-selling horror novels any day now, right?


Well, one of his three kids is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill_(writer)



And now, I'm leaving before I get caught up in this conversation.


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## Greer (Sep 24, 2011)

Italiahaircolor said:


> It's a book with two parts and definitely, definitely NOT YA ... unless, of course, kids are into reading about death and breast cancer?


There's a YA writer named Lurlene McDaniel who writes all about teenagers dying of wasting diseases who was quite popular. Back when I worked at Chapters, there was hardly a week went by that we didn't see more of her books go through receiving.

I, too, thought your book was YA, judging by the cover. I went to take a look at the blurb, and thought your book sounds like it's a really good story. Unfortunately, I have a feeling I would wind up bawling by the end if I were to read it - and I really don't like bawling - but if it was one of my genres, I would snap it up in a second. I am, however, looking forward to the one about the murder case with no body that you talked about writing in one of your other threads. That one is definitely my kind of book.


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