Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Sci-fi novel now available from DC member kyrathaba!
mouser:
I'm going to offer the first 50% of the book as a free preview on Smashwords.
--- End quote ---
i don't think there is any reason not to make 50% of the book available for those that want it --
HOWEVER, there is probably some real value in using a very short preview to those who want to get a flavor of it.
too often we neglect the fact that people become easily overwhelmed by information, and we are particularly vulnerable to this when we are the creators and are intimately familiar with the content.
i'd encourage you to consider having one of your proofreaders pick out a very short section (1 chapter? 5 pages?) that best captures the flavor/feel of the work, and use that small excerpt for these kinds of previews.
then if you want to make 50% or 75% of the book downloadable on your homepage, that's another matter and seems fine.
kyrathaba:
Yeah, I know what you mean, mouser.
We'll let you guys pick out some "flavor text" from two or three exciting scenes. Those will come after "Blurbs" and before "Title Page".
Smashwords creator Mark Coker has done extensive research showing that books priced at $2.99 and 50% preview sell the best, even better than $0.99 price-point.
Once the novel is published, I'll make a large portion of it available to hook the reader (I have already had over 200 individuals read Prologue through Ch. 4 and most tell me that the Prologue stirs their interest but that the ending of Ch. 4 is where they really got hooked.
kyrathaba:
Sent first 10 pages as a query to Jason Allen Ashlock of Movable Type to see if he finds it interesting. Cause ya just never know...
kyrathaba:
I have sent Perry an email with the completed manuscript for the novel. It weighs in at 72,164 words of actual story (excludes front-/back-matter). This is a full-length novel. Smashwords defines 50K+ as full, but most publishers like to see novels in the 70-80K words range.
I apologize to Perry and 4wd for going ahead and working on the manuscript, because I'd said I'd pause until we caught up with proofing the existing material. But when inspiration struck, I had to get it written while it was fresh in my mind. Hope my two proofreaders will forgive me.
Now, over the next few days, Perry, 4wd, and I will continue to work jointly using Google Docs as a realtime online collaboration tool, to ferret out typos, misplaced commas, missing quotation marks, etc.
I hope to have the proofed book to mouser as a .mobi file within a few days. Being realistic, it may be 10-14 days (Perry or 4wd may increase that estimate, but I think we can do it in that time frame).
I also have four previously published authors who have agreed to accept a gratis ebook copy to read and review/blurb.
Stay tuned...
Samples downloaded
From DC hosting: 207
From Scribd: 37 reads, 50 followers
From Issuu: 4 reads, 113 impressions, 1 Like
Total words (front-matter + heart of the novel + back-matter): 73,322
Blurbs page: 185 words
Title/Copyright: 21 words
Dedication: 106 words
Acknowledgments: 30 words
Smashwords License Notes: 85 words
Epigraph: 4 words
Quote: 18 words
-------------------------------------
Front Matter: 449 words
Afterword: 719
-------------------------------------
Back Matter: 719 words
Main body of book (excludes front-/back-matter):
73,332 - 449 (front-matter) - 719 (back-matter) = 72,164 words
kyrathaba:
Got this in my email: checked it out. Might be cool, but it looks to me like they're in it to make money off self-publishers. I'm not interested in laying out any cash.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version