Stories and Kindle and stuff…

I recently read into the way Kindle works and are considering to start publishing my stories there (as well). It seems more suitable then (failed) attempts to publish books ^^’

In this regard I wanted two questions to you (as you’re 95% of my potential readers either way):
1. Do you have any experiences with Kindle (as author or reader), recommendations or important things to be noted?
2. Would you even be paying the casual 0.99$/€/BP for a story of mine? F.e. Bronze Bonds (length-wise).

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17 Responses to Stories and Kindle and stuff…

  1. Jeremy F. says:

    I the President of a company who publishes US Military Veteran author stories via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes/iBooks. I am speaking from our experiences, but they can vary and I hear some people have great luck and others have some tough luck with Amazon.

    1. Biggest things are formatting, spelling, and editing. So have everything proof read, edited, and formatted for reading. Test everything with the Kindle preview tool (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000765261). Also, payments via royalties several months after the story is released and payment may be delayed until it reaches a certain dollar threshold (about $100, possibly less depending on Amazon). Best thing to setup is EFT to a bank account if you can, saves you a lot of headaches with checks. Good FAQ here: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A30F3VI2TH1FR8

    2. I just read Bronze Bonds as of a few minutes of this posting. Are you planning to release short stories or expand upon the stories into longer lengths? The challenge with Amazon is it is saturated with a lot of books, stories, etc. So targeting your material is a huge deal and also providing people a “preview” of your content is a must. The problem you may have is the length of the story is fairly short. You may consider combining multiple stories into a single short story book or something to that effect and release it for a bit more the $0.99. Just a thought. I would also suggest looking into formatting the text in a manner similar to that of other novels/short stories, etc. One of the toughest things you will get though is criticism, so be ready for it as some people on Amazon can be pretty harsh and unnecessarily at that.

    Best of luck!

  2. ForcedToMine says:

    I’d pay $20 for a hard-copy of a book that I’d pay $2 for an electronic copy. In other words even though I really enjoy buying hard-copies of books I’d only buy an electronic copy if its really cheap. (I hate publishers that sell electronic copies for $18.00 or something when the hard-copy is $20.00.)

  3. Myrddin Emrys says:

    Money can be made in the Kindle market, but it can be made in any market with a good product. What matters is getting the millions of people who have never heard of you a way to believe that their $1 or $2 will be well spent with you, rather than one of the thousand other authors out there.

    – Make sure people can read an excerpt, or read some of your stories for free, then give them a way to get others for money.
    – People who love your work will pay for it multiple times, or consume it in multiple formats. You can often make more money giving away a story online AND selling it than you can just selling it (very successful for webcomics).

  4. Talimn says:

    I haven’t read anything about your books, but I’d be more than happy to buy them from amazon. I have the kindle app for android and I’m constantly buying $.99 books. If you publish through them, I’ll definitely buy a copy.

  5. Nanomanz says:

    I’d buy some, and it sounds like a good idea to publish your stuff on Kindle. I have a Kindle myself, and was considering getting your stories onto it to read.

  6. bbqroast says:

    I have a Kindle, and there are a couple of thinks I could ask/recommend:
    Sell your books for maybe $2? You could package them together.
    Make sure the book is formatted properly. The most annoying think I’ve found is when people don’t put a clear indication of a change in perspective. A good way to do this is to put a centered “~” in between two different perspectives (not a change in speaker, but if the story starts telling what another person sees and feels).
    Also use a good name, for example “Bronze Bonds” not “Alblaka’s Great New Book (Bronze Bonds)”. What seems great in a book store is annoying for Kindles. And finally advertise a bit, as in put a link in the sidebar of this page, maybe a post on that old story forum you talked about (providing that is allowed in their rules).

    Good luck!!

  7. Luingar says:

    I would reccomend releasing it in another form as well, such as barnes and nobles’ market. Amazon’s DRM is fairly annoying, and is the (only) reason i wouldn’t drop .99 on one of your books in digital form.

    • Rgamer says:

      AMAZON’s DRM is annoying? Try B&N’s DRM. I have a few books for Nook, but no Nook, and I can’t even FIND the file to convert to Kindle-compatible format.

      • Luingar says:

        didn’t know that. only knew that nook is capable of reading html and various drm free formats while the kindle can only read a few.

  8. Rgamer says:

    As a Kindle user, the biggest things are price, price, and price. I’m willing to give a unknown author a shot for $0.99, but not $1.99+.

    What decides if I’ll keep buying books by that author after the initial read is if the book is:
    1. Well formatted. I will not try tell you how annoying I find it to try to read something which is poorly formatted for Kindle. This means indicating the start of chapters so I can skip to them,and a Table of Contents that allows me to jump between chapters. Basically, make it easy to jump around the book.

    2. Spelling and grammar. When I look at a book, and there’s a spelling problem, I immediately think “Never buying stuff from this guy again”. I’m referring to spelling problems that disrupt the flow of reading, here. Same deal for major grammatical errors. These two things will cause me to dismiss the author out of hand, even if the plot and characters are well-constructed. Major spelling and grammar errors just get in the way of me enjoying the book.

    Note that both spelling and grammar errors are excusable in conversation between characters, just not in the rest of the text. (I.E. A character from the Deep South having that drawl added in over the text, with things such as “y’all”, and similar regionalisms.

  9. Elendu says:

    It is extremely easy for independent writers to publish on Amazon, I highly recommend it! Here is my favorite tutorial published from my magazine (in English):
    Maximum PC | How to Create an E-book for the Kindle Reader
    It explains the basic process, and shows some simple (and free) tool to use that can help you (or anyone else reading the comments) get started.
    p.s. Keep up the good work! :3

  10. Shalashalska says:

    I have some experience reading on kindle, but not much. You will need to get any story you want to post edited first, otherwise people won’t buy them again. I would say 0.99 for something like bronze bonds, and about 2-3$the for each part of TDC, as they’re the length of a novel.

  11. Peter Davidowicz says:

    I own a Kindle, I read a lot of Sci-Fi and fantasy novels. For entry your price point should be ~$0.99. Might seem low from a business sense, but purchase volume is extremely important in the kindle market: the more purchases you get the higher your ranking in the popularity list, which is where a lot of prospective readers are brought automatically for browsing.

    Reviews are EVERYTHING, place a short paragraph at the end thanking and asking for reviews. Then, make sure your book has been proofread and previewed on a kindle, the converter can do some funky things with fonts and spacing sometimes and I’ve read a number of books with these errors that I couldn’t give 5 stars because of it.

    Also, provide information about future books at the end so that readers have a reference if they like your work.

  12. Lost Ninja says:

    As primarily a consumer of IC2 and not a reader of your stories (yet), I’d like to add. You could have a look at Lulu for self publishing.

    As a kindle user what I look for in unknown authors? First and foremost the story has to be good, internally logical, internally realistic and well edited. I can accept that spelling is not always 100% (you see that in dead tree format from established authors) I can even accept grammar inconsistencies. But everything else should be spot on.

    To select a new author over a known author in order: Synopsis > Price > Reviews. That all said I do ‘buy’ a large selection of the free kindle books on a regular basis and sometimes buy authors I have found through that.

    You should also look at getting Calibre and perhaps adding e-com to your site and just selling books/stories that way. Lulu will do dead tree format publishing if you want to sell in that format too.

    LN

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