I have made a small scale graphic novel that will be marketed towards the our kind.
I am looking at options on publishing it.
Is Amazon KDP a viable avenue?
Is there a primer for people that are "hobbyists" and not trying to become a best selling author?
In reply to QuasiMofo (John Brown) :
You and I are friends on FB. Look up an FB friend of mine named Frank Adkins. He is a hobbyist author and has had several books of "car folk" stories published. If you reach out to him he will probably offer advice. He's a great guy and has actual experience.
If you want me to contact him I will.
If looking for a paper printer, a recommendation for Mixam. They print most of my zines. Very happy with the entire process.
How much? They have a handy online price calculator.
I can't speak to the graphic novel aspect, but I've had no issues with Amazon Publishing. It's print-on-demand, so there is no inventory to worry about. Formatting it correctly to upload is the most difficult part.
Marketing your work is the hard and expensive part unless you just want to be a niche author and sell a hundred copies or so through word of mouth. My three fiction novels went nowhere because I wasn't willing to spend money in an attempt to make money. My one non-fiction book, OTOH, has been a steady seller, though hardly risking being on the NYT list.
I printed off a copy to do some tactile editing and have made some changes. The final product SHOULD be ready for press Sunday.
In for at least 1 copy. You should do a book signing at the Challenge!
Duke said:In reply to QuasiMofo (John Brown) :
You and I are friends on FB. Look up an FB friend of mine named Frank Adkins. He is a hobbyist author and has had several books of "car folk" stories published. If you reach out to him he will probably offer advice. He's a great guy and has actual experience.
If you want me to contact him I will.
Sorry to cut in, but is there any chance I could get in on this?
I have a manuscript copywritten for a similar style book (kids/automotive) and have been sitting on it FOREVER because I have zero art abilities and no idea what to do next (and estimates to hire an illustrator all seem to be like $15,000). I have a couple more manuscripts I'd like to submit, but have been sitting on them forever because I never did anything more with the first. The goal would be to publish a book like Quasi's immediately above.
Also: Quasi, I would love to know how you worked the process sir. Any firsthand experience would be appreciated.
Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:Duke said:In reply to QuasiMofo (John Brown) :
You and I are friends on FB. Look up an FB friend of mine named Frank Adkins. He is a hobbyist author and has had several books of "car folk" stories published. If you reach out to him he will probably offer advice. He's a great guy and has actual experience.
If you want me to contact him I will.
Sorry to cut in, but is there any chance I could get in on this?
I have a manuscript copywritten for a similar style book (kids/automotive) and have been sitting on it FOREVER because I have zero art abilities and no idea what to do next (and estimates to hire an illustrator all seem to be like $15,000). I have a couple more manuscripts I'd like to submit, but have been sitting on them forever because I never did anything more with the first. The goal would be to publish a book like Quasi's immediately above.Also: Quasi, I would love to know how you worked the process sir. Any firsthand experience would be appreciated.
Pretty sure this came about from ai generated images.
Or, even if it didn't, that is definitely a path you could take for illustrations.
I AM curious about copyright details with AI generated images.
So WTF did AI put in that miata?
In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :
All of the images were AI generated initially. Most are slightly modified and edited. Initially I made a joke about the book cover. Then I MADE the book cover. Then the rest fell in to place.
As far as trademark and copywrite representation, from what I have researched and been told by the live body at one publisher, if you generate it and can prove it then it is yours to use. AI laws may change but currently it is legal to copyright items you generated as long as there is no other existing design or use infringement.
I am sending my copyright packet out on Wednesday so I will have more info from that.
Mess around with the free AI Image generation pages to see if you get the visuals you want.
In reply to Kendall_Jones :
I am thinking it's a Toyota 3UZ converted to Propane
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:In for at least 1 copy. You should do a book signing at the Challenge!
I will have the Amazon link up on Monday if all goes well.
I could write the Challenge off as a business expense!
QuasiMofo (John Brown) said:AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:In for at least 1 copy. You should do a book signing at the Challenge!
I will have the Amazon link up on Monday if all goes well.
I could write the Challenge off as a business expense!
It totally passes the blush test as a research expense. But with the standard deduction going up a couple years ago, I'm guessing you still won't cross the threshold to itemize.
I've seen the prototype, and it's pretty damn good. I'll be needing a signed copy for my grandchildren.
Welp. I'm a real boy now.
72ish hours and we should be live.
He really said the F word!
In reply to QuasiMofo (John Brown) :
And remember, this was all because I started reading the AI chat on the GRM Forum instead of working...
You too can be a starving artist!
KDP has been a very easy button for us. But unless my wife spent 5 hours a week to promote it we got no sales at all. And at $4 profit per book, it wasn't worth the result. Sooo we made $1k, which was the cost of art supplies and gave us a few extra fun activities and now one or two sales trickle in each month.
@Hungary Bill, PM me about what you're thinking for illustrations. I can't promise anything, but let's talk.
In reply to P3PPY :
So I guess the pivot now becomes...
I wrote and published a book, learn me marketing!
I created a page on The Book of Feces and am working to try to figure out how to afford the advertising beyond the easy peasy free-zy stuff!
In reply to QuasiMofo (John Brown) :
We obviously do not know what we are doing since we only sold 250 books over 6 months, but she found that Instagram was the way to market. We tried a couple Facebook ads for some other project she was working on and got absolutely no results from them at all. So we didn't even bother with FB when the book came out.
She started following people who explain how to do Instagram marketing, you have to do like one or two each day, there are prime times to publish your Instagram posts, like 2:30 in the afternoon or something like that. Videos of you walking and talking are supposed to be good. But I guess the caveat here is that she was marketing herself as an expert on a field and happened to be selling that as a resource, she was not directly simply trying to sell the book. I don't know how that translates into your situation, though it did result in sales for us.
EDIT: I remember one "hack" we kind of came up with was the idea of getting the book in the hands of people who do that "influencer" stuff for a living. See if they will de facto market/sell it FOR YOU by including it in THEIR popular podcasts, Instagram feeds, what have you.
P3PPY said:EDIT: I remember one "hack" we kind of came up with was the idea of getting the book in the hands of people who do that "influencer" stuff for a living. See if they will de facto market/sell it FOR YOU by including it in THEIR popular podcasts, Instagram feeds, what have you.
you get VGG to plug your book, you're gonna make the NYTimes Bestseller list.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:P3PPY said:EDIT: I remember one "hack" we kind of came up with was the idea of getting the book in the hands of people who do that "influencer" stuff for a living. See if they will de facto market/sell it FOR YOU by including it in THEIR popular podcasts, Instagram feeds, what have you.
you get VGG to plug your book, you're gonna make the NYTimes Bestseller list.
Anyone have Derek's number?
Cleetus?
I got Andrews, Patrick's and Speedycops addresses... LOLOLOLOLOLOL
You'll need to log in to post.
