What are /r/PubTips' favorite Products & Services?

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I came out of a big MFA program. Queried agents twenty years ago after I finished my first novel and had no problem getting people to read my stuff. Got a lot of really nice replies to "send me your next one." I wrote two more and decided I didn't like them. Then recently I co-wrote a military memoir and again had no problem getting people to read them. Got an agent pretty quickly. Then failed to find a publisher (well, we got one offer but didn't like it). So now we are publishing it ourselves.

I don't know how much my MFA helped my cover letter. I'd focus on really crisp, direct cover letter with something in the first sentence or two about why you are sending to them specifically, and make sure your first sample pages are awesome. I thought this was good advice many years ago.

https://www.amazon.com/First-Five-Pages-Writers-Rejection/dp/068485743X

Literary fiction is a tough racket though. When you see the actual sales numbers from books considered a "success" in this category, it's kind of eye opening. It's why many of these folks teach. Hope this helps!

Here's what I would do. Go to this website. https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

Every time you load the page, it's a new portrait created by an AI. Every time into the future someone asks for a photo, send them another one. Soon, your psuedonym will be legendary. Is this person a black 80-year old? Yes. Is this person a pre-teen white kid? Yes.

Just keep in mind the backgrounds can be a little weird.

This sounds good. I can't advise too much on the technical aspects of the query, but love the plot and vibe.

Run this through Hemingway and cut down some of the sentences, as there's a few long ones that could be truncated (especially that second one).

I guess another point is, there's not much about Sloan as a character. Yeah, he's looking to uncover the main crime. But what's his personal story?

What does he want and what's at stake for him personally?

Is The Golem his antagonist?

Where's the conflict?

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>is seeking to reclaim the violin ~~he had~~ stolen from him ~~and lost~~ during the war.

This sentence could be less ambiguous as well. I've added a suggestion.

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Edit: formatting and extra details added

Amazon doesn't touch the content. You upload it and that's it. Also, I don't think they have an exclusivity agreement. You can rescind at any time you want. And now they do offer paperback copies. That's what I did.

Now there are a ton of predatory self-publishers out there who will make you sign a bunch of legal documents and who will make you pay them to print your book. That's not a good situation. And some will even push you out as the writer if the book is moderately successful.

All Amazon does in this service is print the book. At least that's been my experience.

The only way to be really sure you've got total control is to go out there and research book printers, pay them upwards of $2,000-5,000 to get a bunch of printed copies of your book, on top of paying for editing/ISBN/art/etc.

It sounds like you're serious about this if you actually want to pay an editor. That's good. I would encourage you to keep trying the traditional route while you do your research. You never know what could happen. But if you get to the point where you are totally ready and still haven't made a connection with an agent/publisher, try Amazon. I've loved it.

Here's the book I've got with them. Call of the Mountains

Haha, what? Suspense is a huge genre. (And yeah, you don't need to say "adult.") Good luck on the querying!

https://reedsy.com/discovery/blog/best-suspense-books

For a very low cost (circa £20 a year for me) and low maintenance website, I can recommend Blot.im - it just syncs with a Dropbox folder, uses Markdown for posts and is basically just a bunch of text files. And you can get it decent-but-minimalist without doing much or any tweaking.

It's not self-promotion if someone else does it! Correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but I believe the ARCs in question are of Stop Asking How Was Your Day: 444 Better Questions to Help You Connect With Your Child

https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Asking-How-Was-Your/dp/1950500497

I can get lots of traffic. I can get great reviews and sales. But converting to purchases is a mystery for me, and often my conversion rate is low for reasons that I don't know why.

This might not be "Amazon Legal" but if there was a page that mimicked amazon exactly but showed me at what point visitors left for testing that would be amazing.

Example Page: https://www.amazon.com/Star-Child-Places-Leonard-Petracci-ebook/dp/B076PGG2XK/

So, do I look for an agent first or just start sending my manuscript to publishers?

I was following Stephen King's advice in 'On Writing' where he says to build a list of accomplishments (stories you've published and awards you've won) and then look for an agent to do the work of selling your book for you.

Good point about the comps, I knew that part was weak, more of a placeholder for now.

The OwnVoices thing is difficult. Writing about drugs in Los Angeles one can't exactly avoid Hispanic characters. One of my comps could be The Devil Takes you Home, about a Hispanic hit man for the cartel named Mario. Although written by a Hispanic author, I don't think its OwnVoices. Or maybe it is, somewhat confusing to me. Definitely something to think about, thanks for pointing it out.

https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Takes-You-Home-Novel/dp/0316426911

Have you read Woman World

I don’t know enough about publishing to know if this is a problem since Aminder Dhaliwal’s story is a comic/graphic novel but I just wanted to draw your attention to it in case you haven’t come across it yet, as that is the exact same starting premise and I literally thought I was reading about WW at first! The main plot sounds different and obviously the content and telling will be totally different so hopefully not :)

Oh yikes, I wasn't aware of the Weinstein book, I meant this one which happens to have the same title. Maybe adding the author name there would help, or just find a different comp.

I will look at reordering those sentences too, thank you for the response and insight!

The best way to format books for Kindle is using the free software Calibre (https://calibre-ebook.com/) it'll convert your document into a pdf quickly. But also to Mobi and Epub files, which work better for Kindle. Here is the tutorial I followed to convert my word document into a mobi file using Calibre > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcxLNcuHT0w

Two questions:

• What sort of computer does she have? Mac/Windows? There’s some software that’s great on one or the other but not both.
• What sort of needs does she have in terms of storing reference information and reworking the order of sections within the document?

If she has a reasonably recent Mac, and just needs a way to efficiently get words onto the page, the free Pages app from Apple is a very solid word processor. Exports to .doc, .epub, and several other common formats.

If she needs to keep track of notes and research, and to move things around a lot once written, Scrivener is an extremely good program that has a huge amount of support and reference online. Also allows for substantial detail in terms of exporting a completed ebook, if she’s self-publishing.

If you want to sell books, it's a pretty good idea to start cultivating a list before you have a book. Sounds counter-intuitive, but you can't build a launch team or hope to get those first key reviews if you can't tap into that list. Of course if you sign a deal, your publisher will do some of that (hopefully) but it will only help you more if you do some too. Times have changed.

Do build a list you need a reader magnet. Something of value to readers who will like what you write to give them in exchange for joining the list (there are loads of tools online for doing this sort of thing.)

I use a short story for this, which works well. It's the same genre as my novel (science fiction) and the same type of writing.

Awesome!

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Pi-Yann-Martel/dp/0156027321

I have no idea what the actual Life of Pi query looks like but queries and book blurbs are supposed to be similar, so why don't you try writing a book blurb of RoaBiaB modeled on this blurb on Amazon? It might give you some new ideas!

Id love it if you would. Here's the link to the amazon page. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LTLL1PN/ref=mp_s_a_1_13?dchild=1&keywords=The+Island+of+Apples&qid=1603658255&s=books&sr=1-13

(ps: If you want to see the rest for free, I can semd you the manuscript pdf.)

I have not, but it looks like a fun read! And that cover is gorgeous

So The Many Lives of Steven Leeds copy (Amazon link) only makes reference to the first novella. I wonder if its worth taking a cue from?

If you're getting lots of traffic naturally and those that do convert end up loving your work then you have a good problem on your hands IMO. It's much easier to tweak the cover, keywords, categories, and description around if people already love your book.

Check out the listing for Battlefield Earth Alien Invasion:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Battlefield-Earth-Invasion-Post-Apocalyptic-Desperate-ebook/dp/B01B41I4NI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544110930&sr=1-1&keywords=battlefield+earth

The description goes in-depth about the book without revealing too much and adds in good customer reviews. Also, like crowqueen mentioned, I think the cover for the book you linked doesn't jump out as a sci-fi book. Lots of people just purchase based on the cover, unfortunately.

First anniversary of my friend's death, and he was entirely responsible for the last five years of my life. Made the push to release the Kindle version today, and the print should be shipping in less than two weeks.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MUVFXK8

Now, I haven't slept, so time for a quick nap.