Support for Indie Authors discussion

Hey everyone!

In our last moderator's meeting, (yes, we have meetings -- we're official!! ha ha) we thought it might be a good idea to have an option for you all to be able to send us links to various author resources or platforms or even publishing companies that you're unsure about.

And we'll help you research and investigate them!

So just let us know if there's a publisher that's been asking you for $$ to publish your book or if you know of a new resource and you're not sure if it's worth signing up or not.

And we'll let you know what we think!

I love this -- thank you!

I'm not sure if you're aware, but VM is VERY NINJA LIKE! And we're all curious individuals, so we're just as anxious to learn about the new resources as you all are!

Fantastic plan!

Thank you SO much for looking out for us!

Thanks! That's awesome!

Where would I go to see a list of sites you all have discussed already? A site called bookbub.com has come up in the forums a few times and I am hoping for some perspective on them.
thanks for all your help!

Bookbub has been pretty publically vetted. They work if you can afford their rates (which I hear went up) and they pick you.

Yep yep. I get their newsletter daily. Just haven't been able to meet their criteria yet.

Wow! I was just looking into Bookbub... $800 (for the science fiction category) is way out of my range at. I would rather put that kind of money towards book cover design and editing! I am thinking a large following would be necessary to gain a return on investment at that dollar value.

Thanks for the links V.M.

Wow! They went up again, I guess. It's good to be the king.

I think if I qualified for Bookbub I wouldn't need Bookbub.

:) I like your point Ken :)

Ken wrote: "I think if I qualified for Bookbub I wouldn't need Bookbub."

:) exactly!

Hey Mods, Ann made a thread called "who are you reading" but she closed it to further comments. Is that supposed to be like that?

Thanks for this thread, and in particular thanks for the link and the insight into BookBub VM. :)

Hi Hayden!

Yes my thread is locked because it's just an explanation of the sub category. The goal is for members to create new discussions under that category. :)

Yep, we want you to make a topic to discuss a book and why you liked it.

Speaking of the Self-Publishing Review (as per VM's link above), I'm definitely curious about their packages at:

http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/s...

Any idea if these are worth the cost? I'm skeptical they can "guarantee" so many reviews in 5-10 days...

I actually believe they can, but whether or not it will be unbiased and worth it is another matter. I can't see why someone would pay for a review, if you can just plan ahead and get them for free.
But I know they could pump out reviews that quick because Alysia, one of the reviewers for my blog, tends to pump out 2-3 books a day...I don't know how she does it...but she does!

Yeah...if I wasn't so against paying for reviews, I might start charging for them x D

V.M. wrote: "How do you know when you've "made it"?

When BookBub is willing to promote you."

You and Ken pretty well nailed it.

Hey Everyone, I've added a new folder called Moderators Investigate and I'm moving any and all questions about various scams, promoters, anything you might find dodgy or confusing over there. In the future, please use this folder for such questions. :)

Hey, just a shout out for the Indie authors! I am currently offering a free service for authors needing help with their novel. If you're interested, go ahead and take a gander at my website: https://editorash.wordpress.com/rates

I love helping and I hope this helps you!

Two questions for the group:

1) I just made a correction to a Amazon Kindle Book and it was successfully processed in the Amazon Bookshelf. a) Does that mean that that correction flows automatically to the Amazon Author Page (or do we have to do something?) b) then, if that is OK, does that correction automatically flow to our Goodreads Author Page, if they were linked originally---or do we have to do something?

2) Has anyone tried to contact the Goodreads Newletter? I have tried contacting the Editor-in-Chief, the Editor for the General Newsletter, and the Editor for the Young Adult Newsletter, and no response from any of them. Wondering what is up??

thanks all!!

1) If you make changes to a book for corrections, whatever, it is changed on Kdp, period. Anyone who downloads your book after that will get your updated version once it's live. All your links will go to it, so you shouldn't have to do anything.

2)They probably get hundreds, if not thousands of emails a day. It's hard to check them all, I mean, I have a rough day when I get 60-70 so I can only imagine hundreds. And I know I've lost people to the spam filter and in the inbox. It's just hard to keep up.

Sounds great Riley and in fact I just received an email from Amazon Help stating the the correction automatically went to my Amazon Author Page, so all that looks cool.

Also thanks for clarifying the situation with the newsletter editors. :)

Riley wrote: "1) If you make changes to a book for corrections, whatever, it is changed on Kdp, period. Anyone who downloads your book after that will get your updated version once it's live. All your links will..."

On your kindle you have to turn on automatic updates to have them just sent to your kindle. Otherwise, when they go to "Manage your Content and Devices" it says an update is available. When I got my first kindle, that defaulted to "off." If I am remembering correctly, before I turned it "on" I received an email to go get the update.

This took a couple days, but it even updated an ebook cover a few days after the author said she changed it.

Ann wrote: "Hey everyone!

In our last moderator's meeting, (yes, we have meetings -- we're official!! ha ha) we thought it might be a good idea to have an option for you all to be able to send us links to var..."

What a great idea Ann! :)

Rhonda wrote: "Ann wrote: "Hey everyone!

In our last moderator's meeting, (yes, we have meetings -- we're official!! ha ha) we thought it might be a good idea to have an option for you all to be able to send us ..."

I know that for Kindle books I've bought, the updating is erratic. I think sometimes the author has to write KDP and ask them to push an update so people get a notice. Or the customer has to contact Amazon and ask for an update. Just uploading a a new version does not seem to necessarily trigger an update.

@Owen: When my wife last year (author E.M. Kaplan) talked to the KDP folks via email, they said that there is some step they (the KDP folks) can take to manually push out those updates. But she had to request them to do it and even afterwards it was unclear if the changes had propagated out.

They tell you that you need to ask for it. You need to document the changes and send it to them and they will decide if a push/notification will be done.

Almost two years ago, that's what I did. I had over twenty pages of changes. They never contacted me to tell me whether or not they would push.

Did they? I still have no clue.

J.D. wrote: "@Owen: When my wife last year (author E.M. Kaplan) talked to the KDP folks via email, they said that there is some step they (the KDP folks) can take to manually push out those updates. But she had..."

I asked the same thing and was pretty much told the same thing, after being told it should happen "automatically" for "minor" changes. It seems that the answer one gets can vary, depending on who answers. It sounds like having to ask is the authoritative answer. We've never requested a push, however.

I have asked for an update for a book I bought which was updated and I did get that, when I knew the book was updated, but no update was listed. And on one occasion, a book I bought did list an update. But that's it for my experience. It does seem like there's some room for improvement.

What??? Amazon isn't perfect???? ;)

Please allow me to submit this question to any of the moderators who would be kind enough to answer it.

I know you can't speak for all of the GR groups, but are the conversations within this group indexed into Google? In other words, could anyone on the open Internet Google-ing with the correct search arguments access and read our postings?

I'm just curious.

I don't think anybody but Google can answer that question

Ross wrote: "I know you can't speak for all of the GR groups, but are the conversations within this group indexed into Google? In other words, could anyone on the open Internet Google-ing with the correct search arguments access and read our postings?..."

I was able to do a site search in google for the name of this folder and see some of the topics. It took me to the topic.
Here was what I searched in google:
moderators investigate! site: goodreads.com/topic/show/
And I got some that weren't on our folder, but also got:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
so, yes, it is indexed in google, but it would be really hard to get it in your top results on google.

Diana wrote: "Ross wrote: "I know you can't speak for all of the GR groups, but are the conversations within this group indexed into Google? In other words, could anyone on the open Internet Google-ing with the ..."

Riley and Diana, thanks for your responses.

And Diana, thank you for your impromptu Google experiment. I guess this could serve as a subtle reminder that even within the "perceived" security and privacy of this group, one should be careful about what you post, how you post, and about whom you post. Google is watching....

I just want to point out that this is a public group. Anyone can join and anyone can read anything posted here. I don't even know if Goodreads has private groups, but the site itself is public. I don't have to be logged into Goodreads to see discussions.

Duly warned and noting for future reference. Thanks, Christina.

Christina wrote: "I just want to point out that this is a public group. Anyone can join and anyone can read anything posted here. I don't even know if Goodreads has private groups, but the site itself is public. I d..."

Yes, GR has private groups where people can only read the posts if they join first. They are by invitation only. At least, they had a few years ago. Things have changed since then so maybe they don't allow those anymore. I couldn't really tell since I don't have any example to bring up to support my claim. :/

Ross wrote: "Please allow me to submit this question to any of the moderators who would be kind enough to answer it.

I know you can't speak for all of the GR groups, but are the conversations within this group..."

I actually found this group when I typed in a question in Google and a thread came up. Though I was already a member of Goodreads, I was not logged in at the time. So yes, I think anybody is able to see it.

Reese wrote: "I actually found this group when I typed in a question in Google and a thread came up. Though I was already a member of Goodreads, I was not logged in at the time. So yes, I think anybody is able to see it. ..."

The thing is, googling something without an exact search term gets so many results that whatever is said in this group is unlikely to be in the top results.

Google is powerfully invasive, it will track a book by title name in to any domain forum threads anywhere on the net in which the book title is named and discussed in a conversation thread (unless the pdfif template is removed by the domain-site or sites, or removed by google itself) if a party looks at all result links of their google query-? They'll be surprised at finding things they didn't expect.

Brian wrote: "Google is powerfully invasive, it will track a book by title name in to any domain forum threads anywhere on the net in which the book title is named and discussed in a conversation thread (unless ..."

I think google is strongly oriented to help people sell, that is why you find the books so easily.

Google is a giant tomb of knowledge, on google earth you can find the tree in your neighbor's backyard if you wish to.

Brian wrote: "Google is a giant tomb of knowledge, on google earth you can find the tree in your neighbor's backyard if you wish to."

You can find the Emerald Ash Borers in the tree in your neighbor's backyard if you wish to. LOL

Brian wrote: "Google is a giant tomb of knowledge, on google earth you can find the tree in your neighbor's backyard if you wish to."

LOL, I remember when my company built a new building 13 years ago, and the first time I saw my car parked in the parking lot on street view. It was so cool. Now I love street view for finding things.

I just was fiddling with the new account capabilities on google, and I saw my search history going back to 2013. I deleted it, but it was cool.

I use street view to tweak my descriptions of real places sometimes. I tend to only use locations I'm familiar with (if it's not someplace I've made up), but if it's a place I haven't been in years, I'll use street view both as a reminder and to see what has changed.

I had been planning to use CreateSpace for producing my print editions, but from what I've learned, IMHO IngramSpark is almost certainly a much better option everywhere in the world except the US (where IngramSpark would probably be not quite as good, in some ways). (Slightly better book quality; much better payment except in the US; printed locally so lower delivery costs; bigger distribution; more book format/size options; ability to print on the reverse of the cover.)

But then I stumbled over this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsGgV...) describing in detail what sounds like a seriously broken publishing process in the handling of "returns". (Books returned for refund, after being ordered and printed.)

Note that this was for Ingram Lighning Source, which is not the same platform as IngramSpark. And it was almost two years ago, too, so things may have changed. It may also only have been happening at one location?

It seemed almost unbelievable to me. I thought about contacting Ingram to get their comment, but then got paranoid: might asking about the video label me as a client they'd rather not take on? So I thought perhaps I could ask SIA if any members had had experience with Ingram?

A bad experiences seems most unlikely, since they're probably bigger than Amazon (in print-book publishing/distribution). So everyone would know, I imagine, if they were (still?) doing this.

To me the key point of the video seems that back in Dec 2013, at least, Lightning Source for indie publishers did not assign an anonymous but unique "Customer Identification Number" for orders of your book, so you could deal with weird or suspicious stuff going on with returns of your book. Instead, the video producer claimed that they just randomly jumbled them up and claimed they'd all been ordered by the Ingram Publishing group, and so he could find out neither why books were being returned, nor by whom.

My key question is probably: if any member uses IngramSpark, do their invoices showing your book sales now use a Customer ID No., so you can investigate any odd patterns in returns?

At present I'm thinking I'll still use IngramSpark, but probably choose not to allow books to be returned - which will mean most book stores would choose not to stock them. :-(