Thanks for the feedback! It's very helpful and a lot of what I expected.

So let me address here a few of those things...not as a defense, but as a "why"

The price:

1) First and foremost, I set the list price, expecting most bookstores to automatically "whack the price" by a dollar or more.
a) only Google Play did this, immediately. No one else did.
b) I actually debated reporting the cheaper price to Amazon so they'd lower it...but it was selling better than expect, and well, that seemed to be stupid of me to do. It got noticed on its own.
c) I was afraid if I set it at $4.99 it would get whacked really low. And a really long, really cheap book screams "CRAP"

2) I also tried to set a price based on "entertainment time" The book is almost 250,000 words, which is very long by ebook standards. I see these $2.99 books with fewer than 100,000 words and the bang for the buck thing kicks in. If it's twice as many words????? It should be twice as much. $5.99 (Yes, I know that doesn't always hold)

My book prices are really dated (mainly because I don't buy mass market paperbacks--only ebooks, trade paperbacks and hardcover these days) but in my "mind" a good SF, mass market paperback should be around $6.99, trade $14.99, HC $24.99 and this is just internalized pricing. So a "good" ebook price would be $4.99. Which was really the price I paid the longest for a mass market.

Of course, that is all without inflation...in terms of value, look at how little the price of books has changed, especially SF/Fantasy vs movie tickets?

So my goal was always about $5 for the book, my expectation was it would get whacked to that...and it did, eventually.


3) Editing: yes, I know there are errors still. It's unbelievable how many times, I and my best friends have read and edited things and still couldn't catch stuff. I'm going to give every author I bad mouthed for crappy editing a huge break. It's hard. (unless you have a publisher...and then there's no excuse, they are taking most of the money...so they should hire a good editor)

Next time, I'm going to see about a real editor...I just need to find one that's good with SF/Fantasy and particularly, Oorstemothians. But there will also be a beta program where, while I'd be looking for more content/plot/continuity feedback, I'm sure people will catch annoying editing things as well.

4) Cover art: I never intended to do the cover art myself. I was going to hire someone, but time was getting down there...i wanted to get this out before I started another full time contract job, and the artists I "liked" I was afraid were very expensive, and or had a long queue, and I had no idea how well this book would sell to justify $1k to $2K or more. Now, that I know that I can make the money to pay for a good artist, I'm going to do so.

I also wanted something very catchy to stand out in the huge array of books out there, so I feared it would take quite a lot of back and forth to get the right cover image...and I wanted it "out there"


5) I really don't know what to do with the description that will hook people, be an honest portrayal/description, and not give too much away. There "is a reason" publishers have specialists to write these things. The author is almost always too close to the story.


Maybe we should have a "write a new blurb" contest?

Good point.

I had thought about that, but then decided I needed to move to the main story a bit quicker. May not have been the right idea. When you have the story and back story in your head, and "know things" it's often hard to see things from an outside perspective.

I think feedback like this, discussion of what makes transitions better is why I want to do a beta program next time. And you need multiple points of view on this. One danger of using local friends is that they may know too much of the story in advance of reading, and don't get the true "cold opening" experience.

I am thinking to do some of the backstory as an add on short story here on the site and may end up adding it to a later edition of the book. Or perhaps in the "Extended Director's Second Final Extreme Re-Edit Edition" of the complete series. Assuming a convergence of books and movies happens by the time there can be a "complete series edition"

Patrick, I think that is just a rule that you made up. I had read a lot of books that has blurbs that doesn't reinforce the message of the cover. Gosh. There are even books that has a plain cover. No blurbs. No picture or anything, just plain paper or cloth, sometimes with the title printed on them.

Designing an illustration is very difficult. I have been making digital illustrations (2D and 3D) as a hobby and they are very difficult and time consuming.

I'm not sure it's that far out from the cover. I do like it.

I'm mixing up the description now, to get people to give it a second look. So I'd love to work it into the rotation. While I'm exclusive to Kindle it's a lot easier...when I first launched I had to maintain a bunch of stores and blurbs...

I also need alternate blurbs for ads on other sites, such as Goodreads, FaceBook, Tumblr, DeviantArt, etc.

I'd like to change the cover as well, so I spend time looking for artists who've done stuff I like and do similar things, but so far those few I've contacted are already overbooked...

I also want to get more art for the site. But as Rosver said, illustrations take quite a bit of time...especially when trying to do something specific and "on demand" rather than as the muse strikes you. And at the moment I'm not doing any art because I'm writing v2 in all my spare time.

The next edition should feature Tom's initial summoning as he stares at his soul stares at his new body. It is a very important step in the book and I think it would look better than Tom being summoned into a tent. Anybody else have a scene they think might look better?

Cover art. Frankly, 99% of the material out there that incorporates 3-d art is complete shit. So I'm conditioned to automatically NOPE my way away from anything 3-d rendered.

I'd probably be more interested if there was MS-paint pixel art instead of 3-d. I'm not saying you need to pay a ton of money to get a cover. Heck, you can make some pretty eye-catching pictures without much difficulty by abusing abstract designs or lots of shadows/darkness around the picture, but I would really suggest not using the 3-d models.

The art was also meh but I don't really judge the book because of that. I don't really mind it that much.

The thing I don't like most in the cover was the text. It was a bit hard to read, kinda ugly and doesn't fit with the whole composition. It seems to be an afterthought and tacked in.

Well, difference in perspective, I guess. Still, I kinda wish that the text in the front cover was placed a lot better.

I might have not be too off when I say that the text looks tacked.

I think, you should have incorporated the text in the design from the very beginning. After all, the text is an important part of the cover design.

You could also have at least provide space to where the text should go. As it where important elements of the picture doesn't realy enable any good place to place the titles. It would just look awkward or cover important elements of the image.

Some of your ideas seems good. You might also do it like this:

Move the image lower to provide more space at the top for the tittle text. An element in the bottom (a box here) would hide the fact that the feet are going off the frame.



You might also like to just provide more space at the bottom for the tittle text by moving the image higher. The gradient I used on the bottom could be raised higher though that would hide a large part of the characters. Maybe add a box there instead?



What do you think?

Edited by user Friday, September 19, 2014 2:38:18 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I normally know within the first few chapters if I am really going to like a book. I have always said I really wished I could get the first half of any book and then pay if I wanted to read the rest. So many books are frankly not worth it. There is unfortunately no (legal) way to get a good preview of your book.

Anecdotal evidence: I bought a book I was hesitant about like this one off of smashwords after getting about 25 pages in or so.

For your book, I would recommend the first 31 pages (until the end of chapter 5), if you want to really hook me.

So how did I get over my hesitation on this book? I am going to plead the 5th on that one, but I would swear in an Oorstemothian court that I own a legal copy of the book and that I read the book after buying it. Hopefully the Oorstemothians don't see the equivocation there.

The cover

The cover is not very good. I don't have any problems with the actual scene. In fact, the demon being represented so prominently made me look twice when I was glancing through books. But the art style, which I can only describe as 3d animation without the animation, is not my thing. Also, the fish netted leg seems to be connected too high on the demon and doesn't look right.

I have no idea who any of the characters are (other than Tom) in the picture and I read the book! Is there a guy wearing a crown tied up in the back?