Amazon Listing Novel Project: Fill & Download for Free

This depends on many things.First, which “bestseller” list is it on? The NYT list has a lot of prestige, but it’s only compiled from a select and ever-changing list of bookstores, mostly in the New York area. The USA Today list is broader but still leaves out Amazon. The Amazon list only covers Amazon. Is it on a general list, or a genre list? A genre list other than YA, is going to be defined by fewer sales.Second, how high on the list is it? If it’s lower than top 20, don’t go placing an order for a Ferrari on the strength of the rating. You could probably afford a good used mid-1990s Subaru Impreza in excellent condition.Here’s the thing. A bestselling book is not like a top 10 song. It sells exponentially fewer copies. The only time you should get excited about a “bestselling” book insofar as thinking you might get money from it is if the book is number one and stays there for more than a week.The other time to get, not excited, but at least hopeful, is if there is suddenly media interest.If there is any movie/TV series interest, things might happen. This is where the real money is to be made. But don’t get too excited. The option money can probably buy you a new Subaru Impreza, but many, many, many projects die before they are ever produced. And many more that are produced never make it past a pilot, or die in production hell. If a movie or TV series actually make it however, then all bets are off. And if they are well done with even a modest audience, you will gain thousands of new fans for your entire backlist.

Congratulations! You've finished your manuscript! I hope you have an audience to give you a standing ovation, because the agents and the publishers are not going to give you one. If you're looking to go the traditional publishing route because you are so very good, I hope you have been researching agents and publishers and reading up on their submission requirements before you've finished your final draft. And -- are you sitting down? -- you're 10 percent done.The traditional route is to find yourself an agent because publishers are too busy to be bothered with unknowns and you should be spending your time writing your next novel and planning your PR moves, and not studying which publisher is lacking what you have. Literary agents are supposed to know this.If you are a die-hard do-it-yourself-er, get thee to the reference section of the local library and pore over The Literary Marketplace, which lists publishers and agents by genre. It's important to match your work to the right agent or publishing houses. If your book's main character is a hard-drinking lesbian PI, you might as well flush 20 bucks down the toilet if you send your manuscript to a house specializing in Christian fiction (unless, of course, the whole thing is a come-to-Jesus story).You will need to pitch your novel to your agent or prospective publisher. Most publishers who will have the resources to do right by you will have a website with information about their submission requirements. If you don't follow them, your manuscript won't be considered. Most publishers/agents want you to send them a submission query letter before they will look at the rest of your work. You'll need to describe:Your story in 250 words or less (and how many words are in the manuscript);Who your market is;What your competition might be and how you stand apart from it;What groups or societies you belong to (and how big they are) that might be markets for your book;Whether you are willing to travel to do book signings;If you can speak well, whether you'll do radio interviews or TV appearances, or;Whether you'll be involved in making a book trailer, i.e. a video that can be uploaded to an internet site. Many publishers have pages devoted to what's called their "frontlist" or releases within a publishing season, which is typically either spring or fall.If the agent or publisher wants to see your full manuscript after they've received your feeler letter, rejoice! But don't nag. Find out what their evaluation time is and if you haven't heard from them in that time frame, contact them to politely ask if they have come to a decision. If you have made multiple submissions to different publishers (or an agent has done this for you) and you're getting multiple bites for it, then the fun begins. If you get too cavalier in a bidding war, that might get things off to a not-so-friendly start with the "winning" publisher. Your publisher is supposed to be your partner, not your adversary.Most agents take from 10 to 15 percent of royalties paid to you, and most publishers have a boilerplate contract wherein a few things are negotiable, such as which publishing rights you grant permission for them to format for distribution, i.e. world rights (meaning they can sell translation rights on your behalf, taking a percentage of royalties from such sales) or English world, or North American. Sometimes you or your agent might want to reserve certain rights to sell yourself, such as movie rights, or ebook rights, or translation rights, if you know other companies that might be better able to exercise these rights.Most traditional publishers will pay you an advance against royalties. Publishing services like iUniverse and Outskirts Press will not. The advance is usually a portion of the publisher's best bet as to what they can net in the first print run. They want to make back their "plate" costs (the one-time costs leading up to the first impression of ink or toner on paper) and the advance they paid you plus a gross margin of usually at least 60%. That's why they need to know how many words you've written and all about your market so they can run the numbers and offer you a fair advance against royalties.Royalty rates can be anywhere between 5 percent and 20 percent, with either of these extremes being kind of rare. It's usually around 10 to 15 percent of either the net received or the cover price. Obviously a percentage of the cover price is a better deal for the author. A percent on net is better for the publisher because different selling venues ask for different discounts, which would eat into the publisher's margin if they are paying on cover price.Once your book sales have earned out the advance, then you get paid royalties either biannually or annually. Even when your book sales are working against the advance, you should always get a royalty statement. All of these details will be in the contract.You also must have in the contract a clause that states a time frame within which the work will be published. Typically this is within 18 months or less. It's not ethical, but publishers have taken works off the market by just paying the advance and "delaying" publication until you get fed up and take your work elsewhere.The truth is most publishers won't promote your book beyond the season in which it is released unless it's being released in stages, i.e., hardcover first, then paperback. Depending on the publisher an ebook edition may be released simultaneously. It would be worthwhile for you to find out what the marketing budget is and in which publications your book will be announced.There are many details in negotiating contracts that I cannot get into here so if you don't have an agent covering it for you, you may want to get a lawyer in publishing to look at it. Don't get a regular lawyer to do this because they will raise questions that will annoy the piss out of the publisher and potentially kill the deal. I've seen it happen.Okay, so let's say you've negotiated the contract to your satisfaction and a publication date has been set, you had a contractual date to deliver your final manuscript, and you've met the date. Next your book gets copy edited (and vetted to make sure nothing libelous is in there); you get to yea or nay the edits. It then gets typeset and you should be allowed to review page proofs. Your edits get incorporated to a second set of pages that most authors don't see; it depends on your deal. The book is on a schedule and has an appointed date it's supposed to be at distribution channels and you don't want to mess with that because all of this runs on a time-sensitive "cash flow." Big publishers have all their print runs scheduled in advance to minimize cost and maximize profit. If they lose their schedules with their printers bad things start to happen.When your book goes into production it is usually about four months to get your first offset copy. If you're printing digitally, about a month can get cut off the schedule. Only the biggest authors can get a manuscript through this system in less than four months.If all of the foregoing sounds like a major pain in the ass, there is a nontraditional way thanks to the internet and digital publishing. What everyone forgot in the rise of large publishing houses is authors and printers with their hand-set plates of moveable type used to have direct relationships; authors are the original publishers. On the internet, everything old is new again. Now the "local printing press" is glowing right in your face, right now.Self-publish digitally first, build an audience, save up funds for a print edition. As an ex-traditional publisher, I say this with mixed feelings, but here goes: get into the Kindle Direct Program (KDP). Amazon's CreateSpace site can help you put together your book for both the ebook platform and print format. The path of nonresistance is the path of least resistance and Amazon has made it really easy to get you published. It's the marketing and self-promotion that's daunting and time-consuming. KDP is a 90-day agreement so if you don't get satisfaction, you can get out of the exclusive agreement and sell your book on the many other sites selling ebooks, such as Smashwords.Start a blog and build an audience. There are many free blogging platforms you can get set up on and share your progress with your imagined audience; publish excerpts; and get people involved with your vision. Don't get disconcerted about talking to a seeming void. People are listening. You have to reach out and pull people toward you when you do this. I'm partial to WordPress.com, which has all sorts of built-in code to attract people who want to read your stuff.Get onto Twitter and search for stories and people in your #genre. Collect authors who are self-publishing and watch what they are doing and see how you can set yourself apart, and then build a following there by tweeting a mixture of links to your writing and interactions with people sympathetic to your work.Start a Facebook Page for you, and when you know the title of your book, one for that. Start a Google+ account. Get on every social media platform you can stand. In LinkedIn, join groups of authors there. You can also find book professionals there to help you with advice. But post your writing on your blog and link out to all those other platforms from there. Check out Reddit.Quora has several boards for sharing fiction, such as We Write Short Stories, or you can start your own board as Aman Anand has done with The American Novel Project.A couple of authors I like who have done what I just described are Cristian Mihai -- a multi-talented artist and publisher -- and Sara Zaske who reviews the genre in which she writes at YA Fantastic Book Review. These two have different approaches and are very informative and refreshing. Mihai is working on an exciting new publishing project. Zaske has written an excellent timely fantasy with an environmental twist called The First and it was exciting reading her updates on her publishing progress. Another publisher who is using Quora in a creative way is User-11567716934911258437, self-described "head rabbit" at The Bittersweet Group.My stepfather, an independent record producer, used to say, "Throw enough [stuff] up against the wall and something's bound to stick." Don't take anything personally and never give up.

I have been compiling lists on Quora for a long time. This time, I have decided to go a little meta and curate List of lists across some of my favorite topics. This is the first part with a focus on Reading, Books, Book Recommendations, and Literature.A.1. Book Recommendations“Best” booksTop 100 Books - BBCTop 100 Books - Harvard Book StoreTop 100 Books - Amazon100 Best Novels - The Guardian100 Best Novels - Modern Library100 Best Novels - Time100 Best Novels - TelegraphGoodreads - Best Book ListsProject Gutenberg - Top downloaded 100 books623 of the Best Books Ever WrittenOther book listsThe Books of the Century, 1900-1999Book recommendations from the TED communityEssential Gifts for Comic Book ReadersBest books from around the worldReddit's Favourite Books50 Incredibly Tough Books for Extreme ReadersLiterature Pairings for Your Favorite ShowsBanned Books OnlineMind Expanding BooksGenre-wise listsHorrorReddit's best horror books of all timeThe 50 Scariest Books of All TimeFantasyThe best fantasy booksUnderrated Fantasy BooksBest Fantasy BooksOthers55 great books under 200 pages50 Great Genre-Bending Books32 Books Guaranteed To Make You Laugh Out LoudBest Sci-fi BooksA.2. Free books and literary resourcesGenericResources for free e-books73 Places to Read or Download Free eBooks in 2016800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other DevicesFree Audio Books: Fiction & LiteratureFree Audio Books: Non-FictionFree Audio Books: PoetryNASA - e-Book ArchiveList of links to banned booksAuthor-wiseFree Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft for Nook and KindleComplete Works of ShakespeareFree Works of Charles DickensFeynman Lectures on Physics - Vol. IVol. IIVol. IIIAcademicSubject-wise free books from University of California PressOpen Source Text BooksTextbook for Electrical Engineering & ElectronicsMIT Open CourseWare - Free Online TextbooksOther free resourcesOnline LiteratureA list of all book and reading related subredditsA.3 Reading ListsOf famous writersStephen King's Booklist from "On Writing"George RR Martin - What I’m ReadingCarl Sagan’s Reading ListGabriel García Márquez’s Formative Reading List: 24 Books That Shaped One of Humanity’s Greatest WritersStewart Brand’s Reading List: 76 Books to Sustain and Rebuild HumanityHemingway’s Advice on Writing, Ambition, the Art of Revision, and His Reading List of Essential Books for Aspiring WritersThe Life of the Mind: Oliver Sacks’s 121 Formative and Favorite Books from a Lifetime of ReadingTolstoy’s Reading List: Essential Books for Each Stage of LifePatti Smith on the Two Kinds of Masterpieces and Her Fifty Favorite BooksHere are all of J.K. Rowling's favorite booksCarl Sagan's Reading ListOf famous people (non-writers)Bookshelves of famous peopleRichard Branson's favourite booksPresident Obama's Favorite BooksAlan Turing’s Reading List: Books the Computing Pioneer Borrowed From His School Library50 Children's Books Chosen by Hayao MiyazakiBowie’s top 100 books - the complete list - David Bowie Official BlogBill Gates’ recommendationsBruce Springsteen’s Reading List: 28 Favorite Books That Shaped His Mind and MusicOprah's 10 Favorite Books from the Past Decade18 Book Recommendations From Billionaire Warren BuffettBooks : Read by GandhiNeil deGrasse Tyson Selects the Eight Books Every Intelligent Person on the Planet Should ReadLet Emma Watson's Year In Books Inspire Your 2017 Reading ListOthers4chan’s recommended reading listOprah's Book ClubYour reading list just got longer—the 2017 National Book Awards longlist is hereLongreads Best of 2016: Under-Recognized BooksInside the 2016 Man Booker LonglistA Reading List of One's Own: 10 Essential Feminist Books100 Books Across America: Fiction and Nonfiction for Every State in the UnionA.4. Specific BooksHarry PotterThe most comprehensive Harry Potter resource guideThe definitive guide to HP FanfictionA Song of Ice and FireThe Grand ASOIAF Resource Guide2016 Edition (updated)Fan TheoriesPart 1 (Identity & Conspiracy Theories)Part 2 (Plot Points, ASOIAF History & the Future of ASOIAF Theories)A.5 Non-booksWe Need to Talk About Madness: A Reading ListTop 500 Poems ListFlash Fiction: A List of ResourcesThe Thirty-Six Dramatic SituationsAhead by a Century: A Gord Downie Reading ListMulti-Level Marketing’s Feminine Mystique: A Reading ListAnxiety, Betrayal, and Limbo: A DACA Reading ListThe Unknowable Diana, 20 Years On: A Reading List25 Handy Words That Simply Don’t Exist In EnglishThe greatest villains in literatureA.6. MiscQuora questions and answersBest Quora questions on LiteratureBest Quora questions on BooksBest Quora questions on WritingUnderstanding ShakespeareInterestingSelf-contradicting Rules for WritingDavid Foster Wallace’s favorite wordsJack Kerouac’s 30 Beliefs and Techniques For Writing Modern Prose45 Ways To Avoid Using The Word ‘Very’25 Handy Words That Simply Don’t Exist In English