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Web Fiction Guide Forums » Forum: General Chat - Recent Posts http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ Web Fiction Guide Forums » Forum: General Chat - Recent Posts en Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:21:05 +0000 ubersoft on "The Great Site Redesign of 2012" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-great-site-redesign-of-2012#post-7755 Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:17:48 +0000 ubersoft 7755@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ I started with WordPress. I switched to Drupal because of all the stuff I do with taxonomies. WordPress isn't a bad CMS but the things Drupal can do with taxonomies are incredible. I could place the comic at the very top of the page and it would probably still require scrolling on most monitors. It's designed vertically instead of horizontally (i.e. all panels are stacked on top of each other) so if it goes beyond 3 panels it cuts below the page line on most monitors. Thanks for the feedback! SgL on "The Great Site Redesign of 2012" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-great-site-redesign-of-2012#post-7753 Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:09:52 +0000 SgL 7753@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ I like the webserial part a lot. The font (on my screen) against the white background is really pleasant and a good choice. Where I think it's harder for me to follow is the comic. A lot of webcomics tend to also place their image in the middle and stay away from the need to scroll to see the entire page. Their comic begins as close to the to of the screen as possible (usually under a fairly modest banner). They keep as much as they can "above the fold" or above that bottom line. What I noticed is that your comic itself doesn't begin until halfway down my first screen. You want to have most of your image contained within that first screen but because of the complex stack of site name/branding element, project wonderful ad, and a menu bar I do more scrolling than I would for the several dozen comics I currently read online. This gets tiring if I start going through your archive. I think the other thing that is a bit hard to follow is the use of multiple columns on the right side of that comic. Think about putting one column to the left, center your image of your comic, and then put the other column to the right. As we read left to right, keep your navigational/social networking stuff to the right so people are likely to click out to something that is "your stuff". Hope this feedback is helpful. Incidentally, if you ever decide to chuck Drupal, Wordpress does great stuff for comics. Most everyone else seems to be using wordpress plugins to manage their comic websites. Jim Zoetewey on "Creative Monetization" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/creative-monetization#post-7742 Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:36:18 +0000 Jim Zoetewey 7742@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ VJ: I noticed your first Azazel novel at first (I think) in the free books list. I'm assuming making the first book free and having them paying for the rest is working pretty well for you. vjchambers on "Creative Monetization" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/creative-monetization#post-7741 Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:25:03 +0000 vjchambers 7741@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ Only thing that's worked for me is selling the darned books. I've never made the minimum payout for any of the merch sites I've used. I've never made more that $20 from donations for a year. I've never made more than $10 in a year selling ads on my site. But I've made enough money selling ebooks that I quit my day job in December. I've been publishing my stuff since June of 2009, and I have twenty or so titles available for sale (some novels, some novellas, some short stories). If you can serialize, you can write fast. Which means there's no reason not to bundle those chapters and put them up for sale on Amazon and Smashwords. I think if you use Pandamian, it'll even format it all for you. Ryphna St-John on "Creative Monetization" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/creative-monetization#post-7737 Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:41:16 +0000 Ryphna St-John 7737@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ Hi, I'm still very new in the whole "web novel" thing and am still just trying to put my stuff together with my co-author. Our website is out there and we have a few ideas we want to try for funding it... A) Merchandise (generic) : Cafepress and other print on demand service make it easy to create merchandise with Logo, Images and text straight from the novel to whatever people might like (T-shirts, cups, books... name it) B) Publicity : Let's agree, it doesn't pay much but it's still a way C) Merchandise (special) : Our webnovel is all about steampunk... And Steampunk means Inventions, gadgets and very cool victorian inspired clothing and accessories. In the next year or so, we are planning to design and put together steampunk pieces directly inspired from our Web novel. I am still in a study of how we are going to do this. On one side we can do "unique" pieces straight from our crafty hands, an other option is to take other artist work in consignement and then an other option is to mix the two first option and also add a "reproduction" option where we would use a 3D printer to create "plastic" copy of some objects and gadgets. (That whole project IS big and require a lot of thinking and planning) I have a few more ideas for potential income but they are still very foggy and are mostly to try to increase or keep readers around and encourage them to participate in our "world" one way or an other.... Maybe it can help to say that I have a background as a Storyteller for LARP and RPGs, our project is centre on our novel but one of the most important component is our Wiki/Encyclopedia we are building as we write our story as to make our world something way larger then what you see in the story itself and so usable for games and RPGs. I do like the trick you gave about selling character names and things like that, I will keep the in mind the next time we start creating more characters. :) Thanks! Ryphna ubersoft on "The Great Site Redesign of 2012" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-great-site-redesign-of-2012#post-7728 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:01:39 +0000 ubersoft 7728@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ So the sites are now all consolidated into a single domain (eviscerati.org). But -- clever me -- the old domains are still working. ubersoft.net redirects to eviscerati.org/comics, and unexploredhorizons.net redirects to eviscerati.org/fiction. The layout hasn't really changed too much (sorry Chris) because this effort was mostly focused on smooshing the three sites together, but I did remove one layer of branding. So there's that. When I move up to Drupal 7 I'm going to be switching to a more modern template (HTML 5 compliant, etc) that has built-in support for mobile devices, and at that point I expect some more significant design changes to creep in. Tim Sevenhuysen on "Creative Monetization" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/creative-monetization#post-7714 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:55:37 +0000 Tim Sevenhuysen 7714@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ What kinds of interesting experiments have you tried in terms of ways to monetize your web fiction? I've seen some ideas floated out there, especially regarding serials. I know people have tried requiring a set donation amount before the next chapter gets posted, or using donations to accelerate the posting schedule, and things like that... What's worked for you, and what hasn't? This week I ran a couple of experiments with selling the right to name/create characters for me, and it's been successful so far. I seem to be very lucky, because I don't necessarily have a huge audience, but they appear quite willing to invest in me, which is awesome. I sold the right to create a character, including name + special ability, for <a href="http://specialpeople.timsevenhuysen.com">Special People</a>, for $5, and it got snapped up in under 10 minutes. Then I put out a novelette yesterday, with special offers to buy the right to name a minor or major character in the novel I'm working on set in the same world as the novelette. I made three minor characters available for $4.99 each, and one major character for $19.99. So far one minor character and the major character have sold. (When they bought the rights they also got a copy of the novelette.) So I guess this thread is a partial triumph story, and a partial call for sharing your experiences. What kinds of special ways have you monetized your web fiction or online fiction sales? Tim Sevenhuysen on "The Great Site Redesign of 2012" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-great-site-redesign-of-2012#post-7694 Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:49:13 +0000 Tim Sevenhuysen 7694@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ I hope it works out well! This kind of thing can be such a stress and such a headache, but it's usually worth it in the end. ubersoft on "The Great Site Redesign of 2012" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-great-site-redesign-of-2012#post-7693 Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:33:30 +0000 ubersoft 7693@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ The tags on this post represent the tiny voice in my brain screaming that no good will come from this, but I have to do something. My current site management strategy is a mess. I have three separate websites (eviscerati.net, ubersoft.net, unexploredhorizons.net) that are managed from a single interface. Which is better than having to manage three sites separately, but lately trying to sort the information between sites has become really difficult. So I've decided the only thing to do is to combine them into one large mixed-media content site. I'm not sure how good this is from a marketing perspective. Generally my webcomic readers aren't interested in my fiction, and... I don't have enough fiction readers to actually know if it works the other way or not. So they might be turned off by suddenly having everything right there. Which is why I've worked out a way to a) consolidate everything into one site while b) still allowing people to use the "old" domain names to filter out everything but the content they want to see, more or less. From a management perspective it will be a huge relief. From a reader perspective... well, I don't know. That's the part that has the DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER DANGER klaxon alarm set on repeat. It does, however, give me another chance at trying to design a web interface Chris hates less. ;-) (In all seriousness, though, the redesign *will* have the advantage of removing at least one of the layers of branding on each site, and probably two, which I remember was one of Chris' critiques of my current design.) Wish me luck! Or, you know, try to talk me down. I need one or the other. :D Erin Klitzke on "The Monkey, It Is Off My Back" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-monkey-it-is-off-my-back#post-7676 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:06:33 +0000 Erin Klitzke 7676@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ It's an e-reader forum. ubersoft on "The Monkey, It Is Off My Back" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-monkey-it-is-off-my-back#post-7675 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:22:18 +0000 ubersoft 7675@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ What is MobileReads? me <--- clueless. Obviously. Erin Klitzke on "The Monkey, It Is Off My Back" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-monkey-it-is-off-my-back#post-7674 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:15:00 +0000 Erin Klitzke 7674@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ Well, if you ever have issues with them again, go find the founder on the MobileReads forums. I see him floating around all the time there. ubersoft on "The Monkey, It Is Off My Back" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-monkey-it-is-off-my-back#post-7673 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:37:16 +0000 ubersoft 7673@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ Two things. First, because I created the epub and mobi versions first (using a really killer epub creation tool called Jutoh) I wasn't working from a Microsoft Word document as my source material. I had to essentially export from Jutoh to an opendocument file and work from that, and I had to massively reformat that in order to get it through the grinder. That took weeks to do and the end result is something that, in my opinion, doesn't look nearly as good as the version I created. That pissed me off a lot. But that's not what REALLY pissed me off. What REALLY pissed me off is that when I assigned my ISBN to the book (to make it available to itunes, kobo, etc) I typed in the wrong ISBN number... and there was no way for me to fix it. No way at ALL. The ONLY way to fix it is to email them with their little contact form and them to do it, because there is no way to contact them by phone, or chat app, or ANYTHING. This is a contact form that promises you'll get a response within 72 hours, but I sent them no less than THREE emails over a three week period, and by the end of the third week I finally got a response from the FIRST EMAIL saying "sorry, it's too late, we already submitted your book with the first ISBN so it's set in stone now." So to summarize: my smashwords epub is currently displaying an ISBN that is different from the one it was registered under. And I "used up" one of my precious 10 ISBNs for no reason, because Smashwords isn't using it... because they couldn't be bothered to get back to me for three goddamn weeks, and emailing them was the ONLY AVENUE I HAD TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEM. I am really pissed off at Smashwords. Now that iTunes is going to be open to authors directly I plan, going forward, to use Smashwords *only* to sell ebooks on their site and never use them for increased distribution ever again. Erin Klitzke on "The Monkey, It Is Off My Back" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-monkey-it-is-off-my-back#post-7671 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:28:36 +0000 Erin Klitzke 7671@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ Oh dear. What was the issue with Smashwords? I don't tend to have a problem with them (though some of the Kobo versions of my books look funny, but I have a feeling that's more Kobo's CSS than Smashwords causing the issue). ubersoft on "The Monkey, It Is Off My Back" http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/the-monkey-it-is-off-my-back#post-7670 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:50:45 +0000 ubersoft 7670@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ Finally! December was a logistically tricky month. I had to: - put a beloved dog to sleep - buy a new car after my wife got into an accident and totaled my old one - get freaking Smashwords to respond to my hand signals in order to make an ebook of Pay Me, Bug! available on iTunes (this was a disaster by the way) - Do Christmas Things - go to my Day Job These five things made it nearly impossible to write -- even when I had the time, I didn't have the focus. And so The Points Between languished in semi-neglect, quietly gathering dust, occasionally clearing its throat and shooting accusing glances in my direction. But this week changed all that as I was finally able to post Chapter 12 today. It's a short chapter. Only 1900 words! ;-) Thank God that monkey is finally off my back. Now I can -- ... ... what's that? Every week? ... ... stupid monkey.