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I've been thinking of taking the plunge and attempting to publish on Amazon Kindle. I've read some books there and a few of them have been from BCTS authors, though some of the others could have been but were done in the stealth mode. I'm not planning to out anyone.
They are my three oldest stories, and I think that all three are large enough to interest Amazon. I'm not terribly worried about my editing work because I recently read a very long book there that passed but still needed a lot of editorial work, though the story was quite engaging.
I just want the satisfaction of being able to say that I am a "published Author". I would say that all three are involuntary transition. Perhaps this all comes to lend some legitimacy to my writing and to assuage any guilt. This presupposes that my present vision issues can be minimized. Thinking about doing this under my real name.
Please wish me luck. Any money made would likely go to BCTS, unless it is in 6 figures. :)
Gwen Brown (Boucher)
Comments
I'm a publishe author
I have a couple of book on Amazon, about 10 on Smashwords and three with Reluctant Press.
The first stories I published were with Reluctant Press and they payed me a couple of hundred up front for each. Don't know what their current pay schedule is. But they publish in both dead tree versions and PDF. What you sell them is the copyright to your book.
For ebooks, I prefer Smashwords but probably because I don't have a Kindle, but own a Nook. Amazon KDP wants be the exclusive publisher. You retain copyright, but agree to not publish elsewhere. You can of course opt out of KDP and take a lesser payment per sale. Smashwords on the other hand will publish, distribute to a couple of dozen retailers worldwide and the don't care if you publish elsewhere.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Be careful
Read the Terms of Service for Amazon very, very carefully. If you've ever published them online, I'd avoid Kindle Unlimited. Also, be very careful if you've ever published them under a different name. Amazon is picky about copyright, use of images, content guidelines, and a ton of other things that can get your account closed. I had over thirty books published on Amazon, and 'one' book got considered 'porn' and they nearly terminated my account.
To this day, I have no idea why it was considered porn. Sure, there were a couple of love scenes, but I didn't even use the word C**ck. I had a few F*** words in it, but I would have rated the whole thing rated R, or a racy PG-13. I have no clue how some people can continue to publish some of the smut I've seen, but yeah, I ended up pulling all my stuff off Amazon and going with Patreon and Gumroad. I do have mainstream fiction under a different psuedonym, so I don't want my TG collection to lock up my Amazon account.
If you're doing your own covers, be sure you own the rights to the photos. Also, don't use Canva for stock photos, there's a ton of people who have used them, and end up with their accounts closed since they duplicated someone else's cover. I'd also be reluctant to do any images generated by AI, as the jury is still out on that whole thing.
Anyway, just my .02. Good Luck!
Raine
If your stories contain anything that might be porn
I'd recommend you publish that at Smashwords. They happily accept porn under the genre "Erotica" with several sub genres
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Story Content
I'll have to go read the stories again. They involve involuntary gender change, but have no penetrative intercourse. Well, perhaps it is implied but not described. I'd heard that Amazon is quite nasty and legalistic and I do not care to be involuntarily bound to them. Thanks for the guideance.
Gwen
Perhaps not Literotica?
It seems like about anything goes over there. Perhaps that is a dumb question.
Gwen
Thoughts on Amazon
I only publish on Amazon.
If you have previously published online. You can avoid many issues by making a few simple changes. Change the title. Change the character names. In that way, a trolling program won't find a copyright issue. Picture issues were discussed. If you use stock photos, alter them. Crop to use only part of the photo or add something if possible. This is easy to do. Alter the author name by adding a middle initial or expanding the name.
If you stay with Amazon, you can get into Kindle Unlimited which is a unique audience.
If you limit yourself to Amazon, you get twice the royalties in comparison to opting to publish on multiple platforms. The audience is huge and dwarfs most of the alternatives by a magnitude that makes it financially worthwhile.
You can publish with Amazon on paperback and you have no costs involved.
Selecting your price point is important. IF people are interested, a dollar won't discourage them. Several dollars will. Stay in the 2.99-6.99 range. Price based on word count. Longer story, more money.
My thoughts.
DD
If you're going to do your own covers...
Here are the site I use:
For creating the cover:
https://pixlr.com/e/
Pixlr E is a user friendly online free Photoshop clone. You're allowed to alter/add to/modify as many as you like but are limited to 3 downloads per calendar day. You can of course up grade to pro (for a fee) and then you are allowed unlimited downloads.
For free photos (mind the license agreement for crediting photos. Each site is different.)
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/
https://pixabay.com/
https://www.pexels.com/
https://unsplash.com/
https://www.freeimages.com/
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt