The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: MandalayVA on August 12, 2016, 06:44:57 AM
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A few months ago while I was prepping my novel for self-publishing I learned about a program Amazon runs called Kindle Scout. An author uploads an unpublished manuscript to the site, and for the next thirty days other Amazon users can nominate the book to be published by Kindle Press, one of Amazon's imprints. After that, Amazon has fifteen days to decide whether or not to publish the book. If chosen, the author receives a small advance, a professional edit and the power of Amazon's publicity machine once the book's released.
On Sunday I bit the bullet and submitted my novel, and the campaign went live Wednesday. Some Mustachians were kind enough to beta read the manuscript for me, and I'm hoping that more Mustachians will be kind enough to nominate the book. All you need is an Amazon account.
Follow this link to my campaign: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/35J578N30IQT5
You'll see the cover, a little about me, and be able to read a short excerpt. Click on the "nominate me" button and you're done! Alas, you can only nominate the book once, but you have two other nominate areas where you can check out other books in the running. If the book gets accepted, anyone who nominated it will receive a free e-copy. At the very least, you'll get a thank you note from me.
Becoming a published author has always been my dream. Help me make it come true!
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Nominated.
Best of luck.
Edit: Read the excerpt. You are a great writer. Unfortunately, not my genre :-(
Also saw your picture. Nothing like I imagined :-)
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Good luck with it!
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Done that. Best of luck with the book.
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Done! What a great way to get your writing seen. Good luck!
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Done! Good luck!
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Done! I had no idea such a thing existed. Now I have another place to visit when things are slow at work, lol.
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Done! Good luck, let us know how it turns out!
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Nominated.
Best of luck.
Edit: Read the excerpt. You are a great writer. Unfortunately, not my genre :-(
Also saw your picture. Nothing like I imagined :-)
Should I ask how you imagined? :D
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Nominated.
Best of luck.
Edit: Read the excerpt. You are a great writer. Unfortunately, not my genre :-(
Also saw your picture. Nothing like I imagined :-)
Should I ask how you imagined? :D
Hmm, Mandalay, so I was expecting this exotic person from Burma .....Living in Va
So, how did you get the username?
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Nominated!
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Nominated. Great excerpt!
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Nominated.
Best of luck.
Edit: Read the excerpt. You are a great writer. Unfortunately, not my genre :-(
Also saw your picture. Nothing like I imagined :-)
Should I ask how you imagined? :D
Hmm, Mandalay, so I was expecting this exotic person from Burma .....Living in Va
So, how did you get the username?
LOL, Burma. If I were any whiter I'd be Casper. :D
Back in the day I used to haunt a Robbie Williams board. One of his songs is "The Road to Mandalay" (my journal title here). MandalayVA just kind of flowed out of that. I use the name in a couple other places too.
Thanks to everybody who nominated the book! I'll probably be bumping this thread as the campaign nears its end. I'm not pimping it like some people, but any response is good, right?
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Nominated, and BUMP for this thread! :)
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Nominated, and BUMP for this thread! :)
Thanks for the bump!
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How is the nomination going? Or do you have to wait for the end and see if you made it?
Anyway, the waiting must be awful :-(
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How is the nomination going? Or do you have to wait for the end and see if you made it?
Anyway, the waiting must be awful :-(
After the nomination period ends Amazon has fifteen days to make a decision. As far as views go (I can't see nominations), the number is VERY small but steady. I'm told that there should be a boost in the last couple of days of the campaign since a lot of people don't nominate until then.
In spite of the whole nomination process, it seems to me that in the end it really doesn't matter. There are people who do Twitter and Facebook spams and Headtalker/Thunderclap campaigns--think GoFundMe without asking for money--and get thousands of views and hundreds of hours in "Hot and Trending," but don't get picked. There's others that don't do any advertising at all and don't get a lot of views but do get picked. Those who nominate a chosen novel are going to get a free copy so they won't be buying it, therefore no revenue for Amazon. Like most of life, there's apparently no rhyme or reason to this thing.
As far as waiting goes, I'm a pretty patient person. Will I be disappointed if the novel doesn't get chosen? Sure. Is it going to be the end of the world? No. I look at everything as a learning experience. Besides, as you know I have some other things going on in my life so I'm not really dwelling on this right now. :D
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Congratulations - writing a book is so hard! I don't usually read romance but as a fellow mustachian I will gladly check it out.
Edited: Also, please report back and let us know how this all went for you. I'm polishing up a book myself, debating how to roll it out, and I hadn't heard of this program.
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Congratulations - writing a book is so hard! I don't usually read romance but as a fellow mustachian I will gladly check it out.
Edited: Also, please report back and let us know how this all went for you. I'm polishing up a book myself, debating how to roll it out, and I hadn't heard of this program.
Oh, definitely. A lot of us mustachians are wannabe or actual writers so any light I can shed on the process I will.
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Nominated! It says 13 more days left, let's keep this thread bumped, people.
I have a friend who wrote a bunch of romance novels (romance/mystery, actually), before she made it. NYTimes best seller now. :)
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Nominated - looks like a fun read. Good Luck!
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Nominated. Good luck!
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Hey, two days left! I notice that there is now a tag next to your book cover that says "Hot," so that's a good sign!
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Hey, two days left! I notice that there is now a tag next to your book cover that says "Hot," so that's a good sign!
Just came here to bump!
https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/35J578N30IQT5 (https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/35J578N30IQT5)
I know people are nominating it on KBoards now with only two days left. I just keep telling myself I wrote the best book I could and the cover looks good and the blurb and excerpt read smoothly, I've done all I can do. But yeah, I like seeing the "Hot" tag too. :D
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Nominated! 1 day to go!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Nominated. Best wishes, Ap.
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One last bump!
I don't expect to hear anything until Monday at the earliest. Thanks once again to all of you who nominated!
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Did you hear anything yet?
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Did you hear anything yet?
Not yet. The two other people whose campaigns ran concurrent with mine were rejected Monday and Tuesday respectively. Today is day eight of fifteen. On the Kindle Scout board I follow everybody had an answer by day eight--the majority of them acceptances but a couple of rejections too. Like I wrote in my own journal I haven't been this nervous since my wedding day. Marriage turned out okay, so hopefully this will too.
ETA: Someone whose campaign ended a couple of days after mine just got her rejection. I'm in a limbo sandwich right now ...
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Keeping fingers crossed for you!
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Day twelve ... and I got my rejection. Honestly, it went on for so long that I'm just glad to know one way or another, although I am disappointed. I'd like to think that it was pretty heavily considered considering how long it took, but in the end there just weren't enough eyeballs on it. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone from here who nominated the book (and are now getting my badly formatted thank you note). Mustachians rule!
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Sorry to hear that Mandalay. But...you will still be self-publishing, right? We need to find out how the story ends! And I for one am willing to pay money to do so.
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Sorry to hear that Mandalay. But...you will still be self-publishing, right? We need to find out how the story ends! And I for one am willing to pay money to do so.
Yay, a customer! :D
Yes, I will be self-publishing. I'm leaving for London on Friday for my birthday rampage, and once I get back on October first I'll start getting some ads set up. Depending on how long that takes I'm looking at mid- to late October for making it available. If you nominated the book you'll get an email letting you know when it's up.
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I'll buy one too!
If you can, share your process on here as you work through the self-publishing process. I just started going through createspace this morning with my book.
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I'll buy one too!
If you can, share your process on here as you work through the self-publishing process. I just started going through createspace this morning with my book.
Thank you! You may want to check out Draft2Digital as well--I've heard nothing but good things about it.
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Thanks for the recommendation. I spent a lot (LOT) of time learning how Scrivener works, so I'm going to see if I can get through all the createspace hurdles with my scrivener-compiled manuscript. This looks like a good option if I crash and burn.
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I have Scrivener too, but it's too fussy for me to use as a word processor. It's useful for converting Word docs to e-books and that's the main reason why I got it.
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I have Scrivener too, but it's too fussy for me to use as a word processor. It's useful for converting Word docs to e-books and that's the main reason why I got it.
Yup, we used it the same way--wrote in word, converted in Scrivener.
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Hooray, just downloaded! And good timing, too, as I'll be on a train for a few hours on Wednesday and wanted something new to read. Looking forward to it now. :) Congrats to you on publishing day!
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So sad I missed this during voting. But you have links, so I can still enjoy!