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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  1d ago (text post)   367 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for January 27, 2026

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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After getting an offer, I elected to go the self pub route with my first story (A different story than I got the offer on actually, because I didn't feel confident finishing that series). I got what was apparently pretty decent numbers on my offer (I can look up the breakdown by medium if you want em), but even then the percentiles are kinda brutal. I think the highest was ebooks at 30 or 35 percent after platform fees. I know the sales and marketing efforts of publishing houses are supposed to be better than what most authors manage on their own, but I really did not feel comfortable signing away very fixed and definite rights and shares of profit in exchange for marketing efforts that were highly subjective and discretionary. Obviously the publisher is suppose to be aligned with your interests, because every sale benefits them even more than it does you, but I just don't love the model in this day and age where up-front printing costs have gone from 5-6 figures to basically zero. Even with audiobook production being included and a small advance (5k per book), it didn't feel worth it to me. So, I'll be self publishing my first novel in June. I wish you the best with your submissions though, it's a harsh game if you're not one of the big genres that they're currently pushing.

Thanks a lot. What platform are you using for self-publishing?

Amazon. I currently post on Royal Road/Patreon/other forum sites, but Amazon and Audible are pretty much the only games in town for self publishing unless you go full indie and sell ebooks off your own website. There are other options, but they generally don't have a fraction of the reach.

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