RheingoldRiver's recent activity

  1. Comment on Happy 6th Birthday, Tildes! in ~tildes

    RheingoldRiver
    Link Parent
    what about the 5 screens of bbcode at the bottom of every page :D

    what about the 5 screens of bbcode at the bottom of every page :D

    14 votes

  2. Comment on Self published authors, how do you market your books? Nothing I've tried has had any success. in ~creative

    RheingoldRiver
    Link Parent
    I'm a little hesitant to recommend this but one option is of course to give away your books for free permanently on a website you host (just let people download epubs). The biggest downside of...

    I'm a little hesitant to recommend this but one option is of course to give away your books for free permanently on a website you host (just let people download epubs). The biggest downside of this (I mean other than that you make no money lol) is that a lot of people will assume your books are bad if they are free. But if you have some short fiction too, people might take a chance on your short fiction and then give your novel a go if they like it. Especially if it's in the same universe. But in this case quality is waaaaaaay more important than quantity because you need to make sure that everyone's first experience is positive.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Self published authors, how do you market your books? Nothing I've tried has had any success. in ~creative

    RheingoldRiver
    Link Parent
    I don't think it should cost you anything? But I've never seen this from the author side, just the reader side. To be clear though, I am talking about the ebook, not a paper copy. I mean I guess...

    I'm curious about the free sales you mention... Would those end up.costing me, or is there a special type of sale you've seen where it doesn't cost anything as a promo?

    I don't think it should cost you anything? But I've never seen this from the author side, just the reader side. To be clear though, I am talking about the ebook, not a paper copy.

    I suppose that if I really want to reach folks though, I should just buckle down and figure it out.

    I mean I guess I'd ask what you want out of this. If you want to get more out of the time investment you put in previously, imo you are falling for the sunk cost fallacy & I might suggest moving on. If you think some time spent marketing can make you some returns now, then that's probably true if your book is good (or at least not bad lol), but you will have to put some regular time in. Marketing is a ton of work, if you aren't enjoying making the content it might not be worth it.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Self published authors, how do you market your books? Nothing I've tried has had any success. in ~creative

    RheingoldRiver
    Link
    Not an author but I read a lot and I used to be really really active on /r/fantasy, not so much since the api changes but this past month I've been posting again. I also wrote reviews for about 9...

    Not an author but I read a lot and I used to be really really active on /r/fantasy, not so much since the api changes but this past month I've been posting again. I also wrote reviews for about 9 months but I was finding it stressful so I stopped. My answer depends a bit on the genre, but I'm gonna assume it's some sort of genre fiction (SFF/romance/mystery/etc). And mostly I'll talk about spec fic cos that's what I read.

    There are a few places you want to be active, and I mean active not just talking about your own book but also reviewing other books, making recommendations, etc:

    • tiktok (booktok)
    • youtube (booktube)
    • instagram
    • reddit - the rest of the post will be about reddit

    Which subreddit(s) specifically depend on the genre. I'm mainly on /r/fantasy but other ones are /r/printsf, /r/romancenovels, etc, there's also a lot for REALLY specific subgenres like /r/cozyfantasy, /r/litrpg, etc. Different subreddits will have different self-promo rules so promote according to those. DO NOT overpromote yourself even within the rules like e.g. in the case of /r/fantasy there's a self-promo thread once a week, and sometimes authors will post about themselves every single week for months on end (which is allowed by the rules!) and the community will start to get very tired of this.

    I would recommend trying to participate in indie sales; there are several indie charity sales every year in the SFF space and I'm sure there are some in other genres too. And put your book on sale for $0 for a weekend when you post it to reddit - that's one of the best ways you can get people to at least put it on their kindle, and then maybe they'll read it when they are bored sometime, and if they like it, they might start talking about it.

    Oh also let me add that it sounds to me like you are using KU, and from what I've heard, some authors are leaving this as it pays really badly now and also some readers are very anti-amazon and will only buy your book if it's available on other platforms. So you may want to consider that too.

    4 votes

  5. Comment on Tildes Book Club - Next up The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin in ~books

    RheingoldRiver
    Link Parent
    spoiler It's possible that partially inspired it, but I just really like mobiles and I made a lot of mobiles for fun. I painted them to look like planets and I said something like "oh the book...
    spoiler It's possible that partially inspired it, but I just really like mobiles and I made a lot of mobiles for fun. I painted them to look like planets and I said something like "oh the book demonstrates that the society on each planet requires the existence of the other planet to stay stable because otherwise people would be upset and want to change but because the other planet exists, they have something to be opposed to, so they are stable in balance opposite each other....just like a mobile hahaha"

    which is like. not at all a real theme in the book? but if I wanted to make up a theme that a mobile would demonstrate it would be that, so I pretended it was lol

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Tildes Book Club - Next up The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin in ~books

  7. Comment on Tildes Book Club - Next up The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin in ~books

    RheingoldRiver
    Link Parent
    I have been marking the pings as "noise" every time, not sure if that works given they get upvoted too but maybe if we all do it?

    I have been marking the pings as "noise" every time, not sure if that works given they get upvoted too but maybe if we all do it?

    1 vote

  8. Comment on Tildes Book Club - Next up The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin in ~books

    RheingoldRiver
    Link
    Read this in high school and it made a very big impact on me at the time. Won't be rereading now but I'll def join in on the discussion! I do remember we had to do some kind of "project" or...

    Read this in high school and it made a very big impact on me at the time. Won't be rereading now but I'll def join in on the discussion!

    I do remember we had to do some kind of "project" or something so I made a mobile because I felt like making a mobile and then made up some ridiculous symbolism that wasn't even accurate to the novel and my teacher loved it lol

    5 votes

  9. Comment on What are the best websites/programs for creating mood boards / image collages / 'visual lists'? in ~tech

    RheingoldRiver
    (edited )
    Link
    high learning curve but if you still haven't found something you're happy with I'd look into Figma! To upload images with minimal clicks. - right-click, copy the image, go to figma, press ctrl+V....

    high learning curve but if you still haven't found something you're happy with I'd look into Figma!

    • To upload images with minimal clicks. - right-click, copy the image, go to figma, press ctrl+V.
    • To display medium resolution images as clear thumbnails (e.g. anywhere from 200x200 to 500x500). Enough for detail, but not necessarily "HD". - Figma is an infinite canvas and you can zoom in and out as you like. It also will preserve the original source of any image you insert into the document if you choose to resize.
    • To offer the ability to crop (or even just display) images as square thumbnails (for the purposes of a neat and uniform grid) without me having to go through https://squareanimage.com (real website!) for every single image. - yes although I'm not sure how minimal the clicks are here. edit: what you are looking to do is make an "auto layout" group and then add a new item to it. you'll want to use alt+click-and-drag which duplicates an element to add a new identical item to your auto layout group, and then change its
      "background" image to the new image you wanna display.
    • To categorize images into groups (i.e. to display a set of images as a coherent little grid/gallery). I'm not picky about whether this is done via fixed category pages, or tags + filtering. - this is the one I'm the least sure about. You can certainly use "auto layout" to show images in a grid. The question is if you want to be able to e.g. filter all images that you've put into your project so far. I bet it's possible but I've never used it in this way.
    • To maybe add extra information attached to each image (e.g. descriptions, links, etc.) without necessarily cluttering the grid. - figma supports an annotations functionality
    • As for whether the service is public or private, cloud-based or local, I don't really mind! - Figma is free as long as you aren't sharing with anyone, its business model is to sell to large enterprises

  10. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    RheingoldRiver
    Link
    Nonfiction: I finished The Ascent of Money as recommended by Tildes and am starting Sleepwalkers: some really long title about the causes of World War I. I also read The Trouble With Physics, a...

    Nonfiction: I finished The Ascent of Money as recommended by Tildes and am starting Sleepwalkers: some really long title about the causes of World War I. I also read The Trouble With Physics, a book about the problems with string theory as a field, recommended by Hacker News. And I am reading a book about the Iliad that was recommended by an article linked to from HN a few months ago.

    If anyone has a good history on the Medici dynasty I would be interested.

    Fiction: New /r/fantasy Bingo season started, last year I did a card where every title had the word "City" in it, this year I am doing a card where every title has the word "Empire" in it. A few squares are going to be tricky I think, like "Dark Academia," I've looked through every single page of 5 or so lists of Dark Academia books on goodreads and not found one single option. So far I've read The Trials of Empire (book 3 in Empire of the Wolf (Justice of Kings series) and Empire of the Vampire/Empire of the Damned.

    But I haven't been just working on this card, I've been a bit all over the place. Read a bunch of space opera: Winter's Orbit & sequel; several Vorkosigan books (honestly overrated but maybe it gets better?); Some Desperate Glory (I have a whole rant about it tomorrow that I am saving for the Hugo readalong post tomorrow but I can post it here too if anyone is interested). Most recently Sorcery & Cecilia and sequels by Patricia C. Wrede, very cute regency romantasy trilogy. Going to go back to hugo nominees after this I think with Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (conveniently fills the alliteration square) & then back to empire books! I am looking forward very much to Sun Eater (which starts out with a book 1 with "Empire" in its title, and publication of the audiobook for book 6 was delayed a bit, which is why I'm waiting, it's at the end of the month).

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Fellow hardline materialists, how do you "enchant" the world? in ~talk

    RheingoldRiver
    Link Parent
    interesting, tbh for me it's decreased a lot as I age. I remember almost having a panic attack in a high school bathroom thinking about the universe, and such moments were pretty common when I was...

    while it becomes bigger as I get older

    interesting, tbh for me it's decreased a lot as I age. I remember almost having a panic attack in a high school bathroom thinking about the universe, and such moments were pretty common when I was a teenager. Now I can dismiss it within about 5 seconds with little effort.

    Not sure when you started having these thoughts so maybe things will get better for you also :)

    7 votes

  12. Comment on Maui wildfire report: Officials declined extra help before a deadly inferno engulfed Lahaina, killing more than 100 people in ~enviro

    RheingoldRiver
    Link Parent
    But there have to be stats about it right? cos the offer of help would be FOIA-able? I'm thinking it has to be pretty routine to turn down help though, cos a state-level disaster-relief program...

    But there have to be stats about it right? cos the offer of help would be FOIA-able?

    I'm thinking it has to be pretty routine to turn down help though, cos a state-level disaster-relief program will have much less knowledge than a local chapter. For example if there's a storm in counties X, Y, and Z then the state says to each county "hey are you gonna be ok" and each county does its own risk assessment and X and Y say "yep we seem ok" and Z says "no we are going to need evacuation help can you send us 10 people who can do jobs A, B, and C" so the state sends those people to county Z and everyone was correct and everything goes well.

    Or now say that instead these are three different storms and the state has a budget to send full support one time a year so each time they ask "do you need help this time" and if the counties say "yes" and they didn't need the help and they didn't well, that sucks a lot, you just wasted your disaster bail-out money. Of course 1 time is probably really n times but there's still going to be a limit here.

    So I am sure there is a lot of actuarial math here and disaster planning and budgeting and who has what information, and with climate change we are going to be a LOT worse at making accurate forecasts. And we see this kind of article so often and it makes me wonder about the first part of the headline, I think it's very likely that "oh haha they turned down aid" is quite likely clickbait and what really happened is that an extremely complex system malfunctioned, but usually it does what it's supposed to (and would function better sans climate change).

    But I have zero background here and no idea what is actually the case so I am curious; this is just what seems likely to me based on my general mental model of organizational problems.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on Maui wildfire report: Officials declined extra help before a deadly inferno engulfed Lahaina, killing more than 100 people in ~enviro

    RheingoldRiver
    Link
    We hear a lot about "officials decline help and then we learn they should have accepted help," how often is help offered and then declined and that was correct, it's just a matter of course to...

    We hear a lot about "officials decline help and then we learn they should have accepted help," how often is help offered and then declined and that was correct, it's just a matter of course to offer help in X condition but the local people know conditions better and say "we are probably fine" and then they are, in fact, fine?

    4 votes

  14. Comment on PewDiePie takes me bouldering in Tokyo in ~hobbies

    RheingoldRiver
    Link Parent
    I watched the first ~15 minutes then skipped to the last ~5, it was pretty funny

    I watched the first ~15 minutes then skipped to the last ~5, it was pretty funny

    3 votes

  15. Comment on Where is the best place to find freelance UX/UI designers? in ~design

    RheingoldRiver
    Link
    I have been approached by people looking for freelancers on /r/technicalwriting - so I would suggest looking through UI/UX subreddits, check for people who seem like they know what they are...

    I have been approached by people looking for freelancers on /r/technicalwriting - so I would suggest looking through UI/UX subreddits, check for people who seem like they know what they are talking about in comments, and then DM them seeing if they are looking for freelance work

  16. Comment on Weekly thread for casual chat and photos of pets in ~life.pets

  17. Comment on Weekly thread for casual chat and photos of pets in ~life.pets

    RheingoldRiver
    Link
    Is there a way I can ignore JUST this recurring thread (permanently)? I mostly like recurring threads, and I like ask.survey, and I like casual, but I'm not interested in the weekly photos of pets...

    Is there a way I can ignore JUST this recurring thread (permanently)? I mostly like recurring threads, and I like ask.survey, and I like casual, but I'm not interested in the weekly photos of pets threads and it's slightly annoying to press ignore every single week (sorry if this gets asked frequently!! This is the first time I've looked inside to ask this question!)

    1 vote

  18. Comment on The internet used to be ✨fun✨ in ~tech

    RheingoldRiver
    Link Parent
    ah I meant more, I was not even close to current when I read it. I still laughed at the Alanis Morissette joke, contrary to this strip that joke will never get old

    ah I meant more, I was not even close to current when I read it. I still laughed at the Alanis Morissette joke, contrary to this strip that joke will never get old

    1 vote

  19. Comment on The internet used to be ✨fun✨ in ~tech

    RheingoldRiver
    Link Parent
    i am not sure if i should thank you for helping me waste time on the internet at this point in my life, but thank you!! going to start reading now edit hmmm this seems very familiar actually, no...

    i am not sure if i should thank you for helping me waste time on the internet at this point in my life, but thank you!! going to start reading now

    edit hmmm this seems very familiar actually, no idea how much I read but this would've been like 2005 at the latest so not even close to current

    3 votes

  20. Comment on The internet used to be ✨fun✨ in ~tech

    RheingoldRiver
    Link
    I really miss the days of reading webcomics and Project Wonderful advertisements leading me to new webcomics and adding all these webcomings to my RSS Reader extension that was integrated into my...

    I really miss the days of reading webcomics and Project Wonderful advertisements leading me to new webcomics and adding all these webcomings to my RSS Reader extension that was integrated into my Firefox sidebar.

    I still vaguely remember a couple that had continuous plots that I never found out what happened, and I'm vaguely dissatisfied by this, even though I don't remember what was happening at the time that I stopped reading them...

    10 votes