What's a fair price for a 500-page trade paperback?

[Uncle Sparky]

They're at around nineteenth-century tech levels, to the extent that such comparisons can be made.

Steampunk is very hot right now... While I did like your latest blurb (with the age removed), if you make if a bit steampunk, you will draw a lot of interest.

[Bereta_Eder]

Young1 Yunise Columabbi is the last living bearer blessed with or burdened with2 of the Curse of Life. She can give sight to the blind, heal crippled limbs in a moment, bring the sick back from the brink of death—or kill a man without touching him. To her father's subjects3, she is an angel. But her miraculous powers come only at the cost of her own health. The Curse killed her mother, and if she isn't careful it might kill her as well. Already it has cost her her birthright as an amir's daughter, and left her friendless and vulnerable.
Now, as she struggles to make a place in the world for herself, she finds it much less stable and happy than she thought. The priesthood which has ordered civilization for a thousand years is decaying, and there are forces at work who have no care for angels, or miracles, only for their own power. But they will gladly take hers as well, if they can get them . . .
4

1:If you don't want to say the specific age (that would have brought twilight etc fans in there) just use a general descriptive adjective for her age
2: Qualify the curse. She is probably "burdened" and not "blessed" with it because it is a curse. But using descriptive words as often as possible taking care not to weight down the novel, gives strength to the sentence. Since this is a 200 words only text, the heavier/more impact it has, the better
3: You clearly need to state who her father is, even if it's a word that's scifi and is your own and noone understands it (it adds to the drama). "To her father, the king/emperor/whatever of whatever's subjects she is an angel".
4: You need to add a small sentence describing the world Yunise lives in. As was said, is it apocalyptic or something else? How is it different than the world we know? Just giving a few glimpses would be enough.

Good luck

P.S. Lots of people will give you advice. You are the writer and the end product is yours, it will be how you want it to be, so I doubt that someone will get vexed if you didn't follow his/her advice
P.S. #2 Use a lot of punctuation. Long sentences tire the reader and may make the text difficult to understand.

[Elok]

BK, the dark bars mark the field currently selected to edit, in this case author name. They, like the rulers around the periphery, will not exist in the final version. BUncle's sister is working on some alternative final art--though BUncle himself is still plowing through with tweaks for the image you see, purely as a fallback. Because, y'know, he's awesome like that.

Sparky, well, I added that "to the extent such parallels can be made" for a reason: it's a terraformed world with a fifteen-hundred-year-old biosphere. Not a drop or speck of fossil fuels anywhere on it. I say nineteenth century because they have electricity, telegraphs, breech-loading rifles, and things like that. But they lean rather more heavily on electricity than Victorians did, out of necessity.

Trying to think of a way to concisely and evocatively say "post-collapse society living in engineered ecosystem within enormous rift valleys scattered across a largely barren planet."

[Bereta_Eder]

Trying to think of a way to concisely and evocatively say "post-collapse society living in engineered ecosystem within enormous rift valleys scattered across a largely barren planet."

You could start by naming this planet something other than earth and then describe it shorty. Don't decribe it directly but rather outline the perimeter so that the reader can construct the center image himself. Let it loom in his mind so to speak.
English is not my first language but something along the lines: "She was considered an angel on Xenandia and the citizens of this desolate barren planet used to watch her coming to them walking through the vast chasms of this ravaged man made world" something like that maybe (with much better english)

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Lessee - IIRC, the vBulletin software will show this at full size...



Well no - but if you click on it a couple times, there it is with all the seams still showing...

[Elok]

Okay, I just ordered my proof. I went with slow shipping because I am not anxious enough to let them bait me into ordering INCREDIBLY EXPEDITED SHIPPING for most of the cost of the proof itself. I'll probably have to lower the cost of the book a bit to make it worth buying when S & H are factored in. Hrm.

Anyway, here's the revised cover, with image courtesy BUncle's sister, after BUncle did a whole lot of work on that image and didn't get mad when none of it got used. Yay BUncle. Yay authorial neurosis. Yay this-project-is-almost-done.

[rah]

Remember to give us order info. It will probably get you a handful of sales.

[Ben Kenobi]

Much better, Elok!

[C0ckney]

it looks really good.

[Elok]

Thank you!

Lori, in case you're not following the BUncleforum thread anymore, what subgenre of sci-fi would you call this? I need to pick something called a "BISAC category." Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic seems the best fit, but it has elements of a couple of other listed categories. I don't want to be a weenie and go with "general."

[Elok]

Also I need some sort of author bio. I don't think I need to tell people about resenting my English major, spending a lot of time arguing with people on the internet, or my two kids. Createspace advises me to keep it snappy but memorable. I'm thinking, "Brayton Cole is a highly self-critical author. He has tried to write six novels, almost two thousand manuscript pages in total, and wound up despising all of them. This is his first work he thinks good enough to publish. You should buy it."

But, you know, better.

[Ming]

Also I need some sort of author bio. I don't think I need to tell people about resenting my English major, spending a lot of time arguing with people on the internet, or my two kids. Createspace advises me to keep it snappy but memorable. I'm thinking, "Brayton Cole is a highly self-critical author. He has tried to write six novels, almost two thousand manuscript pages in total, and wound up despising all of them. This is his first work he thinks good enough to publish. You should buy it."

Uhhhh.... NO!

While it might be "memorable", I'm not sure that is the message you want to get across
However, I do like the "buy it"

[Elok]

(there was some sarcasm there)
(the author bio is theoretically optional, and I haven't had a terribly exciting or interesting life)

The bad news is that, at present, I can't price it under twelve bucks and change. Thirteen has me making fifty cents a copy on Amazon.com, three bucks if I nudge people to the dedicated CreateSpace e-store.

[Lorizael]

Pretty sure you're a world traveler and educator.

[Elok]

I might as well append "and bull****ter" if I put in that. Then again, that's desirable in an author, I guess. And I did think, very briefly, of going by the name "B.S. Cole."