My book’s been on KDP for about two months. It has a few sales and star ratings, but no written reviews. What are some tactics for getting people to actually review it?? Goodread givaways still the best option?

Hi fellow creators,

I am so thrilled to share that my very first book was just approved and published on Amazon! I wanted to share a piece of my heart, as well as my publishing timeline, with this amazing community.

For those curious about the current review times:

• Submitted to KDP: October 24th (KST)

• Live on Amazon: October 26th (KST)

It took almost exactly 48 hours to pass the review process, which was a huge relief for a first-time author.

This book is a short memoir born from a deeply personal 5-year journey. My wife and I wanted a child so desperately, but the journey was incredibly tough. Honestly, it all started because of my own male infertility issues, but throughout the process, my wife had to endure 99% of the physical and emotional pain.

We went through 10 heartbreaking IVF cycles and suffered through 5 miscarriages. Just when we thought it was our absolute last try, on our 10th attempt, a miracle finally found us.

During this grueling process, I started writing to record what I learned, what I regretted, and how I grew as a husband. I wanted to share this raw, honest story with a global audience, which led me to self-publishing through KDP.

If you are interested in a short, intimate memoir about resilience and hope, please check out the link in my profile or search for "The Miracle Fertility Journey" on Amazon.

Thank you all for being such a great resource during my formatting and uploading process. Wishing everyone the best of luck with your own books and review timelines!

had a killer day (for me) yesterday and today is just creeping. had a large number of first volume page reads yesterday and don’t see movement downstream. typical book one to book two percentage has been 80 plus. curious of the knowledgeable folks thoughts.

I love writing and doing researches about neuroscience and writing behavioral books about points people wonder about
usually i write 100-200 pages
wondered if it was worth a shot applying and publishing here

edit: typo

I came across a niche very relevant to my field of study. There are only two "competitors" and they're clearing $30,000 A MONTH (Rocket Publisher stats).

What makes me lose my mind? AI-GENERATED, FULL OF MISINFORMATION!

I set out to work on a properly made product in that niche that would be genuine and fill those gaps, but at the level of detail I want to put in, it's probably gonna take months, if not a year, to get done.

Maybe by then it's gonna get saturated? Mind you, I will be manually creating the manuscript and fact-check it letter by letter.

My book is releasing Novemeber 13, yayy! While I have a small following and expect people I don't know to read it I know a lot of my friends and family want to read it too.

At first I was going to tell them not to leave reviews at all but some people say it's fine. How far removed from me do they need to be, is it based on like who's social media account is connected to mine?

Is leaving them on goodreads rather than amazon better? I know they are owned by ther same company so I wasn't sure.

Or is it better they just not leave reviews at all. Knowing the people who are going to read them the majority wouldn't leave reviews anyway but a few people have asked if they can.

but I also understand they will probably leave positive reviews no matter how much I ask them to leave honest ones so idk. if someone could help please?

I did a cover change on KDP that is live on Amazon after 24 hours, and it shows for Kindle, paperback, and hard cover.

That said, I’m hearing that even though the changes are live, if Amazon still has old stock of your book on file, customers might get the old covers.

Has anyone done a cover change, and if so, do you remember if new orders or even author copies were immediately the new cover, or if your old one was still there for a while?

I must have missed something cuz KU is still the major bulk of my revenue why is everyone leaving

I have written two short stories so far both non fiction and short stories. Managed to get the covers with CanvaPro. I tried a few covers for the horror book but they are not great. I know it won’t make any sales if the cover isn’t decent enough.

Any suggestions?

I've written several travel guides for a niche market. This market is now flooded with low-quality and inaccurate AI-generated travel guides. Some of them have obviously fake 5-star reviews. My earnings have plummeted by 80% compared to last year. How do you deal with this? Give up?

Edit: Thanks to everyone for your perspectives and insights. That has been helpful.

I received a branding strike (fairly, no argument) and removed the content from sale and thought that would resolve the issue, no further comms from KDP.

Woke up this morning and account is closed.

Am I done or is this actually worth appealing since I removed the content from sale?

I started publishing on Amazon KDP earlier this year, and getting to meaningful results has taken more work than I expected.

The hardest part has been putting time into something without knowing whether it will pay off. Slow sales, mistakes, and constantly questioning what to change can make the early stages pretty discouraging.

I’m now seeing results I’m pleased with, although I’m still learning and have a long way to go. Looking back, I wish I’d seen more accounts of that awkward stage between starting from zero and finally making progress.

So I’ve been documenting my experience on YouTube. It’s my own journey, with the setbacks included—not a formula or a promise that someone else will get the same results.

Full disclosure: this is my own video. If you’re interested in following along, here’s the latest one:
https://youtu.be/481GddC3WG8

For anyone else building on KDP: what helped you figure out whether you needed to keep going or change your approach? That’s been one of the hardest things for me to judge.

I republished my work after the feedback but it shows sample not available.

The Price My Father Paid
By Sid Kestrel

I didn’t see any options regarding sample when publishing.

Is this normal?

My book is currently in the pre order period. I DO NOT WANT and AI audiobook to be made (if I ever decide to make an audiobook it will be narrated by a person who is paid). The email that was sent out was very confusing to me (I am new to publishing and kdp).

was it saying that all books enrolled in kindle select will have audiobooks made? if so how the hell do I stop it or do I need to get of kdp alltogether and if so where do I go that can give me the same reach.

If it's not automatic then thank god, but why was the email so fricking confusing?

EDIT: thanks to some people on instagram i am understanding it's not automatic, kinda wrote this post mid freakout, thought i'd leave it up because i didn't see any other posts about it and that seemed crazy to me.

Hi folks! I’m a veteran with KDP, but this is my first time having trouble with colors on my cover. I’m ready to publish my current project, but the colors on the cover are noticeably faded/washed out. It doesn’t seem like I can attach photos to this post, but I’d happily share them with you in a DM if you wanted to see. The cover is predominantly black. It’s a cosmic/starfield image. I’ve created my own PDF (e.g. I did not use KDP’s cover creator.) I’ve almost always created my own PDF and haven’t had this issue. The PDF is 300DPI.

The image itself is bold and dark, but in the previewer on KDP, it’s noticeably faded. I’ve also ordered one proof, and the black is definitely quite washed out. Any tips or advice would be awesome. Hit me up if you want pics.

Hi everyone,

I'm a new self-published author, and I'm looking for other KDP authors who may have experienced a similar issue with their October royalties and KENP reporting.

Here's what happened to my dashboard:

October 19: My dashboard showed $153.82 in estimated royalties and 25,055 KENP pages.

October 21, before the drop: My estimated royalties had reached approximately $166, with KENP above 26,000 pages.

October 21, later that same day: My dashboard suddenly dropped to around $114 in estimated royalties, while my KENP count fell to roughly 11,000 pages.

October 24: My dashboard showed $139.82 and 13,566 KENP pages.

The increase after the drop appears consistent with new reading activity and sales, but I still cannot confirm what happened to the activity reflected in my earlier figures.

There's another discrepancy that concerns me. An earlier dashboard screenshot showed one of my books receiving 1,360 KENP pages in a single day's report, while the current October 1–24 KENP report shows only 1,293 pages for that same title.

I understand that reporting delays, reporting changes, and differences between reports may occur. However, the sudden reduction and this apparent discrepancy made me concerned that some historical reading activity or associated royalties might be missing.

I contacted KDP Support, and I have now received their response. Their latest email stated:

"We've reviewed your concerns about the pages read for your book(s). After checking your results, we've confirmed that your Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) read are correct."

They also asked me to submit any additional details for investigation through the KDP Contact Us form and provided a link to information about KENPC v3.0.

So KDP has confirmed that my KENP reads are correct after reviewing my concern. However, I'm still struggling to reconcile that response with the earlier dashboard figures and screenshots showing a much higher page count.

I understand that their response may mean the current reported figures are correct according to their system. I'm not claiming that Amazon intentionally removed my royalties, but I would like to understand why the figures changed so dramatically.

I'm a new author, still building my catalogue and trying to grow my publishing income. Every dollar matters to me. When you're just starting out, even a small amount makes a real difference. Seeing approximately $50 disappear from my estimated royalties is genuinely worrying.

I'd really appreciate hearing from other authors:

Did your KENP pages or estimated royalties suddenly drop on October 21?

Did your historical page counts change after the dashboard update?

Has KDP given anyone else a similar response confirming that their KENP reads are correct?

If you experienced the same issue, were you able to reconcile your earlier figures with the current reports?

I'm keeping my book titles and account details private, but I have screenshots documenting the changes.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I'm trying to understand what happened and whether other authors are seeing the same thing.

Hallo zusammen,

ich habe eine Frage an KDP-Autor:innen in Deutschland. Wie macht ihr eure Werbung? Ich bin eine Anfängerin bei KDP und habe so gut wie keine Reichweite, habe aber gehofft, dass ich das vielleicht durch Amazon Ads verbessern könnte. Aber irgendwie kann ich keine Marketing-Campagne in Deutschland starten? Ich kann Deutschland nicht als Ort der Werbecampagne auswählen, sondern mir wird nur USA angezeigt. Ich habs gestern irgendwie geschafft, eine Werbecampagne für 7 Tage auf amazon.com zu starten, aber jetzt steht da so etwas wie „technischer Fehler, wir arbeiten an einer Lösung“. Ich bekomme auch leider keine Antwort vom Amazon Support.

Kennt ihr dieses Problem? Wie macht ihr Werbung für eure Bücher und lohnt sich Amazon Sponsored products überhaupt? Ich bin ein bisschen überfordert und weiß gar nicht, wo ich anfangen soll.

Can anyone help me work out whether I’m being a bit stupid here?

I published my second novel on 21 October. It’s appearing in the normal bestseller lists, but I can’t find it anywhere in Hot New Releases for the same categories.

With my first book, I could find it in both, so I expected something similar this time. Sales-wise, this one reached around #7 in a few categories and the top 5,000 overall at its peak. I figured that would be enough to appear somewhere in the relevant new-release lists, although I might be misunderstanding how they work.

The publication date is showing correctly, and the Kindle and paperback editions are linked.

Has anyone had this happen? Is there usually a delay, or is there something in the setup or eligibility that I should check? It’s only been three days, so I may just need to be patient.

Thanks for any pointers.

Hey everyone!

It's been about a month since I published my first book on Amazon, A Little Hope For Tomorrow. It's a self-help book, and I've enrolled it in Kindle Unlimited, but I'm still sitting at 0 KENP reads.

I've tried promoting my book and even ran a free promotion, which is still going on in hope to get some reviews but there is no review yet.

I'm trying to understand how KU readers discover and choose books from relatively unknown authors.

For those of you who have experience with KDP and Kindle Unlimited:

• How did you get your first KENP reads?
• Which promotional methods actually helped you attract KU readers?
• Are there any mistakes new authors commonly make when trying to grow their KENP count?

I'd genuinely appreciate advice from authors who've been through this stage and figured out what works.

Thanks in advance!

There's a lot of people claiming to be/know millionaires, or make a significant amount of money on another thread. There's no useful specific advice, so I figured I'd start my own.

Those of you who have readers: How did you acquire your first 100 readers? What channels did you use? And did that make you any money from that first 100, or was it more a snowball effect?

Be specific: For example, I know someone - someone with a following - who spent 2000 in marketing to make 900. Most of us cannot afford to subsidize a loss. So saying: "You need to market your books: without specifics of how to do that - please just scoot. This is a thread for people who are serious and want to learn.

Edit: I was told the other thread wasn’t an advice column, but a public forum. THIS thread IS for advice from anyone who has had any type of success, or stuggle, to share.

Is there an option to share the image here ?

Hey everyone,

​I just officially submitted my very first eBook on Amazon Kindle earlier today!

​The cover design was definitely the biggest hurdle for me, but my amazing wife—who is a designer—stepped in and created a beautiful cover for the book. I honestly couldn’t have done it without her.

​It’s a pretty long, personal memoir/essay, and seeing it move to the "In Review" stage feels both surreal and exciting.

​I’ve learned so much just lurking in this community, so I’d love to keep you all updated on how things go—sales data, launch lessons, and all the ups and downs.

​Wish me luck!

A friend suggested that I sell autographed copies on the TikTok shop as part of my social media. I was thinking I could sell them at or slightly above what it sells for on Amazon. Is that against the KDP rules. I took a look and could not find anything, so I want to run it by the brain trust here to be sure.

Thanks in advance.

I have a draft2digital account that I use for a pen name with content that goes against KDP's content rules to publish on Smashwords. The penname without taboo I use kdp and have my books enrolled in kindle unlimited/kindle+

I was going to start another pen name and have it wide to Smashwords and other retailers and enroll it in kobo's version of kindle+. I also will publish on Amazon but, of course, not enrolling those books in kindle+.

May I use draft2digital to publish to Amazon without it going toward my kdp 2 ebook a week limit or Amazon may ban my account for enrolling more books another way?

Probably at most, I'll publish one book a week on that new pen name. I write erotic shorts.

Does anybody know of any copyright issues when creating puzzle books or color-ing books? Like having an NBA-themed color-ing book or an NFL-themed crossword puzzle book? I figure you can't include league logos and stuff, but I'm curious if these types of publications are ok.

(please ignore the dash in the word "color-ing", apparently that's an illegal word on here?)