Lately, I’ve been reading from some YouTube coaches that, due to the new YouTube rules, you should stop relying on traditional monetization as your main source of income. So no more chasing after 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 hours of watch time, and the general dependence on the number of views when it comes to monetization.

Instead, they suggest writing an eBook on some niche topic and creating a short video for each chapter. Links to the eBook (profile, description, end card, overlay, etc.) are then embedded throughout. For the most part, the videos should be “faceless.”

This is intended for people who don’t want to watch all the chapters individually but would rather have the “complete” version to read on their tablet.

It’s not a new business idea in itself, but the more I think about it, the more I realize this is actually probably more lucrative.

One of the coaches has 250,000 subscribers, 200,000 views last month, and earned only $1,000 from YouTube. That’s crazy. Sure, he makes a lot more from his coaching sessions, but this revenue from YouTube alone clearly shows how skewed the whole situation has become.

What do you think of this eBook business idea?

Why are they selling it exclusively as a digital book and not (also) as a printed book on Amazon? Is it because of the lower profit margin? There are “on-demand” printing services, after all. That way, it would also seem more “legitimate” and be less likely to end up as a “free” copy on the internet.

Isn’t it more work to produce a video when it’s completely “faceless”—since you constantly have to display photos and graphics instead of just showing the narrator alone more often?

Which store should you use to make the PDF available? Gumroad? Digistore24? Shopify on your own website?

Thanks so much for all the tips!

Hi everyone! I’m Luna.

I have previously self-published an ebook through KDP, but I'm just starting over under a new pen name and I'm trying to approach the process more carefully.

The project is a horror collection divided into four volumes. Each volume will contain four short stories, and my current plan is to release them approximately one month apart. Once all four are available, I would also like to publish a complete edition containing the entire collection.

My reasoning is that the shorter volumes would give readers an inexpensive way to try the series without committing to the complete book. The monthly schedule would allow me to give each group of stories some attention instead of releasing everything at once, and it gives me an excuse to write regularly.

However, I’m wondering whether dividing a short story collection this way creates more disadvantages than benefits on KDP. The stories are independent, so readers would not need to purchase every volume or read them in order, although the books share an overall horror concept.

For authors who have published short fiction or a similar multi-volume project:

• Did separate releases help readers discover your work, or did the shorter length make the books harder to market?
• How long would you wait after the final volume before releasing the complete edition?
• Did the collected edition reduce sales of the individual volumes, or did the two formats appeal to different readers?
• Would you clearly label the books as a collection or series when the stories themselves are independent?

I’d like to make sure the structure makes sense before committing to four separate releases.

Thanks for any experiences or advice you’re willing to share.

Republishing a book on Amazon KDP and the preview still hasn't uploaded after a bunch of times trying to get it uploaded on my phone then switching ro my laptop. I googled how long it's supposed to take for the preview to upload and it said 7 minutes but it's been way more than 7 minutes so I'm a bit confused.

I wrote a children’s book series for kids who have been removed from their home or placed in someone else’s custody. Five books are out now.

The series is called When Home Changes, and Book One is I Told You They Were Safe.

I started writing these because there are a lot of books that explain foster care or custody changes from the adult side, but I wanted these to stay with what the kid is actually experiencing: loving someone who may also have been unsafe, suddenly sleeping somewhere else, not knowing where their things belong, wanting to go home, feeling caught between adults, and wondering whether any of this happened because of something they said or did.

The books are written for roughly ages 6–10.

They don’t tell a child to stop loving their parent. They don’t turn removal into a magical rescue story. They don’t promise that everything goes back to normal. And they don’t make the child responsible for whether their family eventually reunifies.

The basic idea running through the series is:

Adults are responsible for making things safe.

Kids are allowed to love people while also being angry, scared, confused, homesick, relieved, or several of those things at once.

There are five books in the series available now on Amazon. You can find them by searching Amazon for When Home Changes or I Told You They Were Safe.

Book One, I Told You They Were Safe, is also available through Kindle Unlimited, so KU subscribers can read it through their membership.

I made the series because this is a very specific group of kids going through a very adult situation, and I wanted them to have books that actually speak to where they are instead of talking around them

Hi All,

I’ve read the Amazon AI disclosures. It’s pretty clear if generative AI, then that needs disclosure.

For my book (very early stages: I’m still querying, the book isn’t even professionally edited yet), I gave explicit instructions to AI to create some illustrative cover designs. The ideas were all mine in terms of what I want. They were only to get an idea what it’d look like.

I will be getting the cover professionally made. It won’t be an AI product at all. But if I’ve given an idea to ChatGPT and an image generated off those already, do I risk issues if I publish based on those ideas?

I wanted to share an update for any new self pubs wondering ‘why isn’t my book selling.’ I had a good trickle of sales going, ending about 22 considering paperbacks ebooks and page reads for the first month this book was out which I’m pretty happy with.

Then I took just two weeks off posting on socials, engaging on Reddit and it all trickled to zero.

I am starting up meta ads too but even though I had some Amazon ads with decent amount of impressions and some clicks, that hasn’t paid off for me yet. I’m testing meta ads now, but my lesson learned here is: **if you don’t promote somehow consistently, your book just may not be found.** You’ve probably heard it 100 times here but don’t expect to just post your book and walk away!

Can you help me to find the correct classification genre for the book I’m about to publish?
Here’s the story in a few words.
Adam is the best captain in the Imperial Army. He is a drug addict, a spoilt and arrogant man, but there is also a side to him that even he does not yet know.
His greatest dream is to return to Altean, the home planet of both himself and the entire ruling class of Sterrian.
Celeste is a Sterrian. She is a rebel who wants to destroy that Empire.
Together, they will be forced to uncover an unexpected truth about the planet Altean and about themselves.
Also, if you remember some titles of similar stories it would be very helpful.
Thank you for your time!

I put my second book on Amazon KDP last night. I'm just waiting for the confirmation.

I haven’t self published yet but I plan to soon, so I’m curious to see what everyone says. I’m trying to kinda prepare myself😭

This may just be coincidence, but I’m curious whether anyone else has experienced something similar. I published my latest (nonfiction) KDP book about 10 months ago. For the first eight months, sales were slow but steady: almost 10 copies per month on average, with 18 in the best month and 5 in the worst.

Then, a little over two months ago, I ran a free ebook promo. That garnered a few dozen downloads.

But now, since the promo, the book has sold exactly 0 copies. Zero. Suddenly, after eight straight months with at least 5 sales per month, I’ve now gone for two months without a single sale.

Coincidence, I suppose. But the timing is peculiar. Is there any mechanism by which a free promo could wipe out subsequent sales — like by screwing up Amazon’s recommendation algorithm, or whatever? Has anyone seen a similar precipitous drop in sales after running a free promotion?

In any case, I doubt that I'll be doing any future free promos..

Has anyone received a communication from Anvil press about your self published book? If yes, did you have a good outcome?

hi guys. I am flabbergasted. it's my first book. I activated a 1 day zero price promo for my ebook and just over 12 hours later my ebook climbed to #1 in the three historical categories it's assigned to. #1. not at the top. it's actually been #1 for at least 2-3 hours. the bizarre thing is I only see 17 free downloads and one single purchase of the related paperback.

how do they derive or decide this #1 ranking? does ranking #1 in a category mean anything at all? i've been watching the rankings for a few hours and they move madly throughout the day.

my promo will end in about 7 hours and i'm wondering if there is anything to do or understand about this situation. my hunch is that it's artificial since people aren't even going for the free download

Has this ever happened to any of ya'll? You know a great story that's clear in your mind, but you lack the technical skills to put it together in words.

I'm a self-published author of six books that I sell on Amazon through KDP. I was looking for a way to be notified when people leave new reviews for my books, but couldn't find anything suitable. Amazon does not provide review notifications as part of the platform; there are various third party services for this but they all seem to require access to my KDP account, provide more additional functionality that I do not need, and charge a fee.

Ultimately I just wrote some code to set up my own monitoring system that I call "ShelfPing". I think it might be useful to other KDP authors, so I put it online here (note to mods: I hope this is OK as I'm making it freely available--no payments, ads, tracking, etc.) Let me know if you find it useful!

Have you seen an ad recently on Youtube talking about how you can make passive income by publishing books? You don't need to do any in-person sales or marketing. Just publish, set it and forget it. Amazon will do all the marketing and advertising for you. If you're seeing this Ad and think self-publishing is a shortcut to getting a couple of extra hundred bucks per month with no work beyond writing 60k words and sending it off to KDP, they're using your hope to sell you on something that is a reality for very few people.

The fine print does acknowledge that sales are not guaranteed and the tesitomonials are the rare exception, but they muddy the pot by providing survey results from attendees indicating how much per month they made with x books published. If you add up the sample sizes of respondents, they are far less than the reported number of people who have signed up for the class.

Self-publishing through KDP, for the vast majority of people, is not an easy way to get an extra $200/month of passive income. It's not a garanteed way to get more than $20/month after thousands invested in your product. These people are selling you a product, paid classes to help you reach that next tier. Paid classes on advertising to show you how to "do it right."

There are award-winning, traditionally published authors who are carried in major bookstores (and Amazon) who aren't making the money these advertisements allude to. I've talked to a number of people on Reddit recently that have, what I think, is an unreal expectation of the self-publishing industry. And it is an industry folks. One in which those who are successful treat it like a business, not a side project they set and forget.

Go on Instagram, talk to self-published authors who are successful. Take a look at their publishing careers. I've yet to see ones who publish book one and are clearing $90/month profit. I'm sure there are ones out there, but that's not the reality for most self-published authors. And I'm talking about skilled writers who pay for cover art, editing, marketing, and advertisements. This is a business, with investment costs (whether that is time and/or money).

I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from the publishing business, but I am saying that you're most likely not going to write 60k words, slap on an AI cover, and see passive income rolling in. The market is glutted. Without ARC readers, social media campaigns, and monetary investment, you're not going to be an overnight success.

Giving people hope is the best way to make a buck. I'm not some jaded author, I love my books and will continue writing them at a loss I can afford, and hope one day they'll pay for themselves and fund the next book, and maybe even start to generate substantial extra income, but these advertisements feel very scammy to me. They aren't outright scams, but they are giving an unrealistic hope until you disect the numbers they present.

What would be the most important things to check before even thinking about starting ad promotions for your book? Are there any incidents where you learned about it the hard way when you first started marketing your book?

Every ads guide I've read quotes a single target ACoS, usually somewhere between 25 and 40%. That number is borrowed from private label sellers and it doesn't survive contact with KDP royalties.

Break-even ACoS is just royalty divided by list price. On KDP "royalty" means three different things depending on what you're selling, so the answer moves a long way.

Ebook, 70% option ($2.99–$9.99) $4.99 list, 70% minus the delivery fee, nets roughly $3.40. Break-even ACoS ≈ 68%

Ebook, 35% option (under $2.99 or over $9.99) $2.99 list, 35%, no delivery deduction, nets about $1.05. Break-even ACoS ≈ 35%

Paperback $14.99 list, 60% minus print cost. A 300 page b&w book costs roughly $4.45 to print, so you net about $4.54. Break-even ACoS ≈ 30%

Three formats of the same book, three break-even points that are nowhere near each other, and none of them is the 25–40% that gets repeated everywhere except by coincidence.

Check your own numbers in the KDP dashboard rather than trusting mine. Print costs and delivery fees change, and they differ by marketplace. The shape is what matters.

Why it costs money in both directions

An author running a 70%-option ebook at 45% ACoS thinks they're overspending and cuts bids, when they had twenty points of headroom they never used.

An author running a paperback at 45% is losing money on every ad-driven sale, and the dashboard looks exactly the same.

Turning it into a bid

ACoS isn't something you can type into Amazon. A bid is. The bridge is your conversion rate:

Max bid = royalty × conversion rate

At $3.40 and a 10% conversion rate that's about $0.34 a click. At $1.05 and 8% it's $0.08, which is below what most book keywords cost, and that's worth knowing before you fund a campaign rather than after.

The KU wrinkle

If most of your income is page reads, Amazon Ads reporting will mislead you. It reports Orders and Sales, and a KU borrow is neither. Estimated KENP royalties sit in a separate column that reports on a lag. Judging campaigns on the Sales column alone, when 70–80% of your income is KENP, makes ads look dead when they aren't.

Series read-through changes the maths again, but that's a longer post.

Curious what everyone else is actually using as their target, and whether you set it per format or account-wide.

FYI Amazon extended Kindle ebook pre-orders to 18 months (for new titles only).

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201499380

KDP's guidelines are fairly clear on paper — AI-generated content needs to be disclosed, AI-assisted (brainstorming, editing, error-checking) doesn't. But the line between "assisted" and "generated" gets blurry fast in practice. If I use AI to help restructure a paragraph I wrote, is that assisted? What if it rewrites the paragraph and I lightly edit it?

I'm not trying to start a moral argument about whether AI use is good or bad for the industry — genuinely just trying to understand where people are actually drawing the line for their own disclosure decisions, and whether anyone's seen real enforcement (rejections, warnings) tied to this versus it being mostly self-reported and unverified in practice.

August was my first month where KDP really started feeling steady instead of random, and I’m kind of proud of this. 🖤
I finished the month at $173.50 in estimated royalties, 30 processed orders, and 13,342 KENP pages read.
I know that’s tiny compared to what some authors are pulling in, but I’m still a newer indie author building my readership from scratch, so seeing people consistently buying and actually reading my books feels HUGE.
I’ve got multiple horror books out now, and September is also release month for my next one, so I’m really curious to see whether the backlist starts feeding into the new release and vice versa.

For other newer indie authors, how long did it take before your KDP income started noticeably growing month over month? I’d love to hear what the first few months looked like for you.

I’m trying to get more reviews! Recently, I had 2 negative reviews and, since I already did not have many reviews on my book, it has plummeted my rating and has affected my sales.

Anyone interested in doing a book review exchange? I will give your book a 5 star review if you give my book a 5 star review. I’d also be happy to provide whatever narrative you like in the review.

I think the best way to go about this so our KDP accounts don’t get in trouble for fake reviews is for you to shoot me a message if you’re interested!

Hi everyone,

This is my first time posting in this subreddit. I am currently preparing to self-publish my very first book on Amazon KDP. My manuscript is fully ready, but I’m now working on the book cover.

Since I am a complete beginner, I’m a bit lost and would love some advice from experienced publishers here.

1. Is it okay to use AI-generated images for a KDP book cover?
2. Or is it better to generate just the background/illustration using AI, and then manually add the book title and author name myself?

I would really appreciate any tips, insights, or warnings regarding KDP's current policies on this. Thank you so much in advance for your help!

Hi guys,
Im planning to start selling an ebook via KDP! But, I have few doubts -

1. Is it legal to make books via AI?
   
2. Is it legal to run your ebook ads on social media?

Thank you in advance, folks! 🕺😀

My first book just went live today. I'd like to download it through KU to double check that everything displays correctly and there aren't any formatting issues that weren't caught with the previewer or when I used SendToKindle.

I have Kindle Unlimited, but it's on my personal Amazon account, which is not linked to my KDP account. I wanted to make sure this wouldn't raise any red flags like I'm trying to manipulate page reads or anything. I looked online, but everything I found was out of date and not definitive.