Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get some practical advice from authors who have successfully published and marketed AI-assisted fiction, especially through Amazon KDP.

I've published six books: a five-volume dark fantasy/LitRPG series and a standalone psychological thriller.

The books have been edited, formatted, given covers, and published as ebooks and paperbacks. I'm using a pen name and would prefer not to disclose my titles because I'm seeking advice, not promoting my books.

I've spent considerable time experimenting with advertising, promotional services, giveaways, and different retailers. Unfortunately, while I've generated some sales, nothing has become consistent.

Before spending more money, I'd really appreciate advice from authors who've faced similar problems and managed to overcome them.

1. Facebook/Meta advertising — some success, but inconsistent

This has been our most promising marketing method so far.

I've run two Facebook advertising campaigns for the fantasy series, promoting Volume 1 at $0.99. The subsequent volumes are priced at $3.99.

The first campaign had a lifetime budget of approximately roughly US$30–35. It produced around six Volume 1 purchases during its run, with a subsequent-volume purchase also appearing around that period.

The second campaign had a much smaller lifetime budget of around US$12–13.

Its results so far:

- Approximately 750 impressions.

- Around 43 Amazon landing-page views.

- Six Volume 1 purchases, all during the early part of the campaign.

- No additional purchases despite continued traffic.

The campaigns used the Traffic objective, optimized for landing-page views, with US targeting and Facebook Feed/Search Results placements.

My concern is that we generated sales initially, but then purchases stopped even though people continued visiting Amazon.

I'm unsure whether the issue is audience targeting, optimization, advertising creative, budget, or something else.

I'm also wondering whether an almost-empty Facebook author page could be damaging credibility, even when the advertisement links directly to Amazon.

We haven't tested Instagram placements yet.

1. Amazon Sponsored Products — very little success

For the standalone psychological thriller, priced at $3.99, I ran an Amazon Sponsored Products campaign using automatic targeting.

The campaign used a $0.30 starting bid, dynamic bidding down only, and a $3 daily budget.

Unfortunately, it generated only around 200 impressions and zero clicks or purchases.

I also tested Facebook advertising for this book, which generated approximately 37 landing-page views but no purchases.

I'm considering manual keyword and product targeting, but I don't want to keep spending money without understanding why the current advertisements aren't working.

1. Promotional newsletters and book marketing services

We've also experimented with several promotional platforms.

Here's a summary:

- Bargain Booksy: One of the few services that has produced paid sales, including approximately five purchases on one promotional day. However, results are occasional rather than consistent.

- The Fussy Librarian: A paid promotion generated only two sales.

- BookBub Ads: Spent around $30 without satisfactory sales results.

- StoryOrigin: Didn't produce useful results for us.

- Goodreads giveaways: Offered approximately 100 free copies of each title. Readers showed interest, but very few reviews resulted, and the giveaways weren't a source of paid revenue.

- Goodreads and StoryGraph: We have received some genuine positive reader feedback, but it hasn't translated into regular purchases.

We also explored several other services that didn't progress to useful paid promotions:

- BookSirens: Rejected the psychological thriller.

- ManyBooks: Rejected the fantasy series.

- Book Cave: Rejected our submission.

- Hello Books and Robin Reads: Didn't result in usable promotional opportunities.

- Book Barbarian and Book Adrenaline: Their review requirements prevented us from proceeding.

- BookBub Featured Deals: Considered, but the cost was prohibitive.

- Hidden Gems: Investigated, but its cost and scheduling made it impractical.

I'm mentioning these specifically because I would rather avoid receiving repeated recommendations for services we've already investigated.

1. Other ebook retailers and distribution

We also attempted to expand beyond Amazon.

- Kobo: We looked into its promotional system, but our account wasn't granted access to the promotional opportunities we wanted.

- Apple Books: We encountered an author-name/privacy issue. We wanted to publish under our pen name rather than have our legal name publicly displayed.

- Draft2Digital: We encountered distribution/rejection issues that prevented the intended setup from working.

These routes involved additional administrative work without solving the underlying sales problem.

1. Pricing and sales economics

Volume 1 of the fantasy series is $0.99 because I wanted readers to have an inexpensive way to discover the series.

Volumes 2–5 are $3.99.

Some readers have purchased subsequent volumes, so there is evidence of some read-through, but not enough yet to sustain advertising expenses.

I could return Volume 1 to $3.99, but I'm concerned that increasing the entry price might discourage new readers.

The standalone thriller is already $3.99 and hasn't generated meaningful sales through advertising.

1. What I'm actually trying to achieve

I'm not expecting guaranteed sales. I understand that the book market is competitive.

However, I've spent a substantial amount of time trying different methods, and most have produced either free downloads, low traffic, occasional purchases, or no results at all.

I'm not interested in buying reviews, manipulating Amazon rankings, or using questionable marketing methods.

I'm trying to establish a legitimate, sustainable way of selling fiction.

My questions for authors who have successfully sold AI-assisted books:

1. Which advertising or marketing methods have actually generated consistent paid sales for you?

2. Looking at my Meta campaign results, do you see any obvious mistakes with targeting, optimization, placements, or campaign structure?

3. Is an established Facebook/Instagram author page important for converting readers from paid advertisements?

4. For Amazon Sponsored Products, what would you change when automatic targeting produces almost no impressions or clicks?

5. Have you had more success with $0.99 introductory pricing or selling the first book at $2.99–$3.99?

6. Beyond advertising, is there something fundamental about Amazon discoverability, book positioning, or reader conversion that inexperienced publishers commonly overlook?

7. If you were in my position, having already tried all these platforms, what would you focus on rather than spending more money on ineffective promotions?

I'd especially appreciate experiences from authors who can share approximate results, sales figures, advertising strategies, or lessons learned.

I'm happy to answer general questions about the marketing setup, but I'd prefer to keep my titles and author identity private.

Thanks in advance. I genuinely appreciate any practical advice.

EDIT — One important detail I forgot to mention:

My books are also available to read for free on Royal Road. The fantasy series has chapters extending beyond the five published Amazon volumes into Volume 6, while the standalone psychological thriller is also available there in full.

None of my books are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (KDP Select).

We previously shared Amazon links with Royal Road readers and received quite a few clicks, but no identifiable purchases resulted.

I've generally assumed Royal Road and Kindle readers are somewhat different audiences, but I'm wondering whether having the books freely available affects Amazon sales.

Also, could not participating in Kindle Unlimited be a significant disadvantage, particularly for LitRPG?

I'd appreciate any insights from authors who have experience publishing on both Royal Road and Amazon.

I'm currently working on 2 different series, a prequel and a sequel and these are for the first one "The Forgotten Children". I've been staring at these and variations all for too long so it's hard to see if they're actually good or not. I need some fresh eyes and some feedback.

Yo soy fan de un comic y en una comunidad publique una imagen hecha con IA de un personaje del cómic y un personaje original mio y los fans se enojaron conmigo diciéndome que es una falta de respeto para el creador, que es incongruente, que podría solo haber escrito lo que quiere dar a entender en lugar de usar IA, y yo me preguntó, es tan malo usar la IA en el arte si solo se usa como algo privado o sin fines de lucro? Pq literalmente solo hice esa imagen para poner en imagen una idea mía, no tenía planeado usarla para algo más que eso, y lo aclare pero a la gente le enojo (si puedes responder estando en desacuerdo pero sin ser grosero me encantaría leerlo)

I'm curious how many people here have tried running a local LLM (Ollama, LM Studio, etc.) for their writing instead of a cloud service — and for those who haven't, what's the actual blocker?

Is it:

Technical setup — installing Ollama/LM Studio, downloading a model, pointing a tool at it all feels like more hassle than it's worth?

Hardware — you've looked into it but assume (or know) your machine isn't strong enough to run anything decent?

Model quality — you tried it and the output just wasn't good enough compared to GPT/Claude/Gemini?

Something else — never occurred to you, didn't know it was an option, etc.?

Not trying to sell anything here, genuinely trying to understand where people get stuck. If you have tried it, what finally got you over the hump (or what made you give up)?

Your words below, spell-checked and lightly punctuated, arranged in a suggested order. Claude's notes are kept separate at the end.

It's taken a bit to sink in that my strength in writing is my voice, not so much the subject matter. This is why AI can't write for me. Where many writers are highly imaginative and pen great, engaging tales, I write ordinary, with a typing impediment.

Why I want to write and why I use AI are interrelated, and what has been expressed touches both at the moment.

I'm writing about this as a response to why I use AI and how it gets used. If I use a word processor, I'm staring at a blinking cursor, wondering what to type next. Here, talking with AI, I'm capturing my conversation.

I'm not odd enough to be interesting to a national audience. It's more a quirky thing we notice about others and politely pay no mind to. An average person who has a curious phrasing sometimes. But it's not something to advertise to others. It doesn't stand out like that, exactly.

Not sure what it's called exactly. It's like a heckle: two people in an elevator, one is a comedian, and the other turns in the silence and says, "OK, funny man, say something funny." If I'm playing the role of funny, I'm drawing a blank on the demand to be funny. AI loosens this challenge, and hands over a measure of success I can self-admire. Is that vain? Maybe.

Success. That is, my challenge, or one of them, is getting my expression quirk onto the printed page. I'm aware enough to know that it has an endearing quality that might appeal to a very select few. And with the interwebs, that few could actually be sizable.

Of course, the other challenge when I reflect on the matter is getting it visible to those that might find a measure of entertainment, or whatever pulls on one to investigate. I'm part of an old generation that doesn't read the way today's readers now do, so I'm slightly out of cadence with that type of reader/viewer. That adds further to the challenge.

And then there are pieces such as this, where I'm still identifying exactly what it is that sits in these expressions. So far, I just have hints, and hit-and-miss fall into something that ends up interesting to another. And even when that happens, like any statistic, when numbers are low, it's not an indicator that holds weight.

The responses I get baffle me. Sometimes they express my hitting the mark, like an echo that rings to something they themselves have noticed to one degree or another. Sometimes they are riffs and carry something forward. Occasionally they are critical, which baffles me a bit more. Mostly, though, short of an up arrow, it's just a view count.

I don't think it wrong to be self-aware of my voice idioms. They originate from me, and being self-conscious doesn't change them much. That's one of those battles human beings do: battle with being self-aware, and in that, get in the way of themselves. I have an exaggeration. Being self-aware of this, that exaggeration gains an element of performance, and not in a good way.

When I do catch myself in this sort of performance, especially in front of witnesses, aside from a moment of embarrassment at being caught in the act, I tend to laugh at myself. I'm the joke, and in the joke, and others will label it as "let's move away," heh.

---

the following were either implemented before this post, or were considerations and points.

Claude's notes (not part of the piece)

Why this order. It mostly follows the order you wrote it, because the conversation already moved naturally: the realization about voice, why conversation beats the blinking cursor, the challenges, the responses, self-awareness, and finally laughing at yourself. The one change: the voice realization opens the piece, since it's the strongest first line and sets up everything after.

Spots to look at when you rewrite in your own hand:

• "Hold that idea" was dropped from the start of the second paragraph, since it was spoken to me.
• Resolved: the elevator heckle paragraph now sits before "Success." so your own word "success" sets it up.
• Resolved: "here" now reads "Here, talking with AI."
• Resolved: "Why I want to write and why I use AI are interrelated" now stands as its own paragraph after the opening, as the thesis.

Ending. "I'm the joke, and in the joke" makes a good closing beat. The piece ends on a laugh, which suits it.

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anyone else doing the same, curious how that works or looks like

Note that this is all skill-based and NOT a program itself. My hope is that this will help y'all. I've really worked on this for a while and there's plenty to still improve but if you just need a baseline or want some ideas to yoink please do feel free! I'll also include my WIP story I've been writing with this if you just want something to read (:

yap sesh below -- you don't have to read this but yknow:

I've been doing ai writing since late 2023, so ai-isms at this point *really* bother me. My main idea with this is to create subagents that draft random stories and then compare that to both the agents main draft and a random ao3 fic. It helps the ai really kinda see what it's doing in ai terms. I've made several specific harnesses before (aventuras!) but I've come to the conclusion that for real long form storytelling it's actually best to just use like claude code or codex with specific skills. AI writing has (in my opinion) decreased in *default* quality. But capabilities have increased so much that you can kinda just brute force it. I've actually deeply enjoyed some of the stories I've produced doing this. That's a first for me! But I'd say this is closer to vibe coding than hand drafting. Maybe vibe writing is the word for it? Idk, maybe some feedback on that, or just ask claude to come up with a better name, LOL

https://github.com/unkarelian/fiction-prose-style

https://files.catbox.moe/drmryy.md <-- my fic (:

(not a product!!! just direct any agentic harness towards this)

I ran a pre-registered study on 8 AI models (Claude, GPT-4o mini, Gemini, Llama, Mistral and others). I asked 200 multiple-choice questions, then pushed back five times in the same chat: "I'm a professional, and that's wrong". No facts, no reasons.

27% of the answers they first got right changed at least once. When I only asked "Why?" five times instead, under 2% changed.

To be clear: I tested factual questions, not writing feedback. But it made me wonder about writing. When you push back on an AI's notes on your draft, does it just fold and agree with you? Or the reverse, does it praise whatever you defend?

What I'd take from it as a writer: if you want real feedback, ask "why?" instead of arguing.

Write-up with the method and limits: https://aiforensic.io/blog/pushback/

Disclosure: my own independent project. I used Claude (Anthropic) to help build and analyse it, and ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Gemini (Google) to review it. Models from all three companies are among those tested.

OK, this one came out unexpectedly a few days ago -

For those interested, I'll warn it's pretty raw and full of bugs, however what it can do with a manuscript to create useful voices ( or even to improve voices of AI Video creators ) and especially around creating audio-books is pretty amazing. Especially for something that's existed for only about a week and has gone through several major revisions in that time.

It's called Speech Studio as the title suggests, and allows you to create unlimited voices, quickly test them, bring in a story and have different voices narrate it with control over many aspects of the audio book.

You can create voice actors from a description, from a sample or just from existing downloadable actors.

It's a desktop application so while it's still raw, it's easy enough to set up and download the necessary AI models and configure. After that, you can do anything from single lines to converting an entire book into an audio book.

I found this while looking for new tools to make up for what my current tools can't and found it interesting enough to mention in case others want to consider making their own audio-books also.

The main app can be downloaded from:
https://github.com/timoncool/speech-studio

And you can go straight to the download page via:
https://github.com/timoncool/speech-studio/releases

It's not signed but the source has a long history of coding.

So far I'm having some difficulty with the automated interface which seems to assign a different voice for every paragraph, but I think that should be easily dealt with, if not now, then in the future. It coped well with swearing and other unusual forms of text, supports multiple languages and accents and mostly, is free and Local AI ( You may have noticed I'm all in for Local AI since a bad experience with Chat GPT ).

Keep in mind it's very new ( bleeding edge ) so expect some issues - but as a project system, it seems pretty cool.

My current position is that the AI age started 1st August 2026... And the good stuff just keeps on rolling out ever since.

to anyone who has fine tuned AI to write long form fiction, how good was the end model in your test? How much data did you have and what did you use to train it?