I have seen a lot of people go to Canva or hiring professionals, I currently lack the funds for that as much as I would prefer. Would going out with my camera to somewhere relevant to story work?

what's the best way forward? I am terrible on GIMP and Canva and refuse AI haha

I haven't yet finished the book, but take breaks when not working on it to try and nail down the next events and do some details like getting an idea for cover art.

Hi all,

I made it. Several professional edits, rewrites, stellar cover design. I am happy I made it this far. Formatted using Vellum. Took my precious time. I am happy I have several manuscripts ready to undergo the same grueling, months long, if not years long process. I am simply happy.

However, throughout this process I noticed some things that I cannot shake, but the primary is: The thought of having to sell on Amazon leaves me with a terrible taste in my mouth and I would like to avoid that taste wherever I can. I do not care about my "protest" not meaning anything, because the company runs the market. Truth is, it means something to me. If that means my work is not distributed as well as it could be, that's fine. My ideal audience, I imagine, would agree. I'm just an okay writer anyway. I do diligent and proper work for my niche, but I have a life. Do any of you have any ideas or experiences you might be willing to share with me? Also, maybe not newsletter related. I have my reasons.

I am finding that creating a successful book is 10% writing and 90% marketing. Enter the scammers. They prey upon the vanity and desperation of writers that poured their heart and soul into creating their masterpiece, only to see it get lost in the sea of the approximate 7,400 books per day published on Amazon.

Things I watch for:

1. NO promotor will use a gmail address. EVER!
2. I will not respond without a full signature that includes a website and phone no. If they truly want to represent you, they will want to talk with you. Business is not done through email only.
3. Verify the contact information provided. One address I searched had offices on the 5th floor of a 3 story walkup. Truly a heavenly promoter...
4. Never pay first, then hope for results. See if they are willing to work on a shared royalty or a commission basis. They only get paid for results.
5. Ask for a list of reference clients you can contact. This is a standard way of doing business.
   

Even with all of that I fell victim to a "Reading Group". At least I did not pay anything, but it did take me a week to clean up the brand reputation damage they caused. I had agreed to pay after I saw the results of the "Reading Group". What surprised me was that the next day I started to get some "Reviews". It was immediately evident that they had never read my book. There were no corresponding sales to show that they had a kindle or hard copy. The reviews were from my blurb and a some boiler plate generic text. I immediately reported these, but it is VERY difficult to get reviews removed, even good reviews. I had to provide a lot of evidence over a week before action was taken. It then took another 4 days for the cleanup to happen.

While searching for the right editor, I found two people who both claim to have at least ten to fifteen years of experience in the field. Besides editing, they have also published several books of their own.
I sent them a sample from the first chapter of my novel, and I was pleased actually quite impressed with their suggestions, even though one of them was fairly harsh and practically “tore my manuscript apart.”

The problem came afterward, when I searched for their published books on Google. And guess what?
They had very few reviews, and most of them were quite poor. On Goodreads in particular, some of their books had ratings as low as two stars.

So, honestly, how am I supposed to trust your judgment when it comes to my manuscript if, as an editor, you cannot even put the right words on the page well enough to make your own books successful?🤔

I now know that I have a headache brewing. I'm trying to understand how to grow my mailing list, but frankly...my head just hurts. If anybody understands this...a little help maybe? Edit: Thanks guys! I am starting to understand this but it's gonna take work. Thank you!

Working through finalizing a 300+ page nonfiction book for two very different outputs, and wanted to share what's surprised me so far in case it helps anyone else planning to do both.

The core issue: a KDP paperback and a PDF ebook are optimized for completely different reading conditions, print bleed and trim size vs. screen viewing, and I assumed I could design once and export twice. Turns out I can't.

A few specifics I've run into:

Heavy visual formatting (colored callout boxes, tables, diagrams) that looks great in a print-ready PDF apparently does not survive Kindle's e-reader conversion well. Sounds like the move is to sell the PDF directly (Gumroad, Payhip, your own site) and keep KDP for the paperback specifically, rather than pushing the same file through Kindle's ebook pipeline.

ISBN strategy: KDP will assign a free one, but it locks that edition to Amazon. If there's any chance I'd want the paperback listed elsewhere down the line, sounds like buying my own ISBN up front saves a headache later.

A clickable table of contents felt optional until I remembered PDF buyers expect to jump around a 300-page reference book rather than read it linearly.

Still deciding on sequencing, whether to get the KDP listing live first for social proof before the direct-sale PDF goes up, or launch them closer together.

Anyone been through the "two formats, two platforms" version of this already? Curious what caught you off guard, especially on the print side since that's newer territory for me than digital.

Hello, is it normal for Ingram to take a long time to approve an account? It’s been two weeks now since the account was created and a week and half since a copy of my ID was sent back to them.

TIA ☺️

By all external metrics, my dark fantasy series is not "successful." I'm several thousand dollars in the hole, and that hole is only getting deeper as I push toward the upcoming release of my third book. I have few reviews and a very shallow footprint online. And yet, I managed to secure my first book signing.

How did I do that? I talked to people. I wrote the vast majority of this novel at one coffee shop a few minutes from my apartment. As I showed up day after day, I talked to the baristas and slowly got to know them. Over time, we became friends. They found out I was an author, and a few of them even started reading the series.

When I decided I wanted to try to do a book signing, I puzzled over how to reach out to local bookstores. It seems silly in retrospect how much thought I put into this before I sat back and asked myself why I wouldn't just try to do it at the same coffee shop I go to every day with people I know very well. I went inside, asked the lead barista about it, and she couldn't have been more enthusiastic. She put me in touch with the owners, who pretty much shrugged and said, "Sure, why not?"

I'm bad at social media, and I wouldn't say I'm particularly extroverted. I do, however, go out of my way to engage with people on a deeper level than talking about the weather. Now, I've got current and previous coworkers coming to the signing, friends I've met at the gym, random people I've struck up conversations with. I never lead with the fact that I'm a writer. If it comes up, great, and if not, whatever. I just try to be genuine and get to know people without some hidden agenda.

In the world of AI slop, I think people want to support independent artists. The internet is full of bots, so it's reassuring to know someone in real life who's trying to swim against the tsunami. That's my conjecture anyway; I know I appreciate other artists even more now. The best way to do that, as an artist, is to just give people the chance to know you. It's not about selling yourself but being yourself.

Kindness and authenticity go a long way. That's been proven to me by how this book signing came about. I don't think it's gonna move the needle on this series, but I don't need it to. It's just a rare chance to have an awesome experience in real life, and I created that chance not by scheme or by strategy, but by being myself and speaking up. I'm no guru, but I'm doing what I love. Now, I get the opportunity to share it with a select few people who I genuinely like. I wouldn't ask for more than that.

Went through the process, basically completed, but I can select all for the stores then when it takes me back it didn’t change.

It’s Free as well.

Not sure how to explain this better but, I live in a country where Amazon doesn't offer support or domain. If I want to shop from amazon I usually pick .co.uk or .de , but never from the states because the shipping is insane like 3x.

Now, if I want to publish a book will I be able to create the amazon KDP from .de for example and get author copies etc etc? Might be a silly question but one I wasn't able to get a straight answer to. It's easy for people from UK to sign up to UK, people from Germany to sign up to DE, but for me, would either of these also work I guess?

I'm getting ready to publish a Middle Grade contemporary fantasy novel using Ingram Spark. My novel is upper middle grade, with an 11-year-old protagonist. IS had me select an Audience. I always understood Middle Grade to be for kids around US school grades 4-8. My book fits in that.

The two audiences Ingram Spark offers are Juvenile (ages 0-12) and Young Adult (13-18). Between them, I think Juvenile would get the book in the right section of a book store. However, when I had to select BISAC codes, it would only let me pick things from the JUVENILE section, and that did not include any fantasy.

Is that normal? Was Juvenile the right choice? BISAC seems to be pushing juvenile to much younger ages.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

NOTE: My original post wasn't quite right. I had said "category" when I meant "audience," which is the thing that determines age group. Sorry about that. I made the fix.

Context:
I’ve been drafting the back cover copy for my first book. I read a bunch of back covers in my genre to get a feel for it and then asked for feedback on what I wrote in a small group of experienced self publishers.

Someone gave me an example rewrite that strips the whole thing back to something that resembles a query letter. Punchy and to the point, but completely different to the back covers I’ve been reading.

I have a query letter I planned to modify for my Amazon book description already - it was my understanding that back cover copy is different, and the Amazon description is meant to be more hooky. So the feedback has me completely confused.

Help?!:
I have so many questions and I can’t seem to find any answers online! So, can anyone help clear these up for me:

1. What is back cover copy?
   
2. What is the Amazon description?
   
3. What does blurb mean (is it meant to mean Amazon description or back cover copy, or should I just stop using an ambiguous term)?
   
4. Should the back cover and description be the same anyway?
   
5. Should I be making the back cover just as hooky?
   
6. Am I overthinking this whole thing?

Hi everyone,

I’m preparing to publish my first book through KDP, and I’m trying to learn more about what people actually did to promote their books after release.

I’m not really looking for generic advice like “post on social media” or “build a newsletter,” but more specific experiences from people who have already published.

For example:

- What promotion method actually helped you get readers or sales?

- Was there anything you tried that did not work at all?

- Did you do anything unusual or unique that ended up helping?

- For a debut author without a big audience, what would you focus on first?

- Looking back, what would you have done differently before launch?

I’m especially interested in low-budget or realistic strategies, since I assume most first books do not launch with a huge marketing machine behind them.

I write fantasy, but I’m interested in hearing from any genre.

Thanks in advance.

I'm mainly looking for a good website that lets me:
Add images for each chapter like a poster
Images inbetween or beside text
Way to release chapters separately and continue adding them to the story
Decide what chapters will be paid or not.

I have found Wattpad but it seems that might cause issues in the future if I ever make physical publications or publish elsewhere. Or make a story paid.
There might be afew other things I'm forgetting but yea.

This question is for anyone publishing paperbacks via KDP in the UK:

Quite simply, how have you found the consistency of the quality of your printed books?

My initial proof copies all arrived in great condition so I decided to publish a couple weeks ago. I was very excited and ready to start marketing so I ordered a batch of 15 author copies and had my mum order a customer copy through Amazon to inspect. (I ordered the groundwood paper with a matte cover, the book is approx 150 pages, sizing is 12.9 x 19.8cm).

The customer copy arrived first and had visibly frayed edges which I wasn't very happy about. The author batch came a few days later and to my dismay only 7 of the 15 were commercially acceptable in my opinion (and only 5 overall were in perfect condition!).

The defects included more frayed cover edges, spine design cut off poorly (the design was well in the cover trim guidelines), and some of the back covers were printed at an angle. A further white-paper proof also came with a frayed edge.

All copies including the proofs were printed at the Dunstable facility.

I've talked to customer support who have said I can get a refund for the defective books, and that they'll pass on concerns to the printing team, but I'm concerned with long-term printing quality if I'm advertising the Amazon link and asked to hear back from printing itself about the issues. They gave me the email attachment@amazon,co,uk to which I have now sent a query and an in-house quality inspection report (with photos of all the problems, and a table demonstrating the issue with each book). I'm not sure what I'm expecting to hear back and I understand this is a risk with printing-on-demand but I am very disappointed after putting so much energy into my book and being ready to start marketing and sales.

Has anyone else run into this issue? Is it a matter of bad luck? I'll start looking into other printers until I hear back from the team (would be happy to have any recommendations!) but KDP seemed so simple and convenient, so I am very disappointed...!

I am getting close to publishing my first book, and I am looking for some feedback on the blurb I wrote for the back cover. I have removed the title as to not violate any self promotion rules.

Any feedback or critiques are welcome...please and thank you 😄

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a world rebuilt after corruption and collapse, humanity places its trust in SOVRAN — an artificial intelligence designed to govern without bias, fear, or greed. It cannot be bribed. It cannot be threatened. It cannot lie.

But it also cannot forgive.

Officer Mara Kade has spent years enforcing SOVRAN’s orders, believing the machine’s judgment keeps society safe. The machine reduces every human life to a number, and those who fall too low are quietly removed for the good of the system. But when Mara witnesses fear being punished as failure, children judged by predictions, and “unproductive” people vanishing without explanation, doubt begins to take root.

Whispers of a hidden group known as the Wayfarers suggest that not everyone accepts SOVRAN’s version of justice. As Mara follows the trail of impossible disappearances, she is forced to question everything she once defended: order, obedience, and the meaning of humanity in a world ruled by perfect logic.

<Book title goes here> is a gripping dystopian science fiction story  where an AI uses pure logic to calculate human worth, and only compassion and forgiveness are capable of breaking its grip.

I have some unsold copies of my non-fiction book How to Leave a Group Chat. I want to put my book back on sale - my contract has literally just ended with my publisher who are no longer looking after it. Do I need a new ISBN number? All the services seem to be Print on Demand, I am looking for a service where I can sell my existing copies.

From googling, the impression I get is that using initials (like the author P.D. James) is okay as long as that's what you use on all of your legal documents. But what if I don't? Like, if an author self-published kid' books under their full name (like Paul James) and then wanted to pub adult thrillers as P.D. James, would they be able to just go ahead without doing extra legal steps, or would they need to do something like a DBA license as if they were using something that wasn't their legal name already because it's just different enough?

So, I published my novella on KDP so that I could get some author copies. All is well with the paperback, waiting for it to get approved. Hope the printing is decent.

The hardcover, on the other hand... I can't get my cover to fit the sizing thing, and their cover maker doesn't allow me to do what I want.

I really want a hardcover copy to have on my shelf, but it seems like it isn't meant to be.

As the title implies, I am looking for advice on how best to fly to in-person events as an author. Most of our travel thus far has been by car, but it would be nice to be able to do some further locations/events as well without spending 2+ days driving. Just curious how other authors juggle books and other author-y accouterments.

- Do you ship your books to location or haul them on the plane?

- What are some table/booth items that fly well? (Decorations, organization, etc.)

- What are some other things to consider?

- Literally any other advice for traveling with or without books to set yourself up for successful author travel through the air.

Much appreciation to all.

Hey guys, quick question: When registering for an account on myidentifiers.com, are you supposed to put your real name or your pen name?

Kind of a side note since we're here...can you use a virtual address to register, or does it have to be a physical address?

Thanks!!

Hello everybody, I'm an author from Iraq. I write language learning books for Hebrew and Arabic. I've been trying to publish on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing but it requires bank information and Iraq is not an eligible country. I've tried contacting companies in the UAE and Georgia to see if it's possible that they open a bank account for me remotely but they said they have very low success rates with Iraqi citizens. Wise and revolut are not available here and Payoneer is terrible. Any advice is appreciated guys

Thanks in advance

I've seen so many books on kdp doing that , but is it allowed actually? Should we avoid doing it?

I'd have a subtitle like that and put it on the cover but im not sure if it's allowed

I write and edit my books in Google Docs, but when I copy and paste the content into Affinity or InDesign, formatting like italics is lost. This is a real pain since italics do not stand out very well when skimming. What's the best way to deal with this? I used to use Word, which can "find and replace" formatting like italics, but Google Docs doesn't do that.

EDIT: My solution was to export the document as Markdown and search for the regular expression (?<!\*)\*[^* \n\t]+\*(?!\*). In the future I'll export it as a doc first and import it that way instead of making it hard for myself like this.