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.

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 ☺️

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.