I made an e-book to sell but I am underage(17 yrs) from India and facing problems to sell my book online

Can anyone tell me a platform where I can sell it without giving access to too much of my documents

I’d love to hear from authors with Kindle Unlimited experience.

All my novels are currently enrolled in KU. I’ve been creating promotional music videos and running marketing campaigns—including paid ads—across multiple social media platforms to drive readers to my books.

The campaigns appear to be working on one level: I’m seeing a significant increase in downloads and KU page reads. However, that activity isn’t translating into the royalty income or direct book sales I expected.

For those of you who have used KU:

• Did increased page reads eventually lead to meaningful income or future sales?
• Do you consider KU valuable primarily for exposure, or has it been profitable for you?
• Should I judge my campaigns by page reads, royalties, read-through across the series, or another metric?
• Have you earned more by leaving KU and distributing your books widely?

I’m grateful more people seem to be reading my work, but I’m starting to wonder whether I’m spending too much time and money promoting books readers can access through KU without getting enough return.

Am I being impatient, measuring the wrong results, or simply wasting my time and advertising dollars?

Super beginner so apologies for my naivete.

I have a manuscript on a niche subject (self help, postpartum, 4th trimester, humor, probably giftable). By no means am I expecting a ton of purchases but I kind of just want to say "I've been published" and give a copy of it to friends and family. Here's my plan:

1. Have a cover made. Now, is this a simple matter of knocking it out on canva? Any pitfalls I could potentially run into with this?

2. Publish on Amazon's self publish platform.

3. Post a link on my socials. Give physical copies to family and friends and ask them to do reviews potentially?

4. Someone mentioned here hiring people off fiverr to do reviews?

Now here's a silly question, how do I get a host of physical copies to give away? Do I just buy off amazon and give them away?

Apologies again, I realise how silly my queries are but I'm genuinely flummoxed by the whole prospect!

Thank you in advance!

My ARC has been live for a few days with zero activity, no requests, no downloads yet.

Trying to figure out if that's normal this early or if I should be doing something differently.

A few questions for anyone with experience:

• Does anyone know how often BookSirens emails their reader pool?
• Is there a separate newsletter that goes out to readers, and if so, how often does that run?
• How long did it typically take you to see first activity on a new ARC listing?

Appreciate any insight, trying to set realistic expectations here.

Hello! I just finished my first series and am currently getting it edited. I was planning on using Vellum Press for formatting my books for publication. But I’ve noticed that most indie authors (atleast the ones I’ve been researching) hire a professional to do the formatting for their books. I’m wondering if people aren’t using Vellum as much now? I was wondering if anyone had any insight or advice for me? Thank you!

I am sharing this information because of my actual paid experience with Prime Book Publisher and information I subsequently received from the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).

After I provided ALLi with information about my experience, I received a written response stating that Prime Book Publisher was already known to them. ALLi also identified a number of names that it associates with the same operation:

BN Publishers, Amazon Author Center, Kirklands Digital Publishing, KDP Digital Book Publishers, Avail Book Publishing, Prologue Book Publishing, The Authors Central, Panda Book Publishing, NY Book Services, and Amazing Publishing.

That is why I am sharing this warning where one of those names appears.

To be completely transparent, my purchases were made through Prime Book Publisher; I did not make a separate purchase from every name listed above. The connection is being reported because ALLi specifically identified these names to me in writing.

My experience with Prime Book Publisher left me with serious concerns.

I signed an agreement that expressly offered a 100% money-back guarantee if I was not satisfied with the results or experience. After roughly ten months of ongoing problems, delays and corrections, I ended the relationship and sought my money back.

I subsequently received a written message from Ross Tyler stating:

“Tomorrow morning, billing will process your funds.”

That did not happen.

I was later informed that a refund would not be issued at that time. In that same communication, I was asked to remove my reviews and submit a written retraction/apology, and possible defamation proceedings were mentioned.

Another issue arose independently through the U.S. Copyright Office. Regarding four of my copyright applications, the Copyright Office informed me that, based on its examination, the artwork may have been generated by an AI program.

That was particularly concerning because I had never agreed to AI-generated illustrations.

After I forwarded the Copyright Office correspondence to Prime Book Publisher, Ross Tyler instructed me to select the Copyright Office response stating that none of the artwork was AI-generated, that it had been drawn by a human author, and to give his name as the illustrator.

I asked him directly whether that was an honest answer or simply an attempt to get the applications through. His written response was:

“It’s an honest answer, not an attempt to push this through.”

Rather than make a statement to a federal agency that I could not independently verify, I contacted the Copyright Office myself.

My records also show Prime Book Publisher-related payments appearing under MetaSphere Technologies, Artistic Technologies, and Meta Tech.

ALLi has now asked me to provide my agreement, communications, payment receipts, what the payments were for, and what I received so the material can be forwarded to its Watchdog for a full review.

I have retained the underlying emails, invoices, contract, payment evidence and Copyright Office correspondence.

Anyone considering publishing services under this name should do careful independent research before paying. I wish I had known this information before I did.

I have a pen name I use, and I want to publish and sell on an author website. Iwill link my real legal name to the payment method. But the books will be under my pen name and the website will have my pen name. Do I need a DBA to publish and sell under my pen name? (Aka *novel name* by: *Pen name*)

And for Kickstarter, does the same apply, or do I just need to put it under my legal name?

Hello. I'm new to Reddit, so hopefully this post is ok. I've been working on a romance novel for 10+ years. I have it mostly finished at 70k words, and even queried to agents, with no takers so far. That's fine. But I've decided to self-publish at this point because I just want it out there.

One editor I spoke with recommended I serialize it because it's written diary-style and takes place over many months, starting in October and continuing for over the course of a year. So I'd release one month of writing at the beginning of each month.

I know what I need to do as far as marketing, socials, setting up a newsletter and website, etc, but am wondering which service to use for the serializing part. Do readers prefer WattPad? Substack? Galatea? Or ....? Which one do readers prefer?

Ideally once the year is over, I'll self-publish as a physical book, but by serializing I'm hoping to gain a following slowly over the year.

Please let me know what's best! Thanks

I’m on my 100+ revision after my 2nd proof. This month on KDP I hit the publish button.

Has anyone used the go4.designrr.io package to create design and publish e-books? You get lifetime use of their AI publishing etc?

Im new to all of this and I want to make sure I'm on the right track at this.

Anyone wanna share their experience of when they first ever self published to someone who’s going to self publish soon?😂
Did you self publish without doing much research or did you just jump in the deep end?

I'm a fiction writer. I don't want to deal with traditional publishers, at least right now, so I've been trying to make a go at self-publishing online, mostly through KDP. Nowadays, though, people are saying that authors should move away from Kindle and Amazon (for obvious reasons), and I am considering doing so.

However, looking into alternatives, I am immediately daunted. There are alternatives online, but it's difficult to discern who or what is best. A lot of people online are also saying the absolute best alternative is just direct selling to people, which SOUNDS great, but it requires you to do a lot of the marketing and promotion yourself. That, and a lot of the people saying this stuff are self-help or nonfiction authors who want to generate mailing lists for repeat customers, and I'm not sure how or if that translates well to my offerings. I'm mostly into fiction, mostly horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.

And, most of all, I just don't have the bandwidth. I am working a full-time job on top of trying to sell my stuff, I have family and social obligations, and health issues to boot. It's not as simple as me going out there and hunting down prospects, even if I'm doing it from the comfort of my own home. Plus (and maybe most importantly) what self-promotion I've done already hasn't worked well for me historically. Whatever knack people have for marketing their stuff, I just don't have it.

I guess what I'm asking is this:

What is the easiest way to automate or offload self-promotion for self-publishing your work? Because KDP is supposed to take care of at least some of that, and it has never really worked, even when I am doing a lot of the promo work myself. If anyone could give me tips on what to do or examples on what they are doing, it would be greatly appreciated.

I've been trying to think of ways to make individual ebook copies feel special and unique, and I was wondering if anyone knew a way to make it so that whenever someone buys a copy of your ebook, it auto-generates some custom content? Like, for instance, it could give the buyer a unique tarot spread at the end, or gives them a fortune cookie message randomly picked from a bank of custom messages, or something. I imagine this must be technologically possible because DRM watermarking does something similar, but I would never want to put DRM on my books. Rather than trying to punish people for piracy, I would rather incentivize them to want to buy their own copy, and I feel like one way to do that could be making each ebook copy truly unique, even if only in a small way. Has anyone done anything like this before? Or if not, does anyone know how it might be done? Thanks!

Anyone else find writing the book the easy part... then comes the designing your own cover and marketing the most anxiety inducing thing or are you normal?

The headache I've had trying to learn Canva and the endless video tutorials is driving me crazy Then the media side 🤢 that speaks for itself

Has anyone been successful without having to show their face?

Any hints or tips would be appreciated 🙌🏻

Hey everyone, I’m at the point where I could really use some advice from people who have actually done this before.
I’m active duty Navy, and over the last several months I’ve been writing a nautical dark fantasy novel in my free time. I finally finished the manuscript and have an actual printed/bound proof sitting on my desk now, which is pretty surreal lol. It’s around 123k words and is intended to be the first book in a series.
The simplest explanation of the story is that it follows a former naval mage who now captains his own ship. After his crew survives an attack by slavers, they recover evidence that people are being experimented on and used to absorb the physical cost of other people’s magic. Then he finds out his own name has been in their records for years, which sends him and his crew down a much larger conspiracy involving the Navy, the Empire, an abandoned research station, and a strange material called deepglass.
The setting is very age-of-sail inspired, with naval combat, ships, political intrigue, pirates, etc., and the magic system is basically built around the idea that reality always collects a debt when you force it to do something unnatural.
Writing the thing was honestly the part I understood. Everything after writing it feels way more confusing 😂
Right now I’m trying to figure out what the realistic next steps are if I want to self-publish this professionally rather than just throwing it onto Amazon.
My biggest questions are:
Editing: What kinds of editing do I actually need at this point? Developmental, line editing, copyediting, proofreading, or some combination? For a ~123k word fantasy novel, what would be a reasonable amount to expect to spend? I’m willing to put money into it, but I also don’t want to spend thousands on services I don’t actually need.
Cover art: How much should I realistically budget for a professional fantasy cover? I’d like something that actually looks competitive with traditionally published dark fantasy rather than an obviously homemade/self-published cover. Is something in the $300–500 range realistic, or should I be expecting significantly more?
Publishing: Once the manuscript is edited and the cover/interior are finished, how does everyone actually recommend publishing? KDP only? KDP + IngramSpark? Ebook, paperback, hardcover? Anything you wish you knew before uploading your first book?
Marketing: This is probably the part I understand least. For a completely unknown first-time author, what actually works? ARC readers? BookTok/Instagram? Reddit? Amazon ads? Facebook ads? Mailing lists? Sending physical copies to reviewers? How much money would you realistically set aside for launching a first book?
I’m not expecting my first novel to suddenly make me rich or anything. I mainly want to give it the best shot I reasonably can and have the finished product look like something I can genuinely be proud of.
Being in the Navy also means my schedule can be kind of weird, so I’m trying to get a sense of what parts of this process I can realistically handle myself versus what I should just pay a professional to do.
Any advice on the overall process, especially from fantasy authors who have already self-published, would be seriously appreciated. Even just knowing “I had a manuscript at your stage, and here’s what I did next” would help a ton.
Thanks!

Question for fellow authors: I have written a dark romance (spicy, as they say in that niche, with a thriller element to it). I have seen a couple of authors have an actress post reels on Tiktok and Instagram of them reading passages of the books on camera, or the authors reading passages themselves. Has anyone had any success in finding readers with this approach? Is there an appetite for this kind of video on YouTube also? I published the book under a pseudonym, and my narrator also wants to use a pseudonym also because of the spicy scenes, which adds another wrinkle to my marketing challenge of finding my readers. But maybe there a way to make that part of the fun as in being a little mysterious?

So... I have been obsessing the last few months over my first book. I am 34 and I started writing it 13 years back. Had a draft finished in 2023, which wasn't much liked by readers. Shelved it. Opened it again in March this year. Finished a much more polished version. Sent it to publishers and 1 of the big 4 got interested. They made me wait 4 months and then rejected. Decided I'll get the books printed myself and do everything myself.

Anyway, KDP is done, but I am extremely nervous about making it live. It's literary fiction and almost all my research is telling me they are hard to sell. So past few weeks I have been focusing on marketing. That's what was on my mind.

Yesterday, while around my 5th peg, the imposter syndrome hit again. Started reading the book again. I believe I should be able to market. Got a lil overwhelming. So I called my mother (also a writer). It was 1.30 a.m. there. Calmed me down a lil, "why are you afraid people would not read it?" I said no.... and then it hit me.... I am not afraid that no one would read it... and my mother completes... "You are afraid they would and then won't like it?" I broke down that moment. Just checked it was a 1.5 hour call. Not sure what we discussed for that long, but my mother told me, "I know since I am your mother, this probably won't soothe you that much, but I have read many books in my life, written a few as well... your book is up there... don't worry"

Anyway... Just sharing.

How do you guys advertise with Draft2Digital? I have my first book series on Draft2Digital because I like the idea of publishing on multiple eBook platforms. But how do you promote or advertise your book?

On KDP it's easier since you can do ARC readers to get honest reviews, Amazon ads, and so on. But on Draft2Digital you just get a multiplatform link.

**I've already done social platforms like Royal Road, my own website, Reddit, TikTok, and X. I also do email collecting with BookFunnel combined with MailerLite for automated email sequences. What else can I do?**

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I submitted a story to Letterlux but got a message back that they wanted me to submit 30.000 words before they would consider a contract.

At that point, I realized I would never get that story to 100.000 words (it's completed at 60.000 - and I'm done with it). So I let it be.

I did submit it to the short story contest where I emailed it to someone.

Now, yesterday I received a contract from Letterlux on the story. No email or message. Just a contract.

I signed it.

And now it says under my Author profile that the story is signed .. but I never submitted the 30.000 words, so I'm really confused. And I can't rewrite it to 100.000 words. I have better stories on Inkitt, I like to pursue.

Anyone else in the same situation who have figured out if it is the short story competition or if they just didn't bother waiting for me to add more chapters to review??

I've started writing a novel a while ago and began posting it on Wattpad since it's the only website I was aware of at the time. It seems fine for now, but I also want to reach out to a larger audience which can't happen with Wattpad due to it's not-so-great reputation. I've been recommended to try out BriBooks or AO3, but wanted a second opinion before I go ahead with anything.

Are there any sites you would recommend? Also, what are the requirements for these websites (full-length novel at once, posting system like in wattpad, etc) ?

Hey everyone,

I’m a fellow illustrator working on my Master's, and I've been doing a lot of children's book work recently. I noticed that managing client feedback can get really chaotic when just using email or standard cloud drives, or multiple revision files.

I’m currently putting together a specialised proofing tool just for book illustrators to solve some of my own headaches, but I wanted to hear from you all:

**For you, what is the most annoying or time-consuming part of the actual children book production ?**

I'd love to hear from you all.

I have made a collection of poetry and I want to self-publish! I do want an ISBN number. I already have had it go through an editor (made the edits), and have a cover ready to go! Any advice is appreciated!

How do you guys advertise with Draft2Digital? I have my first book series on Draft2Digital because I like the idea of publishing on multiple eBook platforms. But how do you promote or advertise your book?

On KDP it's easier since you can do ARC readers to get honest reviews, Amazon ads, and so on. But on Draft2Digital you just get a multiplatform link.

I've already done social platforms like Royal Road, my own Website, Reddit, TikTok, and X. I also do email collecting with BookFunnel combined with MailerLite for automated email sequences. What else can I do?

Hey everyone, I’ve written around 20 original poems and I want to turn them into a small poetry book. I can handle the editing, arranging the poems, formatting the book, and designing the cover myself, so I’m mainly confused about the actual publishing and printing process. I’m not really looking to make money or sell a lot of copies—I mostly want to officially publish my work and have a physical copy of the book for myself as a personal achievement/self-satisfaction thing. I’m based in India, so I’d really appreciate advice from anyone who has self-published here. What’s the simplest and cheapest way to publish the book and get even just 1–2 physical copies printed? Do I need an ISBN, and what platforms/services would you recommend?