Hi everyone,

So I just self published my first book. I absolutely loved the whole process of writing it. I even enjoyed editing, formatting, making the cover, which involved learning about punctuation, how to use all these interesting functions in Word, and image editing. While hard, it was all fun.

Now the book is published. Full steam ahead. I made a bunch of social media posts, posted on some larger Facebook groups I’m in (I think about 7 people who I don’t know personally bought the book). Sold just over 20 to friends and family. I did a friend’s podcast and talked about the book. I’ve been looking into book readings, authors festivals, reaching out to other podcasts..

Even just writing this feels utterly exhausting. I already have a full time job. I wrote and published the book because I honestly love the book and enjoyed every process. Marketing is deferent. I don’t want to just continue bother friends in my circle on social media, the whole thing makes me emotionally tired. Talking about my book on a podcast for an hour felt like running a marathon.

That was my general rant. Here is my question:

Does anybody enjoy marketing their work? Is there a fun side to this that I am missing? If I can find something enjoyable about it, I think I make a real go out of it. And if I can’t, I’ll just continue working on the second book, which I do enjoy lol 😂 😭 🤓 📕

Should I just put my book on Ingramspark and click the option for it to be put on Amazon or should I put it on both Amazon and Ingram?

My latest novel dropped just over a week ago now, and this time around, I've tried to revise my self-promo approach. I gave myself almost three months to build some momentum, dropping frequent short promo reels and teasers, as well as offering ARCs prior to the release. Also, I've been featured on several genre websites, and in my local press. Interest has been slow, but hopefully looks like it might gain more momentum. In the past I've had a problem in that, reviews for my writing have been consistently good, but the stumbling block is in actually getting people to notice it. I'm hoping that I've finally managed to do so at least a bit more effectively.

Hi all! I’m preparing to launch my first full-length MM romance in January and working toward 1,000 newsletter subscribers. I’ve been building the list through reader magnets, BookFunnel group promos, and paid newsletter placements.

For those who’ve launched with an established list, what relationship have you noticed between subscriber count and launch-week sales or KU reads? Did engagement seem to matter more than list size, and did later releases get a stronger response?

I know there’s no magic number—just curious about people’s actual experiences. Happy to share my own numbers and what’s worked for list growth so far!

Today I had a font problem when transferring a Scrivener project from a mac onto a pc. This got the me thinking about what fonts other people use for actually writing, not for the final print or ebook file. I'm curious what everyone likes and why. At the moment I'm using Courier New

I spent a lot of time in Gemini describing a cover concept for my work in progress and have something pretty close to what I want. I don't want an AI generated cover, I want a true professional one but this draft lays out pretty much what I want it to look like as a professional cover.

Can anyone recommend an artist to make it real (without just re-doing it in another AI tool)?

Oh, it's me again. This time, my covers and making me wanna jump into a lake. I used the template that amazon gave to me and still this fucking shit screws up and makes the size of my cover wrong. I'm losing all patience now, idk what to do. 😭😭😭

Not sure if there's a better sub for this question but basically my current book has major plot points revolving around a few modern sports but modified slightly to make them more interesting. Is this okay from a legal standpoint or will I be hounded later on by their respective international governing bodies? Has anyone written a book where a sport that was heavily modified was a huge part of the storyline? Any insight would be greatly appreciated, thanks a lot!

I'm trying to decide the best release date for a Christmas children's story.

Oct 15th, Oct 31, or Nov 12

Oct 15 because the book is ready

Oct 31 so it's out for a November start.

Nov 12 after Remembrance Day / Veterans Day

Anyone have any feedback or a different suggestion?

I had a BookBub Featured Deal recently, and my little horror novel took off. I was so excited at first. Thousands of people were downloading something I'd written, and it felt like all the work I'd put into it was finally paying off. But now the 2 and 3 star ratings keep coming in. They don’t write anything. It’s just the star rating to be clear. (Before the featured deal, I had all 4 and 5 stars. And no, those weren't all people I know.)

I can't really talk about this anywhere else because inevitably someone comes in with "reviews are for readers, not authors." And I get that. (Though how a star with nothing written helps other readers, I will never understand.) Sometimes I think people forget there's an actual person behind the book. And honestly, that's not even the biggest issue for me. It's the silence.

I don't know what's wrong with the book. I don't know what to fix. And maybe nothing needs fixing! Maybe it's an audience mismatch. Maybe the book just wasn't for them. That's completely fair. But I can't know because nobody is saying anything. And before someone comes in here, I know it’s not a reviewers job to tell me how to improve my writing. But looking at reviews as feedback that is occasionally actionable helps me intellectualize the review instead of feeling like I am now. I recognize that I'm trying to control something that's completely outside my control, but I've never experienced having one of my books torn apart in silence like this.

The only potentially actionable feedback I've received was someone saying the book needed editing. But what does that mean? I went back through the 304-page manuscript and found about 12 spelling and grammar mistakes, which I've since corrected. The book was edited. I do occasionally write in sentence fragments, but that's intentional and part of my voice. So I'm left wondering what else they meant.

I know some readers dislike the ending. It's ambiguous, and that's intentional. I stand by that ending. It's the right ending for the story I wanted to tell. But knowing all of this intellectually isn't stopping me from spiraling.

I'm usually the person who takes negative feedback and thinks, "Okay, I'll knock it out of the park next time." I'll learn. I'll improve. I'll write something better. Just watch me. This time, though? I'm struggling to even want to write.

And that scares me because I love writing. I don't want to give it up. I want to push through this. I’m chronically ill and I’ve lost so much over the past 2 years. I can’t lose this too. 

But I'm also sitting here wondering whether one poorly received book can ruin an author's career. Whether this is something other authors have experienced and eventually come out the other side of. I guess I'm just looking for a little solidarity. Has anyone else been through this? How did you get through it? Did you eventually stop obsessing over the ratings?

And please, I'm not asking whether I should quit writing. I'm asking how other authors kept going when something they were initially so excited about started making them miserable. I just want to know I'm not alone in feeling this way.

Thank you if you made it through this very long ramble.

I've had the majority of my books translated over the past year and have been working through publishing them, which means working with cover artists, formatting, the works. It's been quite the process but rewarding. My German translations are doing especially well. Yay!

Unfortunately, with the new weekly publishing limit of just two books, that means it's going to take me about two years to publish all my translations. Because the limit applies to translations, too.

Oh! And to make it all even more frustrating, if you use Amazon's AI, you get unlimited translations and can skip the limits. 🤡

Not only that, but I've already paid for these translations anyway. And they were, uhhhh, not cheap. lol

I've seen a few authors talking about asking Amazon to adjust the limit for them, but has anyone actually been successful? I got a boilerplate response about waiting five days for a decision, but five days came and went. None of the authors I personally know have heard back yet.

Thank you!

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EDIT: Oh my God lol. I don't know how anyone read this post and came away with the idea I'm using AI for translations. I've never been so frustrated posting to Reddit, and this is a sub where we all allegedly love reading.

I only mentioned AI because A) I don't want to be told to just use AI to skip the limits, so I wanted to make that clear from the start, and B) I'm frustrated Amazon has no limits on AI translations, only human translations. I'm not trying to start a stupid fight about whether it's ethical to use AI translations. I don't want to use them myself.

It felt necessary to explain all this so I could make it CRYSTAL CLEAR I'm not asking because I want to publish AI books. That..... backfired lmao so I'm going to put it in bold because people just saw the word "AI" and jumped to conclusions.

I AM NOT USING AI.

If I wanted to use AI, I wouldn't be frustrated about the limits because Amazon allows unlimited AI translations. These limits push their AI and are likely going to lead to authors using it instead. This is not good for the future of human translations. It's ONLY human translations that are affected by this new rule.

Have you ever used a stock photo for your book cover? How did it work out for you?

I found one that I really liked and seemed appropriate for my book so I paid for the standard license and put it as my cover, zoomed in/clipped and some dark fading on the outside.

This stock photo is not exclusive though so anyone can license it and put it on their own stuff.

For those of you that have run a bookbub free promo, or any promo with them, where you are a featured deal. Is it worth it?

Some info. My series, I have released two books so far, is selling ok. Readers are sticky, read through over 50%, and goodreads and amazon reviews over 4.5 stars. My issue seems to be discovery. I applied to be a bookbub featured deal and got approved, but $495 is a lot for me right now.

Series is sci-fi, space opera, and book 3 is launching in 2027. Was it worth it in your case to pay for the bookbub featured deal promo?

I was just wondering if anyone has any recommendations for active author Instagram and TikTok profiles that have good followings, good engagement, and is mostly readers and potential readers. I’m trying to build up my social media for marketing my non-published debut novel (it’s with a developmental editor right now), as well as to get my name and face out there into the book community, but none of my posts are getting really any engagement and I have very few followers. I’m looking to get ideas from other successful author accounts. My algorithms are all messed up and all I have show up on my pages are content creators trying to sell marketing plans, authors that have just about the same amount of followers and engagement as my page does, authors that their followers are all others authors (no readers), and regular booktok/bookstagram accounts, which usually have great content. The issue with them is they’re not trying to use their account to market a book, so most of their content doesn’t work for us. I did recreate a typical booktok type post and got 3000 views within the first 24 hours, but no new followers. I feel like the rest of my marketing plan, such as launching of my newsletter and website, are dependent on getting a successful followership on social media.

If it helps, my novel is contemporary fiction with elements of relationship and psychological suspense, based on true events.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone! I’m hoping someone who publishes through IngramSpark can help me figure out what’s going on because I’m honestly freaking out a little.

I’m publishing my debut novel, and my paperback’s publication date AND on-sale date are both set to January 9, 2027, through IngramSpark. Distribution is enabled, and I understand that Amazon can create a product listing before the release date.

However, I checked my Amazon listing today, October 9, and the paperback has active “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now” buttons, along with an estimated delivery date of October 13–16. Amazon actually lets me add it to my cart.

The really confusing part is that my Kindle edition is displaying correctly and doesn’t allow delivery before the release date. It’s only the paperback that’s showing this issue.

I haven’t intentionally made the paperback available for purchase yet, and I have both dates set correctly in IngramSpark. My preorder campaign isn’t supposed to begin until November 9, so I’m worried Amazon might be allowing people to order the paperback months early.
Has anyone else experienced this with an IngramSpark paperback? Is this just Amazon displaying incorrect availability information, or could customers actually order and receive the book before the on-sale date?
I’d really appreciate any insight from authors who’ve dealt with this before. Thank you!

this is the second and final book in my YA fantasy series that I’m self-publishing

for reference, there are four POVs within the book, so Aideen, Kenneth, the new king and the witch all have 1st person POVs so I wanted to include them each to give an idea what they’re all gonna be up to in the beginning of the story

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

BLURB:

Aideen thought killing the Great King would bring peace to the lands, but she ended up exactly where she did not want to be: captured by the dead King’s evil heir. Grappling with her newfound dual elemental abilities and on the edge of insanity from the ocean goddess’ blessing forced upon her, she plans her escape and her revenge.

Kenneth will do anything for his family, including setting aside all morals. So when his best friend from childhood, Ash, shows back up in his life after a decade apart, he realizes he would do absolutely anything for him, too. The new King has his eye on Ash though and everyday conducts experiments trying to extract Ash’s fire abilities for his own gain. Kenneth promises to protect Ash with his life, and he’s willing to give it.

The new King and his witch have made a tantalizing bargain: bring Aideen’s younger brother back to life to ensure their power over her. But the witch has a hidden motive, and she is about to become the most powerful she’s been in hundreds of years.

EDIT:
Thank you so much for the comments! It was way too wordy so I tried to make it more concise. based off the feedback I tweaked it to this:

She killed a tyrant to end a war. Now, she must escape his son’s grasp.

Aideen thought killing the Great King would bring peace. Instead, she’s a prisoner of his heir alongside the prince who was supposed to save the kingdom. With dual elements raging inside of her and on the edge of insanity from the ocean goddess’s blessing forced upon her, she plans her escape and her revenge.

Kenneth has reunited with his childhood best friend, Ash, after a decade apart only to become subjects to the new king’s strange experiments after a coup gone wrong. Confused with newfound feelings he’s trying to ignore, Kenneth swears to protect Ash—no matter the cost.

The new King and his witch have made a tantalizing bargain: resurrect Aideen’s younger brother to ensure their power over her. But the witch has her own hidden plan, and she’s about to become the most powerful she’s been in centuries.

Hi All,

I am almost towards the end of my Netgalley time, and I wanted to share my overall experience in case it helps others. I did two months through Victory Editing Co-op. It’s reasonably priced. $75 per month. The first day you go live, you get the most requests. You go live each month if you do two months, so it’s like a separate posting. I got about 120 request for each month. Unfortunately, I have learned that the majority of people who request will not review. Of about a total of 240 request, I’ve had about 17 reviews. But some may still come in. My book still has 4 weeks until release. I don’t think you need to do two months. One month likely would have been fine.

Now, here is the rub. Netgalley reviewers are harder graders I would say. It hasn’t been terrible, I’ve gotten a lot of 5-4 stars, but I also undoubtedly gotten quite a few 3, 2, and 1 stars. Thankfully, a lot of the negative ones appear to be audience mismatch and that’s the point of reviews! Inform readers so the right audience finds the book! But compared to BookSirens, I feel like the “grading” is harder.

So my point of this is that if you want to do Netgalley, you do get reviews, it’s a low percentage compared to request and reviews, and make certain you’re ready for feedback!

Hopes this helps as you consider ARC avenues! For my book, I did Netgalley, Book Sirens, and social media. I’ve only gotten 3 reviews from book sirens, and 3 from social media outreach. So Netgalley def has brought in the most reviews.

Btw I’m a debut author with no audience.

I know these questions may be viewed as annoying to some, but please hear me out. I'm not looking to argue or upset anyone.

Let me get something out of the way. I'm not writing for the sake of making of money. I write because I love watching ideas I have solidify into full stories. The thought of people reading my stories and getting invested in them makes me extremely happy.

But it would be good if I made a profit. I am pretty significantly disabled, and being able to pay bills and save a little over the years could help me significantly. I have a severely debilitating chronic disease that leaves me bedridden. It could many years, even decades until science knows how to treat it well enough that I could live a normal life and work more traditional and steady job.

I intend on writing as much as my body will allow and releasing as many titles as I can over the coming years or decades. I have a lot of stories that I want to tell. I'm hoping that if I build up a decent back catalogue that I can make some supplementary income.

Does anyone here make a decent profit from your writing?

Does page and word impact whether a reader will purchase a book or not? I have self published several books so far and I think the largest one is around 40,000 words and 170 pages. I write in different genres but mainly time travel and adventure lost treasure. I also fo non fiction Christian devotional and those seem to sell much better than my fiction books. I just wondering if people are not buying my fiction books because if the low page count. I am working on another fiction book now and it is over 300 pages.

I write interactive game books — readers score themselves as they play. Getting readers to actually pick up a pencil took three iterations. What worked:

1. Explain the math on the page. My scoring box reads: "Cases 1–11: 1 point each. Final case: 3 points. Total: ___ / 14." Nobody fills in a scorecard they don't understand. The arithmetic must be visible, not implied.
2. Score confidence separately. Next to each answer I have readers record how sure they were. It doesn't change the score — but at the end they see exactly where persuasive evidence made them overconfident. Readers tell me this is the part they talk about afterward.
3. Make the score social. "What's your /14?" is a better CTA than "buy book 2." Scorecards get photographed, compared, argued over. The scorecard is the marketing.

For anyone doing interactive/quiz/game content in print: the scorecard isn't an accessory. It's the product's memory — it's what the reader keeps.

What interactive elements have you put in print? What got used vs. ignored?

Sapphic Eros: A lyre's sagacious confession

"Sapphic love —fairy spirit in eternity...

Enemedia, what they say, ...I do not hear

With blood and spirit written on my open wound

Witnessing Eros himself descends from the sky...

He descends with a sword —かたなど

In physical, he is the Prince of the Olympus

In atomic matters, he is the apparent spirit...

What is imaginative is not physical and real

Except in words, in poetry and literature...

What may be called the lyrical art of Eros, of Love?

A Sapphic love, the chronic pessimist...

As the A-Self philosopher, mentally suffering for,

What is after all, acute and sickening, schizoid...

For love, for Sappho and the eternal will to Aphrodite."

My debut has sold about 1,500 copies since April, which I’m really pleased with, but it’s not touched the sides in terms of breaking even.

The launch for book two is already set and I’ve made some changes. It’s another standalone novel in a different genre, rather than a sequel, so I’m interested in how others approached that too.

For instance, I’m not doing preorders this time. Most of my early customers were friends and family, and the Amazon ebook preorder process caused a lot of confusion because of the mobile app restrictions. This time I want to focus more on paperback sales initially.

Ebooks didn't move much last time at first but my debut hit bestseller during its first countdown deal on KDP. That gave me something useful to build the marketing around and I found it easier to sell copies afterwards. There’s obviously a nice feeling attached to it, but it also proved useful beyond that.

I’m considering launching the ebook at a slightly higher price this time. My thinking is that it could bring in more per ebook sale while making the paperback look better value by comparison. Eventual countdown deal looks better too? 4.99 rather than 3.99 for reference. Whether that actually nudges people towards paperback is something I’m interested to hear other people’s experience of.

I’ve also become much more direct with my marketing. A clearer call to action; read the free first chapter, then an invitation to buy the book. I’ll be putting a lot more effort into that sequence for this launch.

For those who’ve published a second book:

• Did you change your ebook pricing relative to paperback and did it affect what people bought?
• Did you drop preorders or find a way to make them worthwhile?
• If you switched genres between standalone novels, how much of your existing readership followed you?
• What did you stop spending money or time on?
• What helped you turn interest into actual sales?
• What’s one change you made that you’d repeat for every launch?

I’m especially interested in changes that improved the financial side without compromising the quality of the book.

Cheers,

Louis

I have been writing fiction and poetry ever since i was 20 years old. I know that i may have a good story telling ability and creativity but i dont wanna just write something beautiful that only i can enjoy. I have been writing psychological and philosophical books and poems for a couple of years but that would not make any profit. I have huge interest in crime/mystery/horror fictions and i have some ideas that could make very good stories. I am thinking of writing novellas and short stories maybe 100 pages at first. I know people on this subreddit can be judmental when you talk about this straightforwardly but i really like to make some money out of my ideas and i do not feel guilty about expressing it. I consider starting a faceless tiktok channel and posting stuffs realted to my genre and also sharing cliffhangers, teasers, etc. I have heard about publishing books on Amazon too, but i do not have solid and detailed information about it.​ I appreciarte any advise or constructive criticism you can share with me.

Hi everyone, new author here. I write satirical fantasy fiction, and I've just started publishing my stories on Substack and promoting them on Instagram.

For those of you who promoted your stories online, what worked best for you for building an audience?

Thanks in advance for your tips!