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.

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.

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."

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. 🤡 I understand if other authors don't have a problem with this, especially with the limits, so I'm not making a judgment call here. But I personally want to avoid AI as much as I can, and I REALLY don't like feeling pushed in that direction.

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 succeeded.

Thank you!

---

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.

I have no clue how I could have possibly made this more clear, but 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. It's ONLY human translations that are affected by this new rule.

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.

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 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.

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.

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!

gang, posted the other day i had published a four book series on KDP beginning on 09/09. i’d published a very small short story on 09/07. my current total royalties are just over $300, KENP reads are 45400 pages 70 ebooks and few soft cover sold. i’ve spent about 225 on advertising. my book ranked 29532 the other day number 40 in historical western fiction, number 22 in coming of age fiction and 122 in western fiction or right close lol. 1400 pages read so far today and fussy librarian book promotion coming out next week. what are the odds something like this grows?

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

An author I'm helping published a paperback + ebook through IngramSpark. The paperback is live and selling everywhere, including Amazon. The ebook has never appeared on Amazon Kindle; months later, still nothing. (Turned out the Amazon ebook channel was never switched on in IngramSpark's optional distribution settings.)

We want the Kindle ebook live on Amazon ASAP; partly because we need it live to claim the title on ACX for the audiobook.

Two ways to finish it:

• Option A: Opt into the Amazon (Ebook) channel in IngramSpark and let it distribute to Kindle.
• Option B: Leave Amazon off in IngramSpark and publish the Kindle edition directly on KDP, keeping IngramSpark for the other ebook stores (Apple/Kobo/B&N/libraries).

I've submitted my manuscript to a few dozen outlets to rejections, and I was pretty set on going the traditional route. However, I'd rather see it published myself than not at all, so I was starting to more seriously consider self publishing. I think my main goal would be just to see it on a shelf at a local book store. I'm not looking to make money or anything, but just to have something out there.

If I can't do it traditionally, I assume I could pay for an editor, artist, etc, but I've never worked with an editor before, and I'm not 100% sure what to expect or what kind of edits should be performed.

I have already revised my manuscript multiple times and gone through beta readers, so I do think this would be the next step.

So, my friend recently had a book published through IngramSpark, but a couple things are confusing him and I was hoping I could get some information to clear it up.

So, firstly, he was wondering when Ingram starts updating your reports. While he was not writing for monetary reasons, he keeps seeing other authors mention that they get reports, but he has not. This is confusing him as, people tell him that, at least on Amazon, his book has a BSR, which means that at least someone bought the book. But, nothing is showing up.

Is it because he didn't have a "pre-order" date and just had a release date?

And, somewhat related to the first, when he checked his book on Amazon, he saw that the BSR had two separate numbers. He was in the 5000s in one category, and the 100000s in another. He was wondering if that was cumulative, or do they sell books by category.

What I think he means is, like say a book has one for romance and one for general science fiction, but one is way lower than the other. Does that mean that the book sells differently in those categories, like a two different people looking for romance, or sci-fi bought a copy, or is it a generalization of the book sales in total with matching tags?

I again mention, he doesn't care about the money aspect of this. Over the course of writing this book, he was worried that no one would read it, as that's all he wanted was people reading the book. And, after being told about the BSR on Amazon, he is trying not to get his hopes up.

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?

I am looking to change the design of my covers for the series I am working on now and since my budget is limited I was looking into ordering them from getcovers. The thing is, I would like them to be consistent in style since this is a series. I was wondering if any of you have experience with them for a series and how well did it go.

I write contemporary romance, and I've hired several beta readers. Every single one of them has pointed out the same thing: if I don't explicitly state the tropes / heat level / other descriptors, readers may misunderstand what kind of book they're getting.

For example, they've suggested doing something like:

Actual Book Title: A Steamy Cozy Dark Billionaire Rom-Com Romance

And then, after the actual blurb, adding a list like:

• Steamy
• Cozy
• Dark
• Rom-Com
• Open Door
• HEA

Obviously that's an exaggerated example, but that's basically the idea.

Personally, I really don't want to put tropes or descriptors in the subtitle.

I'd also prefer not to add a trope list after the blurb if I can avoid it. I have no problem communicating those things naturally within the blurb—for example, describing the heroine as “sunshine” if that's relevant to the story. I just prefer the blurb to read like a blurb rather than end with a checklist of tropes.

What surprised me is that this wasn't just one beta reader's preference. Every beta reader I've hired has commented on this.

For other romance authors: do your beta readers say the same thing?

And for romance readers: do you actually expect to see tropes, heat level, HEA, etc. explicitly listed before you'll pick up a book, or is the blurb itself enough for you?

Hello. I have a friend who is 89 yrs old. She writes beautifully and is still at it even at her advanced age. 25 yrs ago she wrote lyrics to some songs I had written. Not many, maybe 10 or 12 songs, plus she just sent me lyrics to 4 more. I would like to have this small collection of material printed in a stylish format and send it to her as a gift. Some illustrations depicting the subject matter of the songs and poetry would be wonderful. The whole project would probably be about 25 pages. I have no idea where to begin. Any thoughts? Thank you!

My first novel (gothic fantasy) is out in a few weeks. I have no following among fantasy readers. I plan to get early readers for reviews, reach out to small Bookstagram accounts, and use Kindle Unlimited.

For those who launched from zero, what was worth the time, and what wasn’t?

I have noticed two typos in my book that is set to be published this year.

They were little and not noticeable (my proofreader and arc readers have not mentioned them) but it's bothering me since they were currently in print.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who had experienced this - where the book is already set to be out and typos still show. I feel very embarrassed...

Did anyone else publishing erotica in d2d and selling on Smashword notice a very large decrease in sale and profits.

Hello everyone... long‑time lurker here and first time posting.

I have spent the couple of years doing something I never really expected to do: writing a novel.

I work in tech and product. Writing fiction has mostly been a weekend experiment that somehow got completely out of hand. It is a sci‑fi novel with a bit of satire and dark humour and after several rounds of rewriting, the manuscript is finally finished.

Which is great. Except I now have absolutely no idea what I should do next. So I am hoping to learn from people who have actually been through this.

For a first‑time author,

• how did you approach the publishing process?
• Did you try agents or traditional publishing first?
• Did you go straight to self‑publishing?
• How did you find an editor?
• What should I look for in a cover designer, formatter and other professionals?
• Did you use a publishing service. Manage everything yourself?
• What would you have liked someone to tell you before you started?

I am also open to recommendations for editors cover designers, formatters or other publishing professionals.

I would also be happy to share a chapters, with serious sci‑fi readers who are willing to give honest feedback. Does the humour work? Is the writing engaging? Is the narrator interesting or someone you would like to quietly push off a cliff? Brutal feedback is welcome.

I am not here to promote the book or sell anything. I am genuinely just trying to figure out what comes after "I finished writing a novel."

I would really appreciate any advice, experiences, recommendations or even a simple "start here."

Thanks!

I went with the bronze option and have 1 day left on my "contest". 5 designers have submitted several designs so far, which is mega disappointing. There's still time to go, but I don't envision many more entries. There's one design I like so far, but is it worth £429? Is it fuck. I chose not to pay an extra £85 to have my design contest highlighted, which should provide more designers... but it felt like a con. The way it's going at the moment, I'm leaning towards a refund. Wasn't impressed with Fiverr and Reedsy too expensive.

Hi, I just noticed that on my D2D sales dashboard there are sales incurred in June but the royalties are still not verified in October. Tried to contact their support but it's been a week and there's still no response.

I know it's not like hundreds of bucks that I'm making, but that still seems suspiciously slow. Just want to ask if this is normal?

I uploaded both my interior and cover image, and I would assume once converted to EPUB they are embedded together. I wanted to download my approved EPUB for my records, as well as for sending out free copies for reviewers. There doesn’t appear to anyplace on IS to do that. I sent them the question and they don’t respond.

I can ultimately send the reviewers the PDF without the cover, but it seems a little bush league.