But I should've listened to those who told me revising and editing books takes longer than writing. I doubted you, and for that, I owe you my apologies.

Also, to the one editor on a random thread who said you can't comprehend how many errors are on every single page: I see you. I understand you, and I wish your magic eight ball was wrong.

But I am finished. Just waiting for the cover art, and then I'm sending ARCs everywhere with an official, unchanging release date.

Woke up early Oct 11th to find my ebook had been blocked by Amazon's Kindle Content Review Team.

1. The Kindle Content Team email said: 

Hello,

We haven't received a reply to our previous message regarding the following book(s), so we will not be making the book(s) available for sale on Amazon:

(my book title)

If you still want to publish the book(s) listed above, review our previous message and address the requests we've outlined. If you're having difficulty finding the message, check your spam or junk folder.

As a reminder, all content submitted through KDP must comply with our Terms and Conditions and ContentGuidelines. Repeated submission of books that do not comply may negatively impact your account status. You may also lose access to optional KDP services.

1. I searched my email and while I have other emails from the Kindle Content Team, none are about this book meaning I never got that first email (I publish children's books and so I had multiple about a formatting error I was having trouble fixing). 

I checked my spam and junk. My husband checked my spam, junk, inbox, everything.

1. I tried to contact customer service, but they said there would not be a live agent until 3am the next day. I tried to stay up because it's just romance and no, I don't have a ton of sales, but it's important to me. I fell asleep at 2:30am, work at 4:15am and waited until 4:30ish to connect to first a customer support person and then their supervisor. Both of them basically said:

a) you've already responded to the Kindle Content Team via email (I had, at Oct 11th, 7:25am after looking thoroughly through my spam/junk/etc.) so I just had to wait.

b) I asked if they could see the content team's original email (they said no)

c) I asked if they could see the errors (again no)

d) I asked if there was anything else I could do and it was just no, no, no

1. After reading more online and seeing resources from people who have gone through this, I also emailed RWA, joined ALLi and emailed ALLi. It sounds like some appealed successfully some did not.

2. Because I had just published a spin-off to the ebook that was blocked, I would love to have the ebook available somewhere and so I tried to contact customer service to ask if:

a) My KDP/Kindle Unlimited contract is still binding even if my book is blocked (I believe yes, but this is an internet answer yes so I wanted to doublecheck)

b) since I can’t see it directly, I asked when my 90day exclusivity ends.

Again, a sea of no, and we don’t know and no.

1. I've emailed everyone I can think of, I know there are far more serious things happening, but I spent one and a half, almost two years writing, hiring human editors and copyeditors, artists, etc. to get three books to a place where they could be sold. My subcategories are filled with books people seem to be publishing weekly (actually weekly, don’t know if real human or AI or what else could be happening).

To have nothing I can do now is just an awful feeling.

... and it was bad.

At least at first.

Then, after sparse sales, and interactions with buyers and "almost but not quite" potential buyers. I learned that you're not really exhibiting and showing off your creations as much as playing the game of managing expectations.

Would I recommend it?

Yes, but don't go in there expecting to make lots of sales or even a lot of new fans. If you go there as an indie creator (especially if your comic con host decides to put you in the infamous "Artist Alley" section) you WILL be neglected and you will be neglected for hours. Dozens, no, hundreds will walk right by you and the most you can hope to get from them is a curious glance before something else grabs their attention.

My advice? Don't take it personally. They're looking for something and you just aren't it. Even if it's for something as shallow as because they never heard of you or what it is you're selling, always keep in mind their budget is not a bottomless pit. All you can do is bring some business cards (Which I foolishly did not have prepared) and give as many of those away as you can if you can't make a sale.

Plus, always tell yourself it's never about the profit (It's almost impossible to make profit). It's about the exposure. You're not going there to cover the cost of the exhibition fee, the trip, and your next project. You;re going there to make sure you get a few more fans who will know your brand and follow it for as long as you don;t give up on it.

So, in short, never think of comic con exhibitions as huge leaps. Just small steps for you to mature as as an artist.

I walked in, had my soul crushed, then walked out not happy, but humbled and relieved for having done it at all.

Growing up I always marveled at RL Stein and the sheer quantity of Goosebumps books that were in any library at any given time. And I’ve always wanted to have a library similar to that, so recently I finally started writing Novellas

I did what great grandpa Tolkien did and spent approximately a year on world building. Granted I know that he absolutely spent longer considering he made full languages.

My goal is to get a good sized library on different standalone stories in this world from a wide variety of genres alongside the main Fantasy genre.

I plan to write and release: novella, novella, short novel. I plan keep up with this cycle

Which leads me to my next questions:

1. How commercially viable is this? I want to put it all on KDP Unlimited so kindle readers can read as much as they want no extra charge. (Growing up all the adults around me liked to read on kindles and they read a lot)

2. Do people really care about Novellas nowadays? Personally I don’t read short books

3. How would ya’ll go about getting an email list together for ARCs? I wouldn’t wanna make every single release like a big big deal and try to generate a ton of hype. But I’d like to start building interest in them all the same

4. What services do ya’ll know of that I can sell them as sets? Like releases 1-3 or 7-9 etc

Also let me know anything else ya’ll want to say after hearing about what I’m doing

My arc readers are overwhelming giving me 4 stars. The reviews have been good, but there's just a wide gap between 4 and 5, about 13 review gap. I know 4 is good, but i'm just seeing authors with releases alongside mine getting more 5 stars. And ARC readers tend to be nicer and more gentle, and I'm worried it might bode poorly for when buying customer reviews come in. I have about 20 five star ratings, 35 4 stars and 4 three star. I'm just panicking a bit as I don't have many reviews and they're seeming a bit mixed. My genre is sci-fi and it's my debut. I'm a little senstive right now as a couple of readers have tagged me in bad reviews. thanks for sharing any advice!

Here’s the situation:
My grandparents, whom I love dearly, have asked me to write and illustrate a Children’s book by Christmas. I have all the “story” pieces ready to go - the 400-ish words are in rhyme, it’s 22 pages long, character reference sheets, etc, etc.

What I need:
A good company or contact so I can get their size template, draw the actual book, and send it in to them and have like 10 copies properly printed. Ideally 8.5 X 8.5 pages with a hardcover - simple, traditional children’s book. I can’t spend too too much on this either, so suggesting something that isn’t too expensive helps as well (one website quoted me $700 for 10 copies… no thank you!)

More context for those who wish:
I think my grandparents are expecting a listing on Amazon and all the works, but honestly I just want a few solid, well-produced copies as a Christmas present to them. They have memory issues - it’s a whole thing, this is a labor of love.

I never wanted to write a kids book, this is not my career, and I’m staunchly against Amazon (if I can help it).

what an incredible amount of work to put together marketing materials, ads, newsletters, landing pages, author pages. heck the writing and publishing is the easy part. this tine stuff blows!!!

I have my WooCommerce store integrated with BookVault and have for the past two years. The shipping has always been exorbitant, however, and I was glad to hear that they had added Australia Post to the shipping services.

I went to order three books. Shipping cost? $32. With Startrack it's $22.

I make nothing on paperbacks because the cost of printing (and shipping) exceed people's expectations (and mine) about what they should pay for a trade paperback.

I've heard of Lulu, but the production price pushed me towards BookVault when I was setting up. I just checked their pricing calculator and shipping my three books would cost $18. It would bump up the per-book production cost by $3 though.

Aussie authors, what do you use? Is Lulu reliable? What other options do we have?

I’m mostly ranting/not looking for advice. I’m feeling so down. My Romantasy book came out on the forth. I sent out ARC copies 6 weeks prior to 25 people and none of them have left reviews. I’ve sent follow up emails, etc and just ooof. Now I’ve had a terrible launch and I’m wondering if my book just sucks. I have 2 other romance books with ~10 decent reviews. I’m just sad and feel like a failure.

I've been publishing books on Amazon KDP for a while now, and I'm honestly starting to wonder what I'm doing wrong.

I write fantasy, but I also create illustrated books about Slavic mythology, folklore, and traditional herbs. I publish in both English and German.

Here's the strange part. My German nonfiction books actually sell. Not in huge numbers, but people buy them from time to time. My English editions, on the other hand, barely get any sales.

And my fantasy novels? Almost nothing.

The first book in my fantasy series sold once, received a pretty harsh review, and hasn't sold again since. I've revised the manuscript since then, but it hasn't made much difference.

I've spent a ridiculous amount of time editing, checking translations, fixing mistakes, updating covers, rewriting descriptions, and trying different keywords. English and German aren't my native languages, so getting everything right takes even more work.

I'm not expecting to become a bestselling author overnight. I'd just like to understand why some of my books find readers while others seem completely invisible.

I've been thinking about going through my descriptions and categories again, maybe adding A+ Content, but I'm getting tired of changing things without knowing whether any of it actually helps.

Has anyone here dealt with something similar?

How did you figure out what was holding your books back? Was it the cover, the description, the categories, the writing itself, or simply not enough people seeing the books?

And if you had a few nonfiction titles that were selling while your fiction wasn't, would you keep trying to improve the novels or put more energy into the books that already have some demand?

I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences.

I put isbns but i wasn't sure where else to put it.

I recently published my debut poetry collection on Amazon because that was the cheapest. I'm now planning to buy an ISBN online (i live in the UK) but i was just curious as to what print-on-demand services does everyone use? I stink at marketing so i am under no belief that it'll sell loads and i don't want to accumulate 200 copies for no reason. I wanna be realistic.

Any suggestions on that? Everything i find is so expensive online 😭

Hi there!

I published my first novel in August of this year. It's part one of a series I've been working on for a while now. I am already in the process of writing book two (and have a pretty good start on it). However, I have never been someone to write one book at a time.

For whatever reason, I find it easier and more inspiring to have two to three stories going at once. I sort of rotate through them, writing large sections at a time. With my first book published, I know that people are waiting on book two. However, I am very close to finishing up a book that is entirely unrelated to this series.

I'm curious if it would be a bad idea to publish a book that's not part of the series next. Or should I hold off on the nearly finished book and put all my effort into book two of the series?

Welcoming all tips and info! Thank you in advance.

I am about to publish my second book in my planned 5 book series. Yay for my, I suppose.

What are the chances that this second book boosts my overall performance, and is there anything I should now know in regards to promotions etc.

Thank u!

Hi, I'm looking for first impressions and critiques of two different blurbs for the same story. Which, if either, would make you pick up the book, read a sample, purchase, etc? What type of tone or vibe do you get? If I lost you, where did that happen?

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this!

#1: Nick Steel, an African American PI and World War 2 veteran, has one last case that will require more than just his wits and dry charm to solve. It requires his life. After finishing what he thought to be his last case of the year, he kicked back, excited to leave the city and head back home to his sister in North Carolina. But that dream is snuffed away as his boss convinces him with a few choice words, a tug at a past he’d rather forget, and the illustrious promise of booze to take on the case.
 A murder, an assault, an abduction. 
The chase is on, but as the case unravels Nick realizes there are other players involved. The mafia, the Feds, the Reds, and something he can’t even describe, but Nick simply can’t fail now as he had in the past. Can he piece enough clues together to catch the suspect and find the kid, or will it end up costing him everything?

#2: Nick Steel, a PI and somewhat sardonic World War 2 veteran, has one last case that will require more than just his wits and dry charm to solve. It requires his life. After finishing what he thought to be his last case of the year, he kicked back, excited to leave the city and head back home to his sister in North Carolina. But that dream is snuffed away as his boss convinces him with a few choice words, a tug at a past he’d rather forget, and the illustrious promise of booze to take on the case.
 A murder, an assault, an abduction.
The chase is on, but as the case unravels Nick realizes there are other players involved. The mafia, the Feds, the Reds, and something he can’t even describe, but Nick simply can’t turn away now as he had in the past. He’ll do whatever it takes to solve the case and find that kid even if it ends in him losing his own life. Maybe then, it'll finally be worth something.

Hi everyone! I'm trying to self-publish a poetry book but I'm feeling very conflicted about whether I should add content warnings. I do discuss sh, si, and just general feelings of anxiety and depression throughout my poems and there is a lot of vivid imagery. These poems do tie in with the theme of my collection and are a reflection of my experience--I'm not trying to purposely glamorize these aspects of mental health, it is deeply personal to me and through others reading my poems I hope they can feel heard and like they are not so alone. So far I've cycled through several different variations of content warnings but I'm wondering if they are explicitly needed? I would appreciate some advice!

Anyone have any luck selling merchandise?

I have a friend who’s an artist and wants to do some illustrations for scenes out of my book to share on social media, and I thought it would be cool to turn those scenes into t shirts. I’d honestly probably just break even on the t shirts and make sure its labeled with title, name, and/or website somewhere so it’s free marketing for the book.

But before i commit to all that work, i’m curious how much success selling merchandise actually has for self published authors.

I'm using both Amazon KDP and Ingramspark to publish my paperback with a tentative release date of 11/11. On Ingram, I just wanted to order a proof copy, but 'distribution' was enabled by accident, creating a pre-order Amazon listing prematurely, which I don't want.

I contacted Ingram last week to disable distribution, which they did (I can see it's disabled on my Ingram page), but the listing is STILL showing on Amazon with a pre-order button.

Is there a way to remove the paperback listing from Amazon, or at the very least, remove the preorder button? When the book is ready, I want to publish on Amazon FIRST - then Ingram second.

Thanks.

Anyone else go through a period of worrying your book isn't good enough after releasing it?

I'm finding hightened insecurity as I wait to hear back from bookstores, the library, and wait for the reviews on Amazon. I love what I created, but feel very much that I'm in an insecure limbo right now.

I’ve published my first urban fantasy novel (Amazon KU and paperback) and have written an 8,000 word character origin short story that I’d like to offer as a free reader magnet.
I already have my own author website and use EmailOctopus for newsletter signups and emails.
My initial thought was to host the EPUB on my website, email existing subscribers a direct download link, and have new subscribers receive the same link through an automated welcome email.
Is it really that simple?
Does downloading an EPUB directly work well enough for most readers, particularly Kindle users? Or am I creating unnecessary friction by not using something like BookFunnel or StoryOrigin?
I’m happy to pay for a service if it genuinely makes things easier for readers, but I’d rather not add another platform unless there’s a good reason.
Interested to hear what others have tried and what they’d recommend.

Just to be clear, this is celebrating a revenue milestone. It's not profit. I need to sell waaaaaaaay more books to make up for what I've spent on editing, artwork, advertising and the party I put on to celebrate the launch of book 1. But seeing that number tick over $1000 (with more to come because I'm not counting the royalties from Amazon until I actually receive them) still felt like it was worth celebrating and sharing what it took to get here.

So, first book of a planned trilogy, released Sept 1st. I'd been promoting it pretty heavily through my social networks leading up to the release. No ARCs to speak of, just beta readers. I had about fifty people asking about getting copies before I launched.

Had a mini-launch party Sept 3rd, sold 12 physical copies and 7 ebooks.

Went overseas back to my country of birth for the second half of September. Sold 28 physical copies and got another 9 ebook sales.

Returned to the US and held a more official launch party. Sold 18 physical copies and 5 ebooks.

There have been a few other sales here and there which weren't tied to any particular events.

I set up a small ad campaign on Meta, experimenting with just one type of ad on FB for a month. It has resulted in a handful of additional ebook sales and 6400 KENP read. I'll be trying a campaign on IG and TikTok for one month each moving forward. Not sure if I'll try Amazon.

Total: 101 physical books, 37 ebooks, 6405 KENP (equates to 17 full book reads). All up, that's 155 copies in just over five weeks.

Lessons learned so far. Book sales are great, but those KENP reads excite me the most. To see people actually reading the book is the best part, especially because those reads are more likely to be strangers taking a chance on me.

The Meta ad was initially targeted at 18-35 year olds (the book is YA) and I got some ok click rates on it, but when I expanded to all ages, the number of clicks improved substantially.

Getting reviews is soooooooo hard. Trying to think of how I can gently encourage people to leave an honest rating to get those numbers up.

I'm trying to view the first two books in the trilogy as a giant ARC campaign. When the third part comes out, I'm hoping that there are enough reviews that will allow me to hit the ground with a larger ad campaign for the entire series.

Happy to answer any questions. I know some others have done better than this, so I'm certainly no expert, but just throwing the above into the discussion so you can see what's possible.

If you have a website that combines your author profile with another service (specifically, editing or ghostwriting), can you share it here for those of us looking to do the same?

Some things about me that make it challenging to know how I should design a website:

- I only have one book right now. It’s in a genre that I am aiming to make my specialty for copyediting and ghostwriting. It’s sold well in that genre so far.
- My only copyediting credit right now is my friend’s book of poetry. I am fine putting the book on my website, but it’s just one book.
- My only ghostwriting credit right now is for a book I’m not proud of. I did it out of desperation during Covid (the author is a MAGA person bloviating about his life and opinions). So I don’t want to put that on the website, and yet I want to market ghostwriting services.

Any tips are welcome! Thank you.

So a few weeks ago I got a publisher rocket report which gave me a whole list of highly targeted reader phrases that have an estimated frequency of 300+ times a month. I picked a few for my backend keywords but then I also created a targeted ad for those exact keywords under exact and phrase and 50 cents. The thing is, it’s been running for weeks and they’re all blank (absolutely zero impressions). The ad is delivering, but it’s strange to me that they’re having absolutely zero impressions. Not even a suggested bid. Does that mean they aren’t in fact highly targeted reader phrases and publisher rocket just made it up?

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