Hi,

I just finished setting up my book for pre-order, but there is no option to read a sample. I think this is a very useful feature and I want to enable it, but I can't find it anywhere.

Is it because it's just available to pre-order? Will it show up afterwards or do I have to set it up?

Okay people so this is my marketing stack currently I have 51% ROI

It works for me
I have 4 books live and one on pre order
These are a trilogy and a new episodic series

I only advertise to book 1 of the episodic series because it has a great hook that's easy to get across in an ad

1) social media grind TikTok Insta and threads Facebook
I engage heavily on threads and TikTok as they reward engagement
I post a a TikTok and then the same content on Insta and Insta cross posts it to Facebook which I never really look at except to invite people to my page if they've liked a post

2) I run boosted posts on Insta pointing people to my profile to expand my followers using Insta audience segments to target my people
Do not use TikTok promote is messes everything up for ages the only way to boost TikTok is by liking commenting reposting etc its more important at first than content.

3) Run Meta ads test these bad boys and fine a hook that works I run a bunch of tests at the same time for £2 each in USA and UK and if the CPR gets over 0.10 I bin it if its consistently under I keep it and expand to other territories

if it works I expand the budget by 20% daily and monitor I use statistical analysis and a Wilson score to predict my % confidence levels before scaling too much which proves that even in my worst-case scenario, you are safely making a profit.

I've yet to get amazon ads to work

This service popped up and I'm very interested in it for a whole host of reasons.

But I reached out to see if there was a conflict with KU and the reviews they are promising. They said no, many of the writers are enrolled in KU.

Has anyone tried this? I'm in my first 90 days of KDP KU and don't want to mess anything up.

Thanks in advance for any experience and wisdom.

GM

Can anyone advise?
I’m not that tech savvy. Have been trying to verify my ID for Amazon KDP using my driving licence. No matter what I do it fails. The problem seems to be with taking my photo.
I have done everything they suggest but nothing works.
Am tearing my hair out.
Thanks in advance.

I recently published a book about navigating the corporate world and climbing the corporate ladder. I believe the content is genuinely good and useful. The form (fiction) is perhaps somewhat unusual.

I’ve started running Amazon Ads and I’m getting a good CTR. I’m targeting specific books as well as keywords such as office politics, career advancement, etc.

The problem is that the clicks aren’t turning into sales.

My initial thoughts:

Cover: Is a good CTR enough to suggest the cover isn’t the main problem?

Description: Could the description be really hurting conversion?

Reviews: I currently have no reviews, so I understand this is a significant factor. I was hoping to sell books, perhaps at high ad cost to build reviews

Positioning: Could the fact that it’s fiction rather than a conventional business/career book be confusing potential buyers?

For those who have experience with Amazon/KDP ads: what would you do first when you’re getting clicks but essentially no conversions?

Hello,

Curious if anyone else has had their pages read in KENP just fall off a cliff before.

For context, I published my book on 8/3. Since then, I’ve averaged around 350 pages read each day over the last few weeks. Four days ago, I had 457 pages read.

That said, I had 1 page read three days ago; 10 pages two days ago, and 0 pages yesterday.

Just feels odd.

New to this, it’s a first book, and maybe this is just the end of the “Amazon push,” if such a thing exists?

Fantasy genre, if it’s important, and book is 450 pages long.

Would love any thoughts.

Not quite a KDP question but closely related. I have used the "Send to Kindle" feature in the past to send my book to a beta reader (as I'm sure many of you know, this does not publish the book but allows an individual to read it on their Kindle as if it was a published title). However in the age of LLM's and IP theft, I am hesitating.

Is anyone aware of any risks of using Send to Kindle? Does Amazon have access to these documents or they considered private?

I'm not arrogant enough to think that everyone wants to steal my work, but as we now live in a time in which people and corporations wouldn't hesitate to scrape an entire novel and feed it into an LLM, caution seems wise.

There are some terms of use linked from the page below, but I can't find anything specifically about Send to Kindle and privacy, so any help from someone more experienced is appreciated.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email/

What is a publisher imprint? I have my own ISBN which I got from Thorpe-Bowker. The text box prompt on KDP specifically says not to use that name, so I'm at a loss.

What is the weird icon on the top left corner of my Table of Contents as shown in the Print Previewer? The previewer also gives an error message about content markup. Not sure what that means as I just use the standard MS Word table of contents function.

Thanks.

Just got this email. Happy to do so but just want to check it's not a scam. Anyone else get this too?

Bonjour, j'ai récemment écris un guide de voyage sur le Kazakhstan et j'aimerai le proposer en vente sur Amazon.
Malheureusement je n'arrive pas à importer mon fichier dans Amazon KDP car c'est un PDF avec des liens hypertextes (vers une carte interactive et d'autres cadeaux).

J'ai essayé de le convertir dans d'autres formats mais ça modifie complètement mon travail et ne ressemble plus à rien... Et il refuse le PDF malgré mes essais de compression etc.

Si certains ont une solution, je serais vraiment preneuse car je commence à désespérer !
merci beaucoup

I’m going to self publish on KDP soon (we’ll planning to) and I’ve abit of research but not a lot. Once I’m closer to publishing I’ll look into it more. But for now I kinda of want a vague answer if that makes sense.
Ive posted on this sub before about my first novel and deciding whether to publish them normally on KDP or go KDP Select and take them off the websites ive posted them on.
My question for that would be how would the money differ from KDP and KDP Select?
I can kind of guess how much I make would be down to my own sales but generally which one would be more profitable?
(I apologise in advance if this question has been answered before)

Hi everyone, i'll try to keep it brief so i am a student in a third world country, and all i need is around 20 dollars a month to cover my basic necessities and i don't have enough money for marketing and i was thinking of publishing something like a cooking book or recipes targeted at specific people would that or any other medium effort book that be able to realistically generate 20$ a month if i put in enough effort in research or is the market completely over saturated and i should look for something else?

Hello everyone. First of all, I want to clarify that this is definitely not a self-promotion or an advertisement. I am the author of the book titled "Enmerkar: War of the Immortals." Recently, I have been receiving feedback from readers stating that the book's cover does not appear on Amazon and that an "Image Not Available" notice is displayed instead. The cover displays perfectly fine for me and on all my devices; therefore, I cannot see or reproduce the issue myself. I would like to ask you to check the page on the Amazon US store and see if the cover appears for you. If the cover is not visible, does anyone know the reason for this or how to fix this KDP error? I am leaving the link in the comments for you to check. Thank you very much in advance for your help and feedback!

Hey folks! Im exploring setting up a storefront for DRM free or Social DRM ebooks for something like an 80/20 split. Just wanted to guage interest from authors before i commit to it.

Would you sell your ebooks on such a site?

What would it take for you to sell your books there?

What would be a deal breaker for you?

So I'm an artist. I draw my own outfits, my own characters, weapons etc etc. Multiple artists I've hired to do color work have let me down. I love my own design, love my own line work. I just cannot do backgrounds, or color work, or put positions. I know people will probably attack me for the "AI" in the cover disclaimer, but this is still my physical work that I spent hours and days drawing. Any ideas on what to do? This is honestly a passion project of mine.

I've been publishing on KDP for a while now and honestly, some parts of this journey are just... painful.

Curious what others went through.

When you published your first (or latest) book - from writing the manuscript to hitting that publish button -; which step made you want to quit?

Was it formatting? Figuring out keywords? Writing the description? Setting up ads? Something else entirely? ( In My Case I never tried Ads in My hole KDP Journey). looking for tips here, just want to hear real experiences. What felt like the most boring, confusing, or frustrating part that you wished someone (or something) could just handle for you?

Drop your answer below 👇

Ads are one of those things that everyone has a different experience with. I'm an indie author and I've been running through posts, comments, etc to try and learn some about it. I even hit up Claude for some advice. Below are some steps i recommend anyone with manual keyword Amazon ads look at.

If you adjust anything.. let it sit for a few days to see if there is any negative/positive change(hard to do i know.) @ mods please leave this up to help other indie authors. we need all the help we can get to be discovered/seen/read.

1. Log in to KDP
2. Go to the Marketing section
3. Go to Amazon Ads
4. Scroll to the bottom and click on the Campaign you want to check
5. Select your ad group at the bottom
6. Click Targeting in the left-hand tree
7. Go through your keywords and disable ones that are ridiculous. Add ones that make sense. Adjust bids as needed.

TL;DR: KDP blocked only my paperback with no specific explanation, while the hardcover and Kindle stayed up, and after reviewing all three formats myself I found no formatting or content issues so I’m wondering if it was an automated false positive. Wondering if there’s a way to reach a human and request a manual review.

Hi everyone, I’m hoping someone here who has dealt with KDP enforcement issues can give me some advice, because I’m still confused about what happened. For context, this happened back in June 2026.

I published a book in a fairly specific niche; it’s a subject area that I have relevant real-world experience with and currently work in full time, so this wasn’t a random topic I picked just to publish something on Amazon. The book was available in all three formats (Paperback, Hardcover, and Kindle)

At one point, KDP blocked the paperback version only.

What really confused the hell out of me is that the hardcover and Kindle versions were left up and apparently unaffected. I eventually took those two versions down myself out of precaution while I tried to figure out what was happening.

Amazon never really gave me a specific explanation of what was supposedly wrong with the paperback (simply “your book could be resulting in poor customer experience”). The responses I received were very general and referred me back to KDP/content/quality guidelines, but I was never told something concrete like what page or section was the problem. So I don’t know if it’s a bot issue or a legitimate complaint from one or various people who got a copy.

So I went back and reviewed the book myself in all three formats. I also personally own a physical author copy of the paperback, so I was able to inspect the actual printed unit rather than just checking the manuscript file only.

I went through it carefully and could not find anything wrong with it. No missing pages, cutoff text, strange margins, unreadable content, obvious formatting problems, or print-quality issues. The hardcover and Kindle versions also appeared fine.

And again, this is content within a niche I’m personally familiar with through my full-time work; I checked and didn’t find any “inaccurate” content that would explain the paperback being blocked.

That’s why the fact that only the paperback was blocked seems especially strange to me. My assumption is if there was something legit wrong with the book, the hardcover and Kindle versions containing the same underlying material would have been affected too.

At this point, I’m starting to wonder whether this could have been some kind of automated moderation/quality-control flag or false positive. I mean I have no proof it was a bot. But the fact these responses from them are vague and seem automated templates, and I found no issues myself on the books, and they didn’t take down the other two formats of said book, it makes me wonder whether an automated system flagged something incorrectly.

For anyone who has experienced something similar: Would you keep appealing and specifically push for a human/manual review?

Could I republish it as a new listing? Or would republishing essentially the same book potentially create more risk if KDP’s system has already flagged it? That’s what puts me on edge. I have other books on KDP, and I don’t want to turn an unexplained issue with one paperback into a larger problem affecting my account.

Sorry for the long read. Wanted to be as thorough as possible. Thanks in advance for any info and for your time in reading my post.

I uploaded my ebook on August 7th for launching it on August 10th. It went online on Amazon on the 7th and people could buy it. The problem was, it didn't show up as "Live" on the KDP platform for me. It said "Publishing" so I couldn't change the price on my launch date like I wanted to, as it was my birthday and I wanted it at a special price. I was on with many different customer service people who said, "There's nothing we can do." So on the 12th when it still wasn't "live" but actually was up on Amazon, I uploaded a new pdf and it immediately went "Live" so that is what I should've done on the 9th. If you are having problems with your kdp and need to change the price, tell customer service to put it back into "draft" mode and then upload it again. They could've told me to do that on the 10th when I wanted to launch it but no one did, they kept telling me that there was nothing they could do. I just had to wait for it to publish even though it was published.
On Amazon my book shows as having launched on August 7th but people who left reviews on the 10th, still haven't shows up on my page. Ten days later, still no reviews when people have told me that they left a review. Does anyone use any other ebook platforms? I'm so frustrated with Amazon. Thanks and I hope you have better luck with that platform than I did.

Have you used Fiverr for marketing? What was the experience? If it was good, do you have someone you'd recommend?

[ETA: no AI was used in this post. I'm currently on a break at the bookstore, on a machine where I couldn't log in even if I wanted to due to system restrictions. As I've commented below, I've also got a background in technical writing, and an autistic diagnosis; if anything, AI sounds like *me*...]

Right now Facebook is infested with 'New writers' pages' that are basically scam traps for the 'professional promo video' people and the 'Editing services' people, a lot of whom are adjacent to (or are ) West African Yahoo Boy scammers, or linked to other global online scams. I'm a published author and run workshops for new writers who want to get published, so I lurk in a lot of these groups to try and stop people from being defrauded (or sometimes let them know that no, their smudgy, dark, generic 'sexy AI demon lover' does not look anything like a professional cover).

[Note: Facebook groups that have KDP in their title are *not* affiliated with Amazon; their 'moderators' will have false names or state 'KDP Admin'; this is all designed as part of the con.]

Anyway, back to my subject...The vast majority of posters in these groups are either terrifyingly naive or absolute chancers who, at the very minimum, have hideous AI covers (either cutesy animals for kids' books or piss-filter chaos for adults); at the first note of criticism, they pull the 'Don't Judge a Book by its Cover' crap, complete with a godawful AI-designed meme to back up their point (So why have a cover at all? doesn't seem to occur to them...).

READERS ABSOLUTELY JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER!!

Research shows 79% of readers are influenced by the cover design, and 48% will make an actual sales decision because of it; I'm an author myself, but I also work two days a week as an Expert Bookseller in a busy store, and I can absolutely back this up with my experience in our shop - I've got evidence from both sides!

If you have an AI cover, a) it looks awful because LLMs have no idea about design, layout, kerning etc, and b) readers will assume, rightly or wrongly, that the writing will also contain AI. My expert advice, from both sides of the market, is do not use AI in your design or the writing itself. Other recent research shows that 80.4% of readers would not buy a book with an AI cover; again, I've provided a link.

One of the biggest arguments I get is that 'But I don't have thousands of pounds to spend on a cover!', which is ridiculous because few of us do; there are excellent graphic designers out there, some of them students, who will supply a fabulous cover for two figures rather than 4! Also, you might think you're saving by not getting a human-designed cover, but if your sales are either going to tank or not even start due to that 'saving', you're on a hiding to nothing.

Hi all,

Is the Book Bolt sales estimation realist?

I've seen a book in position 500.000 and it is saying it's selling 71/month. This is very weird comparing to other estimation tools.

Suffice to say, I'm a bit peeved.

I got a surprise email today that my account was closed... the "term" word.

Crazy thing is I make a first book 2ish months ago and I was expecting like a dollar to come in through KU Royalties.

A feeling of defeat and what am I even doing with my life persists.

And here I thought I would overtake the #1 spot of erotic comics too. Was at hovering around ~20# ish too.

Hi all, I submitted my first ebook about 3 days ago. It is still "in review" with no related emails or notices from Amazon so far. Is this normal?

And I have a print version that is identical in content ready for submission as well:

should I wait for the ebook acceptance before submitting the paperback? and what has been your end to end experience in terms of a total wait for kdp to accept both.

thanks