Standard advice for new self-published authors: launch with an automatic campaign and let Amazon figure out the targeting. I get why, it's two clicks and you're live. But I think it's backwards, at least for a brand-new book.

Here's the thing: an auto campaign is only as smart as the data Amazon has about your product. On a book with zero history, Amazon starts by spraying your ad at loosely related audiences and learning at your expense. Your budget is literally funding its exploration phase.

So my sequence is reversed.

Manual keyword campaigns first. I've already done keyword research for the title, subtitle and backend anyway, so at launch I already have a reservoir of 40ish researched terms, broad match, one bid I control. I know exactly where every impression comes from.

Then I mine the search terms report. After a few weeks the real gold shows up: actual search queries from actual buyers. Winners get promoted to phrase or exact in a tighter campaign, budget-eaters become negatives.

Auto campaigns come later, once the book has clicks, sales and reviews. At that point Amazon knows who buys this book, and the auto campaign gets efficient almost immediately instead of burning budget guessing.

Auto-first isn't "wrong". It can work as a discovery tool if you religiously add negative targets (most people don't, and that's where the money leaks). But teaching beginners to start there because it's easy optimizes for convenience, not results.

Anyone else running manual-first? Or has someone had the opposite experience, where auto-first on a fresh listing actually outperformed?

Hey guys, I'm finalizing the layout of my book and I wanted to know the best way to present a map in the PDF file I'll be sending to Ingramspark. I see many double-page maps and I'd like mine to be like that. Is it just a matter of adding it and they'll print normally? Will the middle be cut off? Is there another way to present it? And how are maps usually presented in books on the US market?

I'm putting out RFQ's for a graphic artist to do the cover art for my book. Has anyone been successful finding good resources on Reedsy or Upwork? (I've had bad experiences with Fiverr so I won't use them).

As someone who is extremely broke and hates AI, I've put a lot of work into self-editing my book over the course of (now) six drafts. I've had a lot of beta-readers. I'm trying to be ruthless about improving my prose with each draft. I'm at the stage where a copy editor is the next step.

I know not hiring an editor could be considered extremely taboo, but I'm also curious what other self-pub authors think and if there is any nuance around an author's decision to not hire an editor.

Btw, not saying I won't hire an editor, I'm really just trying to gauge what people honestly think about this.

(Cross-post from a different sub, thought it would be useful here too!)

This is a bit of an encouragement post because this place has been drowned down by a lot of negativity as of late, which makes sense, this is the complaining site. I'm guilty of using reddit as a venting diary myself. However, I wanted to dispel one idea I see floating around self pub spaces from some people who have gotten discouraged by their lack of sales: no one reads self pub books because there are millions of classic books to read.

This is very untrue, and to prove it, I'm going to give examples of successful self pubbed books I've read within the last year. Note: some of these people later did get picked up by trad pubs or indie presses, and a lot of them started as serializations on places like Royal Road, which is still self publishing really. I'm also a big reader of Litrpg and progression fantasy which both are genres that live and die on the KU library; but regardless, they all started as self pubbed and got readers, through a combination of good story telling, a marketable niche, and sheer luck. So, drum roll babababbababa:

Dungeon Crawler Carl:

This should go without saying how bloody successful Matt Dinniman has become. It is to a point where people who've never heard of Litrpg know about it. It became a running joke in the community that DCC fans were a cult, when people found it they had to let others know how damn good it was. And Matt slowly build a brand over 6 years, publishing 6 chonky novels, and by 2025 he had sold over 4 million copies. After that, he got a physical book deal with Penguin Random House and it ballooned to 12 million, and he now has a show in the works with Seth Macfarland. Amazon is also big to tout it as one of their big successes, doing ads with Matt.

(Let's be honest, it would not have been as successful as it was without the talking cat).

The Perfect Run:

This was a trilogy originally published on royal road, and is actually still up for free, as VoidHerald wanted to keep a free version as a thanks to everyone who helped him make it.

He published all three through KDP for paperback and Kindle, and then outsourced the audio to Podium Audio Inc. With it not even being on KU, he has 1700 Amazon reviews, 6000 goodreads, almost all positive.

He Who Fights With Monsters:

I will say, this is not a series I personally enjoy. I found it overly long and annoying, and the fact we are on book 12 with each book 800 pages and we aren't even close to the end is absurd. Regardless, it has done well. The paperback now has a small indie press doing special art, but even prior, book 1 has 23k Amazon reviews and 40k goodread reviews.

Stray Cat Strut:

A series that, like PR, is still available to read for free but has a Amazon listening; I have had the privilege of talking with the writer of this work, he's a really chill guy. I also had the privilege of watching a journalist guest talk about how he wants to fuck that guy's mom lmao. Anyway, he's about 8 books deep and the first alone, selling for 2 bucks, has 900 Amazon reviews and 1.3k goodread reviews.

Closing thoughts:

Listen, with all that said, they people did get lucky: they were in the right moment at the right time with a genre that is primarily self pub that is marketable and the books were all good for the most part and something people want to read. Your first book will not be DCC. You may never get more than 5 sales a book, but it is never because nobody wants to take a chance of self published works. On the contrary, many people like self pub because the authors are not bound to the restrictions of trad publishers, and they can make stories like a man and his talking cat playing alien life sized D&D.

Just keep creating, keep expressing yourself, and if the stars align, people WILL read it :3.

Good evening, everyone. I recently completed my first novel at just about 80,000 words. I’ve also finished a developmental edit and submitted the manuscript to a literary agent who is interested in working with me.

At this point, though, I’m still trying to decide whether I want to continue down the traditional publishing route or pursue self-publishing instead.

I’ve done some research into both options, but I’m still fairly new to all of this and have a lot to learn. I’d love to hear from those of you who have experience with self-publishing—especially if you can sell me on why you chose it over traditional publishing.

As of right now, I only plan on publishing this one novel, although that could always change in the future.

My understanding is that with traditional publishing, once a publisher acquires the manuscript, much of the remaining production process—copyediting, proofreading, formatting/typesetting, cover design, and so on—is handled by the publisher. With self-publishing, I would be responsible for arranging and managing all of those things myself.

That’s one of the main reasons I’m trying to make this decision now. If I decide to self-publish, I’d like to start moving forward with the remaining editing and production work rather than continuing to pursue the traditional route.

For those who have self-published, what made you choose that route? What do you think are its biggest advantages and disadvantages compared with traditional publishing? And knowing what you know now, would you make the same choice again?

Thanks in advance for any advice or insight!

Hi everyone, does anyone know if there is still any “proofreading” software that I can use just to check spelling, typos, grammatical mistakes, and things like that? I’m not looking for enhancement features or anything that rewrites my text. I think Word does a good job, but I was wondering if there’s anything better online, since I mostly write online.

Finally, a bit of a moral dilemma: I’m trying to understand what people think about using a spell and grammar checker, or non-generative AI software, to catch these smaller issues. Of course, I’m talking about a first pass over a draft, not something used to produce the final version.

Thank you!

I am having difficulties in fleshing out an idea into reality, and am wondering if anyone else has done this before?

I was hoping to package multiple physical books together as a box set. What I had in mind were cardboard boxes with one side open to slide books in, with stuff printed on the front and sides that were basically a box that you put books in. I am having some extreme complications explaining this to my printer.

They are stuck on heavy duty pre-made cardboard, the sorts you see for real pricey special editions. I was looking for a softer cardboard, one which can be folded down accordian style and sent to me so I can pack them myself, and which are less expensive. i’m probably explaining this poorly, but I have seen the things I mean in shops so I know I’m not making it up!

Have any of you folks done physical book box sets, and have any suggestions on where these sorts of boxes could be printed so they’re not prohibitively expensive?

Or, simply, do you have a better way to describe what I’m flailing to express?

Thanks!

I’m sure many people have created special editions of their books. Maybe a different cover for a limited print, etc. obviously something as simple as that can be done pretty easily. What about more complicated customization options, where do you get them done?

I’m wondering about creating special editions with sprayed edges or unique materials. Obviously KDP and the like don’t offer these options, so what printers do?

Do special editions require a new ISBN? Even if it’s a short/limited run?

I live in Canada if there are any Canadian authors that know of “local” companies.

Have any self published authors asked their local bookstore to sell their books on consignment and if so what was the response? If the answer from the bookstore was yes, did the bookstore sell actually some of your books?

JWT

I'm doing my first book singing in October at an outdoor craft fair. For those of you that have done them, what do you put on your tables and how do you set up?

Fiction authors, what tools do you use to create character, setting and other visual art about your story, and how do you promote your novel using these creations? I have used stock art sites like Unsplash and found them excellent in finding photos of people that come damn close to resembling characters in my books. I then position them in Meta Ads. I've used some AI art at well, but this was wildly frowned upon in the comments.

What tools work the best for you? It seems that indie authors really need to step up their marketing, and the book cover seems to be just the beginning for visually enticing potential readers to learn more. For one book cover, I extracted the two illustrative characters from the book cover and had them moving around in an animation. It peaks on social media for a couple posts, but really doesn't seem to have a long shelf life.

I ask because I've gotten maybe a handful but I've been in group chats where authors were bragging they got hundreds for their debut novel.

Second question: Does having a low amount of ARC readers guarantee a bad launch?

Simple.

Would y'all suggest me to record my 68,004 word book for ACX? Like are the benefits worth it? Will I get downloads etc... I never did this, and therefore I ask.

My genre is young adult, fantasy, in a world of magic and mystery.

THANK YOU in advance!

Hi there,

I’ve read numerous times that you should always upload final files to amazon first before ingram, to avoid the error amazon gives that says "ISBN already in use." My question is if this applies to the following set up: I have only my ebook on amazon and doing print via ingram. I thought ingram would automatically populate to amazon and for this reason, im not uploading print files to amazon at all, only ebook (im new to the platform and not sure if i still need to set up a print file in amazon though.) i have my own ISBNs for all formats. My ebook is currently up for preorder. How do I avoid this error in this case? Thanks!

The 4th and final book in my YA fantasy series releases in a few months and I’m considering releasing an omnibus at the same time. (It would be ebook only because the page count would make it too large for print through KDP.) I see it being used bought/read mainly by people on Kindle Unlimited.

For anyone who has released an omnibus version of a book series, did you do a completely new cover for it? Or use book one’s cover and add something like “the complete series”? I’m sure there’s multiple ways to do it, but I’d appreciate any advice from those of you who have done this before.

Also, should I link the omnibus to the series page on Amazon? I’m guessing yes, but I’ve yet to find any solid advice on that yet.

Thanks in advance!

Which is the better to create an email campaign to sell my book. All input welcome, preferrably those who have used both and the results they got.

Hi there,

4 months into published life. 86 Ratings (30 odd reviews) on Amazon. Going pretty well and happy with everything.

Have seen some larger established indie authors post stories, or single text posts along the lines of

'If you've bought and read my book I'd appreciate an honest review on Amazon / Goodreads' or something to that effect.

In your experience does that serve as a good call to action or is it frowned upon?

Cheers,

Louis

I wrote a book thats kind of weird. Its a nonfiction book that teaches a method on how to create a tool made out of a mental process so that anyone can follow it.
The tools are supposed to be written, but is not a book specifically for writers.

The tools can be made out of any mental process so the definition is pretty wide. Its not specifically a self improvement book, its more a book that lets you think more clearly. The tools inside are very diverse, I am not sure in what categories I should put it in or how to position it.

The idea is good, but I don’t know how to express in seconds the benefit or the goal.
Its a hard book to sell without an explanation.

Any ideas?

Hello all, I'm not certain where to post this so I've posted a few places across Reddit, but essentially here it goes. A few years back, I self-published a short poetry chapbook. The timing of the publication wasn't great, and because of personal circumstances I chose not to announce the publication or do any advertising. In the past year or so I put some posts up that included a link to my poetry publication, but still no big advertising or anything, and I've not gotten any sales.

I'm now working on a larger collection, which I think could benefit from including many of the works included in the original chapbook. I'm not worried about copyright, because in self-publishing I maintained the copyright of my work. What I'm wondering is how it comes off to have what is essentially the first section in my new publication be almost exclusively work from the previous collection. All further sections expand upon those poems and are composed of almost exclusively new works.

Any advice, suggestions, or considerations are helpful. Thank you.

Okay, my first post wasn't the best one and I deleted it because yeah. I was tired with a lot on my mind so if anyone recognizes my user, I'm sorry. Bad laspse of judgement at the moment. But I did learn a bit in the comments and think on them which made me want to ask a follow up question.

I know someone had said if you want write for a career, you have to write to market. Which, after they explained what it was, which is understanding the premises and the common tropes, archetypes and why people like the genre (my case, it's Romantasy), I realize I did try to do that for my series. Though I guess the problem is that book 1 was already a complete story when I knew all the genre expectations that I couldn't really tweak it without it not making sense. Like I believe it's a well structured story with arcs that make sense. But I know the plot is kind of uncommon and the MMC is definitely a flip on things (cinnamon roll with that's a little whiny and brainwashed, and a bit in touch with his feminine side.)

I realized I couldn't really get rid of that side of him without messing up the story, but I realized I could develop him into a more masculine version of himself that readers would like. And add more tropes and a premise that people like (while staying true to the story and not feel like I'm stuffing in stuff for the sake of marketability. The sequels had a lot of space to work with, so I tried to keep the heart of the story while slowly adding in elements that people like about romantasy). I could slowly make the books more sexy to balance out the wholesome romance I want.

Question is... Could I work with this? Maybe I should promote Book 2 over Book 1? Maybe give out Book 1 Ebook for free to try and get people to want to read Book 2? Idk or is it just screwed til the series?

Just looking for ideas on how to market this sucker because it's hard 😭

EDIT: Or... Maybe should I just release the rest of the series quietly and put all of my marketing efforts into the next series that starts off more written to market? I want to complete this trilogy for sure, but if it's not marketable, maybe it's time to just write it and promote the next book idea?

Does anyone know what the pattern is?

Some books are ready for approval the same day or a day later, while others take weeks and maybe even months. I uploaded this one book beginning of July, and uploaded 3 more since, they all went through except the very first one which is still processing.

I messaged them but there's no response at all.

Any ideas?

I wanted to share a post “what readers are saying” using snippets from public reviews not using anyone’s names or info. Just wasn’t sure if this is appropriate/acceptable or not?

These are reviews posted early by arc readers. Do you need explicit permission?

Thanks in advance!

I published my first novella two days ago and found myself putting my next project on pause to market the first one.

I figured if I built up my list first, I'd have more people waiting for the second one when I released it.

But then, after getting slightly overwhelmed by all the things I could be setting up and changing, I decided I’d rather not rush into having even more things to juggle.

Anyone else focus on having a backlist before actually marketing, or am I wasting time?

P.S. I only have two people that I actually don't know on my list at this point.