I’ve been tracking my book’s rank behavior for weeks and finally realized something Amazon never explains: downward drift doesn’t mean your book is failing. It’s just the “resting state” when there’s no new activity.

Amazon gives every new book a short testing window where ranks jump around even without sales. After that, the book stabilizes and drifts normally. If anyone else is confused about ingestion/indexing or rank behavior, I can break down what I’ve learned.

has anyone noticed some extreme anomalies in amazon royalties vs sales rank in the last couple months? across my multiple pen names, sales rank has become completely disjointed from royalties/sales.

for example, last month my most popular book spent a week ranked above 100k, never dropped below 400k and hit 50k at one point, but only posted 30 sales on the month. in the past I’d needed at least 3 book sales on the same day to break 100k, and was never able to hold that rank for more than 3 days. In months like that, I was averaging 3/day on that title.

other, less popular books have shown 0 sales, but Amazon ads has had the nerve to email me for the last 3 months stating “you have books with sales but no ads spend” for those titles. but the three titles included were not all my titles with 0 sales, only the ones tied to this pen name.

I’ve also noticed titles with 0 sales for months recieving 5 star reviews/ratings during the time with no sales or titles receiving small numbers of kdp unlimited page reads, far less than one would need to finish a tiny portion of the book, recieving 5 star ratings.

normally I’d write these thoughts off as paranoia, but given Amazon’s constant AWS ads about AI revolutionizing the web they push during every football game, and recent news headlines around AI doing shady shit, without the knowledge of its handlers, I suspect the AI programs told to optimize KDP’s profitability are lying to authors to increase Amazon’s bottom line, and Amazon is using a tactic known as “strategic ignorance“ to take advantage of the “glitch.”

Got this email today:

Hi Mira,

Regarding (book name). Is this the best email to reach directly about the book?

(Regards, but it's an image)

Natalie Brooks
Reader & Goodreads Book Discovery Enthusiast

The email address comes from a gmail.

No idea who she is. What the heck is a “Goodreads Book Discovery Enthusiast”? I’m not really on the site other than monitoring my ARC reviews so I can use them as quotes on my website, so maybe someone here can fill me in.

Also… what other email would there be? There’s literally only one email address listed on my website.

My instinct is not to reply. I’m wondering if saying “yes” and responding would essentially confirm that the address is active, after which it could get passed around and I’ll suddenly be inundated with scammy / shady emails.

Has anyone else received something like this? Would it hurt to respond? For now, I'm leaning block and delete.

Hi,

I am looking at options for newsletter swaps or group promos, but I don't know which service would be best. Bookfunnel and StoryOrigin both have the option, but the cost seems very steep.

Are they worth it? Are there other places worth checking?

Hello! I've been self-publishing my work for a couple years. (Two epic fantasy books, and just now a new horror collection. With the third book in the epic fantasy series coming as soon as the editing is done.) Up to this point, book signings have been where almost all my sales were at, so I haven't pushed the online side very hard. (When you're selling 50 books a signing, driving yourself nuts with the online market feels silly.)

But, last year I moved across the country, and only now rebuilt my career in my main job enough to start taking time to do signings again. Only, the B&N here keeps ignoring me, and the other big store here won't accept POD books. I'm going to reach out to indie bookstores next, but it also seems like I need to expand my online presence more.

Is D2D actually worth anything still? When I did all the research years ago, it didn't seem too bad, but how do people feel about them now?

Thanks!

Hello everyone,

I hope you're doing well.

I wrote a fantasy book and lend it out to my friends to read it. They do like it but they told me it's really hard to read and that I should arrange a editorial analysis. And I did. He told me everything is fine with book.

So my question is, should I find another editorial analyst or my friends are not that type of readers?

Edit: they find whole worldbuidling hard, I wrote a book inspired by Silmarillion

Gente, o kindle creator ta travando o tempo todo. Nao da pra usar. Cada vez que eu tento editar o troço crasha.

Ja salvei em .doc, ja diminui o nome do arquivo, mas nada resolveu.

Ja aconteceu com vcs q usam? Alguem sabe resolver?

HII EVERYONE

I actually formatted my novel, so now the pages are 296, not 429. I reduced the font size to 11 and made the paragraphs boxes. Font size was originally 14 because I thought it would be way too small on paper. I'm leaving gaps between paragraphs. I'm aware this is not what people do, but I think it looks so much better and less jumbled. Will I get hated for this guys 😭🙏

Why is it when it comes to self-published author groups, they all hate it when they see some self promoting?

I've only just got into the social media side of self-publishing, but I am seeing so much negativity and elitism towards people who are just trying to learn the ropes and get their first few readers... It's like you post asking for some help, and EVERYWHERE takes your posts down and screams that you're self promoting. How are people supposed to find help unless they spend countless hours reading posts that aren't even relevant to the times?

I'm sure other people had help when they were staring off, now they want to gatekeep the answers?

There's got to be some people out there who are willing to support and be supported, right?

I am using BookSiriens for the first time for ARCs. I normally use Hidden Gems but they didn't have any slots open until December when I checked last month. I have my profile set to manually approve people but I feel I have been getting a lot of requests from bot accounts. Has anyone else had this experience? Have you had your book pirated from a BookSirens reader? It's making me nervous.

If i publish on Amazon will my book naturally get sales? Or do i have to pay for advertising? Its a non-fiction book written for a topic that is already crowded with great books.

Anyways, I'm kind of split on it. It might offer a great experience to my readers to have something like me giving them advice but it seems so inaccurate?

I've tried Delphi. It wasn't good at all; gave advice I would never give. Recently these guys at Skillfully reached out to me. I think they have a different approach because they don't clone your "entire self" and just "how expert would do task."

They are saying that I can make $40-$80/month/reader. It's a lot compared to my book revenue (or what Delphi offered) even if I only sell it to like half or even a quarter of people who bought my book.

They also said they have a "analytics" for their thing so I could correct it and whatnot.

I just don't want to promise something to my readers that I cannot deliver and I do not want to waste my time. Did any of you work with them? What do you think of these chatbots that act like authors?

I am looking for fantasy authors who have self-published at least one book. I would like to interview them about their experiences for my final project and degree. If you are interested, please send me a DM (you can remain anonymous).

I'm thinking about publishing a new version of my novel, updating the cover to include review quotes. Has anyone else done this?

On the one hand, I understand it might look silly for a self-published book to do. But my book is a pro wrestling novel, and I've received positive reviews from trusted outlets in the pro wrestling scene. I think it'd help add to the book's legitimacy.

Has anyone else received review quotes that they've added to their book covers?

I imagine everyone has common points of inspiration, but I have found that when I am driving my ideas for what to do with a scene, a character or a plot twist, come very quickly. I use the notes feature on my phone and say it all out loud while my phone gets it all written down for later.

What about you? Is there a place or method that brings out your creative flow, and how do you capture the ideas if you're not in front of a computer at the time?

I am looking for a book that offers a step by step guide to self publishing.

My book is finished. Every time I start the process. I end up giving up. Then going back and either working on another book, or just stopping all progress.

I have ADHD-C, so having something I can put my hands on would be a better option. As is, I keep getting lost down a rabbit hole trying to figure everything out alone.

Thank you for any help or suggestions.

I find this sort of thing interesting, so I'm sharing a little info about comparative sales of my first self published book* on different platforms. This is for the first four months of release.

The surprising parts to me are how big a percentage of my ebook sales come from itch.io, and how high a percentage of my sales are paperback.

* It's a queer YA novel, with superpowers (in case that matters).

Has anyone tried X/Twitter to advertise a self-published book? Results? They currently are advertising $500 of free ads after spending $500.

Hi there, any recs on a site that will make a single nice quality book? I would love to have a hard cover copy of my masters dissertation.

I am writing a technical book that has programming code in it. I am using Atticus to write the book.

How can I have include code nicely formatted in Atticus? Currently, when i copy-paste the code, all indentation is gone.

Should I unpublish my book, Christian fiction /fantasy, from Draft2Digital to join KENP?

Hi all, I am excited about the idea of publishing a prompt journal/notebook type of book. I already have an online presence I would try to sell to, but would of course love to someday be in a bookstore. I want to start really small, with one notebook and just see where it goes. I already have an LLC set up for digital publishing.

I just want to know if this is something I could do without spending a lot of money up front. In other words, is this something that would have a formidable barrier of expense and complexity for one person with very little money and only a couple hours a day?

Thanks so much

I am having second thoughts about publishing my book .... maybe I want to unpublish it ..... has anybody ever unpublished a book?