u/MiraWendam

Looking into sites where I can possibly run a deal for my post-apocalyptic journey thriller. 321 pages, almost 70k words. The 0.99 deal would run for seven days via KDP.

Are they any good? I don't want to drop $40 (~£30) for an ineffective promo.

I already have a reader magnet, so I understand the basic idea. You give someone something they want as an incentive to join your mailing list, then hopefully they become an actual reader and eventually buy your books. My niche is "standalone sci-fi thriller with zero interconnection".

What I don't really understand is the determination (FLOABW) with getting the subscriber number as high as possible. You pay for newsletter promos, group promos, ads, swaps, whatever, and watch the list grow by hundreds or thousands. But how many of those people actually stick around?

If someone is signing up because they want a free book, rather than because they're particularly interested in your writing, aren't you just paying to acquire a subscriber who may download the book and disappear?

That's the bit I'm struggling with. I just lost two subscribers, so I'm down to 21. I want to grow my list, I want to see that number tick up, but I just feel so fucking stupid all the time. If I'm paying all these different sites and services to grow my list, I'd care much more about how many of those subscribers are still there and actually engaged six months or a year later than the headline subscriber number. No, I don't talk to them only to sell my book(s) either. I don't do a lot of that. That would be annoying, even for me. I give writing updates, snippets, free first chapters, that kind of stuff.

Maybe I'm looking at it wrong, but I'd rather have 1,000 people who actually read my emails and buy my books than 10,000 people who signed up for a freebie and never open anything. Would it not be better to sell your books, then invite those readers onto the mailing list via the CTA at the back? At least then you're starting with people who have already demonstrated that they're willing to spend money on your books, rather than people who were attracted by the word free, right?

Maybe I'm being ridiculously short-sighted here. I genuinely don't know. I think I'm just having a bad day.

Really want to up my newsletter game because I’ve been stuck at 23 subs for almost a year now, and I’m feeling a bit more motivated to grow it, put some money into it. Don’t worry—you don’t need to tell me throwing money at something doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get results. I know, so I’d rather experiment a bit before spending anything serious.

I only send my newsletter twice a month, so paying £20+ for a monthly service feels a bit silly when I’m only campaigning 2x anyway. I would much rather find somewhere I can pay for a one-off promo, get my reader magnet in front of some actual readers, and see what happens.

Are there any cheap book promo sites or newsletters where I can promote my reader magnet, website, something like that? I’m not expecting hundreds of downloads or some massive spike. I basically want to run a small £5-£15-ish experiment, track the results, and see if it’s actually worth doing again.

I write standalone sci-fi thrillers with zero interconnection, if it helps. And yes, I already have a CTA in the back matter of all my books.

Basic plan is: spend a small amount, see what happens, learn from it, then maybe do more if it works.

I've done newsletter swaps twice in the past, but they didn't really lead to anything beyond networking... or at least nothing that I noticed. Have you had any success with them? It'd be really helpful especially if you write standalone sci-fi / thrillers as well. I've just grown to hate how stagnant my newsletter is, so I want to take some actionable steps. I've already:

- Improved welcome automation.

- Improved sign up section on homepage.

Plus a few more other small things such as read about how to craft great subject lines.

Edit:

My reader magnet is a short sci-fi thriller around 6k words. It's delivered through StoryOrigin. On my newsletter, I give my subscribers writing updates, snippets, free first chapters, all that.

If a community survives for 100 or 200 years after some catastrophic event, would you consider them to still be living in a post-apocalyptic world? Do you think it depends on the technological / societal (etc) state of things? At some point, they'd just be living in a new civilisation that happens to have been built on the remains of the old one. Like pretty much any other civilisation. That's my thinking.

For example, you could have people who know what a hospital was, but have no idea how modern healthcare actually worked. They might know electricity existed, but consider a working generator an incredible piece of technology.

Eventually, the collapse would become history. Just another blip in time. People born generations later wouldn't necessarily think of themselves as survivors, right?

Recently got into dip pen nibs. Whenever I use them on paper—all four are Leonardt*—I get these little paper fibres that seem to get dragged onto the very tip of the nib. It's not normal printer paper, it's a bit thicker and I think it's made for sketching, so maybe that's the reason?

I find myself having to wipe the nib quite frequently with my art towel to get the fibres off. Is this normal with dip pens, or is it more likely that the paper isn't suitable for them? Have you had this problem? What kind of paper should I use? I have thick ~120gsm watercolour paper, too.

Edit:

*Round Hand 1, Round Hand 2, Blue Pumpkin, and an EF / EEF (?) one I don't know the name of.

I do basically all of my marketing on here, and it’s honestly worked really quite well for me, all things considered. I’ve built up an audience here, I’m comfortable using the platform, I’ve never really felt the need to spread myself across five different social media apps just for the sake of it.

Unfortunately, I think the UK age verification law has now hit my account.

I don’t know if this is happening to everyone, or if it’s just something weird with my account, so I’d be really interested to know what other people are seeing when they look at my profile. When I look at my own account in a private (Brave) browser, I get this message:

___ likes to keep their posts hidden, but check out their stats to learn more about them.

Which is obviously… not something I’ve chosen to do. I absolutely do not want to keep my posts or comments hidden.

And it’s particularly annoying because I had two pinned posts on my profile that were actually pretty important for my marketing: one directing people to my newsletter, and another for my second standalone book. So essentially, two of the most useful things on my profile are now much harder for people to find.

Even worse, I seem to have lost DM functionality as well. I’ve already had a few people email me through my author email asking why they suddenly can’t DM me on Reddit anymore. So from the perspective of someone who actually uses Reddit as part of their business, this is becoming a pretty significant problem.

From what I’ve read, getting a VPN would apparently be completely useless because Reddit has already flagged the account itself. So even if I appear to be accessing Reddit from somewhere outside the UK, the account is still subject to whatever restriction has been placed on it. Right? Or am I wrong?

To be clear, I’m not really interested in doing anything particularly elaborate. I just want my account visibility turned back on and, ideally, my chat functionality restored. I just don’t understand why my entire profile has effectively become hidden as a consequence.

This whole thing is frustrating because I really don’t want to become one of those people who has to maintain more than two social media accounts.

I hate making Reels. I hate worrying about hashtags. I hate looking up the best time to post. I hate trying to figure out what the algorithm supposedly wants this week. I’ve sold books and built an audience here, so naturally I’d rather not have that disappear.

That said, it looks like I may have to start widening my social media outreach anyway.

I’m perfectly fine with making image posts, graphics, or carousels. Should I start a blog? What about Bluesky, Tumblr, etc? That sort of content doesn’t bother me nearly as much. My genre is standalone sci-fi thriller with zero interconnection.

(Before anyone says "do ads", I only have two books out. Not viable right now and not a good idea because I’d be spending money to acquire readers before I’ve got the kind of backlist / earnings to make that remotely worthwhile. I will do them in the future though.)

Edit:

NSFW isn’t turned on, and I don’t go on NSFW subs anyway. I made sure of that from the beginning so my profile wouldn’t get locked out to anyone who hadn’t verified their age, meaning they could still view every post and comment.

Everything to do with profile and privacy in Settings is greyed out. It literally won’t let me turn anything back on unless I give them my ID / a face scan.

All it says is: To access chat, followers, and public profiles, please confirm you are 16 or older. When I press the confirm age button, it takes me to the Persona give-your-face / government ID over.

My ebook is currently £2.99. 321-page standalone post-apocalyptic journey thriller. Thinking of running my first-ever discount and dropping it to £0.99, but I've heard people say that pricing a book too low can make potential readers assume it's lower quality. It's either £0.99 or £1.99. I won't make it free because that's most likely just going to attract digital hoarders who won't open it.

What price has worked best for you? Asking mainly fellow sci-fi / thriller authors but down to hear from anyone!

Also, know of any free listing sites? Don't have the money right now to pay, like, £25 or £60 to get on a discount site.

Planning to put my standalone post-apocalyptic journey thriller ebook on discount for the rest of the month and was wondering where people usually promote these sorts of deals.

Mostly looking for free options; I’d rather not pay for promo sites at this stage. Simply because I don't have enough money right now. Are there any free deal sites worth trying?

The book is a standalone post-apocalyptic survival/journey thriller, so anything that reaches readers who enjoy that sort of thing would be ideal. Any suggestions appreciated. Cheers!

Would you choose Hermaeus Mora for forbidden knowledge, Nocturnal for luck and stealth, Azura for... prophecy—IIRC? What's worth risking your soul for? Who would you strike a deal with? I don't think Hircine's too bad, right? It says online:

Some princes respect honor and fairness among their subjects and are against dishonorable murder. Hircine is typically considered to be in this category. While he cannot exactly be seen as benevolent, he is very honorable and always gives his prey a sporting chance; he is even willing to be congratulatory to those who were deemed as prey if they manage to turn the hunt to their favor and become the hunters in turn. He is not needlessly destructive like many of his Daedric brethren.

So going off this, I think I'd choose Hircine.

I was planning to remove anyone who hasn't opened an email for ninety or 120 days, but now I'm second guessing it. I've seen advice saying not to remove inactive subscribers because they might come back and start opening again.

At the same time, they're dragging down my open rate. Plus, if someone hasn't opened a single email in three or four months... are they really likely to start now?

What do you do? If it helps anything, I'm a sci-fi thriller author. Newsletter is at 23 subs because I haven't been promoting it a lot. Been stuck in the twenties for almost a year now, since October. Just don't know where to begin, really.

Edit:

I'm doing promotion in little ways. Just not heavily. "Dragging down" was perhaps the wrong phrase. I get a sign-up here and there. Just need to get my mind better in the newsletter marketing game, but I don't have a lot of money to keep paying for monthly / yearly author swaps.

Probably a daft question, but I'm trying to get my head around it.

I'd like to run a discount for the rest of August starting on Aug 8, but the 7-day Kindle Countdown Deal isn't long enough for what I want to do.

Is it okay to just lower the list price manually in KDP and then put it back up again at the start of September, or is there a better way of doing it? How long will it take to be put into effect? Might do it the night before or two nights before, even.

I'm in the UK if that makes any difference. Am I likely to get into trouble for changing prices like that, or is it completely allowed? I know Amazon can be a bit particular about some things, so I just wanted to check before I do anything that could cause issues.

And what would be good prices? My book is 321 pages long. Genre is post-apocalyptic thriller. Current prices are £2.99 for ebook, £9.99 for paperback. I'm thinking £2.99 for paperback, £0.99 for ebook?

Edit:

Will leave paperback as £9.99.

I'm planning to discount the ebook to £0.99 from 8 August to 31 August. Discounted ebook will (hopefully) serve as an even more affordable entry point and generate more reviews and ratings. Main goal is to increase exposure.

Any sites to promote it? Preferably no fee required to do so. I know these names: Bookroar, BookBarbarian, Fussy Librarian. Any others?

Checked my emails just now and got this from Inkubator Books:

Hi, Mira,

____ caught my eye in the Kindle store, and it gripped me from the very first scene. It’s compelling and well-paced with plenty of thrilling action scenes. ___ (the robot, omitted by me) deepening friendship with Novalie is extremely well done and touching. Congratulations on this excellent story.

I’m writing on behalf of Inkubator Books, a leading digital publisher specializing in crime, mystery, and thrillers for the e-book marketplace. We’re based in Dublin, but our primary focus is on the U.S. Amazon Kindle market where we have a proven track record of launching bestsellers into some highly competitive categories.

You can find out more about us here: (their website was here)

You can see two of our current books here: 

AUTHOR 1's book

Author 2's book

We are wondering if you would be interested in discussing the possibility of working with us. If this sounds interesting to you, we’d love to set up a video conference call with you on Zoom so we can explain exactly what we do and how we work.

With so many author scams flying around as of late, please feel free to vet us by looking at our author page on our website. We’re happy to arrange an introduction if you’d like to speak to one of them first.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Thank you.

(Omitted Name by me)

Acquiring Editor

---

They have not asked for money. I will not give them a single penny. What surprised me is that they included the robot's real name in my story. This is not found through the preview or on the blurb at all, so I'm thinking she must have read it, right?

This email doesn't come from a standard gmail account. It is the company's address. I've done some research and can't find them on writerbeware, found a FB post with a comment under it that says they're a genuine company. I don't know what to do. On the off-chance they're genuine—and I've taken a look at their website, can't make out anything suspicious—I have no idea where to go from here. The authors they have taken on seem to be doing very well, going off the stars and reviews on GR and Amazon.

The book they're asking about has only sold 15 copies since release date (June 8), so this was unexpected. For now, I'm not buying it.

I just want to say this: I'm young. I don't know shit about the traditional publishing industry. My experience in writing and selling is rooted entirely in self-publishing. This subreddit. My own research. The countless articles I have read and videos I have watched. So, you know... if it's true, well, I just don't know.

Edit:

I have declined to move forward. I knew what I wanted when I came into self-publishing, and I don’t think this opportunity aligned with those goals.

I started self-publishing because I wanted control over my work—the stories I tell, the way I release them, the decisions I make as an author. Moving into a publishing arrangement would mean giving up some of that control, and I’m not ready to do that.

This wasn’t a decision based on assuming anything negative about them. They may very well be a legitimate company, and I’m thankful they took the time to read my work and contact me. But after thinking about what I want from my writing career, I've realised that I want creative control more than anything.