Hi everyone,

I’m preparing my first dark fantasy novel for Amazon KDP and I’m trying to decide what to do about the cover.

I personally prefer drawn/painted fantasy covers rather than photo-manipulated covers, but the artists I like seem to charge around $500 or more for a commercial book cover illustration. Since this is my first book and I don’t know if it will sell, I’m unsure whether spending that much is a smart decision.

For context:

- It is the first book in a planned fantasy series.

- I don’t have an established audience yet.

- I plan to promote through TikTok/Reels/Shorts and send ARC/free copies to reviewers.

- I care about the book looking professional, but I also don’t want to sink too much money into the first release before I know whether there is reader interest.

For those of you who published your first book on KDP:

1. How much did you spend on your first cover?

2. Did you use a custom artist, premade cover, cover designer, or make it yourself?

3. Looking back, would you spend more, less, or the same?

4. Is it better to start cheaper and upgrade the cover later if the book gains traction?

5. For fantasy specifically, how important was the cover to getting sales?

I’d appreciate honest experiences, especially from authors who started without a big audience.

Thank you in advance.

When I published my first book I treated the 7 keyword boxes like tags. Single words like "Japanese" and "language". Complete waste of the slots. Stuff I've figured out since: Each box takes a whole phrase, up to 50 characters. Something like "learn japanese for beginners" covers every search containing those words in any order, so one good phrase does the work of several tags. Don't repeat anything already in your title or subtitle. Amazon indexes those anyway so you're just burning a slot. Biggest mindset shift for me was searching like a buyer instead of an author. Nobody types your book's name. They type their problem, like "jlpt n5 practice" or "japanese workbook for adults". Also you don't need commas or keyword stuffing, Amazon matches the individual words in a phrase on its own. Best free trick: type your keyword into the Amazon search bar and look at the autocomplete suggestions. That's actual buyer language handed to you. And they're not locked in. If you're invisible after a month, swap out the weakest slots and give it a week. The autocomplete thing alone fixed more for me than everything else put together.

Hey guys.

I only recently joined Amazon KDP with publishing two journals.

I put in A LOT of work and I really do need to sell some books, as I have ZERO income atm.

What is the best way to market?

I would love to get some reviews, but I am in South Africa myself, and therefore none of my friends can help me with reviews, and since I don't have sales yet (well one book was bought so far), I cannot ask buyers either.

Any tips from old timers would be appreciated SSOOOO MUCH.

I would love to run ads and will eventually if I have income but that is not an option atm.

Bonjour,

Je suis entrain d'écrire une série de livre pour enfant. J'ai fini le tome 1

Je n'ai pas de budget pour prendre un illustrateur.

J'ai pensé à l I A mais je sais pas comment faire..

Et j'appréhende l'usage de IA car je ne voudrais pas que l'on pense que le livre est créé par IA.

Avez vous des conseils pour moi?

Merci par avance

Ps canva je sais pas l'utiliser 🙃

KDP emailed a warning that they removed my ebook because it’s too interactive. Books containing puzzles or journaling are not allowed on Kindle. If I continue to break this role, I will be banned or blocked or something.

My book is mostly writing with a few fill in the blank lines after questions. It’s not really a journaling book. It has a few worksheets. That’s it. I thought the whole purpose of Kindle scribe was to be able to write in books. Am I wrong? Sucks that I can’t do this as an e-book. Is Amazon in the wrong for this? It’s a 36 page workbook that I’m doing as part of a eight book series. The other books will probably be well over 70 pages. But this is an intro to the series.

Well. It happened. Almost $200 per month is gone and no help from Amazon. Ive been publishing business how -tos and some small fiction books for the last 12 years. They said my most recent book had copyright issues but I have no idea how or where or what triggered it. I think it might have been that in this book I included the book titles to other books that I have written related to the topic? But their automated emails and personal responses were of no help.

Anyone know where else to self publish books? Specifically how-to business series.

My book is based on my own lived experience. It tells the story of how I went from the happiest period of my life to one of the darkest, and how, despite thinking I'd reached rock bottom, things continued to unravel.

I don't want this to come across as a sob story, that isn't why I'm sharing it. I genuinely believe it's a compelling story about trust, love, manipulation, and the consequences of putting your faith in the wrong person. I poured an enormous amount of time and emotion into writing it.

At its core, it's about a relationship that I believe left me emotionally and financially devastated. Looking back, I felt manipulated in ways I didn't recognise at the time, and the effects are still shaping my life today. It's the story of someone I once loved and admired for her intelligence, but who ultimately became the person I trusted the least.

Whether readers agree with my perspective or not, I hope they find the story engaging, thought-provoking, and worth reading.

What platforms do you use to get honest reviews for your book? I want my book to have more reviews and visibility, how do you guys do that?

Hey guys - I wrote my first book on building a solar pool heater. This was driven by science and my personal experience in building one for my new pool. It has 24 chapters and 204 pages and explains the process from start to finish, the science behind it, beautiful illustrations and real data captured live over 14 days that shows its working. I have ordered a proof copy for review and expect to get it next week.

Since its a niche area I dont expect the traffic that a fiction book would get. Can you point me to the right direction to market this book? Are there resources here i should read up or use the help of Claude or copilot?

Hi there,
I’m a first time author that released a running memoir about 3 months ago. My community has fully supported the launch. The book has sold nearly 500 copies via Amazon. In person, I’ve sold another 150’ish. And 50 have sold into bookstores from Ingram Spark. Between Amazon and Goodreads, I have 60 reviews with a 4.7 average.

But now, I’m not sure how to crack into the next layer or the one beyond that. Should I be running ads? I’m now pretty confident that book is worth promoting, but I just don’t know what the highest ROIs are. Do books take off organically most of the time, or do they generally need some ad assistance?

I’ve had the great fortune of being invited on some podcasts and doing some small, local radio and tv spots. They seem to move the needle a bit, but the spikes seem short-lived (5-7 days).

Or is it about getting the book in the hands of the right voice?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and shared experiences.

And left a five star review.

I've made it, this is the big time!

I started publishing this year, and the whole KDP ads is a bit overwhelming and complicated. I assumed there must be a better way to do this. But most solution where very expensive solution that are not realistic for someone starting out.

I then looked into using Claude, but that was quite tricky at first as Claude does not have direct access to your KDP ads. And getting API access can be tricky, but it turned out to be much easier.

I registered with one of the AI ads sites, but only chose the free subscription, this gave me MCP access to KDP ads.

I then added this MCP server to Claude and also searched for some skills to add to Claude.

Once I did that, I can now chat to Claude asking it to analyse my existing campaigns, add new campaigns etc. Just by using normal questions.

Ordered on July 1. Says delivery by July 6. Its July 4 and still not shipped. Do these things arrive on time?

I'm smart on social media marketing and I'm thinking about using social media instead of KDP advertising? What do you think?

So recently I've spent my 1st week kinda exploring around kdp to get a grip of how it works, and I eould like to start doing my own mid content books now. I saw alot of ppl profiting heavily from color books, word searches, mazes, and other puzzle games, but i wanted to know which one could typically be more successful? Any advice is very appreciated

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I ran a free promotion for my book and 32 people downloaded it.

I was excited... then I realized something.

Not a single review.

I know nobody owes me a review.

They downloaded it for free, and many may not have read it yet. But as a new author, it's surprising how difficult it is to get even one honest review.

For those who've published books:

How many free downloads did it take before you started getting reviews?

Did free promotions actually help your book in the long run?

I'd love to hear your experience.

I have same ebooks in I want to published in KDP , you. Can help me to find the best courses in this topic ,

I have started writing my first book!!! It's a practical guide. It'll probably be 60k-70k words.

Fortunately, I have first-hand experience in this topic, the entire category is full of fluff/outdated books, the best seller ($4000 a month!!!) is literally AI SLOP! and I literally compiled all the reviews, read 12+ months worth of reddit posts on the topic, compiled pain points, what works, what doesn't, etc. etc. and now I am starting to write the book.

I have a budget of $150 for the book cover design that I would delegate to some freelancer on Fiverr or UpWork. Is that a good strategy?

Also, I know the topic cold, but I want to optimize the title later.

Any advice?

I have ventured into the world of Amazon KDP self-publishing and I have invested into the best Amazon KDP tools (KDP Spy, KDP Rocket, Atticus) and I have narrowed my niches and got the foundations down.

The problem is, those f'ing exams man. My college is literally crushing me. I can't find the time to write, or do anything.

Is it a bad and a stupid idea if I deliberately delay my graduation by 2 semesters by taking less course loads so I can find time to write? Or is KDP a bad investment?