r/selfpublish

I have been approached by a book club that wants to feature my book in their club. The kicker is they want $150 to $350 to do so. Based on what I make per book about half of their 295 members would need to buy a copy for me to make my money back. Anyone ever hear of Leeds Book Club? There is an old website that hasn't been updated in a while, twitter account etc.. Do book clubs usually charge to be 'featured'. Can't tell how much of a scam this is or isn't.

I help organize book features and reader engagement opportunities through our growing reading community, including the Leeds Book Club with 295 active members. What makes our features different is that authors do not need to travel or join live sessions. Everything is organized remotely, making it simple and stress-free for authors while still giving the book strong exposure to real readers.

For selected titles, we help create visibility through:

• Goodreads and Amazon reader reviews
• Professional teaser clips and cinematic book mockups
• Reader discussions and audience engagement
• Digital newspaper-style features authors can later reuse for podcasts, speaking events, interviews, press coverage, media kits, and future promotions
• Social media exposure across active reading communities
• Promotional materials that continue helping the book long after the feature is completed

To prepare everything properly, we usually need:

• Author bio
• Author journey/story behind the book
• Author photo
• Book cover
• Book purchase links
• Discussion guide or reader questions (if available)
• Any existing media materials you would like included

There is only a one-time administrative contribution involved. This simply helps us cover teaser production, promotional logistics, newspaper-style features, snacks and coffee for club sessions, and coordination for the campaign.

Your book truly sounds like the kind of book readers enjoy talking about, and I can already see strong potential for engagement and visibility around it. Many authors appreciate having promotional materials they can continue using again and again for future interviews, podcasts, speaking events, and media opportunities long after the feature is completed.

I would really love to see your book become one of the featured titles we spotlight next.

I’m currently in the final editing stage of my novel and I keep thinking about the same question over and over:

Should I try traditional publishing and look for a literary agent, or should I go with Amazon Kindle self publishing?

Part of me loves the idea of holding a printed book in my hands, turning the pages, even that smell of paper and ink. It feels real in a different way.

But self publishing gives me full control over everything. Cover decisions, release dates, marketing, updates, freedom.

I honestly don’t know what the right path is.

Some of you have probably already been through this. Maybe some of you made mistakes. Maybe some of you would choose differently if you had another chance.

What did you do?

Did you go traditional or self publish?

Would you do it again the same way?

I keep thinking about this constantly and I’d really appreciate honest advice from people who have already walked this road. Thanks in advance.

Is it from social media posts, links in your books? What is working for you to drive people to giving you the sacred email address?

My first attempt at Erotica. On May 6, I published a 5,000 word short story on KDP in a competitive niche. In the 14 days since, I’ve finished and uploaded 4 more of these- same niche-it takes about two days per story to write and edit, buy a cover, and upload. Just now I bundled all five into a collection, and have story number 6 done for publication on Saturday or Sunday. So far the books have 258 page reads and have earned $1.08 in royalties. I’m going to start doing my own covers with InDesign, and the learning curve might slow me down, but the plan is 10-12 stories a month along with a new collection after every 5 books.
I will post an update at the end of each month. Any suggestions or advice sincerely appreciated. (I also posted this on r/eroticaauthors).

Any video, advice or materials for a new writer. I have just been interested in writing for a while now and i need help on how to start and stay.

any advice will be good.

I will not give money to paid review sites. I'm assuming my primary avenues are going to be facebook or amazon ads, but I haven't tried either of them before. Are there other options?

What would you say is your average cost for editing and cover design. Are there any platforms you find quality editors or designers without blowing over budget or do you just hire a freelancer?

So I took a docx, put it into Kindle create and then used that file to upload into the paperback created in Amazon.

It does not specify that I can submit a KPF file but it uploaded beautifully and the previewer looks perfect.

Am I going to run into problems because I didn't submit a PDF.

Even Kindle Create said I was ready to upload the file to make a paperback.

Thoughts?

What did you guys do, and what tools did you use to be able to advertise your book. And what advice would you say to someone that doesn't have the funds, but has the ability to write a book and just post on KDP? Who did you connect with to tell you strengths and weaknesses in your book?

Ok, so I'm a little confused on this and have read very conflicting advice in various places.

I understand that in addition to the usual ISBN barcode that I can put on my book, I also have the option to add a 5-digit EAN-5 code at the end that encodes recommended retail price data.

Personally I'd like to add one, but the problem with that EAN-5 code is that it can only encode ONE type of currency.

I live in NZ and want to get the book into some local stores, but I want my book to be as widely available as possible, including internationally. If I set up my EAN-5 code to contain the recommended retail price in NZ dollars, would that be a barrier to, say, a store in the US stocking it? Would it be better to just use the 90000 null code rather than supplying the recommended price in NZ dollars?

I've finished my third book and on the 3 covers I want to add something that tells people that this is a series.

Each book has a different title, so no way to link them like “Harry Potter and the”….etc

Example…

Novel Title – The ‘Name’ Series – Book 1

Novel Title – The ‘Name’ Series – Book 2

Novel Title – The ‘Name’ Series – Book 3

 Is there a better way….?.....Any ideas…..?

 EDIT - Thx to everyone who commented!!

*Book 1 and 2 are published (ebooks) so I can't change the title, BUT apparently you can add a subtitle..? "Series - Book 1" etc... I'm hoping that's right..!!

Not true: One said he loved Book 1 and can’t wait for Book 2. So that makes 2 people (including myself), I guess.

That is all! Good day everyone.
🤣

Some time ago, I got curious and searched my own book on google. Just wanted to see if I was listed anywhere surprising. Someone had made a trailer for my book. I didn't ask for it, and it's all AI. I feel flattered that someone thought of me, but also rather meh about it because it's not really in line with my vision, I guess.

I really am unsure how to feel about it, honestly. Anyone else have anything like that happen to them?

I've been contracted to help write and format a cocktail recipe book. It's awkward to explain, but it'll be promotional material for a podcast I help produce, whose format includes a cocktail to go with each episode's theme. I've got a few scenarios that I want to make sure I'm following legal best practice for this recipe book I've been contracted to help write. Generally I've been advised in most circumstances recipes don't require sourcing because they are ingredients and instructions, which can't be copyrighted or trademarked, with a few exceptions. I want to clear up if these are exceptions:

1. A lot of recipe sites will have a section that talks about the history of the recipe, who created it, where it was created, and any recipe books that info was derived from, but not have a specific reference, like APA or MLA style referencing. These are sites with ads all over them, so they are getting paid for clicks. Am I held to a higher standard? Do I need to specifically read and reference those recipe books, or is that info now treated as general historical knowledge that can be written without reference?

2. Is a cocktail like the Sazerac, which is associated specifically with the Sazerac company, required to get permissions for printing? Again, a recipe and history widely published, and mixed in umpteen bars. What's my diligence here?

3. Recipes associated with specific bartenders and bars. The Naked and Famous is a variation on The Last Word. Many websites credit a specific bartender at a specific bar in a specific year, but never provide the source for that info. I'm sure it was in an interview at some point, or someone saved a menu, or word just got around. But it's widely printed information that's never sourced. How do I approach that?

4. This book will have recipes that are "original" variations of known cocktails that were sourced from online authors or websites. Here I actually have web sourced material, so I feel it's more likely and important that these are properly sourced because they were given names by these authors and they aren't something you can ask for at a cocktail bar by name. These cocktails were recognized and referenced in the podcast episodes. I just want to know if these are legally different than well known cocktails, or the situations named above.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Unfortunately, I don't have access to Microsoft word anymore. I don't want to just save to a "cloud" like in Google docs ect . Which free services can I use to write a book and save it directly to my memory stick , rather than "the cloud " ? Any suggestions are welcome .If you have personal experience with any too lmk how it went. Thank you !

I'm having a bit of a crisis. I have 100 ARCs out, and they all opted-in to emails with BookFunnel. But the problem is, the email I sent to them either went to spam or undelivered completely.

I don't know what to do or how to contact them. I have a few emails to use, and I could use MailerLite but idk how to. I need to remind them about their reviews and see them so I can make marketing ads, but I have no way to contact them.

I have a few older email addresses I could use, but all the advice from the tech Reddits are giving me a lot of technical jargon I don't understand and can't perform. I'm a mechanic and an author, not an IT worker. This stuff is so beyond my skills to fix.

For anyone who uses MailerLite, can I just send a campaign out without a special email?

Hello everyone,

Has perfectionism ever taken control of any of you before? Has the idea ever controlled your mind that your abilities are not enough… or that you want writing to become your main source of income?

If you’ve been through all of this before, tell me: did you overcome it? Do you have a strategy or advice for someone who feels unstable and uncertain?

Do you understand how the algorithm works and how things move forward? If my cover is perfect, my description is strong, my keywords are good, and the content is engaging… does that mean I’ll become the next Stephen King, or are there still challenges ahead?

Advice for a beginner, please.

I had initially brought this investigation to r/Scams, but the community redirected me here because the discussion seemed more relevant to KDP publishing, review behavior, and marketplace visibility patterns within Amazon’s language-learning categories.

For this post, I’m using the term “Ghost Rating” to refer to a star-only rating submitted without written feedback.

I’ve spent the last few months analyzing review patterns across a major publisher in Amazon’s language-learning category, Lingo Mastery. I’m a language professional, and I became interested after noticing recurring complaints from native speakers and ESOL instructors regarding translation inconsistencies and content quality. While reviewing the catalog, I noticed several unusual patterns involving rating-only reviews, written-review timing, and review clustering across multiple titles.

Would appreciate a sanity check from others here.

The “Ghost Rating” Flip

Newer titles appear to have a higher proportion of written reviews compared to older catalog titles. But when looking at several established “Best Seller” books (primarily published between 2018–2020), the ratio shifts heavily toward rating-only activity.

Using Japanese Short Stories for Beginners as one example:

Total ratings: 1,866

Written reviews: ~6%

Rating-only (“Ghost”) reviews: ~94%

“Velocity Collapse”: The title appears to have gone through a 500+ day period without new written 5-star reviews, while the total 5-star count continued increasing steadily. Despite the lack of recent positive written feedback, the books continue ranking highly in search.

I focused on their flagship Japanese title as a clean example, but I am observing similar “Velocity Collapse” and “Ghost Rating” patterns across multiple Russian, German, and French titles within the catalog.

What stands out

Extremely high ratio of rating-only reviews: Most 5-star ratings contain no written feedback, and the proportion appears unusually high compared to many other books in these categories.

The Demand Paradox: These books consistently hold strong rankings in languages like Japanese, Russian, and German which are categories that appear smaller in overall demand than Spanish or English. The review accumulation rate appears unusually high relative to the apparent size of these categories.

Clustered Review Activity: Written reviews often appear in dense chronological clusters followed by long quiet periods with very little written engagement.

Contrast with newer books: Some of the publisher’s newer titles appear to have significantly lower rating-only activity, which may suggest a different review accumulation pattern over time.

Critical review consistency: When filtering for 1–3 star reviews, many reviewers which including ESOL teachers and native speakers that repeatedly criticize editing quality, translation consistency, formatting, and instructional usefulness. Several reviews also mention cross-language inconsistencies, such as cultural references or phrasing appearing mismatched to the target language.

Possible Content Mill Indicators

The “Super-Reviewer” Pattern: I identified a cluster of “Top Reviewer” accounts that frequently review these titles alongside many others at unusually high daily review volumes.

Catalog Saturation: The publisher maintains a very large language-learning catalog (roughly 118 titles) combined with strong Amazon Ads visibility and broad SEO coverage across multiple language niches.

Lack of editorial oversight: Multiple reviewers describe the books as heavily templated or mechanically translated material with limited human editing or localization.

The Goodreads Disconnect: On Goodreads, where Amazon search ranking and advertising visibility are less relevant, several of these same titles appear to receive significantly lower ratings.

Questions

Are rating-only spikes like this normal in your own niches?

Has anyone else noticed similar “velocity collapse” patterns where written feedback slows dramatically while overall ratings continue increasing?

Have other KDP authors observed unusually large gaps between written-review activity and total rating growth?

I’ve compiled the audit data, charts, and review timelines in the post for anyone interested in examining the patterns directly.

My protagonist, Arjun, lost his wife Priya in 2081. My novel is set in 2089.

Eight years.

He has had eight years with this grief. It is not fresh. It is not dramatic.It is integrated.

The shape of his life has grown around an absence the way a tree grows around a wound.

I wrote his grief entirely through displacement behaviour and habit.He makes dal with patience.

Priya used to say you could tell everything about a person by whether they rushed the tempering.

He never rushes it.He is alone.He takes his time anyway.He accelerates the motorcycle

exactly the way she liked smooth, not abrupt.

She always noticed when he was impatient with the throttle.

She is gone.He is still smooth.

He names an underwater mountain

Priya's Ridge. 3,200 metres below the Pacific surface.No map will ever show it.Nobody will ever know.He does it anyway.He records the memory

of her laugh.Not her face.Not her words.The specific quality of her laugh in a small kitchen in Bhilai on an ordinary morning that meant nothing to history and everything to him.

He never cries in the novel.Not because he doesn't feel it.Because grief eight years old

doesn't weep.It lives in how you make dal. In how you accelerate.In what you name things when nobody is watching.

I published a (wildly overdue) follow up in a series, and decided to step up my marketing game and spend time and $ on targeted Amazon ads, FB ads, and BookBub. The results were interesting. Performance wise, would day modestly successful as far as getting the clicks, but the response was not what I expected. Sales wise, not impressive at all. However, KENP went way up. I translated that as those clicking through have Kindle Unlimited accounts and the ads made them interested to read my stuff.

But, people without KU were not motivated to purchase much. As the amount of $ authors get from KENP (no matter how great Amazon makes it sound...) is beer money at best, and disappointing from a financial POV at least.

So, from a reading POV I will say successful but from a $ POV, it was not. I'm most driven by the former vs the latter so I will say on balance, I'm happy about it. I got readers to read! Per usual, if you're in it for the $, you will likely not be happy.

Anyone have a similar experience? What ad/marketing vehicle worked for you and which did not?