r/selfpublishing

I have a new novel on Amazon and I'm looking for people to read it and hopefully review it in exchange for a free EPub and/or PDF of the book. Any suggestions you have would be most appreciated.

So I have been writing for a few years now. I have a couple of books on Amazon, a number of my stories on other forums, and I have been using Patreon for around a year with a low-cost ($2/month) subscription model (to protect my stories and fund my caffeine habit), and I think I am about ready to try and ramp things up a little.

I've just finished posting a 210,000-word story called 'The Nuclear Family', and I'm launching into a massive multi-generational mystery ', The Hidden Letters, ' along with weekly posts on other smaller stories, but I am not 100% sure where to go from here.

My wife wants to encourage me to find an agent and publisher, and while that does appeal to me, I would rather increase my readership enough to engage an editor to fix up the mistakes that Grammarly and I just don't see.

But how is it best to increase my readership? What channels and strategies have you used to find more people and engage readers past the story?

Have you built a strategy, engaged marketing firms (which I am loath to do btw), or have you just posted on X, here on Reddit, etc?

I don't quite know what to do with myself tonight. My book is launching on KDP and IngramSpark on Sunday, and I'm running out of ideas on what to do.

I'm currently waiting for proof copies from Ingram and KDP, I've already posted everywhere I can about ARCs, I have some promo images ready to go for launch day. I've been engaging others on social as well.

I could start promo'ing preorders, but it's so close to launch day I question spending the time on it.

Where else would my time be well spent at this moment?

While working on a political thriller, I realized that making fiction feel real is less about collecting facts and more about challenging the right assumptions.

Because my story involved intelligence work, terrorism, government decisions, and the Middle East, I spent a lot of time understanding the political, legal, historical, and practical background needed for each scene.

One of the biggest things I learned is that research can easily become a trap for fiction writers.

You could spend hours finding out how intelligence agencies operate, how governments respond to terrorism, what laws might be relevant, or how countries deal with one another. Yet that research doesn't necessarily make a situation feel realistic.

Eventually, I broke the process down into three main questions:

1. Is it actually possible?  
2. Is it possible that this event, decision, technology, political arrangement, or method of operating could actually exist?
3. Does it seem logical?  
4. Even if it were possible for something to happen, would the characters actually make those choices given what they know, what they want, and the risks they have to face?
5. Will the reader accept that?  
6. This question is unlike the first two, and even if it is realistic, it may still seem wrong to the reader if the writer has not provided sufficient context.

The third question proved especially useful to me during revision.

I also experimented with the use of AI in this process; although I didn't use it to write the novel or develop the story, I found it was most useful for putting my manuscript through its paces—stress-testing it.

For example, I would describe the situation around a scene and ask questions like:

- What assumptions am I making here?
- What would a skeptical reader question?
- Is there an obvious logical gap?
- Does the character have sufficient information to make this choice?
- What other course of action would a reasonable person take?
- Does the political or operational logic add up internally?

The responses I received were all over the place, but that proved to be useful.

At times, the AI highlighted a weakness I had missed. Other times, it proposed inappropriate ideas because it either overlooked relevant context or didn't understand how people or organizations actually behave.

This made me think carefully about each suggestion instead of just accepting it.

For me, the most helpful way to use AI in writing is to treat it not as an expert, but as a tough reader who challenges my work.

The writer still has to decide:

- whether the criticism is valid;
- whether the research supports it;
- whether fixing the issue improves the story;
- and whether realism is in fact serving the narrative.

I get better results when I look into specific problems in my manuscript rather than trying to learn everything about a topic at the beginning.

So instead of thinking, "I need to understand intelligence operations," I ask much more focused questions:

"How would information realistically move between these two organizations?"

"What legal or political obstacle would prevent this action?"

What specific knowledge could this character have at this exact moment?

What repercussions would this decision have?

These kinds of questions lead to research you can really use in your story.

I'd love to hear from other self-published fiction writers about how they approach this:

How do you check if a scene feels believable, not just accurate?

When you use AI as you revise, does it help you more in generating new ideas or in questioning the ideas you have already written?

I’m writing my first children’s book. It is 18 pages and I want it to be a hardcover. I can’t work out how to publish through Amazon as they don’t seem to publish in this format. Can someone help me, if not Amazon, what is the next best option?

I believe most of us thought writing the book was the hard part of this process. Oh boy, we're we wrong, that was the easy part...

Marketing, promoting, selling, defeating the AI witch hunt, no movement after months, etc. IS the hard part.

But don't discourage yourself. Patience will be your greatest asset.

Keep dreaming.

Keep working.

Uplift each other. Promote other indie authors. Promote other indie books. Let's do this collectively.

Wishing you all success.

I am posting this because I wish someone had warned me before I trusted a paid publishing company with my work and my granddaughter's name.

I dealt with Oxford Book Writers, and I have spent months going back through my contracts, emails, payments, book files, refund records, and communications.

Here is what I can document.

I paid for professional publishing services. Their written agreement promised professional proofreading and editing, formatting and typesetting, publishing, ISBN and barcode services, a dedicated project manager, and other services.

What I received was a children's book containing serious mistakes. The book carried my name and the full legal name of my seven year old granddaughter.

This was not simply a draft sitting on someone's computer.

The book was published. A physical copy was purchased.

I have the original files I provided. I have the book that was published. I have the emails where I complained about the problems. I have the payment records. I have the refund communications.

I eventually had to remove the book.

I was also told things during the sales and publishing process that I later began questioning.

One of the biggest issues for me involved the ISBN. I understood from my initial telephone conversation that a Bowker ISBN would be obtained. What I later found was an ISBN associated with Amazon's publishing system instead. Because the original representation was made verbally, I am describing this as what I was told and understood, not pretending I have a written promise that I do not have.

Then there is the money.

The company I believed I was paying was Oxford Book Writers.

But when I later examined my financial records, the merchant descriptions did not simply say Oxford Book Writers.

That made me start asking a very basic question:

Who did I actually pay?

I am still investigating that question.

I also discovered inconsistencies in the public information surrounding the business, including different locations, business history information, and other publishing brands appearing to share contact information.

Again, I am not going to call those companies the same company unless I can prove it.

But I am asking questions.

Then something happened that made this much bigger for me.

The daughter of an elderly Canadian author contacted me after seeing a discussion about vanity publishing. She told me about her father's experience with Oxford and mentioned David Reeds.

I recognized the name.

I went back through my own old records.

David Reeds was also someone I had dealt with at Oxford.

That is when I started documenting everything.

I later called Oxford and recorded the conversation with their knowledge. During that conversation, Oxford confirmed that David Reeds worked there. I also heard statements that I considered inconsistent enough that I preserved the entire recording.

I am not asking Reddit to decide whether anyone committed fraud.

I am not claiming that every allegation another family has made is true.

I am saying that authors need to be extremely careful.

Do not accept a sales representative's statements without getting important promises in writing.

Do not assume the name on a website is necessarily the legal business receiving your payment.

Check your credit card statement.

Verify who owns your ISBN.

Keep the manuscript you originally submitted.

Keep every version they return to you.

Keep your contract.

Keep every email.

Keep every invoice.

Keep every refund promise.

And when someone tells you that you need another service, another marketing package, another registration, or another upgrade before your book can succeed, stop and investigate before paying again.

I learned that lesson the hard way.

This is no longer about the remaining money for me.

It is about what happens when someone takes an author's dream, gains their trust, and then the author discovers that things were not what they believed they were buying.

If you have personally dealt with Oxford Book Writers, I want to hear from you.

Good experience or bad experience.

I especially want to hear from people who still have original contracts, invoices, emails, payment records, ISBN information, refund communications, or communications with David Reeds, Mark J. Cooper, Daniel Hayes, or Jake Austin.

Please do not post account numbers or private financial information.

I am looking for documents and facts, not rumors.

Because the more I have gone back through my own records, the more I have realized something very important:

Authors need to know who they are actually doing business with before they hand over their money, their manuscript, their name, and sometimes even their family's name.

Hey everyone!

I am currently working on my first sci-fi novel, and once I finish my plan is to go the traditional route and submit to agents and publishers for a year while I work on the sequel. If I haven’t had any luck by the time the sequel is done, I’m just going to self publish. (For background, I’m coming from 7 years as an audiobook narrator and am trying my hand at writing my own story)

My question is this: I intend on these being 80,000+ word novels. Since I wouldn’t have the marketing force of a traditional publishing company, and I know that more books is especially better when self-publishing, would it be beneficial to split those two books into four 40,000 word books as a longer series? That way, financially, I could sell four books for let’s say $3.99 each instead of two longer books for $4.99? It makes the barrier to entry for new readers a little lower, and potentially allows for me to multiply the income for the same amount of work.

What do you think?

Looking for the best combination of ease of use and cost (free is, obviously best).

Please tell me WHy you liked it.

The new(ish) A10 algo is choking me to death. My sales have fallen off a cliff (I'm with a small press that once advertised heavily and then relied on the algo to promote new books and now the algo doesn't do so anymore because I never built up a proper social media presence yadda yadda my fault I get it; also my Zon followers don't help much anymore so I guess they hate me now) and I was wondering if any y'all who sell wide have had any luck with Smashwords and other alternative selling sites where they haven't turned in draconian policies like Amazon. I thought if I did a new series or two and flood the alternate sites maybe I can pick up a few extra bucks. Of course it's a lot of work for a maybe. I don't know if anybody bothers with Smashwords, etc., anymore, but I thought it might be worth a try. I'm working on social media stuff but I write thrillers and I'm old so I don't necessarily fit on BookTok. They'd be all who the old guy GTFO. Anyway I thought this might be a good place to ask so thank you.

Hi everyone! I've dreamed of writing and publishing a book since I was young, and I've been working on and rewriting one particular novel for about seven years now.

I've always imagined myself being traditionally published, but the more I look into it, the more discouraged I get by how difficult it seems. I'm now seriously considering self-publishing, but I'm worried about putting years of work into a book that barely gets noticed.

For those who have self-published, was it worth it for you? And how did you actually get people to find and read your book? I'd especially love to hear from people who started with little or no existing audience.

It has taken me twenty years... TWENTY years to complete my first novel. To illiterate: not twenty years from start to finish 😅

Ive dabbled in writing a number of different genres over the years and ive never finished them. life, family, work.. they all got in the way.

Fast forward to a few months ago. I broke my knee 😬 and was laid up for quite a while. I thought hey, lets write! And so I did.

It's a romantasy. I've never written anything of the sort before. I've recently finished it. Not 'The end', I've left it open for continuation. I know exactly what will happen in book two when I come to writing it.

I cried like a baby when i got to the end.

I guess my question is: what now?

I know I need to leave it alone for a while and then go back with fresh eyes to edit to manuscript perfection. (How do people do this! This book is all i think about 🫣)

But what about after? When the character arcs are \*chefs kiss\*, the prose is perfect, the plot flows, the flaws are removed.

Do i find an agent?

Do i self pub first?

Do i use online platforms like wattpad and inkitt to gauge interest?

Essentially, my life long dream is to have a physical book of my own. And to share it with the world, like millions of others. Ans I truly believe there is an audience for my work.

What should my expectations be?

Im just a quiet mother in a small part of the world that has dreamt of this for forever. But I'm so scared that it'll just sit on my computer and be forgotten about.

What are my next steps?

How can I publish my own book?

Hi everyone! I’ve written my own book and now I want to publish it. I’m completely new to the publishing process, so I’d love to hear from authors here how did you publish your first book, and what would you recommend for someone starting out?

Any advice would be really appreciated! ❤️

So I have written my first manuscript (if you can call it that) for what I envision will be a children’s illustrated storybook series. However I am no illustrator, let alone author, and I have no idea what my next steps should be. However do I get illustrations? Do I need an editor or something? Is there an actual site that works well with first-time authors? I feel completely lost but I feel a desire to get this story (and maybe stories) out there. Any and all advice is welcome. Thank you in advance!

I’m a new self-published author who is revising original work for a relaunch. I found my project hard to sell in the marketplace of freelancers. A graphic artist who has a good portfolio quoted me $2700 for the following service: new book cover, refinement of my current internal graphics, design of an audiobook cover, and interior formatting. I want one artist to handle everything for continuity. The artist would also redesign or refine 15 stand-alone marketing pieces. I am so green that I don't know if what I am asking for is unreasonable or if the artist is fair. 5 others I approached said “no.” Any thoughts? I did all the art myself but it looks amateurish so the artist is not working from scratch. I am researching others but the scope of work seems to be the issue.

Hello, I am looking for ways to promote my books on here. Every time I try, it is taken down by Reddit filters. Frustrating. I go to threads where it is the same type of books but they tell you not to self promote. Does anyone have any advice?

I'm new to Reddit and have heard from a friend that it's a great place to share constructive ideas, gain knowledge, and learn from people with experience in different fields.

Recently, I had the idea of writing and publishing a book on Amazon Kindle, but I'm not sure if it's the right path or whether it will work.

I already have the core story in mind. However, it's not fully structured yet—it's mostly a collection of ideas, scenes, and key moments. I'm looking for advice on how to organize those ideas into a complete novel and what steps I should follow to move forward.

I've also set myself a goal: I want to publish Chapter 1 by August 31.

I'd really appreciate any advice, writing tips, or suggestions from authors who have gone through this process. What would you do if you were starting from scratch?

Hi everyone! I have a question for fellow authors: how do you usually get reviews on Amazon?

I’ve had some organic sales and KENP reads, but I still haven’t gotten any reviews. Having reviews definitely makes a book more appealing to potential readers, so I’m wondering if there’s anything I should be doing differently.

I also tried BookSirens, but my book was rejected without any explanation.

I’d really appreciate any advice or tips on how you’ve managed to get your first few reviews organically. Thank you!

I don’t know where to go, but I need help self publishing my children’s book. Can anybody help me with the resources in order to self publish my book at a low cost