Kindle Unlimited has proved to be a lucrative program for many authors, but has also attracted the kindle hacks crowd who are only interested in kindle hacks and scamming kdp select

Kindle Unlimited – A Cheater Magnet

Updated by David Gaughran 29 January 2021. Amazon, Bewares • 83 Comments.

For a month or two, though, things improved. The charts cleaned up. Real, actual authors — not faceless book stuffers powered by ghostwriters — started surfacing again. Readers were saying that it was easier to find good books in the charts. I noticed the difference myself in July when helping someone with a launch; it seemed to take less of a push to get in the Top 100. I stopped paying attention to what the scammers were doing. Life was good.

It seems like Amazon stopped paying attention too. It was far harder to get into the Top 100 in September, and a quick look at the charts showed why. Many of those “authors” from Chance Carter’s mastermind circle who inexplicably survived the purges of June/July — grotesque characters like RR Banks — were suddenly charting again. En masse. With multiple books each, simultaneously.

They had figured out a new hole in the fence. I looked at the Contemporary Romance charts for the first time in a while and all the real authors were being pushed down again, while all the ghostwritten trash was swamping the Kindle Store once more. Read More…

Amazon Only Cares About KDP Select Exclusivity

Updated by David Gaughran 23 March 2021. Bewares • 94 Comments.

Amazon infamously takes a very light touch approach to policing the Kindle Store, except when it comes to KDP Select exclusivity, even when the author is not at fault, as I found out to my cost.

On Monday, I found out that some bug hit a German e-book site causing the reactivation of long-dead listings, including one of mine, causing myself and several other authors to inadvertently breach the KDP Select exclusivity rule.

Amazon pounced into action and cancelled my Countdown deal which was scheduled for this week, screwing up a carefully planned promotion. And despite pledging to resolve the matter and restore the promo, Amazon has not done so. Read More…

KDP Select Launch Raises Payment Questions

Updated by David Gaughran 4 April 2021. Amazon, Publishing • 190 Comments.

Things had been going pretty smoothly for self-publishers until the KDP Select launch. We were more or less done with the arguments about whether this was a viable path and whether you could attract an agent/publisher (if you wanted to) by self-publishing first.

We had generally agreed that e-books were here to stay and that print books and bookstores (sadly) were on the way out. Then Amazon came along with a curveball, splitting the community: KDP Select.

KDP Select is an opt-in program where self-publishers can be part of Amazon’s e-book lending library. There has been a lot of discussion about KDP Select and the Lending Library – some hysterical, some measured – but I think it needs to be considered in the framework of subscription models in general. Read More…

Hysteria Greets Amazon’s Per Page Payment Model

Updated by David Gaughran 27 March 2021. Amazon, Publishing • 89 Comments.

I’ve been around for long enough to know that authors can be a skittish bunch. Probably something to do with our over-active imaginations, with an assist from that old writers’ favorite: the whiskey brunch.

More seriously, we are going through a period of unprecedented change so it’s perfectly normal for people to be a little fearful. I think the disruption we are all experiencing is greater than that which has been faced by similar industries. In fact, I think the transition from print book to e-book is akin to going straight from vinyl to MP3, with all that entails.

So, change. Lots of it. And change can be scary – even if you seem to be benefitting from the changes that are happening. I get that. However, at this point, we should all know enough to treat media reports on Amazon (and publishing in general) with the requisite amount of skepticism. As in 100% skepticism. Read More…

best promo sites 2024 book promotion promote a book promoting

The Best Book Promotion Sites in 2024

Updated by David Gaughran 3 May 2024. Marketing • 208 Comments.

These are the best book promo sites in 2022 for boosting your sales, broken down into various categories – with something for all budgets and experience levels, even some completely free options. This list is curated by me personally, and all these sites have been tested and are recommended because of the results generated.

You can skip to the section you are looking for below but make sure to check the final section for a free course on how to build a proper marketing campaign. Read More…

amazon book category hacks with all your tips for amazon category, amazon categories, amazon book category, amazon book categories, kindle categories, metadata, optimizing metadata, choosing categories, ebook categories, kdp

These Amazon Category Hacks Can Boost Your Book Sales

Updated by David Gaughran 9 May 2021. Amazon, Publishing • 38 Comments.

Choosing the right Amazon categories for your book can greatly increase your visibility in the Kindle Store, making your work more likely to be discovered, purchased, and recommended.

But if you make bad decisions here – or opt to do nothing at all – you can limit your book’s success in surprising ways. Sometimes you can even nudge Amazon towards recommend your book to all the wrong people! Which invariably fails, of course, and causes Amazon to think you have written a dud. Meaning Amazon is less likely to recommend your book at all. This is something you really want to avoid.

Many authors don’t realize they should revisit their categories on a regular basis – not just to ensure they are maximizing visibility, but to check Amazon hasn’t placed them in a bad category. You need to know exactly which categories and sub-categories your book is in – Amazon doesn’t make that part easy – and then keep on top of changes to the category system as well. Read More…

how to self-publish a book free self-publishing guide publish your book for free self-publishers costs self publishing

How To Self-Publish A Book In 10 Steps [2023]

Updated by David Gaughran 10 February 2023. Publishing, Resources • 526 Comments.

This fourth edition of Digital has been completely revamped to reflect the needs of self-publishers in 2020. The structure has been completely streamlined to reflect the ten steps involved in publishing your work like a pro.

Reflecting the specific challenges that writers face today, the advice on each step goes much deeper than before. Instead of just showing you how and where to find a cover designer, for example, Let’s Get Digital will show you how to brief your designer effectively, and learn what effective commercial packaging is for your niche, so that you end up with a cover which isn’t just pretty, but also very effective at appealing to your specific target audience.

And the same goes for writing, editing, formatting, pricing, metadata — all the areas where an author must make crucial decisions which affect the viability of their book.

Of course, the largest section of the book, by far, covers the entire topic of marketing from the ground up, showing authors not just how to find their first readers in the most cost effective way possible, but also how to construct a real author platform, one that will capture interest from readers and use those seeds to grow a community of fans around your work, who will send each new release higher in the charts. Read More…

free promotions are more than just making a book free for a few days, you can also consider permafree series openers, reader magnets, arcs, and more

9 Ways To Unleash The Power of Free

Updated by David Gaughran 25 January 2022. Marketing • 15 Comments.

Authors are giving away more stuff than ever before: permafree books, reader magnets, and ARCs are just the tip of the iceberg. What’s going on? Should you jump on the free train? Does any of this stuff generate money? Let’s break it down.

The self-publishing landscape today looks very different from when I started ten years ago, that heady time when ebooks first exploded in popularity.

But some things are suddenly feeling quite similar. The impact of the pandemic and lockdowns has seen a lot of economic change occur in a short space of time. With an increase in online purchasing for painfully obvious reasons.

That also means there are lots of new ebook consumers up for grabs. Read More…

Amazon Recommendations and also Boughts - customers also bought amazon recommendation engine recommender system

Amazon Recommendations & Also Boughts

Updated by David Gaughran 22 January 2022. Amazon • 19 Comments.

Amazon recommendations drive millions of dollars of book purchases every single day, and Also Boughts are central to this system, which can lead to panic when they periodically disappear.

Also Boughts play an important role in Amazon recommendations — that process of pairing books to readers like some literary version of Tinder — but the exact role in Amazon’s recommender system can be misunderstood.

So let’s break it all down today, and show you the exact role Also Boughts play in Amazon recommendations, and why you need to protect yours. Read More…

ebook pricing is difficult for authors to navigate, but mostly because there is so much nonsense written about it - all you need to do is determine your goals, price accordingly, then evaluate the changes in income

The Great Ebook Pricing Question

Updated by David Gaughran 3 April 2021. Publishing • 164 Comments.

Do bargain basement prices indicate low quality? Will a 99c price tag actually reduce the value a reader places on a book? That’s a harder question to answer. I think this is true in some cases for some readers, but I also think it’s massively overstated.

It’s hard to sell a book at any price if you have a crappy cover, insipid blurb, wonky formatting, a flaccid sample and tons of terrible reviews (which are all cues to the reader about the value of the product).

But if you have a striking, professional cover, an enticing blurb, clean formatting, a sample which grabs readers right away and lots of great reviews, then you can avoid any negative association with a lower price. Or, at least, the number of readers you will gain through lower prices will greatly exceed any you might lose through such negative associations. Read More…

Strangers to Superfans Resources

Welcome to the Resources page for Strangers to Superfans. All the links, books, tools, products, services, and other resources mentioned throughout the book are listed below, along with a bunch more stuff I thought you would find useful – roughly following the same structure as the book itself. However, it is definitely not a substitute for actually reading Strangers to Superfans so if you somehow stumbled upon this private page for book purchasers, please purchase your own copy here. Your Ideal Reader The concept of the Ideal Reader comes from Stephen King’s excellent book On Writing – part memoir, part writer’s guide, I highly recommend whether you are a fan of his fiction or not. There was a throwaway remark Read More…

How To Market A Book | 2020 Edition

Updated by David Gaughran 29 January 2021. Marketing, Resources • 11 Comments.

Figuring out how to sell books in 2020 means facing a pair of imposing challenges : the multiplying complexity of book marketing and — speaking of things rising exponentially — the global pandemic, which has led to lockdowns, recessions, as well as no small amount of tragedy.

And I want to focus on that second challenge for a moment — before we dive into all the ways that you can get your books into readers’ hands — because there is something rather different about this year.

Writers are generally quite fortunate in that they can work from home and sell books online and, for the moment at least, the digital side of the publishing business looks less exposed than the physical end.

Indeed, retailers and distributors are reporting a boost in ebook sales, and freebies in particular seem especially popular. Anecdotal reports concur, and also seem to confirm that there has been a surge in new entrants to the ebook market — which makes sense when people are stuck at home or less inclined to go browsing in meatspace, for painfully obvious reasons. Read More…

Amazon Decoded • Resources

Hi there! Here are all the resources mentioned in Amazon Decoded, and a few extra ones! Oh and if you somehow stumbled on this private page for purchasers of Amazon Decoded, I recommend picking up a copy. Really, you will be missing all the good stuff if you just try and crib from this page, and will probably end up doing everything ass-backwards. It’s less than five dollars, and it’s just nugget after nugget for anyone wanting to increase their Amazon sales. Get your purchase links here. Knowing who you are writing for and what appeals to them is critical to success. Ensuring that you have a solid conception of your Ideal Reader and that your presentation and packaging is Read More…

Starting From Zero • Resources Page

Hello! These are all the course resources I mentioned in Starting From Zero. And if you stumbled onto this page without enrolling in my free course, Starting from Zero, you can do that right here. Free Course Books You have download links in the course materials, and you should also get an email a couple of days after enrolling, with those download links as well. But just in case you miss those, here they are again. Download Let’s Get Digital here. Download Following here. Let’s Get Digital is freely available from all retailers and you’ll get the links you need above, but Following is a mailing list/course exclusive, and you can only get it from BookFunnel. Click the NEED HELP? Read More…

Formatting An Ebook: A Step-by-Step Guide

Updated by David Gaughran 11 February 2023. Publishing, Resources • 44 Comments.

After clocking up ten years’ experience making my own ebooks, I do a few things differently – but these are predominantly stylistic preferences, or my preferred best practices in terms of ebook layout, or the odd policy change from Amazon here and there.

A caveat: you will need a fair bit of patience to get through the DIY formatting process. At least the first time. It becomes much less of a head melter after you first format an ebook successfully, but you will be tearing your hair out that first time. Be warned! That said, I actually love formatting my own ebooks; I find it weirdly soothing.

I can fix errors at the drop of a hat, fiddle with my end matter to my heart’s content, and I could even hang out my shingle as an ebook formatter now, if I needed a side-hustle. It’s a useful skill, if you are willing to work through the many frustrations that will accompany your first efforts.

It might take you a whole day to do this the first time. It could even take longer! But after doing this a few times, you’ll be able to whizz through the process in an hour or less. And it doesn’t take much “practice” to reach that point. That first time is a bear though! You have been warned. Read More…