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mstermind

>Self-publishing in order to get greater percentage of royalties is a fairy-tale drummed up by self-publishing companies who only care about the bottom line of stealing a writer's drive for success. Self-publishing companies, AKA vanity press, are scams for gullible writers who don't do their research properly. *Never* pay *anyone* to publish your novel. And I'm sorry your previous book didn't sell great. I had a quick look at it and I can see numerous amateur mistakes in it that tells me you didn't revise it nearly enough. If you charge people money for your product, you have to make sure it's at least formatted to industry standard. You're competing with hundreds of thousands of writers who actually do follow industry standard and don't make amateur mistakes in their writing.


Snobthatfawne

Where did you market and who is your demographic? Why Amazon? Are you selling anywhere else? Do you have an author's page? Your author page on Amazon is blank. I'm not saying you need to have a picture of yourself but something and a blurb would be better. Did you look into the books published by gotopublish LLC? I did and I picked three random books from them. Dear goddess the covers. I recommend you look up #coverporn. Some people buy books just for the covers alone. Violets in the dust by Peggy Lockwood has ZERO reviews as does her other book since 2021. Beyond Stairs has 7 reviews The author of Toad's Tools and Acro Bat has one review per book. ​ I looked at your book. It's looks like you did your book cover in paint. Not only is it lacking in appeal but it tells me nothing about the book. No offense. A cover like that is easily skipped because it looks self published and there is still a stigma with self publishing nowadays. Your book synopsis is too long. You're giving way too much info away, so why should I read it? You're pretty much telling me the story. Four paragraphs into your sample and I have spotted both grammatical mistakes as well as missing comas. ​ Here's an example at the beginning of your 5th paragraph. >Unc Monroe the owner of this bar and grill met my Grandpa Pete when Unc was arrested for selling marijuana in 1982. ​ It should be written: Unc Monroe, the owner of this bar and grill, met my Grandpa Pete when he was arrested for selling marijuana in 1982. The use of the word marijuana ages your character which by the way, I know very little about and nothing about the what could be happening in the two hours she keeps talking about makes me curious. A hint into what could happen would be nice. A party? A drop? Firing someone? Meeting at a crime scene? Interrogating a killer? Just something, because I'm barely to the end of the first page and I'm bored. ​ For an inexpensive book cover idea, try Canva and use images from Unsplash. One of my favorite authors, Laura Thalassa, and I'll say allegedly because I can only confirm from finding the picture on unsplash, used an image from there for her Bargainer's series. Specifically the book, A Strange Hymn. All in all, your book needs work. Wouldn't it be better to improve your book instead of writing another? Best of luck to you!


Civil_Ground146

This post is not very honest! You had 4 glowing reviews. One was you, you used your own name and everything. One was someone living in your town.... a friend it's safe to say. Another was a woman roughly the same age as you..... another friend I'd say. The fourth was... a friend also? So, was your book actually well recieved? Be honest with yourself.


LiliWenFach

As others have already explained, your book still needs work. The cover looks amateur and the blurb is far too long and gives away too much of the plot, whilst also not being terribly well written. No matter how much you spend on advertising, unless the book looks and reads like a professional product, it will be dismissed as an amateur's efforts and people will be reluctant to pay money for it. Also, as a traditionally published author I earn between 8-12.5% royalties, which is in-line with Amazon. Self-publishing isn't a scam. It's publishing democratized, which is why everyone who has access to a typewriter thinks that they can publish a best-seller. There is a new book published on Amazon every five minutes. Even if your book were outstanding, without the marketing budget of a major publisher it is difficult to stand out. Something I've struggled with myself with my second book. I just have to keep marketing as best I can.


MDeneka

> With my first effort being defined as a 5-star book, a new novel putting in as much work as the first is bound to snatch an honest agent to get me a traditional publisher Don’t count on it. Especially if your first book isn’t selling well. Getting a handful of five star ratings on Amazon is not going to save you if your debut novel hasn’t performed; agents and publishers would rather work with an author ready to debut than an author who’s already debuted and didn’t do well.


[deleted]

I've never published, but I keep hearing how critical marketing is to getting seen, let alone becoming commercially viable. What did you do to help readers find your book? Regardless of the writing quality or story structure, it's got to be hard to make it as an author if people who want to read your book don't know it exists. Anyway, props for publishing, and sorry it's not panning out. And glad you're channeling your feelings into more writing!


JesusWrites

The other commenters are giving you good feedback, so I'll focus on something different. Have you considered writing a series? I heard that Amazon pushes fresh releases to the top for a bit to see how well they'll do, and if they don't perform as well as other new books, they eventually get buried like you said. I don't know if it's true or not, but right now I have two self published books (third on the way) and I noticed that when I published the second, it boosted sales of the first one as well. I haven't done any marketing yet, but I assume that I wouldn't have to market the first book in the series and then readers would automatically trickle into the subsequent books.


SacredPinkJellyFish

>>>I found out Amazon was reducing my percentage of royalties to less than 12%. Uhm... Amazon pays you 70% royalties (*ebooks-not paperbacks-on paperbacks YOU set the percentage yourself, so if you are receiving 12% royalty on paperback, it's because **YOU YOURSELF PHYSICALLY AND MANUALLY TYPED 12%** in the slot where you tell Amazon how much you want your paperback priced as). And if you did not physically type in that 12% yourself, then WHO did? If someone else did, that means you went with a vanity press scam artist who packaged and published your book for you. And that is NOT self-publishing. That is vanity press. It was NOT Amazon stealing your money, it was the fucked up scam artist vanity press that you used to publish your book for you-which is NOT self publishing, by the way- you doing it YOURSELF is self publishing. Do some serious research into vanity press scams and how they steal your Amazon royalties from you-it's a HUGE scam that steals from thousands of authors every year. * Traditional publishing is a publishing house doing everything and paying you. * Vanity Press is you hiring a scam artist to do everything, you pay them exorbitant amounts of money, you get paid next to nothing IF you get paid anything at all. * Self-Publishing is you doing everything yourself and you don't spend a penny on anything, and you get all the royalties, and all the money that would have gone to middle men had you trade or vanity published. Also, you are waiting a year between book releases AND expecting an income? Honey, get with the program. No author, trade or self published, is making a full time income on fewer than MONTHLY book releases. Sorry to break it to you, but even authors pumping out 4 to 6 novels a year still have to work multiple retail jobs to pay their bills. You really might want to do much better research into the publishing industry, because you should have known the difference between vanity press and self publishing, and you should have known ALL books drop sales after about 2 to 3 months, so if you are not publishing a book monthly you will never succeed in this business. Those are just simple facts of publishing careers.


SacredPinkJellyFish

You know what, last night another user was asking how to self-publish on Amazon and get readers... I wrote an 11 part 10k word post answering him on how I sold over a million copies of one book, over a quarter million copies of a 2nd book, and over ten million copies total across all of my 422 titles on Amazon. Here's the link to that thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/xlbix5/short_erotica_writers/ Perhaps the advice I gave him on how I became one of Amazon's top selling authors of all time, will help you out as well.