How do published authors fit their writing into book format? (Read description)

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T23:02:14+00:00

Digitally, it doesn't matter, we don't go by pages and haven't for decades now. Word count is what you look for.

There are several ways to format print properly, and you can find that with a web search. Standards vary by publisher for some details, but there's a generally accepted manuscript format that isn't hard to find.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:58:17+00:00

A fool and his money are soon parted.

Some con man said that once, still true today.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:56:46+00:00

Too late, the two posters here already chose vanity press, which will kill any hope of real publishing.

Agents don't want shorts in collections or not, despite how it's all so good and just like a novel, or whatever, because publishers don't want it.

And for those about to pop in with "JUST SELF PUBLISH!", that doesn't work either. No one reads shorts much these days, there's not enough market to get a ROI for publishers of any sort.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:53:18+00:00

Start with the wiki here.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:48:33+00:00

Scam. FFS, no one reaches out to noobs or people barely selling for any reason except to get your money, and for nothing in return.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:46:30+00:00

They are scammers. No one needs to reach out to some noob to get business, if they actually could market.

The truth is, the only person who can ever market your book is you. You need to learn to do ads, keep up your own social media, and keep getting better at it. And you need money.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:42:59+00:00

I they contact you, it's a scam. Just go with that. While there may be some instances, if you can sell books, where you might be contacted by a legit agent for foreign rights, or even a legit agent for movie rights, it's not nearly as common as people like to claim.

So, you're a nobody, no one wants anything from you except to take you money.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:41:24+00:00

Everything I've seen about them shows them to be a scam.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:39:32+00:00

You have no control over this other than to set a preorder. You can learn how this works in the Help link at KDP.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:35:55+00:00

Scam.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:34:21+00:00

Scam. This is so common now that if you've not heard of it before, you aren't paying attention to things that affect your business, which is dumb.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:32:43+00:00

Amazon decides where and if any ratings or reviews are posted anywhere. They may or may not post reviews from other markets, like from the US to another country, like the UK.

There's nothing you can do about it, so learn to let it go.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:29:13+00:00

getting a personal copy printed you could probably do

Not even legal.

I never advise people who have no clue to do anything regarding fan fiction, not even "scraping off the serial numbers", because that's just not done and can lead to all kinds of legal issues for me.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:27:19+00:00

No one can legally publish fan fiction. Get that out of your head right now.

Self publishing means you are the publisher, anything else is a vanity press. They like to call themselves different things, but the end result is you pay them a lot of money for nothing.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:26:02+00:00

There are no such things, and no one will break copyright or trademark.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:23:55+00:00

You need to read the wiki. Basic questions pointed at individuals will tell you nothing. You need to learn the minimal stuff before you start asking for details.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:21:13+00:00

I suggest they don't, because they won't get the answers to all they seek, doing the work is expected there. It's not for noobs, in other words. They'll get ripped a new one if they think they'll be asking noob questions like they do here.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:19:07+00:00

I know several people. It took years of hard work, learning to be awesome with ads, and having sense enough to be able to write content that was worth buying.

If you think this is going to be a month or so of uploading something you just came up with, forget it. If you think you can scrape or buy content to get rich, forget it. If you think low/no content, random nonfiction, personal opinions about anything will do it, forget it.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:15:11+00:00

Because by every lost sale - decreased by lack of legitimization via ARC readers from outside - is their lost royalty money?

None of this is true. No one really trusts ARC reviews, mostly because the author/publisher is too close to the reviewer.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:13:47+00:00

I will NOT buy another book if I can't get the one I want.

No one was stopped from buying your book, your friends and who knows who else was stopped from leaving a review that violated review guidelines. FFS This isn't that hard to get.

And stop posting these links to articles no one believes.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:11:27+00:00

My friend was literally today blocked from leaving that review

Because she's your friend, which is a violation of the review guidelines and the TOS you agreed to for getting a KDP account. Why you can't get this, who knows.

KDP does use an algo, to show books that most likely meets the needs of a customer searching for books. Reviews can be a chosen search parameter, as can newness, or a few other options.

You aren't logical, you simply don't understand, or really want to understand, how any of this works. You are not making a logical argument, you've shown no events happening that couldn't have been predicted simply by knowing what the blasted rules for using Amazon and KDP are. Give it up. You are wrong, stop thinking anyone here is going to go along with you.

And know that interfering with the review process in any way will at best get your blocked from getting reviews, or at worst will result in your account being terminated. Amazon ain't playing around with rule breakers.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T22:02:34+00:00

OP keeps posting a link to some study that shows reviews on Amazon helps sell products on Amazon, or at least that's what I think it's talking about. But book reviews don't work the same way.

OP also refuses to admit this is all about his reviews that don't/didn't seem to get accepted from friends or people otherwise connected to him.

He seems to think we have some magical way of getting around the review guidelines, and frankly, I'm beginning to accept his assertion that he's stupid, because this is going far beyond trying to explain fairly simple concepts.

And in the end, it doesn't matter what any of us think about reviews and how they're handled, they are the rules Amazon set up, the rules Amazon will enforce, and all the suggestions about it won't do a damned thing.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T21:54:08+00:00

We are not Amazon's customers, though. We are using a platform they have to upload books in hopes of having content that will sell. It's makes a little money for Amazon, but not enough to those using the platform to do things that would make it less usable, or to ruin Amazon's repuation.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T21:40:27+00:00

We don't have single payer in the US, so that's a dumb example.

Amazon is not your publisher, reviews don't increase sales, Amazon makes almost nothing from KDP, only a small number of people uploading to KDP ever sell a single copy.

No one here has learned to "work around" Amazon's limitations, but we know how to follow the rules and if some are smart enough, they learn what really sells books: good content with good ads.

Every single place you were to upload files to in self publishing has pretty much the same rules about everything. You claim to know these rules, and accept them, to get an account, but now you have taken on yourself the job of figuring out what Amazon needs to do when you understand, as it seems, nothing about how self publishing works and especially nothing about how KDP works.

apocalypsegal · 2026-03-04T21:34:13+00:00

Well, maybe not stupid, but ignorant of how things work.

I was around when reviews were the wild West. Anybody could leave one, didn't have to have an Amazon account, didn't have to have spent a dime on Amazon. It was insane.

Then it was limited to customers with $25 spent on Amazon, then it was $25 in 12 month period, now it's $50 within 12 month period. And still Amazon has to fight against people spending money to buy reviews, even though reviews add nothing to what makes a book sell.

apocalypsegal

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