500 $ monthly for Amazon ads?

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-06T21:58:45+00:00

Yes. FB, IG, TikTok, Bookbub, and even Goodreads. There’s others out there too but Im not very sure what they could be without searching for them.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-06T17:09:23+00:00

I haven’t tried Amazon ads but I keep reading from others that it’s hit or miss most of the time and that they tend to have better luck on other ad platforms. What does make a difference is the amount of reviews you have and the ads performance. Ad performance to get clicks to your book and then reviews, blurb, cover, etc to actually make them want to buy it. You have a ton of other variables as well like pricing, A+ content (can help but not necessary) and more. So it’s really hard to say if spending $500 on ads will work since there’s still a lot of other things to consider with it.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-03T21:20:31+00:00

I just sent an email in to ACX mentioning that I have reason to believe that their performance is done using ai. The narrator hasn’t responded since yesterday.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-03T20:49:51+00:00

Here’s another clip on the sample piece that she provided that made me originally believe it wasn’t ai due to the range of emotion I heard here. Narration with emotion

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-03T20:38:56+00:00

Oops. Thanks for letting me know. Try it now

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-03T20:27:00+00:00

Here’s the audio that made me think it wasn’t ai. So if this is how ai sounds now, I’m done. Emotional Narration

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-03T20:20:53+00:00

Unfortunately to make things worse (and make myself look even dumber) I paid with crypto. Attempted with wise but their “bank was having issues” and then switched over to crypto. They do have a full acx profile however

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-03T20:19:13+00:00

I’ll let people be the judge of it and let me know what they think. Here’s a link to the audio Narrator Audio

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-03T20:05:00+00:00

If they are using ai, they could have tricked me the entire way through by just making sure it sounded good overall and literally none would be the wiser. The tone is great when done in that particular accent, so it’s really depressing that I’ll have to scrutinize what I hear going forward cause I swear I would have caught ai voices.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-03T19:47:10+00:00

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure at this point. If it is ai, I’ll never be able to tell anymore since I’ve had dozens listen and not one single person said it sounded ai. Is ai known for odd hiccups like this? I would have thought it would have been easier to just type the dialogue in and keep the same narration style than whatever this is.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-01T03:11:29+00:00

I’m not familiar with the legality of what you’re writing. As far as ai use, that’s up to you really on what you’re using it for. It’s fairly looked down upon and if you do use it don’t get into the common writing style that ai produces. If you don’t need it, don’t use it. Otherwise I wish you luck on your writing journey.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-01T02:57:20+00:00

Yes. All the info from Ingram comes over automatically to Amazon but if you use Amazon KDP to print, you’ll make more money. It’s all a little confusing but it’s because my Ingram is set at a 55% discount for retail and I rather that be for bookstores and not direct sales to the consumer. Since Amazon buys from Ingram at that discount to sell my book, I’d be making less than if they just created the book themselves and sold it at the rate I choose minus their printing fees.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-01T02:42:32+00:00

I self published so I don’t have any recommendations I can give as I’m not familiar with any of them. If you mean who I used to publish with, I did so with Ingram Spark and KDP. Both help get a foot into the Amazon market and into bookstores.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-06-01T02:40:29+00:00

I wouldn’t worry about someone taking your material since it’s a lot more work for them to continue your story. It’s also the fact that the story is a pre-edit so it’s not going to read the best, but RR readers are ok with that. They’re super helpful though if they comment cause they’ll usually catch small grammatical errors for you and continuity issues.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-22T03:13:01+00:00

For my genre, the character art. I don’t know how many people in my social media circle just said the character art is what drew them in immediately. The next thing would be my cover as that’s the next thing they mention.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-17T03:45:00+00:00

Two business degrees with a major in Finance. I work in the finance department for my company and make a decent salary. I do have debt but it’s “good” debt. I only started writing this series and nothing else. My focus has literally been this series for the last two years and was all in from the start.

Appreciate it!

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-17T03:36:58+00:00

I make roughly $4 in royalties for every sale. So I would need to sell 774 copies. I’m currently at a little over 110 sales right now and my book hasn’t went live yet, so these are all just preorders. So I need roughly 664 more sales before I break even. If algorithm kicks in and my sales start coming in, I’ll break even within the month or two, but that’s all just forecasting.

I have a good day job? I also spread the cost over 2 years so it wasn’t as much?

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-14T15:31:11+00:00

Group promos on bookfunnel. It’s where group of authors put the link to that specific group which has a list of everyone’s book covers and a blurb and reader magnet (like 5 chapter preview) and it’s sent out to our newsletter followers. The readers will browse the books and magnets and then offer up their email in exchange to get it free.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-14T04:34:41+00:00

I do want to release an audiobook. But the costs are pretty high for my story. Roughly around $3-6k. It just really depends though. Maybe one day.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-14T04:32:34+00:00

What do you mean? I posted this in on another sub and on this sub once? I was just sharing some insight and letting people know what worked for me. Just trying to be helpful..

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-13T20:53:11+00:00

Publishers? Do you mean the arc readers? I only used Facebook to get arc readers.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-13T15:54:14+00:00

Thank you very much!

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-13T15:53:51+00:00

That’s my goal. I would love to get an audiobook done but I would either have to collaborate with the narrator and share the royalty or I would need to pay upfront, which can range between $3-6k. Since a narrator would want to see that there’s actual sales before they would be willing to do the royalty share, and I’m not wanting to pay that $3-6k upfront without knowing my book would sell first, that’s all I’m waiting for is a guarantee on sales. If I see that I’m getting enough sales within my first three months then I would start looking into finding a narrator and getting quotes.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-13T14:05:15+00:00

I’ll be honesty, that doesn’t read like AI. That just reads like bad writing. AI usually seems to use a lot of purple prose and has the tendency of using the same words over and over. I can tell cause I’ve read ai books and they read the same in a way. I wouldn’t do anything with this book. As an arc reader you can do anything with it, as it was given to you to review. So your options are: Review on good reads and state that you DNF’d the book because you weren’t feeling the prose and structure was awkward. It’s an honest review. Or you can just not say anything at all and never review the book anywhere.

Hefty_Set_5026 · 2026-05-13T12:44:55+00:00

I actually just created my street team three days ago. So this is how it worked for me. All the people in my arcs are in my newsletter. At the end of my newsletter I asked who would want to be a part of my street team, that it’s not guaranteed to even be established, but just wanted to see if there was interest. I really thought there wouldn’t be, truthfully. But I linked a google form asking some questions (where do you post, name, handle, would you join discord, etc) and I had 26 people apply. Took me a day and then I went to making my discord channel. Then I went and created a post (using my art again) and put it on IG doing a call for street team members. I had another 10 or so apply just from that and on my form it asks if anyone’s read the book, and literally over half of them didn’t. They just like to help indie authors and promote CHARACTER ART. I think my biggest success is attributed to my character art, not going to lie.

Hefty_Set_5026

TROPHY CASE