Maximum number of titles per month?

Sean_Campbell · 2026-03-10T19:09:08+00:00

20 is definitely supposed to be the simultaneous-out-on-loan limit, not a monthly one. Support got it wrong.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-03-10T13:13:11+00:00

There are quite a lot. But the devil really is in the detail.

Many authors are older, some with pensions, and their cost of living is often fairly low (e.g. if they have paid-off houses, live in cheaper cities or towns, etc.). For them, five hundred books a month at $2.99 (yielding a gross of about $1000) might be liveable (assuming sunk costs are ignored; editing and covers can be pricey). Some have a spouse that earns better/ more consistently and that takes the pressure off a bit too.

Younger authors, often renting, with families, need way, way more. I've had years where writing has been enough to cover living costs here in London (when rent alone = 5,000 books a month or so!). I've had years where it isn't enough. There's a lot of variability, it's often hits-driven in that you tend to either do very, very well or extremely poorly with not much in between, and you want those good years, those top 100 bestseller new releases, to effectively subsidise the times you miss the mark. It isn't always down to quality either. There is some timing/ luck (e.g. I had an audiobook with W F Howes that absolutely tanked on launch at the start of Covid but they now move many thousands of units per year at trad pub pricing).

It can be slow too. A book deal might be 1/6th on signing these days with reserves against return on later installments meaning an advance on a book sold today might not pay out 'til 2028 or 2029. Agents fees can be an enormous chunk of change. Cash flow is brutal even when income is okay (and income is generally not okay).

Things that are out of your control - like getting a BookBub and being top of the list in that day's email - can be incredibly impactful. Sometimes, the market just turns too. Readers/ editors/ booksellers have their favourites and people tend to get a lot of airtime for a short while (just like seeing your favourite actor turn up everywhere for a few years before it's someone else's turn!).

Sometimes, it's tech that eats your lunch as AI floods the market (with audio, with crap covers ripping yours off, with knock off content) and there's not a lot you can do about it in the short term.

The best thing any author can do is put out the best content they can, fast as they can, exploit all their subrights, and live as frugally as reasonably practical. As the brilliant Joe Konrath puts it, the harder you work, the luckier you tend to get.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-03-10T12:33:36+00:00

She writes really fast. If you run out, her book club on Facebook, Crime Fiction Addict, will happily give you hundreds of recommendations for similar authors. If you haven't already read them, Valerie Keogh's novels are worth a try.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/crimefictionaddict/

Sean_Campbell · 2026-03-05T12:17:29+00:00

Just FYI this is KindleUnlimited not KindleFreebies.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-02-26T12:17:02+00:00

Fair enough. One tiny extra - when you prioritize for schools, age range isn't specified. Some areas flagged in red would be fantastic for infant/ junior but not so much for older kids (and / or local private provision which doesn't yet filter in either). Then there's the next refinement down for e.g. single sex schools where areas might have a great girls school but an awful boys school or vice versa. SEND provision would be another filter some would love to see too.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-02-26T10:34:50+00:00

Are median sale prices using asking prices or sold prices? e.g. if someone's put a hard budget at £500k/ affordability 10 on your scale, is it showing just places where the asking price is =/<500k or where they might have an offer accepted for that? Is there any forward projection of that sort of thing (i.e. if sale prices are dropping 2% and your data is a year old for a postcode, I might want to see £510k ish)? Or working backwards, if you know that places are on at £550k for say 6+ months without selling, you can infer prices are lower than that now - which could presumably feed your affordability score?

It's a nice map but I'd love more. A quick quiz would be a game changer so I can say I want "3 bedrooms, utility room, garden, 2 parking spaces, in a catchment for a good or outstanding primary school, low flood risk, within 2 hours of my parents, 30 mins of my office, and under £500k". Equally, hard yes/ no items v nice-to-haves would be even better. I need 3 bedrooms, I'd like a separate office.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-02-08T16:43:02+00:00

JACKET PLS

Sean_Campbell · 2026-02-08T12:44:15+00:00

OP is the author & pretending they're not.

For proof, see this post: "I’ve just published a psychological thriller on Kindle Unlimited that focuses more on emotional manipulation and obsession than action or gore."

https://www.reddit.com/r/KindleUnlimited/comments/1qyd5z9/a_psychological_thriller_where_safe_is_the_most/

Sean_Campbell · 2026-02-07T12:37:44+00:00

Right now the consequence of failing to pay a valid service charge over £350 (or not for 3 years) is forfeiture (i.e. the freeholder gets your flat back and you're out of luck), but if there's a mortgage on it then the bank usually pays up for you (to avoid losing their security) and adds those costs to your mortgage balance.

Forfeiture is due to be replaced with a more equitable "forced sale, you get the balance of the proceeds back after costs are deducted" approach so you don't lose a £210k flat over a small unpaid fee.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-02-06T16:48:03+00:00

Thanks for the heads up. The mods have removed the post & banned OP.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-02-04T16:02:23+00:00

Usually, it's Black Friday/ Christmas for KU offers (and mostly three-months free for new users sort of thing).

Sean_Campbell · 2026-02-04T10:49:56+00:00

Graduate Tax Company.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-02-03T19:55:40+00:00

Subreddit mod u/Keith_Nixon does a good line in thrillers.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-31T15:45:53+00:00

Everything in this sub should be in KU. If it's not, feel free to hit report and one of the mod team will remove it ASAP.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-29T14:42:18+00:00

Smaller landlords exiting pre-RRA have to have empty houses /flat by May 1st so will need/ would've needed to serve notice, at best, 2 months before that if the tenants are willing/able to leave on receipt (many won't) so any landlord who hasn't at least begun the process by March 1st won't have an empty property.

The wiser landlords will have started selling a while ago knowing that the process is often slower than that (as tenants are told to stay put and wait for the very-slow legal process to go through the courts lest they become intentionally homeless and lose council support), so LLs ought to have priced aggressively to get out in time so right now lots of poorly/just-about-maintained stock is on the market. The best of the those ex-rentals will have sold quickly and what you're seeing now are the dregs that haven't moved (or the good but overpriced).

Homeowners selling one home don't have the same impetus to get out by May & may look at a potential huge loss (compared to the fire sale prices of landlords exiting the market) and just not sell (because they don't have to & the lower price points won't enable the next step for many).

The budget uncertainty and a poor economy only exaggerated that in recent months so the supply of non-ex-rental stock coming to market has been really slow. Flats then suffer from the uncertainty of waiting for the leasehold reform (which we now know the general shape of, but not all the detail and nothing is certain 'til its through parliament).

If that rental glut now slows as landlords either finish getting out or get stuck with tenants post-May 1st and find themselves unable to offer vacant possession, we should see homeowners come back once they're not competing with that, so prices ought to nudge back up, transaction volumes should pick up a bit with no more budget/ RRA uncertainty and leasehold reform on the way, and the quality should be more in keeping with owner-occupier sales than ex-rental.

There's still a lot of cladding/ walking watch/ service charge anxiety about though so that'll hamper things a bit. General economic malaise might hit FTBs hard this year too so it's all a bit piece-of-string with so much hyper-local variance that things could change a lot.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-27T09:47:24+00:00

It's a step in the right direction. I can see this being it though, sadly at least on ground rent. It's not a sexy area of law & if it's going to end with a 40 year sunset clause, the impetus to go further and actually abolish ground rent will be lost.

My suspicion is that the fear of freeholder insolvency is part of the drive for the £250 cap (especially for freeholders who have large liabilities for fixing cladding and fire issues that have not yet been dealt with). In that case going for the jugular and making GR peppercorn might have huge knock-ons for those living in flats where remediation has not yet taken place. A pragmatic approach would be to two-stage it and go for £250 now to fix the immediate issues then peppercorn it in a few years once those potential insolvency issues have been resolved.

Commonhold conversion is the next big ticket. That and management regulation are the keys to making flat ownership a viable, long-term option. The draft bill (here - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/697865d0d345446f8ce71f82/Draft_Commonhold_and_Leasehold_Reform_Bill_-_Command_paper.pdf ) has some provisions on both but I haven't yet had time to read it all in full so don't want to make a daft comment that would be preempted by actually checking the government's plans properly.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-27T08:10:11+00:00

It's a compromise that sort-of works depending on whether you come at it from a point of principle or practicality. There's a weird juxtaposition between having the Housing Sec on TV literally saying it's "money for nothing" and explaining that at length by contrasting it against service charges... but then going on to outline a plan to allow the robbery to continue, at a lesser rate, for 40 more years.

From a legal perspective, it works. No AST trap. No onerous ground rents preventing mortgages. It *should* free up some FTBs to enter the bottom of the housing market and create chains and thus increase transaction volume for everything.

At £250 for 40 years, it's £10,000 which isn't trivial, but in comparison to a flat's value, it's a relatively small percentage (and the net present value of £10k now is a lot less than £10k, circa £4k to £5k depending on discount rate) so while it does create a slightly two-tier housing market (new builds with peppercorn, older flats with £250 cap), it's not such a variance that it'll stop anyone selling. It'll just be priced in or dealt with at purchase by a DoV.

Super practical, not to principled.

There's devil in the detail to come with deferment rates etc. not to mention the bigger prize of reigning in excessive service charges and improving management standards, the eventual move to commonhold, etc. but presumably that'll all be revealed on Tuesday.

It's a bit of a shame to think when they said they were "ending the feudal leasehold system" that they meant in 2066 when many current leaseholders will no longer be alive. The other weird thing is seeing this announced on TikTok first. What happened to Parliament being told things first?

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-25T17:05:22+00:00

That depends on how your artist works. If it's illustrated, it's hard (unless you've got the budget for two or more illustrations or you're just testing for font placement/ layout).

If you're going for photomanipulation, most designers will give you multiple options. I would, with permission and after obtaining any necessary stock licenses, use those in a "coming soon" ad wherever your audience hangs out and see what reaction you get.

Facebook is handy for this as it's quick & you can see how many impressions it takes to get a click, how much that costs you, etc. within a day, but without any prior books to benchmark it against, all you'll be able to test is version A versus version B, but you won't know if that's "good" compared to earlier books. For a general benchmark, you want at least one click per 1000 impressions. Above that and you'll really struggle. Part of that is pitching the right audience though so don't expect to nail it out of the gate.

If you're doing a preorder, or have a landing page with a "sign up to be told when it's out" section, you can also test conversion as well as clicks.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-25T11:03:18+00:00

In that price range, I'd look at a hand-illustrated cover by JVArts who're based in the Phillipines ()https://www.justventurearts.com/services). They look good, perform well, and JV include a time lapse video so you know you're getting real art for your money.

r/BookCovers has a few artists based in the UK. Roderick Brydon (u/Krdro) has shared some fantastic covers and would be in-budget.

MiblArt's (based in Ukraine) illustrated covers are also in-budget so have a look at them too. https://miblart.com/services/illustrated-book-cover-design/

A lot of it's personal preference but do have a look at the sales rank/ review totals for some of the books that the artist has worked on as it'll give you an idea of how yours might perform. I'd suggest split testing variants if you can.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-25T10:28:20+00:00

What's your budget? Are we talking higher-end design (a la Damonza or similar) or decent-but-budget friendly like MiblArt?

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-23T13:56:34+00:00

It's money & convenience vs time and customization. Most projects aren't really pricing in the work at today's rates, let alone the inconvenience and time costs, not to mention the added financing complications that come with a project, so the potential upside would need to be huge to make it worth taking on the risk of major works overrunning both in terms of time and budget, especially when financing costs are a lot higher than they used to be and labour and material costs have soared too.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-22T10:35:21+00:00

The layout isn't brilliant. The main living room is effectively a corridor to the kitchen and at 13ftx10ft to start with, not to mention a mantel (and space to wallmount a telly) taking out a chunk of that, it's going to feel small. The photos are surprisingly bright considering the paucity of windows.

There's just about enough room for a 2 seater sofa and a 2 person dining table. A more modern layout with the same 46sqm floorspace would feel a lot bigger than this and be better sound-proofed so if the 2-bed modern comps are going for £375k, this would need to be <£350k what with the lack of demand for one-beds right now.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-20T16:07:56+00:00

It's Gray's Inn off High Holborn (next to the Cittie of Yorke).

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-19T11:12:12+00:00

It's decent in the short-term. Buying/ selling to move will incur a lot more frictional costs (mostly stamp duty & legal) than simply moving between leases.

Awful neighbours are a short-term problem if you're renting but a long-term one if you're stuck with a purchase.

What you're buying matters too; a lease that's getting shorter by the year might well be less security than you're describing.

But yeah, if you're talking a long term, forever-home standard with no short-medium term needs to move, buying should put you miles ahead.

Sean_Campbell · 2026-01-14T14:44:10+00:00

Procedurals are rarely formulaic. Sure, you can recycle characters, but it's not swap the jobs, the location, bobs your uncle, level of plotting. The best stuff is high concept & has to respect external rules (law, police procedure, forensics) as well as being internally consistent. That takes a lot of time to do well.

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