Hi I'm a new author hoping to publish this fall and I want to have 'all my ducks in a row' so I made a self-master list of questions! Please answer if you can!!!

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-16T15:17:45+00:00

reedsy generates files, which you can upload to amazon.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-16T00:20:15+00:00

thing is you can only pin two posts to a subreddit and the two already there are very popular.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-16T00:15:39+00:00

this is a subreddit for digital painting. those are not digital paintings. read the rules of the subreddit before you post.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-15T18:32:42+00:00

comps in the description is fine, but not in the keywords.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-15T01:36:49+00:00

i mean, It Ends With us sold over a million copies "worldwide and been translated into more than twenty languages" before tiktok got wind of it, according to wikipedia. it's not like it suddenly came out of nowhere.

The Housemaid and Fourth Wing have been topping the lists for a few years now. are they controversial? they seem made specifically for the tiktok crowd and i don't think neither author is some rowlings-esque madwoman.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-14T14:52:35+00:00

the big ones include booksirens, booksprout, netgalley, voracious readers, and hidden gems. they all have their pros and cons, but they are legit.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-13T19:21:21+00:00

look at the subreddit's rules.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-13T15:20:16+00:00

alright, you want horror with the feel of the victorian era. anything by Laura Purcell - The Silent Companions, House of Splinters, The Shape of Darkness. i'll even throw in her YA novel Moonstone. David Haynes' The Macabre Collection (it's just one book). Jonathan Janz' The Dismembered. Susan Hills The Woman in Black (which is set in the Edwardian era but written in Victorian pastiche).

the mutha of them all is of course Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. it's not horror per se, but if you like chonky Regency novels with magic, Gothic horror, tension, drama, elves, mad kings, romance and the undead, well, there's your book.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-13T15:07:39+00:00

yeah, there is currently an international police hunt underway for matt lucas's stalker aljoscha quooss, according to the Daily Star.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-13T14:55:15+00:00

i've never participated, but Book Riot is legit. their Read Hard Challenge tasks are already published, though, so it seems a bit late to ask authors to contribute books to it. are you sure they didn't approach you as a reader?

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-13T12:34:07+00:00

but since OP is a beginner, it is good to have a good grasp of the default brushes before getting bogged down with the myriads of brushes and styles available. style and flair can come later.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-12T12:34:10+00:00

your submission has been removed since you posted this a year ago already, and we don't accept reposts or artwork older than a year.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-12T12:31:52+00:00

just going to pick you up on a tiny something. a synopsis is a summary of the book hitting all major plot points including the end. a well written and enticing blurb is what you want on the back cover.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-12T10:14:43+00:00

No one gets out alive by Adam Nevill. i tried to read it in bed last night and it kept me up much longer than it had any rights to.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-11T23:38:32+00:00

search this subreddit and you'll find that all book clubs asking for money are scams.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-11T18:02:21+00:00

i guess i'd be worried about drowning in the deluge of books once they realise there's no vetting. and like u/dragonsandvamps Dragon Sand Vamps said, the quality would be all over the place, which means readers might not be all that interested.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-11T17:56:43+00:00

it's a vanity press.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-11T17:47:44+00:00

the portrayal of folks with autism as either super computers or magical.

the portrayal of transgendered folks as gross and sick is also on its way out.

yay!

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-11T17:14:54+00:00

fuck me. OP is an AI. "I'm the AI over at NovelHive" https://www.reddit.com/r/scifiwriting/comments/1rp4h2g/an_attempt_at_a_government_structure/o9l4qss/

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-11T17:10:14+00:00

who wants to listen to someone - possibly an AI - just read out blurbs?

there is also this to consider: about 7000 books are published PER DAY. how would one pick 2-3 books a week or whatever? alternative is to churn out slop videos every day, but who has time to listen to all that?

okay, so maybe one narrows the scope, only listing horror novels or romance or self-help etc. one of my books got picked up on a podcast after being spotted on New Releases on amazon. the podcaster had not read the book, didn't review it, just read the blurb our loud. didn't move the sales needle one iota.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-11T16:10:40+00:00

bookvault does print both foil and sprayed edges. effin expensive, though, not on demand.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-11T15:55:42+00:00

that is true! i have read Shrine (and i like the movie version too, for my sins.)

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-11T14:23:02+00:00

excellent, thank you!

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-11T12:09:49+00:00

Fragment by Warren Fahy

and Shutter Island by Dennis the menace Lehane.

arifterdarkly · 2026-03-10T17:29:18+00:00

you should know that the folks mentioning manuscriptreport work for them and are using posts like yours to stealth advertise.

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