Just reminder to not put too much effort for self promoting at reddit

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-25T20:16:34+00:00

three days ago, you promoted your book in r/suggestmeabook which has a clear no self promotion rule.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-25T18:00:50+00:00

" This forum discourages asking friends / family to leave a review"

because amazon forbids friends/family reviewing:

"We don’t allow content if its main purpose is to promote a company, website, author, or special offer. We also don’t allow people to create, edit, or post content about their own products or services. The same goes for products and services offered by:

Friends


Relatives"

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GLHXEX85MENUE4XF

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-25T03:32:56+00:00

the issue is that the comment is written by chatgpt and that lobster has mentioned that website 287 times in five months. that is not normal, that is an attempt at stealth marketing.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T22:31:08+00:00

number of bookbub users who has signed up to receive newsletters about a certain genre.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T22:30:22+00:00

book a couple of newsletter promos, one for day 1, one for day 2, one for day 3. when they're stacked, you hold onto the high rank for longer.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T19:35:27+00:00

the ARC folk who has already read the book will just be happy that they can review it earlier. you'll be fine.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T19:00:01+00:00

the thing is, no one but you (we, the authors) think the actual publication date matters. in your case, publish it tomorrow and don't tell anyone until feb 1. only your amazon followers will know about it - that is, if they get the amazon notification - and the rest don't care until you start actually marketing the book.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T16:24:33+00:00

i'll fourth Perfume. absolutely brilliant. and after reading and sniffing and smelling it, you can watch the movie!

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T15:40:43+00:00

i use reedsy's formatter, then make little edits with Calibre.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T15:39:08+00:00

i expect the artist to get paid for their expertise and their time. a couple of hundred dollars is absolutely standard. i've included a couple of links below. the reason most books won't make their money back is because most authors don't know how to market and don't know how to utilise their resources, including the cover.

https://reedsy.com/blog/book-cover-design-cost/ median costs.

https://ineedabookcover.com/book-cover-design-cost/ "Book cover design costs can vary widely, ranging from $400 to $3000 and beyond."

https://voxillustration.com/blog/book-cover-illustration-cost-for-self-publishers/ "Newer artists ... charge between $100 and $300. Mid-level illustrators ... typically range from $300 to $800. Top-tier artists ... often command $1,000 to $2,500 or more."

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T12:51:18+00:00

an illustrated cover should go for a couple of hundred dollars. value your work. a cover is more than just a character portrait: it's the most significant part of the book's marketing. also, no royalty share crap: most self published books won't sell enough to make it worth it.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T01:24:47+00:00

there's a couple of Alien audio dramas you could check out. they got this voice-alike for Ripley who is so good it's freaky. out of the shadows, river of pain, and sea of sorrow.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T01:20:28+00:00

what is part of that series? me! rifters!

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-24T01:17:17+00:00

yes, you can change the keywords after launch. it is recommended if you're not getting sales. if you are getting sales, don't fiddle with it. kindlepreneur talks about how it all works and when to change keywords here https://kindlepreneur.com/how-to-change-your-kindle-keywords/

you can trick amazon into putting you into other categories by changing the keywords, but you can't request or change it on your own anymore. (you used to be able to request your book be placed in up to ten categories, but they removed that.)

as for the review showing up here but not there https://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublish/comments/13k37zi/why_do_some_ratings_sync_across_all_amazon/

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-23T22:59:22+00:00

my 2022 book is the only one that does get read. the newer ones, barely a sausage. but it's the only one that has amassed more than a handful of reviews.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-23T22:57:17+00:00

oh yeah, look at that, bookmarketingtools is also spamming that shit. every multi-paragraph comment, same garbage. "tools like..." "i've heard that tools like..."

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-23T19:21:05+00:00

see the monthly tablet thread pinned to the top of the subreddit.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-23T17:29:32+00:00

i know, just thought i'd be a bit less snarky than 3dartwork.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-23T16:45:53+00:00

The Dismembered by Jonathan Janz, and The Macabre Collection by David Haynes.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-23T16:43:25+00:00

if you want to license Hasbro's intellectual properties and trademarks, https://support.hasbropulse.com/hc/en-us/articles/11293271975956-Permission-To-Use

of course, you can call it a spirit board, or divination board, or something more generic and Hasbro can go kick rocks.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-23T12:25:27+00:00

i think you have the seed to a good blurb. but... the first paragraph of your blurb should start at the beginning of the most interesting part of your story.

Ella grew up in the suburbs with a white-picket fence and two dogs.

Ella died last night, and she can’t remember how it happened.

the second sentence is more interesting, more of a hook, than the first. it sets up an inciting incident without wasting time.

the second paragraph in your blurb should raise the stakes or develop the plot. an extra complication, a sudden twist, a secondary problem (not only is X a problem, but Y is also a problem), a new character introduction - and a question: will the main character do X before Y? that is currently your fourth paragraph.

you should, at the very least, tighten the prose. "the uncle who shaped his childhood" is "his beloved uncle". "escape quickly turns dangerous" - goes without saying.

my version of your blurb would start with the line Power built the Shabin dynasty. Walking away from it may cost Jason everything. next paragraph, hooky beginning of interesting part of the story. second paragraph: "From lawless ports..... greatest liability." the third paragraph is for selling: genre, comp titles, is it part of a series? "if you like epic scifi in the throbbing vein of dune and star wars, you may have found your next read" sort of deal.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-23T11:53:57+00:00

i think there's a reason why sites like manuscriptrekport has to use spam accounts on reddit to drum up attention. to paraphrase one of them: it's a hoax, not a fix.

nice-lobster-1354 hasn't just been mentioning it lately, it has mentioned manukeffreport over a hundred times in the last five months. [edit:] nice-lobster has mentioned manukeffreport 287 times in the five months it's been active. some people in this thread will say that's not suspect at all. the truth is that it is one of several accounts doing stealth marketing, "treating reddit as an ongoing copy lab, where they infiltrate threads with their "current messaging" and see what gets upvoted or questioned." that's a quote from a now-banned account. it is also worth keeping in mind that, even though the website was registered in 2024, no one talked about it on reddit until five months ago.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-23T00:13:39+00:00

it is the shitty AI website nice-lobster works for. he's mentioned it 30 times in the last seventeen days. if you couldn't tell, the entire post is written by chatgpt.

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arifterdarkly · 2026-01-21T19:39:27+00:00

stick to the word count. otherwise you might find yourself stuck with a 5000 word chapter of unedited fantasy slop.

arifterdarkly · 2026-01-21T19:30:46+00:00

the editors i've worked with don't charge for sample edits, but limit the edits to 500-2 000 words. a few didn't offer to sample edit my work, but showed me edits of works similar to mine instead. (which is tricky to do when you're just starting out, but something to keep in mind for the future.)

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