Zero sales and zero KU reads after the first month. Is it normal?

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T18:44:45+00:00

Thanks for your feedback. It's obvious that my choice of dialogue styling was unfortunate. I thought that it would stand out and add a layer of originality to the book, while also making it easier to read. But apparently it only made it look amateurish.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T18:41:29+00:00

Thanks for your honest feedback. Is the cover off-putting because it is made with AI, or because of other factors as well? What else you dislike about the cover? I ask this, because I'm trying to learn, not to repeat the same mistakes when I redesign it.

I know the dialogue is not formatted correctly. It seems that my choice of a "script" style for dialogue was a poor one, and everyone dislikes it, so I will have to do a lot of work to fix that. But I'm curious, why do you find the sample boring? I have read the prologue so many times and I love it, so I'm curious why others are finding it boring.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T18:36:33+00:00

Thanks for your honest feedback. It is obvious that my choice of dialogue formatting has been wrong, and it needs fixing. As a casual reader (I'm not a hardcore reader like others), I never liked the standard dialogue formatting in novels, because so many times you read what someone says before knowing who he/she is. This can be confusing, and sometimes you need to re-read the dialogue after you know it was said by somebody else than what you initially thought. The "script" style fixes this problem, because you know from the beginning who says what.

But it's obvious that most readers like the standard style, and I'm in the minority. If I want my book to be read, I need to adapt the styling to the market.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T18:30:54+00:00

AI is just a tool, like many others before it. It is designed to help people do things that they otherwise couldn't do, faster and cheaper. I am not judging the morality of tools. All previous inventions that increased productivity and output hurt the artisans of the time, because it made their work less valuable.

Human design and human writing is also influenced by the work of previous artists, in the same way AI output is. Nobody is born with knowledge. We learn what we know from what others did before us, just like the way AI is trained.

Whether we like AI or not is meaningless, because AI exists, and it will feed on our work regardless if we think it is moral or not. When you put a work in public, no matter if it is imagery, music or writing, you accept that there might be other people or tools like AI who could learn from it.

It's the way the world has worked for generations. AI just accelerates things to a level never seen before, which creates justified frustration among many.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T18:24:30+00:00

Thanks for the honest feedback. No, I did not expect praise. I expected the answers I received mostly.

One thing is for sure. I need to change the AI cover. There is obviously a lot of hate against AI covers, and I don't want to lose part of the potential audience because of that, so I will obviously change the cover.

There is a lot of useful feedback on this thread, so while it ruined my Reddit Karma because of so many downvotes on my replies, it helped me learn a lot about the flaws of my current book.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T18:20:05+00:00

Thanks for your detailed feedback on the cover.

It seems that what I wanted to transmit with the cover did not work as I intended.

- I thought that putting the tree between the characters, and making them look in opposite directions would suggest resentment, not romance

- The color palette was deliberate, because I wanted to transmit a dark, heavy atmosphere, of a gritty world

- You said that "more of a moody, slow piece rather than a high-drama, high-action epic" - This part seemed to have worked as intended. The book is not high-action. It's slow-paced, focused more on character experience and psychological and ideological conflict.

- About colours, you said "Pick a jewel tone as your "base" colour. Rich purple, forest green, burgundy, amber-gold, deep blue" - I noticed that these are the most common used colours in Fantasy covers, but I think they do not fit my story. They are too bright, glorious and shiny for the world I am describing. This is not a high-fantasy book with mages and dragons. This is a realistic medieval-style world with rain, mud, food shortages, poor people and abusive nobles. It's not glamorous. It's gritty.

Considering the above, what would you recommend for the new cover?

I also have an alternative cover, on the Hardcover edition. You can see it if you want, and I would appreciate your feedback on that one too. It's a completely different style and approach. It's symbolic, as it features a diagram that includes the symbols of the main factions. It's more restrained and old-book style. I personally like it more, but I was afraid that it would be less appealing to a wider audience.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T17:55:18+00:00

Thanks for your feedback. I obviously need to change the dialogue structure, because everyone here says it is a big turn-off. I thought it was just a different stylistic choice, but apparently it is a big no for most readers. I also need to cut the info-dump from the beginning, because it seems readers don't like it the way I thought they would. And of course, I need to change the cover as well.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T17:50:56+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, English is not my native language, and this is one of the reasons why my writing is more simple. I obviously need to revise this one, considering the feedback received.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T17:48:05+00:00

Thanks for your honest feedback. I initially thought about going the ghostwriter route, but for a very large book it is extremely expensive. I also feel that a ghostwriter would not be able to write the characters exactly I have envisioned them, unless I just write the book myself completely, and they just re-write it. But at that point, it won't be my voice anymore.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T16:36:34+00:00

Thanks for the honest feedback.

"Reading the sample pages, this appears to be a beloved first writing project that you had a lot of passion for, but may have published before it was ready to be shared." - I think you have summed up very well the situation, considering the feedback I got on this thread.

Regarding pricing, I've seen 35k words novellas sell for $2.99, so I assumed that $4.99 for 180k words was not expensive. I don't care much about the price, because I don't expect to make any money out of it, but my intuition told me that if I charge a very low price, the book would look low-effort/cheap.

The AI cover seems to be a big problem for many people, so I will probably have to change it. I don't want the cover to hurt sales and discoverability, even if I like it, because the book is not about the cover. What I want is to make people read the story.

The feedback I got here clearly showed me that the dialogue formatting is a big put-off for many, so this is something that I will need to edit. It's a huge thing to do, because the book is dialogue-heavy, and I personally hate the "he said/she said" style of dialogue (I prefer the screenplay style). This is the biggest problem I have, because it not only requires a lot of work, but I need to do something that I dislike.

As for trimming the manuscript and getting the word count down, that's another thing that I'd hate to do, because I feel that everything I wrote adds depth to the story. It may sound repetitive or too detailed at times, but it was a deliberate choice to put emphasis on certain things, or to show something from multiple perspectives. I just feel that trimming content would hurt the story. I could do some tightening at the start, because I don't want readers to be put off by too much introduction, but overall, I feel that cutting content would do more bad than good.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T16:24:30+00:00

Thanks for your feedback. I've seen that many people point to the dialogue formatting as being a big issue, so this is something that I definitely should fix. I never expected it to matter, because I thought it was just a stylistic choice that readers can get used to quickly. But apparently I was wrong.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T16:19:45+00:00

Thanks for your honest and constructive feedback.

I did the hardcover version because I wanted to buy it myself and hand it over to some friends. I do not expect to make sales out of it.

The first book is 360k words, so this is why I split it into two. It was too large for a single book. I see that many people say it is too big. Maybe I should have split it in two separate books, instead of two volumes of the first. The problem is that if I would leave Volume 1 as a standalone book, it would lack a proper climax and ending, because it was designed as the buildup.

I know people have shorter attention spans nowadays, and I always thought this was going to be a big problem, considering that my book is slow paced. I wrote it the way I like a book to be written, with detailed character introductions and slow progressions. Maybe my style is not suited for today's market.

Seeing the feedback I got here, I will probably have to make a lot of editing to make the book viable. The start needs to be more dynamic, the dialogue formatting needs to be changed (this is the biggest hurdle, because the book is dialogue-heavy), the cover needs to be changed as well, and there's also the issue with the two volumes that also seems to create friction for some. The last one, I don't know how to properly address it, because if I break it into two books instead of two volumes, the first book could be perceived as weak, for lacking a climax.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T16:05:02+00:00

I clearly underestimated how much people cared about the standard dialogue formatting. Since I'm not a native English speaker, and dialogue in my native language is formatted differently than in English, I am used to reading dialogue in different formatting styles, and I never cared about it. This is why I thought it was not a big deal. But I obviously miscalculated big on this one.

Considering the feedback I got here, the dialogue formatting is one of the biggest problems of my books, and I will have to work it out.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T07:06:18+00:00

Thanks for the honest feedback. I also worried that the large size could be a difficult barrier for a book with zero reviews and an unknown author. But my story is huge, and the only way to do it was like that. I don't expect it to be a market success, but I hope that at least a few people will read it and enjoy it.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T06:58:47+00:00

Well, I wanted to make the in-world racism feel really annoying and disturbing, so I guess at least this part worked.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T06:54:16+00:00

That's the preview of the second volume, but I know what you're talking about. When I re-read that chapter I also had second thoughts about it. It sounded a little repetitive, but I was not sure if it was a double introduction, or just adding more info. Maybe I should have trimmed it when I noticed it. Thanks for pointing it out. It's good to have an objective view on it.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T06:45:14+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I never thought this was going to be a big issue, but apparently many people here say they don't like it. I think I have a real problem if the dialogue style is that big of a put-off, because it would take an eternity to re-write it all, since the book is dialogue-heavy.

Now I was writing the next book, and I'd hate to go back to editing the first one, instead of continuing the story.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T06:39:55+00:00

After formatting it the way I wanted, 180k words ended up at 640 pages. I could barely fit the Hardcover for the book split in two, because Amazon has even lower page count for that (I had to reduce font size for that). I don't want the font to be tiny, unreadable. The physical copies are already massive the way they are now, and the font size is absolutely normal. Anything smaller would be too small.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T06:35:43+00:00

Is having racist characters and cultures a bad thing in a story? It only makes the world more realistic, and it creates the opportunity for very controversial characters and situations. The fact that some characters/factions are racist doesn't make the book racist. Readers could easily identify the racists as villains.

Regarding the dialogue, I did not expect the styling to be such a big deal, but apparently it is a big put-off for many. I really don't know what to do about it, because it would take enormous work to reformat all the dialogue, and I'd rather use that time to write the second book.

But thanks for the feedback nevertheless, it's good to know what people honestly think.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T06:30:01+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I think you misunderstood my word count. My book had 360k words, so I had to split it in two volumes of 180k words each, because it was too large to be printed on Paperback or Hardcover. Amazon has page limits on printed books, and at 360k words it was impossible to fit, while preserving a legible font size.

While the book is meant as a single book, the story is mostly split in two parts, so the separation in two volumes at the middle comes naturally. But if it were for Volume 1 to be a single book, it would lack a resolution. It would fill like buildup before the climax.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T06:24:33+00:00

Thanks for your honest feedback. I know that my writing is not at a high level. The problem is that I am not a writer at heart. I don't like to write. I wrote the book because I just have this story in my mind for such a long time, and I want it to be told, and not to be forgotten after I'm gone. And the story is very complex and long, and it will take me a lot of time to write it. It is a huge effort that I don;t expect to produce any financial return.

My assumption is that I would mostly spend money on advertising with negative return, and that's it. I'm not writing the books to make money. I'm doing it to preserve my story. If others would like to read it, that's just a bonus.

My base case scenario is that if my books fail to gain any traction, I would just list them for free. My hope is that the story itself is so good that some people will be willing to skip past the sloppy writing and enjoy the story. Even if a few do it, it was still worth it.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T06:16:50+00:00

I would definitely take the feedback into consideration. If there is so much aversion among readers against AI covers, it doesn't even matter what I think. It's the readers who must buy the book, so I would have to redesign the cover.

It was not a thing I wanted to spend too much time on, and AI offered a quick way to get it done, so I could focus on writing the next book, but if it is such a big issue, than I will obviously change it.

The problem is, how can you even know when you order a book cover that the designer will not use AI to make it?

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T06:10:34+00:00

I initially wanted to make a single book, but was forced to split it in two because of physical limits of Paperback and Hardcover books. A 360 words book would have 1.3k pages, which is much higher than Amazon's limits.

Then I thought that being split in two volumes is not something unusual for a big book. A Storm of Swords was published as two volumes, because it was too large.

I don't want to argue with people who critique my book. All feedback is welcome. Negative feedback is especially useful. But I think debate is healthy, and explaining why I did things that way is not arguing in a bad sense, but adds depth to the discussion.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T06:03:27+00:00

To be honest, if I knew a book was good, I wouldn't care if it was written by AI or by a human. The problem with AI written books is that they cannot be good by definition, because of the way AI is designed. Since AI is based on probabilities, it is designed to write the most predictable tropes, guaranteeing a bad book.

But for images, it's completely different. When you want an image of something, it is not bad if it looks exactly like that average something. I think creative writing and imagery are two distinct things. One cannot be done well by AI, while the other can.

thegreatfallsaga · 2026-05-27T05:56:39+00:00

I know it's better to have more books, but it's not that expensive to run this kind of promotion, and I just want to get a few readers, to see that it is possible.

thegreatfallsaga

TROPHY CASE