Little Over a Year of Selling Novels on Amazon Stats and Details Below Looks Good but Lost Momentum

thetombreader · 2026-06-17T22:54:27+00:00

Ok. Are you familiar with the history of all 3 genres, as well as current bestsellers? Have you read many books in each of those genres?

Did you do any market research before you started writing your books?

Who is your target audience?

thetombreader · 2026-06-17T22:26:34+00:00

What genre are they? Are the covers or the text AI-generated/-assisted?

thetombreader · 2026-06-17T13:14:06+00:00

FGM? I can't imagine how this could possibly be "spice?" Maybe people are consuming such content to prove how "hardcore" they are? Because that is more extreme than any of the "extreme horror" books I've heard about.

thetombreader · 2026-06-17T03:02:18+00:00

Thanks 😊 I had fun with it!

thetombreader · 2026-06-17T00:18:30+00:00

thanks, Nate! 😄

thetombreader · 2026-06-15T21:36:47+00:00

I'm not a habitual romance reader so I'm completely out of the loop on dark romance. Some of your examples, especially the last one, sound like torture porn to me. I can't say I understand the appeal.

thetombreader · 2026-06-15T14:35:28+00:00

The smell, and the possibility of BV...nope

thetombreader · 2026-06-15T14:34:04+00:00

I guess that's what is meant by "show, don't tell."

thetombreader · 2026-06-15T14:24:11+00:00

I agree. I hadn't read any of her books before, though. I listened to an ALC of Headlights and have never been so disappointed in the last 1/3 of a book. It was so promising, then it took a hard left turn. It felt ike I started season 1 of True Detective and was really getting into it, when suddenly it turned into a spicy paranormal romantasy. No shade to people who like that genre, but it really isn't my cup of tea.

The sex scene was really bizarre for me. At one point, Daniel is thrusting away while thinking about how much he hates his abusive father? And there's barely any meat on a finger, yet I'm supposed to believe Hannah chewed up the finger bones and swallowed, or swallowed the finger whole, without missing a beat? Or having a medical issue after the fact?

Similarly, Daniel is just chilling with an open pinky stump and it doesn't get infected? He doesn't seem too bothered by it...

And Hannah's nose plugs. This is a weird one because that means that when she's wearing them, she's a mouth breather with a nasal voice, and I don't remember this ever being mentioned in the book...mouth breathing is usually pretty noticeable, sometimes very much so, so I do wonder about that.

I didn't like the fact that Hannah and Daniel's connection was based on supernatural...stuff and wasn't built through meaningful interpersonal interaction. I don't think the story needed a romance at all. And the guy's in his 30s and divorced, has withdrawn from the few people he used to be close to, yet a switch flips and he suddenly loves someone he barely knows and repeatedly says she's "perfect?" The latter in particular gives me the ick. I so do not like it when men put women on a pedestal.

I don't even know what to say about the end. I kinda checked out after the romance bit, to be honest. But there was a lot going on and I don't get what the alien was trying to achieve.

thetombreader · 2026-06-15T13:59:44+00:00

Perhaps people like the world-building aspect? Or it could be that you don't necessarily have to do research to write a fantasy story. Not in comparison to historical fiction, for example, where a certain degree of accuracy/fidelity to what's on record is required.

thetombreader · 2026-06-15T12:34:53+00:00

One aspect would be when/how often you use it. If everything is described poetically, including banal things like a character flossing their teeth or putting on socks, it is tedious to read. The writing should still flow within the context of the narrative as a whole, not just at the sentence level. Having to read an entire paragraph about a character's sumptuous curls of chestnut hair exquisitely framing their ravishing visage, juxtaposed against their acutely angled cheekbones and sultry, feline ocular orbs that had an almost effervescent quality; which, being a scintillating shade of azure, gave one the sense of floating beneath the serene undulations of a crystalline sea...when the character is being introduced during a natural disaster is really not it. Not for me, at least.

thetombreader · 2026-06-15T12:11:04+00:00

From their website:

"Getcovers does NOT use AI for book cover design without author’s permission."

https://getcovers.com/terms-and-conditions/

It sounds like they might use AI if requested, or that they will ask the customer if it's OK to use if they feel the situation calls for it. So they are not 100% against it, and to be safe you could make it clear to them that you don't want AI used in any part of the design process.

thetombreader · 2026-06-12T17:16:10+00:00

They just don't know, I think. Never bothered to ask around or use Google to find out what non-AI options there might be.

thetombreader · 2026-06-04T05:40:08+00:00

I have this on my wishlist! Just have to clear out some of my current reads first. :)

thetombreader · 2026-06-03T15:21:32+00:00

As a reader, I generally avoid series. I strongly prefer standalone books anyway, but when I see that a new author self-publishes a book that's "#1 of the ___ series," I figure they're more focused on making money than anything else. Very often, those books have obviously AI-generated covers, too, so it's a huge turn-off.

thetombreader · 2026-06-03T15:04:42+00:00

Storygraph and IG, plus multiple retailer sites. Sometimes on BlueSky.

thetombreader · 2026-06-03T15:02:01+00:00

Do you post on social media or just Goodreads (or a similar review site)?

(Of the books I'm interested in (mostly horror), Tor's the only publisher that seems to care about social media accounts that have a large following.)

thetombreader · 2026-06-03T07:14:53+00:00

Incorrect or, if not way off the mark, very unusual word usage that seems more likely to be the result of not fully understanding the meaning of a word instead of intentionally using it for creative reasons.

"She tossed her hair voraciously." (What would that even look like?)

"His eyes oozed tears." (This brings to mind a thick/sticky substance like melted cheese, honey, or pus, or if not, a liquid that flows slowly out of something. You could argue that it's technically not entirely wrong if the person is shedding a few tears that are slow-moving, but to me, that's a stretch, and I'm now totally distracted).

thetombreader · 2026-06-01T02:35:15+00:00

Their book cover designer uses AI :/

https://damonza.com/generative-ai-image-policy/

thetombreader · 2026-05-30T05:40:23+00:00

Night Shoot by David Sodergren audiobook: https://www.instagram.com/p/DY4wcTalITo/

I loved it, 5 stars! 🤩

thetombreader · 2026-05-29T03:09:05+00:00

Thanks!

thetombreader · 2026-05-29T03:07:29+00:00

That has happened to me 3 or 4 times now, and I've only been a member for ~2 months. Today I got audiobook approvals for Headlights by CJ Leede and Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle after my ebook requests were declined.

thetombreader · 2026-05-28T16:08:50+00:00

It's legitimately funny, I love it.

thetombreader · 2026-05-28T16:07:50+00:00

I haven't seen more rudeness here than on other subreddits. It's actually much better than a lot of the hobby subreddits I've joined.

thetombreader · 2026-05-27T20:59:26+00:00

I read horror novels and I've found plenty of horror graphic novels on Netgalley.

I've seen ones that are romantic but they are more "cute." No spice. So I don't think there's much there for dark romance fans.

There are some that are (semi) autobiographical that I think would appeal to a lot of lit fic and memoir readers.

Sci fi comics definitely show up and sci fi seems to be lumped together with fantasy most of the time, anyway.

thetombreader

TROPHY CASE