Resources | Self-Publishing Review

The Best Premade Cover Designers for Indie Authors

In this day and age, there’s no reason to have a bad book cover. Though there are more tools available to make your own book cover, that doesn’t mean you should, as designing a book cover takes as much finesse as any creative art, so if you all you can draw are stick figures, you have no business getting into graphic design.

This is especially true because the cost of book cover design has come down a lot in recent years, while the quality has gone up. This is true as well for premade book covers. You supply the […]

SPR2019-05-23T11:55:07+02:00May 23rd, 2019|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Cover Design|

Self-Publishing: What Not to Do

There is some degree of impatience that goes along with self-publishing. Why wait around for a publisher when you can have a book now? That’s one of the bigger fallacies of the industry, because if you choose to do everything yourself it can (and should) be more work. Writers are still driven to cut corners because it can be so difficult to handle every side of the business. So long as you understand there’s difficulty every step of the way, you will hopefully give each step in the process the attention it deserves.

Here’s a primer on the common […]

SPR2020-02-21T03:47:02+02:00April 18th, 2019|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Cover Design, Book Editing, Book Formatting, Book Promotion, Writing|

When is the Best Time of Year to Release a Book?

In Hollywood, there’s a pretty set calendar for when movies are released: horror movies are usually released around Halloween, high-concept blockbusters in the summer, Oscar movies start in November, movies that aren’t blockbusters or Oscar contenders in February. Does the book trade follow the same release schedule? The answer is, more or less, yes.

Peak reading and buying season is very much tied to the weather. February and March are generally good times to release a book because the weather’s not great, so people will be stuck inside, browsing the web and looking for something to read. Generally, people won’t […]

SPR2019-03-22T07:04:00+02:00March 22nd, 2019|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Promotion|

Book Promotion Services: What Works for Immediate Sales?

A lot of the advice you’ll find about book marketing is frustratingly vague. You’ll find a lot of blog posts touting “Top Ten Book Promotion Strategies” with advice like:

Be Active on Social Media
Blog Regularly
Build an Email List of Readers

While these things may help build a readership, they won’t sell books in the short term…or even the long term. A lot of social media is tweeting into the wind, and blogging can sometimes gain a following of five loyal followers, three of whom live in your house. The same goes for email lists: you can only run […]

SPR2019-03-01T13:40:21+02:00March 1st, 2019|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Promotion|

GDPR – How it Affects Authors in 2018 – With FREE Privacy Policy Template

If you’ve been relying on a mailing list to sell books online, or you sell books from your website, you need to know about the GDPR, a new law that comes into effect on May 25, 2018 that protects people online from spam and unwanted data sharing. It affects anyone who is located, does business, or makes contacts in the EU region, which is basically this area shown in the image (click image for interactive version at Nations Online), and carries hefty fines if you do not follow the rules.

Download our FREE Privacy Policy Template For Author Websites

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Cate Baum2018-06-19T06:29:08+02:00May 16th, 2018|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Amazon|

How to Get Book Reviews in 2018 (Without Going Crazy)

So you want to know the best ways of getting book reviews for your book now it is finally written? Here are some ideas for those glowing reviews to come flooding in, updated for what works in 2018.

What Works in 2018

Use a Reader eMailing Service – Success Rate – 100% + 1- 5% quota met as advertised + high ranking and exposure on Amazon

It’s getting harder to get Verified Customer Reviews, which are the reviews that have most weight for ranking high on Amazon. The only true way to do this is to have access to lists […]

Cate Baum2019-07-01T16:21:20+02:00April 25th, 2018|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Promotion, Book Reviews|

Three Ways To Offer Discounted CreateSpace Paperbacks

There is no doubt that the best way of being able to offer discounted paperbacks Print On Demand is still with CreateSpace. While KDP have offered paperbacks, and companies such as Ingram have been market leaders, the fact still stands that these other services do not give authors the opportunity to print really discounted copies on demand, while the author can retain a fair array of distribution and profit.

You won’t make the Amazon ranks with these methods, as they do not count towards your sales numbers on Amazon, but if you are concerned with an institution or other group […]

Cate Baum2020-02-21T05:43:29+02:00April 21st, 2018|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Amazon|

All the Browser Categories for Amazon KDP Fiction

Here they are! Free! You can also download this Amazon Kindle Categories List FICTION PDF.

Want more categories? Join SPR as a free member and get NON-FICTION and JUVENILE FICTION AND NON-FICTION too!

Make sure when you use them, you check Categories With Keyword Requirements.

The sub-levels are listed: Blue>Orange>Red

Try to list as deep as you can in your KDP account. If this is not possible, choose the highest category, then add the rest of the categories as keywords, e.g.: