Finally got to creating my book cover. My first attempts where shot down dramatically, by my own daughter (designer) and my stepdaughter (artist). 😆 Of course I didn’t believe them at first, but then I found out that the critics' report from https://www.diybookcovers.com/ completely agreed with their opinions. Learnt a lesson (or two). ☺️ The picture is mine (Wat Arun temple in Bangkok). I have created it in Canva. Dimensions are as stipulated by Amazon KDP: 1600 width and 2560 height. I've run it through the website above several times and refined it with Gemini; this is version 9.b. 😗 Second pic shows the progression from really bad to where it is now. Feedback welcome.🙏

At some point Amazon did away with 18+ age range category. So now, by default, if you leave the age range blank, the listing shows 16-18 as the recommended age range for all adult fiction. I'm concerned that many shoppers may interpret this as "Young Adult" content rather than adult. Amazon has many reasons, I'm sure, for making this change but it has the potential to mis-categorize many books and cause potential readers to pass on the purchase. Especially because there previously was an 18+ category and there's very little chance that shoppers are widely aware of this internal change. Has anyone else noticed the change to their Adult titles being displayed as 16-18?

A few days ago, my KDP account was suspended for alleged review manipulation. Since I spent a lot of time searching for similar experiences while going through it, I thought I'd share what happened and how the situation was eventually resolved. On June 13, I received an email from Amazon stating that my KDP account had been suspended because they had detected attempts to manipulate customer reviews. The email asked for detailed information about any methods used to obtain reviews, third parties involved, customer accounts, documentation, and corrective actions. At that point, Amazon did not mention any specific book. The suspension was account-wide. Naturally, I panicked. Like many people would, I started looking for answers everywhere. I analyzed sales patterns, review history, previous account alerts, and every possible explanation I could think of. The more I searched, the more confused I became. During this process, @Adriano Ferrigno helped me in every step of the way. He reviewed the case, analyzed Amazon's responses, and drafted each appeal that was submitted. I provided the underlying information and documentation, while he helped organize everything into clear responses and guided me through the process as the case evolved. I submitted my first appeal along with supporting screenshots and explanations of the promotional methods I had used. A couple of days later, Amazon replied. They still did not provide much detail, but they finally identified a specific ASIN that was under review. I then sent additional information related to that title, including documentation and a more detailed explanation of the promotional activities connected to it. Amazon responded again with what was essentially the same request for information. At that point, I provided an even more structured response, answered every question as clearly as possible, attached supporting documents again, and explained the steps I would take going forward. On June 21, Amazon reinstated my KDP account.

The days of getting 100 amazon reviews in a short period of time (unless you're selling hundreds of books a day) are gone. I just watched this video (it was posted back in January). I know this is from months ago but what an eye-opening video. Even just the idea of clustering should make anyone who uses any service where a relatively small group of people review from a relatively small group of authors never use these services again. Even if a service has 1000 books and 2000 reviewers the algorithm will be able to notice how unnatural that review would be. It doesn't matter whether I buy the occasional physical product (to try and trick the system). It wouldn't take away the fact that there is a connection and cluster of groups of people giving and receiving reviews. As I see it there are only a few ways to get reviews-: 1. a genuine arc service. 2. Facebook ads where you give away your book for free (and ask for honest opinion from pools of millions of random possible people who may or may not leave a feedback-, let alone a review). 3. Organic reviews. I can't think of any other way. Even the services claiming to be Amazon compliant are not really. If I have to pay to get the book (in order to get a review), it's a no go. I'd love to hear of other ways though (if they exist).

I have a seasonal book on Amazon and I am thinking to give it more push by adding a video ad, I am wondering if anyone in the group tried video ad, and did it work for you