https://go.booksignal.io/ I bought Designrr years ago with a dream of book writing, now I mostly just use it for unlimited turning PDFs into Flip Books... Anyway they launched this today and I am a sucker for one time pays. You think this is AI nonsense and you can just hook Claude up to Amazon API or is it worth it. I think I stripped all the attribution off the link, so it should be clean. Let me know. @Krista Brea

I am so excited!😆 pinch me… now to get some more up there!

Sometimes it's hard to explain your book in a sentence... but what if you had to explain it with a GIF? 😆 Drop a GIF in the comments that represents what your book is about (or the book you're currently working on). Examples: ❤️ Relationship book → A couple hugging, arguing, or reconnecting 💰 Personal finance book → Money raining from the sky 🐶 Dog training book → A dog doing something hilarious 🚀 Business book → Someone launching into space 📖 Self-help book → A dramatic transformation GIF No titles. No descriptions. Just the GIF. Let's see if the community can guess what your book is about based on the GIF alone! 👀

I wanted to share another publishing and marketing mistake from this week so you can learn from it. As many of you know, I don't just sell books on Amazon. I also have some of my titles listed on alternative platforms like TikTok Shop. The problem is that I haven't been very active on TikTok lately. Growing there requires posting a lot of content, and honestly, I just haven't had the bandwidth to keep up with creating videos. Then out of nowhere, orders started coming in for one of my Father's Day books. Great news, right? Well... not exactly. I was convinced I had inventory sitting somewhere in my house. So I started tearing apart bookshelves, closets, storage boxes, and every random place I could think of looking for these books. Nothing. I couldn't find them anywhere. The last thing I wanted to do was cancel customer orders and potentially hurt my seller reputation on TikTok Shop. Unfortunately, author copies typically take 2-3 weeks to arrive, which doesn't work when Father's Day is right around the corner. So instead, I had to order copies directly from Amazon and have them shipped to me so I can turn around and mail them to the customers. That means I'm not making money on these sales. In fact, I'm actually losing money. But sometimes protecting your reputation and keeping customers happy is worth more than the profit from a few orders. I also had to mark the book as out of stock on TikTok Shop so additional orders wouldn't come through before I can replenish inventory. That's another missed opportunity, especially this close to Father's Day. The lesson? As your publishing business grows, inventory management becomes important. It's easy to lose track of what you have, where it is, and what is listed for sale across multiple platforms. The truth is, when you're juggling books, marketing, content creation, ads, a full-time job, family, and everything else, it's impossible to keep your eye on every project all the time. Sometimes mistakes happen.

Okay, I've been seeing more questions pop up about ISBNs. Many people think they must buy one before publishing a book, but that isn't always true. Here's a simple breakdown: 📚 You probably DON'T need to buy an ISBN if: ✅ You're publishing only on Amazon KDP ✅ You are okay with Amazon showing as the publisher ✅ You're testing a book idea before investing more money ✅ You're creating low-content books, journals, or books under a pen name where publisher branding isn't important Amazon will actually give you a FREE ISBN for paperbacks and hardcovers. Now here is when buying your own ISBN may make more sense: 💡 Consider buying your own ISBN if: ✅ You want to publish your book beyond Amazon (Barnes & Noble, bookstores, IngramSpark, libraries, etc.) ✅ You want YOUR name or publishing company listed as the publisher instead of Amazon ✅ You're building a long-term publishing brand ✅ You plan to expand into multiple distribution channels One thing many people don't realize: ❌ One ISBN does NOT cover everything. Each format typically needs its own ISBN: • Paperback = 1 ISBN • Hardcover = 1 ISBN • Ebook = usually not required on KDP For beginners, I usually suggest keeping costs low and using the free KDP ISBN while learning the process. You can always invest more as your publishing business grows. Question for you: Did you buy your own ISBN, or did you use the free KDP option?