To be honest, for a moment I felt uneasy. I opened my account with some tension... Fortunately, everything is fine; the account is okay. In regional markets, everything is OK, but in the U.S., it's dogs.

I've been sitting on this post for a while because I wanted to make sure I wasn't just being dramatic. After months of watching the space closely, I'm convinced this isn't fear-mongering — it's pattern recognition. Here's my honest breakdown of where Amazon KDP is headed — for all of us. The Ground is Already Shifting Under Our Feet KDP is currently the frontline of AI disruption. The market isn't just "getting competitive" — it's being flooded with synthetic content at a scale we've never seen before. Amazon knows it. That's why they're actively rewriting the rules: algorithm changes, royalty structure tweaks, review policy updates. The A10 algorithm shift wasn't accidental. They're trying to manage a glut they didn't anticipate, and they're doing it in real time. If we've noticed our organic rankings slipping over the past year, we're not imagining it. The playbook that worked in 2022 is now actively working against us. The Next 1–2 Years: We're No Longer Authors. We're Media Buyers. Here's the hard pill: writing a well-structured, 30,000-word book is no longer a differentiator. We can produce it in a day. Execution — the thing we used to compete on — has been commoditized overnight. And before anyone says, "just write better, more human content," readers can't actually tell the difference anymore. That ship has sailed. Competing on the quality of the text itself is a losing game, regardless of how it's produced. So what actually wins now? External attention. Amazon's new algorithm heavily rewards books that arrive with an audience already attached. That means the winners over the next two years won't be the best writers. They'll be the best digital marketers — the ones building newsletters, growing YouTube followings, nurturing Skool communities, and then pointing that audience toward their books. Our identity in this business has to evolve. We need to think of ourselves less as authors and more as media brands that happen to publish books. The second piece of this is what I'm calling the trust premium. Readers are already experiencing AI fatigue, even if they can't name it. They can feel when a person is behind something — not because the writing is better, but because the marketing is authentic, the niche is specific, and the face behind the brand is real and present. Verifiable human presence and transparent, specific marketing will convert dramatically better than anonymous, optimized content. Our humanity isn't in the text anymore. It's in how we show up off the page.

What is a premium upgrade? Also, way back in late summer when I was still struggling with the password issue, there were many more classes offered than there are now. Why? For example, there was a class on PowerPoint (PP). In my "other life," I used PP extensively for presentation slides, but it never occurred to me that I could use PP for books! And I'm the greenest novice at using templates--is there a class on this? Thanks in advance for your help!

Imagine you are creating a book about decluttering. If you hired two cover designers and gave them a task: Create a cover for a book about decluttering with the title: "Decluttering Made Simple. Subtitle: Practical Strategies to Organize Your Home and Achieve Peace from Clutter in Less than 10 Minutes a Day. By Kate Hansen." Designers returned with their concepts. What offer would you prefer as a prototype to continue with? Your ideas about the quality of designs? Cast your vote for the set you like better. ----- ⚠️ If you recognized some designs, NO SPOILERS please.

So - Apart from Nano Banana, and ChatGPT, what are your other favorite tools for illustrations?