Indie authors have a small budget. If you are indie, it means you probably have a regular work. That pays your bills, and you will be careful how to spend money on your book release. You have no agent , it means all work is on you.
What you need is money for editor, cover creator and formatting book. Then you need money for advertisement and promotion for your book. If you want your paperback, you will buy it from Amazon, with your money.
Considering all this, many indie authors ask for a cheaper choice or free options.
Here are mistakes what they do:
Doing own covers with a help of Kindle creator. They will pick up patterns from Kindle or free pages and make own covers. It is not a good move because many readers are picky and choose book captured by the cover. If your cover looks amateurish, your book will not sell as you wish.
Editing books by their own. Unless you are professional editor, it will not work out well. Editing by Grammarly or other similar pages will fix basic mistakes, but still there are errors.
Formatting books by their own. Formatting is a work for professionals, but if you have a way how to do this free, try that your book will be readable. Skipping chapters will chase away your readers.
Asking for free promotional pages. It is good for visibility of your books, but on such pages is a big competition and your books will not be noticed.
Offering your books for free. Once I offered my books free and got 600 downloads but a small number of reviews. People don't appreciate free things.
If indie authors decide to invest some money, it will not be a good move if you have an amateur editor or cover creator.
Believe me, I burn it when I did this. My so called editor did not fix all mistakes and I needed editing after this work. Also, my cover did not uploaded well in a paperback version and it was a loss of money.
Don't let people to rob you for money or to learn to improve their skills on your books.
Also, don't pay for any suspicious services. Be careful for promotional services who are offered in your inbox. When you see their promotional pages have a small number of followers, it is a scam.
I understand a big desire to sell your book, but it is also a money challenge. Indie authors are gamblers that invest their money in unknown area.
The last thing you would do is to pay for reviews. Paid reviews are banned in Amazon, so don't play with this. Don't send emails to people you don't know for your reviews. It is disrespect and you might be marked as a spammer.
Learning from my experiences, I improved my knowledge about book sales. My sales are still not as I would wish, but it is better that I used to do.
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