Review in Practice: Fearless Author

Fearless Author, by Ashley Emma, is a self-publishingbook launch Plan and checklist, which was not as valuable to me as I had hoped, because nowhere did it say that this was an Amazon author exclusively, so I did not realize what I was getting. Don’t get me wrong. This was a free book, so I’ve wasted nothing but my time, and it was not a total waste. For those who don’t understand why the advice of an exclusive author might be of lesser value to a wide author, such as myself, let me paint a word picture of the state of the independent publishing industry currently, as I see it.

In order to be a KDP author and have your books featured in Kindle Unlimited, Amazon requires an author to download directly to thier site, (you can’t use a third party aggregator to publish your book and they demand exclusivity. Kindle Unlimited can be a substatial income stream for authors, because page reads add up to comprable sales, and some authors, in genres with voracious readers, earn more from page reads than they do from actual sales. I can see why some authors might feel that to be a fair trade for exclusivity, but that exclusivity means that you can’t sell your book anywhere else, including on your own website. That’s why I chose to publish wide. I didn’t want to give up that much control over my books. It is up to me where my books will be sold, which allows me more opportunities to reach more potential readers.

And tactics like rapid release, or free or .99 cent first in series, may not be as effective with other distributors as they are on Amazon, because other distributors don’t use the same algorythyms that Amazon does. For example, Ms. Emma recommends utilizing Amazon’s free days, which are only available to KDP exclusive authors. That is why I didn’t find Ashley Emma’s Fearless Author to be of more value. While her advice for launching and taking a book quickly up to bestseller status may be quite valuable to an Amazon author, but many options are only available to exclusive authors.

All of that to say that Fearless Author might have been more helpful by indicating in the description the fact that Ashley Emma is an Amazon author, offering useful tip to be used with KDP and Kindle Unlimited. At least then I would have known what to expect when I downloaded the free book. There were some tactics which could be of value to all authors, even those who publish wide, like myself.

The lesson learned from this experience: the importance of accurate book descriptions which don’t mislead potential readers. Although I may use some of the advice found in Fearless Author, I would probably not download more of Ashley Emma’s books, even though I might find portions of it useful and I found no fault with her writing.

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For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.

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