Review: Not worth a whole lot of time
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 5, 2014
This book starts out with writing tips, continues with how to prepare for publishing, gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to use KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), and ends with a short chapter on promotion.The writing tips, for the most part, I did not find useful. Most of them were ones I had seen elsewhere. The one helpful thing I found there was links to where to find an editor and illustrator, although if you did the research yourself I’m sure you’d find the same sources.How to prepare for publishing was pretty much common sense—although most of it was things you’d probably be able to figure out yourself as well. There were a few good tips there, though, so I’d recommend a quick scan through there. I felt parts of the instructions on writing a book description were pointless, though, and would possibly even detract from sales—but then, that might be just my opinion.The tutorial on how to use KDP I found really good. It was explained in an easy-to-understand manner. That was the real highlight of the book. Ally did very well with this part. This is the point that will probably bring me back to this book again if I ever pursue self-publishing. Here, she explains how to set up an account, upload your book, find relative keywords, and more. This book has the best explanation on this topic that I’ve seen anywhere.The promotion section was also pretty good. There were some valid points made. Several good websites were linked to as well. I’m sure a newly-published author would find some helpful tidbit there.Overall, I’m afraid I can’t give a rave review on it. I didn’t get a whole lot out of this book. While there were the odd good bits, I feel that this mostly had things in it that I’ve seen elsewhere. The text formatting was also not as good as other books, making it harder to read.I hate writing a negative review, because I know the author has put a lot of time into writing and promoting this book. But these are my honest thoughts. Overall, I’m afraid I can’t really recommend this book. Although, if you are looking for a quick overview on how to publish and market your book, you might find something helpful here.I received this book for free in exchange for my honest thoughts in a review.