Just wondering if someone had some good information on this... I would like to experiment adding video ads, but what do you think is a good way to go about it? Just a flip-through the book, or showing the book being used in action? This is for a children's book, by the way

Hello all, I just wondered why my bestselling book (a LC journal) doesn't sell as good as I want it to. Some research found, that actually someone copied my cover and a+ content almost 1:1. How would you procede in such a case? My book was published in June 24, the copycat on Jan 8, 2026.

"Great book. Easily 50 stars, but... I will leave three." 😂 What are the favorite reviews you got for your books?

I had no plans to publish my 2025 results not to create unproductive comparisons. On one hand, we have members with results in tens of thousands of dollars a month. On the other hand, nine out of ten publishers' earnings are measured in tens or hundreds of dollars a month. After much thought, I decided most of the Guild members are adult enough to understand that the only productive comparison is the comparison with your previous self. And example of the possible trend, not exact numbers, would be inspiring for publishers, struggling to break the plateau. So, in late April 2025 I had catalog of about 50 low-content journals which generated a total $50 a month in average, zero ads spent. At the time I was bored and searched for an idea for productive daily activity. KDP seemed like an decent candidate for it and I started process of re-train myself to modern day publishing in May 2025. Now, eight month later, royalties are increased 22 times with healthy 15 times increased profit. On the way I learned a few things: 1. All necessary information is freely available on the internet: you do not need to spend money on gurus, magical recipes for success, or expensive software. At the same time, a good mentor (not necessarily a human; an LLM works well in this role too) and useful tools can save you a lot of time and effort. And the time saved usually means money earned. 2. As in any business, in KDP there are no magic tricks; instead, feedback loops and effective processes win the game. 3. No matter how low your results are now, if you are ready to grow, you can increase your earnings rather fast. The only limit to the results is your own mindset. What's next? I have a book of my own that has been sitting at "half-finished" for weeks because I've been so focused on our community. To be the best host I can be, I need to finish what I start. I'll be a little quieter here for a short bit while I finish this manuscript. I'm handing the "microphone" to you guys: keep the discussions going, help the newcomers, and let's see who can post the next big growth story!

Actually, @Marzena Krawczyk described the optimal system yesterday: "I use ProtectMyWork site to upload all my book before publishing, and for my bestseller I also got US copyright certificate (took me 3 month to receive it) so I hope this to be bulletproof strategy." @Laura Diaz @Elena Baldwin @Martin M. I will add a little bit to it. Protect My Work is a service that immediately generates a digital certificate with a unique reference number and the registration date, providing independent, credible proof of your copyright. At any point in time, if Amazon's bots ask you for proof of your copyright, you can instantly make them happy by providing a nice document. It's a really good idea to protect your manuscripts before uploading to review services and before sending them to freelancers on Fiverr, Upwork, etc. Also, non-conventional tricks, like collecting readers' emails by selling your coloring books on Etsy, can be protected. But wait, there's more! For Premium tier members of the Guild, we got 20% discount (£8.50 to be exact) for the first year. You can get the link in the Classroom