Indie and Self-Published Author Support discussion

Hello everyone!

My name is Adam Bagdi!
I've been writing stories for a little more than 2 years now.
I do it mostly for the enjoyment of the activity itself. However, I was curious to see how my stories would do in the open market. Since traditional publishing is way too expensive for me, I went with the self-publishing route. I did everything by myself: translating, editing, book-cover making (this is probably noticeable in the final product).

About the novel itself:
It is a light-hearted detective-comedy novel, with noir elements. The follows Jester, a slightly hot headed drifter, who visits Hollywood, after receiving a mysterious letter from his friend. Shortly after arriving in the city of Dreams, he ends up entangled in the case of the disappearance of a famous actress.

If you found this interesting, please check out The Secret of the ruby, now available for on Amazon:
https://a.co/d/08QrQQgl

You can read the book for free starting tomorrow until the 10th of August.

Any and all kinds of support is welcome. I greatly appreciate feedback, both kind words of encouragement and constructive criticism!

Congratulations on publishing your novel, Adam! The combination of detective comedy and noir elements sounds really intriguing, and Jester’s journey to Hollywood definitely caught my attention. It’s also impressive that you handled the translation, editing, and cover design yourself.

Wishing you lots of success with The Secret of the Ruby!

Afra wrote: "Congratulations on publishing your novel, Adam! The combination of detective comedy and noir elements sounds really intriguing, and Jester’s journey to Hollywood definitely caught my attention. It’..."

Thank you for your kind words!

Congratulations on getting it out. Translating, editing and building the cover yourself is four jobs, not one.

One thing on the cover before you redo anything: look at it at the size people actually see it. Shrink the image to about 120 pixels wide and put it next to five other books in your category. That is the size in a phone search result, and it is where a cover that looks fine at full size usually loses. The title stops being readable, or it sits in the same font weight as everything around it and disappears. If it survives that test, leave it alone and spend the time somewhere else.

The other thing worth expecting is that print review bounces things which have nothing to do with the writing. We collected nine print rejections across our titles and not one of them was about the topic. Read the rejection mail literally, it names the exact page or field, and do not start redesigning before you have read it twice.

Good luck with Jester.