I analysed Reddit’s self-publishing subreddits

Some of the results surprised me

Most advice you see online starts with somebody’s hunch. I wanted facts.
So I asked ChatGPT to dig through three years of r/selfpublish and r/selfpublishing, count the hot topics and flag the posts that earned the highest vote totals.

The prompt I used
“Scan back for up to the last three years of the subreddits r/selfpublishing and r/selfpublish, analyse the questions and comments, as well as upvotes and downvotes, and pull out data that I can use to help self-publishing authors. For example, what are the top pain points being expressed in the subreddit? Quantify data where possible, but lists of useful information are also helpful.”

ChatGPT sampled six hundred high-visibility threads. Every post was sorted into a theme, then we calculated the share of discussion. The numbers confirm what many of us feel instinctively, but a few findings were unexpected.

**Rounded to nearest percentage

Special mention to

Casandra Campbell

for her advice on embedding tables in Substack articles.

What surprised me

While I intuitively knew from my own engagement with the subreddits that marketing ans cover design are hot topics, I expected all the nuts-and-bolts questions about ISBNs, trim sizes and print files to rank higher. In practice, posts on publication logistics made up only six per cent of the sample. Three factors seem to explain the gap.

1. The one-click illusion
   Amazon, Draft2Digital and IngramSpark have turned file upload into a guided wizard. Many authors treat that wizard as gospel, so they ask fewer public questions. When trouble does strike: a bleed error on page 312, or a barcode in the wrong spot, they call support rather than crowd-source a fix on Reddit.

2. The wiki effect
   r/selfpublish maintains a detailed wiki that covers ISBN ownership, Library of Congress numbers and print-on-demand choices. Newcomers are told to read it before posting. The result is fewer fresh threads and lower up-vote counts, which pushed logistics down the chart.

3. Opportunity cost
   Every hour you spend tweaking gutters is an hour you could spend on visibility. Authors sense that trade-off. The subreddit feeds that bias by rewarding marketing talk with higher vote totals, so members follow the incentive and focus on ads, categories and pricing.

The lesson is not that logistics are trivial. A file formatted for Amazon alone will not always play nicely with Ingram, and ISBN mistakes can lock you out of bookstores. Treat the low thread volume as a warning. Many authors skip this stage until something breaks. If you learn the fundamentals early you gain a real edge because you will not lose momentum fixing preventable errors after launch.

The key take-aways and how I can help

1. Visibility still rules the pain chart

Nearly one third of all posts revolve around how to get seen. Authors keep asking for practical launch plans that cost less than two hundred dollars and do not require a mailing list of ten thousand readers.

Free subscribers to Author Growth get a free listing in the monthly book launch boost email, to spread the word of their launch more widely and hopefully prime Amazon’s algorithm in the early days.

Annual paying subscribers get a custom 6-10 page marketing plan, tailored to their book (valued at $210), as part of their subscription. Annual subscriptions are currently priced at $75, but will soon be increasing to $100. Get your marketing and launch plan taken care of, so you can concentrate on finishing your book.

Here’s what one author said about the marketing plan I created for her:

Screenshot from Fleur Hull ($95 was the amount in Australian dollars)

2. Kindle Unlimited: cash cow or creative handcuffs

Seven per cent of the chat, yet the passion is intense. When authors share real numbers, those posts double the comments of vague opinions.

A practical way to settle the Kindle Unlimited question is to treat the first 90-day exclusivity period as a controlled experiment. Enrol your e-book in KU, track daily sales, page reads and ad spend in a simple spreadsheet, and calculate the revenue per one-thousand impressions (RPM) so you can compare apples with apples later.

When the term ends, opt out, distribute to Kobo, Apple, Google Play and libraries through Draft2Digital or Smashwords, and run the same ads and price points for another three months. At the end of six months you will have two clean data sets. If wide earnings, including library borrows, match or beat your KU total, stay wide; if KU is clearly higher and you value the Amazon algorithm boost, re-enrol. Either way, you have evidence rather than hunches guiding the decision.

3. The $400 cover dilemma

Questions about covers rank second in volume and this includes the deep distrust of AI stock. Writers need a quick truth-test: does this cover shout its genre and survive Amazon’s thumbnail?

Unfortunately the subreddits do not allow cover uploads. So what’s an author to do to get cover feedback?

Monthly subscribers to Author Growth get a free cover review (valued at $75) as part of their subscription.

4. Vanity-press scars

Not many days go by without an author posting a sad story of how they’ve been scammed out of thousands of dollars by a vanity press. Scammers know that a first-time author’s mix of pride and impatience is fertile ground. Their pitches sound professional and vaguely glamorous, yet a closer look reveals copy-and-paste contracts and eye-watering mark-ups.

Before you sign anything, run the outfit’s name through the Writers Beware® “Thumbs-Down” list and its searchable blog. If you see even one detailed warning, walk away.

Your Next Steps

The Reddit data paints a clear picture. One third of the conversation in r/selfpublish and r/selfpublishing centres on visibility and sales, followed by cover design, scam avoidance, editing costs, and the Kindle Unlimited debate. ISBN logistics, emotional support, AI issues, and craft questions fill the rest of the feed. Here is how to use those insights right away.

1. Join the right communities
   Subscribe to r/selfpublish for strict, nuts-and-bolts advice, r/selfpublishing for a warmer welcome to questions, and r/writers for broader craft discussions. Lurking first will teach you the tone and save you from posting questions already answered in the sidebar.

2. Build a visibility plan first
   Draft a ninety-day launch calendar (or get Fleur to write a custom plan for you, by upgrading to annual paying subscriber) that caps weekly spend and lists one marketing task per week. The subreddit vote tallies prove that discoverability is every indie author’s biggest pain point.

3. Pressure-test your cover
   Apply the thumbnail test and genre comparison the forums rave about. Post a low-resolution version in a critique thread or in your own author circle and ask for instant impressions.

4. Price out editing sensibly
   Follow the tiered workflow many Redditors swear by: free beta swap, AI clean-up, then only pay for the highest-value professional pass your budget can absorb.

5. Run the Kindle Unlimited experiment
   Use the first ninety-day exclusivity window as a controlled trial. Track page reads, calculate revenue per thousand impressions, then compare that data with a three-month wide release.

6. Keep scam filters on
   Even though scams ranked lower than marketing woes, the stakes are high. Scan Writers Beware before signing anything, then share what you learn in the subreddits to keep the community strong.

Reddit thrives on members who give as much as they take, so circle back with your own data once you have tried these steps. The more detailed your report, the more helpful it will be to the next author searching for answers.

If you’d like to support my work but are not in a position to commit to a monthly subscription, consider buying me a coffee.