Elite Authors Services FAQs
A guide to our most frequently asked questions
General Support Questions
Our office hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. eastern time (ET). For the fastest response time, send an email to your dedicated author success manager.
Although our editing, writing, and design creatives are unfortunately not available by phone, we’re happy to contact them on your behalf.
Elite Authors and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) are separate entities! While many of our authors choose to publish with Amazon/KDP, we are not directly affiliated with the organization.
You may contact Amazon directly for any questions at (866) 321-8851, and you can reach them with any questions here.
Please reach out to your author success manager. They can let you know whether your requested revisions incur a fee or are included in your purchased service.
Yes. You can preview through Kindle Previewer or KDP’s online preview tool before going live.
We created the below checklist to help you prepare to fill out the Elite Authors questionnaire. This checklist is meant as a guide to help you prepare your materials. It is not exhaustive, as requirements may vary from book to book, and the assets needed depend on the services you’ve purchased. Link to checklist.
Author Questionnaire Questions
An ISBN is an International Standard Book Number. They are unique to every book and are required in order to publish. Every ISBN can either be a 10- or 13-digit number. If you decide to use the free KDP ISBN, KDP owns the number, but not the rights to your work.
If you decide to buy one through Bowker, you will own the ISBN number and can then publish with that number wherever you’d like and register your book under any publisher name. The link to purchase an ISBN through Bowker can be found here.
If you purchase through Bowker, you will own the ISBN and can publish wherever you’d like. However, if you are chosen by a traditional publisher, you’ll need to change it to their ISBN.
For more information about ISBNs, you can find an excellent and comprehensive article here.
Your imprint is “who” you’re publishing through. If you obtain a free ISBN from KDP, your imprint will be “independently published.” If you purchase your ISBN through Bowker, you’ll need to log in to their website. Then, click on your account, then your profile, and it will display the organization name. This is your imprint name.
Editing Questions
Our manuscript editing services range from proofreading to developmental editing. You can buy one round of editing, or you can invest in three or more. There’s a reason traditionally published books go through a minimum of four (and up to as many as eight) rounds of editing, all done by different editors and all focusing on distinct aspects of the book: choosing only one or two rounds of editing may considerably lower the quality of the finished product. That’s why we offer discounted editing packages—to help ensure the book you publish is the best possible experience for readers. Please reach out to us, and we’ll be happy to discuss options with you.
Yes, you need Microsoft Word. Our editors work exclusively with Microsoft Word’s Track Changes feature, so you’ll need to have Microsoft Word (or compatible software) to incorporate our team’s suggested edits.
We highly encourage our authors to individually review the suggestions as you, the author, know your own voice best. However, after you have reviewed and accepted or rejected any Tracked Changes and have updated your manuscript based on to our editor’s suggestions, our editorial team can reconcile any new content and ensure your manuscript is clean and ready for the next round or stage in the process. Please contact your author success manager to learn more about this service and any associated fees.
We match the right editor to each manuscript. We make sure that the editor has experience in that genre and style, and if subject matter expertise is necessary based on the topic, we look for an editor who is a match there too.
While we don’t share the editor’s personal information, we want to reassure you that we have a team of editors who have been tested and are in the 99th percentile of those tested. Each editor must be rigorously tested and trained to work here and, on average, they have 10+ years of experience.
Marketing Questions
Please contact us if you’re interested in learning more about our book marketing services, such as video book trailer creation, Amazon Optimized Listing, back cover text, Elite Authors Reviews, or social media campaign management.
Your Optimized Amazon Listing is a Microsoft Word document completed according to best practices for comparable titles in your genre and designed to increase discoverability on Amazon. It includes a note from your copywriter, 7 keyword recommendations, up to 3 category recommendations for Kindle and print listings, a product description of 1,000–4,000 characters, and an HTML product description.
Taglines can be used on your book’s cover (front or back), on bookmarks, on flyers, on your website, or on any other marketing material you might create. They’re for you to utilize how you wish. They’re designed to evoke an emotional response—rather than tell the full story of your book.
Cover Design Questions
Please send us images in JPG, TIFF, or PNG format at 300 DPI or more. If you are sending more than one image, please send them in a zipped folder to help us communicate your vision more efficiently with the design team.
If you have purchased Simple Cover Design, one image is included. If you have purchased Complex Cover Design, you can include up to five images on the cover.
You can download the preferences sheet by clicking this link.
Yes we can! Please reach out to your Elite Authors Sales Consultant for the best cover service to fit your needs and budget.
The Simple Cover Design service is for you! Read more about our cover design services here.
The formatting piece of cover design is critical to KDP upload; the image(s) are secondary. Thus, we must format both the interior and the cover to provide you with the KDP Upload Service. You could choose either Simple or Complex, based on your needs and desires for the book.
Interior Questions
Industry standard is for each chapter to start on the right-facing page. So if a chapter would start on the left-facing page, an extra blank page is inserted so that the chapter always starts on the right. If you would prefer, we can take the blank pages out and have chapters start wherever they may fall.
EPUB files can only be previewed once uploaded to KDP and through their previewer; they cannot be opened on regular PCs or Macs. Please first download the files to your computer; then you can upload them to KDP!
There are fundamental limitations of ebook designs. There’s no way to guarantee that a reflowable digital file will look exactly like the print file, as different e-readers have default settings that will inevitably change the layout.
Some customization is possible, as with the headings and fleurons, but ebook designers must work with a simplified layout to accommodate all e-readers.
Please watch this two-minute video to learn how to use the Elite Authors interior revisions form.
You can download the form by clicking this link.
Our Interior Template Guide shows you each of our layout options. You can download it by clicking this link.
If you have further questions, please review your Author Questionnaire or contact your author success manager.
Uploading Questions
We do not currently upload books to platforms other than KDP. However, your Author Success Manager can direct you to some helpful guides for other platforms or distributors.
As a note, IngramSpark has different cover-size requirements, so please inform us if you’d like to publish on that platform.
If you have enrolled in Amazon KDP’s Expanded Distribution channels, then your book will also be listed with Barnes & Noble online. It will take approximately six weeks for the book to appear on their site.
Finally, remember that if you are using a free KDP-provided ISBN, that ISBN will only work for KDP.
- First, please confirm that you are using the most current files to upload.
- Then, confirm your paper type, trim size, & bleed settings as outlined in your “Read This First” letter.
- If you are still having issues, please reach out to our team for assistance!
There are a number of factors to consider when pricing your book: genre, length of your book, color versus black and white, paperback versus hardcover, etc. And do you already have an established audience that you know will be buying your book no matter what?
To figure out how to price your book, we recommend reviewing similar books on Amazon KDP to get a sense of what the genre prices tend to be.
Prices on KDP are editable, so you can always go back and increase or decrease the price depending on how your book is selling.
KDP has a great printing cost calculator that will let you play with cost to see your project’s royalties. Typically, authors on KDP make around $3–$5 per book.
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Questions
KDP needs to know some basic tax and financial information so that they can send your royalty checks to you. To input your banking information, log in to KDP and click the “Your Account” tab on the top right-hand corner. From there, you can input your banking information to receive your royalties!
Make sure you fill out your tax information as well! If you do not fill out your tax info, you will not be able to collect your royalties. For more information about your payments, visit this link.
Please see this link for more information about purchasing ads on Amazon.
For KDP, royalties are displayed under the "reports" tab. You can learn more about the reports here.
Elite Authors Reviews Questions
There are a few ways to get book reviews. For example, you can ask family and friends to read your book and write reviews, you can put a callout on social media, and you can even include a request in the book itself for happy readers to share their opinions with others. But if your friends and family network needs a boost in numbers, we can help! Engaging a quality reviews service such as ours takes the legwork out of the equation and can help you increase your total number of reviews.
Reviews—their quantity as well as their quality—tell bookselling algorithms that people are not just reading your book but pausing to share their opinion with other readers. That alone suggests that your book is one to be taken seriously, and that is reflected in your search rankings. On some platforms, having up to 30, 50, or 100 reviews can help you get better visibility in search results. Thus, the more reviews your book gets, the happier the algorithm will be.
The one-word answer is yes. Reviews sell books. You probably know this yourself. If you’re intrigued by the cover or a premise of a new book, especially if the author is unknown to you, you start skimming reviews to see what other readers think. You’re not alone in this. According to some estimates, 97 percent of readers use reviews as a deciding factor when considering which book to buy.
The Elite Authors Reviews service typically takes about 2.5–3 weeks for up to 50 reviews. During this time, the reviewers read your book, write, and post reviews.
Absolutely! After all reviews have been written and posted, we’ll send a summary of the reviews for your convenience. This summary will include a link to your reviews and the body of each individual review.
Yes! We don’t tell our reviewers what to write, though we do, of course, ask that they write informative reviews that go beyond “I liked it.” We also ask that they include concrete details and examples of what they found intriguing or appealing.
Distribution and Publishing Questions
Yes. You set your book’s list price. We recommend reviewing your chosen distributor's royalty calculator to assist in deciding the book's price. Here is KDP's royalty calculator. Here is IngramSpark's royalty calculator.
Royalties depend on retailer policies and print costs. For KDP, you can view their policies here.
Image Resolution and DPI Questions
Contact Us
Have more questions? We're happy to help! Send us an email at projectmanager@eliteauthors.com, provide a few details, and we'll get back to you within one business day.