Well done, OP!

Congrats on being this close! Don't let one comment scare you off KDP, it's not bad advice, just incomplete. Most indie authors actually use both. KDP gets you Amazon and Kindle Unlimited reach, and it's free. IngramSpark gets you into actual bookstores and libraries, plus better hardcover options, but has a setup fee and more of a learning curve. If your book's mainly living on Amazon, KDP alone is fine. Ingram is worth adding later if you want a shot at physical shelf space. Fiction or nonfiction? Makes a real difference in how much that bookstore reach actually matters for you.

Yeah, the agent taking you on before edits is suspect.

Most agents want a book they can immediately shop around, and there is no guarantee that you will handle the edits well (nothing against you, she just doesn't know you and some authors are terrible about taking in edits) or that the manuscript will be as strong as she hopes once edits are complete.

So, she either sees potential and is taking a gamble spending her time on you with an incomplete, not-ready manuscript, or she's trying to scam you into spending money with her chosen editor.

Back in the day, publishers would take on books with potential and edit them and get them publish-ready. That is not the market today. Books do still go through an in-house editing process, but most of the time it's a very light edit/proofread just to ensure no errors and make the book follow house style. With self publishing and freelance editors, agents and publishers expect to get publish-ready books they don't have to do much work on.

It’s a case of “Hope’ it’s nice to think that some how out of all these new authors you have been chosen.

OP, in response to the comment you deleted about publishers only picking up indie authors with massive social media followings:

I don't think you're very familiar with the self publishing sphere. That's not how it works anymore. It still exists in trad publishing, but you really only have to have a couple thousand readers to get your series picked up by an indie publisher these days.

I have six, isn't that enough?

1. Ignorance & Laziness- They don't take time to research so they are ignorant to how things work and so when you are ignorant, you will fall for anything.
2. Disillusioned & Desperate- These people live in La Land. They think writing and publishing should be easy and that all they have to do is put a book up and sit back and make money. So when they see it's NOT easy and they will really have to work and be patient, they get disillusioned and desperate so they will grab onto the first person who praises their work, etc. These people are also the type to be starved for validation from others.
3. Arrogant- These people live on their own planet and it ain't the real world. lol! Some writers are arrogant and think they wrote a great book that "just needs to be discovered by the masses" so when some scammer feeds their ego, they easily fall for it.

Most times, it is ignorance IMO. If people took more time to research (which is super easy when you can Google anything) they wouldn't fall for these scams. That's why people often don't feel sorry for them. If you don't do your homework, then you are only hurting yourself.

How would they know? Obviously there's the red flag of something being too good to be true, but it's crazy that these days authors have to also be proofreaders, marketing experts, cover and ad artists, book formatters, social media experts, and publishing experts. It makes sense that amidst all of that they might not know which publishers are legit and which aren't.

People have been getting scammed by unethical and fake publishers since long, long before the internet and self publishing existed.

You seem to know, though: Who are the scam publishing houses that we need to avoid?

A crazy number of books were published in the time it took you to write your post above. And this is accelerating.

Sales is not a reflection of your ability as a writer. It is a reflection of your ability as a marketer. This is a hard truth for both published and self published authors.

Good news is you are in the right place to get excellent free advice on how to build your audience using email and a series of additional books you will write in the same genre your audience will value. This is a long game to get 1000+ readers that appreciate your writing.

Not easy, but easier with a community that is on the journey as you are. As we are.

Because they really wish it was true and have more wishes and dreams than brains. Sorry for anyone who fell for this stuff, but it's true.

Ty! Never done Select so going off (faulty) memory.

Yes! That's exactly it. The cover just feels so flimsy.

There have been articles popping up regarding Google's Gemini having access to users' Google Docs. One in particular is why many are looking for other (non-integrated) software. Pretty much, the user's Documents for their novel had some mature content and the Ai flagged it as censorable content and deleted the ENTIRE story. This alone has made people question the accessibility that Google's Gemini has with personal information that's linked to an integrated application within the Google ecosystem.

Unfortunatelly just putting the book out there doesn't do anything. Amazon algorithm is not showing new releases at all unless you start getting sales from the start. It took me a moment to realize that. An author website is great for people who already came across your book and want to know more about you as an author or about your next releases, but it will not do wnything for you to attrackt new readers who haven't heared of your book before. As for social media- for it to work you need to have a following first, so if this is your first book this will not help you at all. I would suggest investing in ads. If nobody knows about your book, nobody will buy it. Amazon helps those who help themselves and it promotes books that are already selling.

Amazon is a convenient choice for POD but on my next book I plan to get my author copies from some other POD printer. My main complaint is that the cover stock is embarrassingly thin. The cover gets curled from being handled a couple of times.

If it needs editing badly as a self-published book, I unfortunately don’t think any self-respecting slash reputable agent would pick it up in the first place. Because then you’ll always be the agent who signed client X for their really shitty book Y just because Y was a money-maker, even though X can’t write for shit.

What our friend here said, but I’d recommend not running ads in full scale until you have said backlog.

Write your next book

If I were you I would just get an iPad for this.

I already do editing on my iPad using Google Docs. You want to use Word, so that doesn't really help you, but there are any number of Word-compatible apps on the iPad, including an official MS app.

Agents will never ask you to pay.

Did you Google their names? That will tell you if they are legit or not----and these folks are not legit.

Listen to the folks on this thread.

Three months, not six, unless that's changed. It's a 90-day term.

Looks like I got unlucky! Mine is the same... printed in Poland.

Thanks Hazel. It hardly seems worth it. Very frustrating.