Having covered the steps of the editing process, book covers, getting set up on stores or choosing distributors in this blog, it’s time to talk indie book launch tips. On to self-publishing step 8!
8. Book Launch
Set Up Pre-orders
You may want to set up pre-orders (especially for a book 2 or later, in which case do so before you publish book 1, so book 2’s preorder is in book 1’s back matter when its first published). You’ll also need a pre-order if this is your first book, as you can’t set up author profiles or put your book on review sites to start gathering reviews until you have a purchase link.
This can take the pressure off leading up to launch today, because setting up the pre-order means having the blurb, keywords, categories, meta data and price set on retailers well in advance. (Uploading all this stuff for stores is unpacked in step 12 below). Having a pre-order also means you can share a purchase link when you do your cover reveal on social media and in your newsletter, and other social media posts leading up to launch day.
Book Links For Pre-orders. Bookstoread will create a link to a page displaying icons linked to your book’s page on each retailer your ebook and paperback are available at. If you also want to provide links for people to add your book to their digital TBR, I suggest creating a book page on your website. Then readers can have the choice to buy and or TBR your book, and a chance to sign up to your newsletter, or to follow you on Goodreads/ Bookbub etc.
Note: I’ve had issues with adding some book links, while others have disappeared after I added them to BooksToRead. So if you use it; monitor it! Check all your links are still there and still working.
Grow Your Newsletter
Consider newsletter swaps with writers in the same genre, writing for the same audience age. Building your list means more people to tell when your book drops. Your reader magnet can get its own landing page on BookFunnel, where you can join group promos (this is a monthly/ annual subscription service). I suggest choosing the promos with the most participants in your genre. This maximises your chances of the download page with all participating author’s reader magnets getting you the most amount of sign ups. (2026 update: this has got pricier and fellow indies still using it tell me they’re getting less sign ups for their money.)
Story Origin (another monthly/ annual subscription) is another good site for swaps directly with other authors. In a swap, each author displays the reader magnet’s cover, a short blurb and link in their newsletter, instead of linking a group landing page image, from which they have to choose to click your book, not everyone else in the group promo’s. The only downside her is last I used them (2023?), they had few authors in my genre with under 500 subscribers. That meant few people with similar size lists likely to swap with me.
Crave Books Giveaways is a one off (or very occasional, likely with different book 1’s) option. But it gained me more subscribers by adding my ebook to a 9 fantasy ebooks giveaway (to which Cravebooks added paperback copies of the Stormlight Archives) in Dec 2024, than I’d gained from Bookfunnel in a year. If you only pay for one thing to grow your newsletter; choose this one!
Also: Keep Subscribers Engaged. Here’s some content ideas from Bookfunnel to help with that.
Multi-Author Promotions
The easiest and free way to do this is to have your books on Itchio and join a (temporary) Itchio Book Bundle, the latter via Discord or Bsky Social.
Resources: Designing Your Own Virtual Book Tour Basics.
Reviews and Blog Tours
Reviews don’t just show potential readers what they may enjoy about your book, getting enough of them makes you eligible to be featured on Bookbub. But don’t pay for reviews. That can get you in hot water.
The alternative I’m finding works well is blog tours. This isn’t paying for reviews, its paying for a tour organiser to make your book accessible to reviewers and or book bloggers, and for your book (and sometimes you as an author) to be featured on blogs and or social media.
Which tours are worth the cost? I’d say the ones that get reviews, though reviews may not be guaranteed. Rachel’s Resources has been recommended to me by indies who were happy with reviews they received. Itsy Bitsy has landed me between 19-30 reviews on Goodreads and Bookbub for my first two books and I was very happy with Colleen (the organiser, who runs a tight ship).
You can put your book on Netgalley (I haven’t tried that), Book Sirens (I got one reader & review), or Booksprout (dito). But honestly, I suspect posting on your social media -for free!- is better value. Especially if you set up a direct store on something like Payhip, which lets you hide the ARC copy page from public view. Then you can send ARC reviewers found on social media a link to that page for them to download your book, without using a paid service.
Promotion Sites & Paid Newsletters
Check out platforms which host giveaways, or promote books. Group giveaways are a good way to grow your newsletter or Bookbub following, depending which of the two readers are required to do to enter the giveaway. Sites like BookSweeps or Prolific Works may help.
First: ensure that your cover is genre-appropriate and looks good at thumbnail size, the size it will most commonly display at online, where you’ll get most of your sales. Again: I suggest asking people publishing in a similar genre what they’ve had success with. Or reading this post of paid newsletters Nicholas Erik has had good experiences promoting a range of genres in.
Advertising
To put it bluntly, paid advertising offers many ways to set your money on fire. Step one to avoid that seems to be take a course, and or research articles or read books, before spending money you don’t intend to lose on paid ads. Even then, paid advertising on any one platform another indie author swears buy may yield you little. In other words; think of advertising as a gamble that may or may not pay off.
Measuring Sales
Book Report is handy for this. I’ve heard it can report sales data faster than DraftToDigital does. It will report for up to 10 stores, so may be worth paying for if your book is available in quite a few stores. (2026 Update: due to reasons discussed in the distributor section of Part 1 of this blog, I’m about to downsize to just Kobo, Itchio and my direct store, so I won’t bother with it.)
Press Kit
This is a means of making your key site and book links easily accessible to bloggers, the press etc. Though I find most bloggers want links pasted directly into their form, and you have to keep updating your Press Kit page, should you have one. So consider whether you intend toctively seek interviews, and whether its worth creating and annually (at least!) updating this page.
For an example press kit, see mine.
Marketing Resources
Wide for the Win is a great starting point for publishing wide (beyond only evil Amazon).
Free Courses: Starting From Zero, with David Gaughran.
Google Air, free Google add workshops (you have to register using your Google account.)
Wondering about sales trends? K-lytics is a handy (free) blog to follow, though their paid services are expensive.
9. Set up Author Profiles/ your Book on; Goodreads, Bookbub, Storygraph etc)
To seek reviews, you need an author profile and your book’s information up on review sites. Your book needs to be on sale or available for pre-order to do this. For Goodreads, you have to add your book to Goodreads first, then you can claim your author profile. This is worth doing early on, as reviews can be uploaded to Goodreads BEFORE launch day.
Tip: get your betas to add their reviews when they finish reading your late draft.
On other sites, you simply need to sign up, add a purchase link for your book, a profile photo, fill in your bio etc. I suggest using the same profile photo and short bio for all of these sites, your website, social media etc., so people you ‘meet’ on any digital space recognise you on others.
If you seek ARC reviewers, I suggest giving them your Goodreads, Bookbub, Storygraph (and any other) profile links, and encouraging reviews on all three+. Remember: Bookbub reviews may one day help you become eligible for a coveted Bookbub feature.
I have author profiles set up on Goodreads, Bookbub and Storygraph —which recently affiliated with Canadian-Japanese store Kobo. (The Goodreads link above is to instructions to set up your author page while the Bookbub and Storygraph links take you to the sign-up pages for those platforms).
10. Update your Socials
Now is a good time to put a book banner on your website’s header and a cover, blurb and pre-order or purchase link front and centre on your website’s home page. It’s also a good time to place a book banner as your social media cover image, and to do and pin a post about your upcoming release (this may be your cover reveal).
11. Street Teams/ Social Media Boosting
2026 Updated: is this even a thing for indie authors? Or newbies?
A ‘street team’ for a traditionally published author may be a large group of people excited about the upcoming book, formally organised on a Discord server, or other digital space. It probably has an application form to join and hundreds of applicants. It will definitely be an organised group effort to ‘generate hype’ about the upcoming book, via its members doing social media posts about the book, ARC readers posting their reviews etc.
As an indie author you may struggle to get ARC reviews. Let alone people happy to organic post your cover reveal, or do social media posts to hype your books. I’ve never bothered with a ‘Street Team.’ I just do my cover reveal, pitch my upcoming release in some Bsky Pitch Parties for more eyes on posts, then do a launch day post. I rely on the generosity of whichever of my followers see them to repost.
Blog Visibility
I’ve heard that blogging is more useful for promoting non-fiction books, and may have little impact with fiction. But my first interview was met with a detailed reply from someone I didn’t know on social media, who read and enjoyed the interview. Blog reach may be small, but a few indies I are interviewing each other about writing, life and their books. Again, ideally the people you interview and are interviewed by, write similar books and have a similar audience to you, the goal being getting your name and book’s existence out there and helping them do the same. Should you find interviews!
Nightbeats can be a good place to look.
12. Format Your E-book
(+paperback if applicable)
Paperback
Perhaps ironically, I found formatting paperback (in Word) easy. You choose your paper size (I chose 5.5 by 8.5 for my YA Fantasy, a common size), set your margins (do this early because when I changed them last, Word re-inserted page numbers into the front matter). I followed Chloe Alice Balkin’s youtube tutorial, using ‘layout,’ ‘page breaks’, ‘next page’ to add page-number-free front matter, created styles in Word for front matter, back matter, titles, chapter headings, chapter header art, dingus and for body text.
Then I saved the Word doc as a pdf and the book was uploaded.
If you do have issues with formatting styles in Word not styling;
-Remove formatting from the offending section.
-Copy the whole book into a new Word doc.
-Then format again. This should work!
Ebook Formatting (in Word)
This I found fiddlier. If you format a paperback yourself in Word, mistakes can insert random blank pages throughout the book, or splice content across pages.
Don’t
-Hit ‘enter’ for page breaks (your book may format without page breaks, and for multiple pov books this will present to readers as head-hopping.)
-Let Word generate a Table Of Contents for you (there are many ways this can go wrong).
-Leave any images without a style (my chapter header images were displayed on separate pages to chapter headings when I converted to epub because of this).
Do
–Use a tool to do the formatting for you. Reedsy’s tool is popular. Draft2Digital will format your book for you (though check it, as it couldn’t handle the chapter header art in mine). If you’re a Mac user willing to pay a one off fee, Vellum is very popular (no, I’m not an affiliate for them or anyone else linked in this post).
–OR Use a Style Guide. Smashwords Style Guide is good, but wordy.
Formatting In Word
-Use styles for EVERYTHING (headings, copyright page, all images, body text etc).
-If you’re wide, upload your interior file everywhere at the same time. Some may pick up issues other’s don’t. So cross-checking issues each distributor and or store spots, then making final tweaks, can spare you additional formatting edits.
–get proofs for every format on every store/ distributor to ensure they turn out ok. (Kobo converted my Word doc to epub without mishap, but Draft to Digital had one issue throughout, while the Smashwords epub conversion was so bad that I converted the epub myself (using Convertio).
Front Matter Tips
-Keep it short so readers can get to the book and the online look inside feature shows the opening pages.
-Look at the copyright notices of other indie books to help you phrase yours. Consider including an assertion that you do not consent to your book being used to train LLMs and asserting whether or not gen ai has been used to create your book. Also consider mentioning which spelling conventions your book uses (I assert that mine are Aussie/ UK to dodge reviews from Americans criticising my ‘spelling mistakes.’
-Mention other or upcoming titles on your ‘also by author ____’ page.
-Consider a map and or personis dramatis for epic fantasy or similar, so readers can see where things are happening and check who is who as they read. (I kept both as front matter when a reviewer said they didn’t notice the dramatis personae until the end, when it was at the end.)
Back Matter Tips
-Link to your website, newsletter sign up and if you like, your social media/ Goodreads/ Bookbub.
-You may like to politely ask for reviews, but only link to the store that copy of the book is being uploaded to. (Apple do not like when you upload competitor’s links to their copy of your book.) Better yet; link Goodreads/ Bookbub/ Storygraph and or the book’s page of your website for stores, so you can upload the same ebook file to every store/ distributor.
-Write a book 2 blurb and include in the ebook a pre-order link to book 2.
Formatting Error Checklist
Is your front matter free of page numbers?
Does your epub have random blank pages anywhere?
Are your front and back matter spaced as you wish?
Are your chapter headings (and images) spaced appropriately and consistently?
Does your back matter only contain links to that store/ your books/ Goodreads/ Bookbub/ Storygraph pages?
Does your paperback file only contain black and white or greyscale text, styles and images? (Unless you’re printing a special colour edition.)
13 Uploading your Book
Meta Data
If you’re going wide, I suggest creating a file that has all the meta data you’ll need to copy and paste everywhere you upload your book (your name, book name, genre, categories, tags/ search terms, blurb, contributors, ISBN, BISACS etc).
Choosing Categories.
Have a look at which sub-genre/ fiction headings match your book using Book Industry Study Group’s BISAC List.
Choosing Key Words
Use ‘incognito’ mode on your browser, then or your browser/ Goodreads or a store; type your genre and audience age, and see which search terms your browser suggests (popularly searched ones) and which are relevant to your book. Different stores/ distributors may allow a different number of these, so its good to build a list.
Pricing
To determine a price in any currency, this article outlines factors you may like to consider.
My best advice:
-Get on the Kobo store of each region of the world it sells to (Important NB: a reasonable $US price converts into what Brits consider to be a too-expensive UK price, so don’t just let retailers convert international pricing from US dollars, check which pricing appears reasonable by currency and national store).
-Search books of your genre and audience age and note pricing.
-Get an idea of cheap prices, moderate prices and outrageously expensive prices (you will see the latter, especially for traditionally published ebooks).
-Observe whether you think a book is indie or traditionally published and how prices vary because of that.
-Check how many pages a books has to get an idea of a reasonable price for a 70k vs. a 100k+ book.
-Choose a price taking the above and your personal publishing/ marketing goals and factors in the article linked above into account.
2026 Update: Standard indie prices for 2022 were $4.99 US for ebook novels and $14.99 for paperback. Rising print costs (an ongoing issue) tends to mean you price your books at whatever price lets you earn a dollar or 2 in profit. Meanwhile throughout 2026, I’ve seen multiple indie author conversations around increasing our prices -after all; everything else has gone up!
I now have my 100k-ish books at $6.99, and my 160k chonker at $7.99. I’m considering bringing the latter up to $8.99.
–Check the profit margin in every currency. Does it leave you room to put the book on sale without losing money? In the UK, print books are so cheap that you may struggle to discount your book there and still break even. But if you aim to make the smallest of profits on every sale (as opposed to freebies), you’ll need to check regular vs. sale price profit margins carefully.
Sale Pricing
If you’re discounting your pre-orders or book, don’t just change the pricing in your author dashboard. Sale prices are entered separately, via ‘Promotions’ on D2D and Itchio, ‘Marketing’ on Payhip, etc. Remember to discount on all stores/ distributors!
Uploading
To Distributors. Before you upload your book to any distributor, be clear about which distributor you want to send your books to which retailer (or other distributor), so you don’t double up.
Upload To Libraries. If you’re American or Canadian, you can upload your books to the Indie Author Project to get your book into libraries in both countries. And yes, you’ll earn royalties -see the FAQ page.
Fellow Australian authors, we can register our books at the National Library of Australia Legal Deposit. We can register to be compensated for having our books in libraries via Australia Lending Rights Schemes, if you register your book within 5 years of its publication date.
Local Brick and Mortar Stores. Some indie stores may be willing to take your books on consignment (meaning for a set length of time, after which they’ll pay you or give you back unsold books.) When you find such stores, this is a free, and much easier option than tabling at book fairs (I’ll be blogging about this soon).
To help you prepare to approach book shops, here’s some comprehensive (UK sourced) advice on Getting Your Book into a High End Store.
14. Cover Reveal
Post your cover on your social media, share it in your newsletter and share it on any promo sites you’ve joined which feature cover reveals, such as LGBTQ+ Reads (who reveal your first 3 covers for free -if you have queer pov characters).
You may wish your cover reveal to be the first of a series of social media promo posts counting down to launch day. That could include teasers, character introductions, ARC review snippets etc, containing your pre-order purchase link.
15. Release Day
Put purchase links on your site and author profiles (if the book wasn’t on pre-order). Post your launch day post on social media (a selfie with an author copy goes down well. Interact with everyone who replies. I hope it goes well for you!
(And if you’d like to join an Author Discord to discuss any of the above, let me know by replying to my posts about it on Blue Sky on Mastodon, or via my contact page.)
Acknowledgements
I learnt A LOT of the above from conversations with and between the following indie authors:
Website
Blue Sky Social
Rebecca Jonesee, Romance
Goodreads
Chris Vandyke, SFF Author Website
K. W. Kenny, YA Fantasy Website
Bsky
Jay Veloso Batista, Fantasy Author.
Website
Leia Talon, Fantasy author.
Website
Chloe Alice Balkin, Speculative Romance
Website
Further Reading
Just in case your head isn’t exploding with information already, there are more resources on many of the above topics on my Writers Resources Page. I’ll also point you towards a Self Publishing pro, David Gaughram.
If your head is exploding, I suggest bookmarking this post so you can revisit a few of its steps at a time.
Whichever of the above steps you’re at –Good Luck!
