Tag: book marketing ideas

June 17, 2025 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

Abandoning Amazon as a reader is easy (if you don’t have a Kindle), when there are so many alternative stores, subscription services, and Goodreads alternatives, several of which I’ll describe and link here. Abandoning it as an author was, until 2025, largely unthinkable. Even authors resentful of Amazon’s market dominance or lack of ethics felt we had to publish on Amazon to have any hope of selling books, let alone a career as an author, especially an indie author. But with Amazon in 2025 adding to its disregard for its staff and contempt for the environment; abandoning DEI (which almost had me bailing), and two big changes with gen ai, my decision to pull my books from them was made. And it became time to consider what being an author who doesn’t sell books on Amazon looks like.

Brick & Mortar/ Local Alternatives

As an Aussie, when I lived in Frankston, I bought books from Robinson’s Bookstore. In inner Melbourne, I discovered Collins Bookstore, and then my new favourite indie store in the inner suburbs, Readings. Anywhere I went, I also borrowed from the local library. Anything niche I wanted that wasn’t at a local store could be ordered online from Book Depository. Yes, the giant who offered free shipping world wide, the rival Amazon bought, then closed permanently.

Bookshop.org

The brick and mortar alternative I like best for UK and US readers, if you don’t have one nearby is Bookshop.org, because they share their profits with indie stores. Its a good paperback alternative to Amazon and, as of 2025, Bookshop.org sell ebooks too.

Note for Authors: distributing your paperbacks via Ingram Spark directly, or using Ingram via Draft to Digital (which I prefer, as I find the D2D dashboard and customer service more accessible), will automatically make your paperbacks available on Bookshop.org. (For more on self publishing and book distributors, see this blog).

Online Store Alternatives

Before I link big multinational stores, I’ve found my Ruarnon Trilogy ebooks (courtesy of StreeLib) in national stores in western Europe, and one (so far) in South East Asia (all linked here.) So if you’re wanting to buy local, unsure of your choices and outside America, western Europe, UK, Canada or Australia, check in with the internet/ friends/ family about bookstores owned by your country.

Itchio

Itch.io was most popular with gamers, but in 2025 is growing in popularity among readers and indie authors. They sell ebooks DRM-free, and offer authors a better profit than many alternatives (buying direct from the author is best for authors, but comes with an international taxation headache that puts off or delays quite a few us with selling direct).

Note for Readers: Itchio doesn’t have a storefront for different countries. There’s one online storefront and the author chooses a currency for the minimum price, which can be free and you can tip above it. If needed, the price is converted into the purchaser’s currency.

Note for Authors: you need to create an account and upload your books directly to sell on Itch. Setting prices in UK/ US or Euro currencies means unfavourable exchange rates for readers in the rest of the world. For example, a US $4.50 ebook cost me around $8.30 Aud. The standard Australian dollar indie book price is $6. So you might want to take exchange rates into account when setting your minimum price.

Kobo

For Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, much of Europe, the UK, South Africa, India, Japan, and some of the Asia-Pacific (specific countries listed here), we can buy ebooks via the Canadian company Kobo. Kobo is part owned by Rakuten, based in Japan, where they don’t call it ‘DEI’, but they say ‘we respect human rights of all and uphold individual dignity,’ and commit to ‘contribute to a sustainable future.’ (Kobo became home of my digital library in 2024, and I plan to purchase a Kobo now in 2025. [2026: I did and am very happy with it].)

Not only does Kobo sell ebooks, it also has an ebook and or audio subscription service. And distributes indie books to libraries via Overdrive/ Libby.

2026 Update: Storygraph is now partnered with Kobo, meaning readers can sync their books between Storygraph and their Kobo ereader, for a total Amazon and Goodreads replacement.

Author note: if you upload your books directly to Kobo, you can access more in-store promos than on D2D. Your Kobo dashboard will track for you which ones you didn’t get into, which you’ve done, and your upcoming promos. It will also let you fill in a form to be notified of Overdrive promos.
NB: you’ll likely need to speak to Kobo’s chatbot to ask them to add the Kobo promo tab to your dashboard.

Barnes & Noble

I assume Barnes and Noble is (if anything now even more) popular in America. I couldn’t find much about them and DEI, though they still have their Black Lives Matter statement up, which I take as a good sign.

Apple

All of the aforementioned countries for Kobo, plus more of South America, Eastern Europe, Asia and the Pacific (specific countries listed here) have access to Apple, whose commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion remains firm. BUT in 2025 their CEO personally gifted Trump with 1 million $, and was happy to negotiate favourably for Trump to evade his short lived 2025 tariff madness. Adding two and two, I suspect Apple happily defend DEI because their customers, whom they make money from, like DEI. Were that not the case, I suspect they’d throw it too, under a bus, to curry more favourable business deals with the Trump Regime.

Booktopia

It would be un-Australian of me not to also mention Booktopia, Australia’s largest online store (yes trading again as of 2025 after voluntary administration in 2024). And they own another Aussie bookstore, which seems to be more online than brick and mortar these days; Angus and Robertson.

Note for Authors: I distribute my ebooks (and for B&N and Booktopia my paperbacks) to all of the above stores except –Itchio– via Draft to Digital (who also distribute to Everand, listed below).

Subscription Service Alternatives

For Americans, there’s Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

For Americans, Canadians, Aussies, Brits, Kiwis and everyone who has access to Kobo, there’s Kobo Plus.

There’s also 24 Symbols, which is multi lingual.

And Everand.

Note for Authors: I distribute my books to 24 Symbols and a range of local online stores throughout Europe, Latin America and elsewhere via StreetLib.

Library Apps

My favourite place to read and make my own book available for free is my local library. Any author who doesn’t have their books in Kindle Unlimited can make their ebooks (as well as paperbacks) available to local libraries, and yes, some services or government grants will pay us per borrow, or reimburse us beyond the libraries’ initial ebook purchase (Canadian and American authors, see Indie Author Project. Australian authors, see Lending Rights Schemes). You may want to borrow ebooks directly through your local library, or check if your local lets you borrow via the two popular apps below.

Libby

The readers of Bsky made me away of Libby, an international library app.

Hoopla

Your local library may also or alternately let you borrow through Hoopla.

Note for Authors: if your books are available for library purchase via Overdrive (to whom DraftToDigital distribute), readers can borrow them via Libby. DraftToDigital also distribute directly to Hoopla.

TBR & Review Alternatives

StoryGraph

StoryGraph is independently owned and was founded by Nadia Odunayo, with a focus on readers. This article by Distractify explores the benefit of that. Yes, you can export your Goodreads data to Storygraph, so you have the same TBR, book stats etc. They also offer a short questionnaire about your reading preferences, to inform their recommendations, and a free (which I use) and a paid tier. Book Riot’s (2021) Review has more information. Or you can create an account on Storygraph’s sign up page. (And or check out my epic YA Fantasy books.)

Note For Authors: the reason I’ve linked to my books instead of my Storygraph author profile (above) is because Storygraph doesn’t yet have an author profile option, to which authors can link our books. Apparently its in their roadmap for future developments.

BookBub

Bookbub is another option for following authors, getting notified of new releases, tracking your reading, reviewing books, etc. If you add a book to your wishlist or follow an author, they notify you when that book is on sale, not just on Amazon, but also on Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. You can sign up for their daily email of books on sale by genre, and again sale links are for multiple stores. I’m on there mainly to review books (which I’m quite behind on), and my profile is here.

Note for Authors: you can pay for your books to be advertised in Bookbub’s emails. They also offer a coveted feature deal, which is far from cheap, but from all reports gives you a sales spike the day it goes out by email. Author sign up.

Fabel

I’m hearing mixed reviews of Fabel. It’s a paid service, but I’m including it because it emphasises book clubs and interactive reading, both of which seem less of an option on StoryGraph and Bookbub. I haven’t used Fabel.

Abandoning Amazon as an Author

Why do Indie Authors Publish On Amazon?

As an Aussie who grew up in a city when indie bookstores thrive; I never had any interest in Amazon as a reader. It didn’t exist here till 2018, its foreign owned, bad for the environment and treats its staff in exploitative conditions that would NEVER be tolerated in my country. But when I was doing my homework on self publishing in 2021, before releasing Manipulator’s War in 2022; every indie author I spoke to believed you HAD to be on Amazon.

It dominates the American market and has a firm grip on the world market. It was the best way for indie authors publishing in obscurity like myself to become ‘discoverable.’ It was the site all my indie author friends most valued reviews on, so that’s where I reluctantly purchased and began reviewing books. Then I learned if you spend less than $50 a year annually on Amazon; you can’t write reviews there. (Is it just me, or is everything about that site about keeping you on it, to make more money off you?)

I never liked it. I didn’t want to have my books there. But even Wide for the Win, authors dedicated to and supporting each other with publishing wide (beyond Amazon as well as on it). seemed to believe you had to start on Amazon. the you could gradually build your readership on non-Amazon stores. So I reluctantly published on Amazon from 2022 to 2025.

My Tipping Points for Leaving

As I said in the introduction, I was tempted to pull my books when they abandoned DEI back in January. But with Meta updating their hate speech policy to exclude many forms of hate speech and abandoning fact checking around the same time, January had me busy connecting with travel friends and family on alternative platforms, before deleting my Facebook and Insta accounts.

I then dedicated myself to redesigning Manipulator’s War’s cover with art from my retired cover artist, and overcoming major paperback formatting issues for Ruarnon Trilogy, to release paperbacks via Draft to Digital and on Amazon. Within weeks of all three paperbacks being live on stores in May, I became aware of more Amazon bombshells.

Gen Ai Book Summaries- Author Copyright Violation?

I saw a post about how Amazon are introducing ai summaries of Kindle books. And those summaries include plot and character development. The book blurbs authors submit do not have all of that information. It could only be obtained by feeding an author’s book into generative ai. Which no author gave Amazon consent to do.

Multiple authors began emailing Amazon about this, and I learned of it via this post by Skyla Cameron, summarising her email chain conversation with Amazon. After over a month of emails were exchanged; they failed to disclose whether they were storing and using the book data we did not consent to be fed to gen ai, to train their gen ai.

Skyla and I both concluded from the Amazon customer service person saying, ‘I cannot say’ that Amazon are indeed training their gen ai on authors book files (which we upload for the purpose of selling them), without author consent. I was ready to pull my books then.

Ai to ‘Narrate’ Audible Books

Within days I saw another social media post about Amazon’s plans to make 100 ai ‘narrators’ available to narrate audio books. Stealing from authors on one hand and trying to put voice actors out of a job with the next? Decision to pull my books made!

Then Amazon announced they were cutting author royalties by 10% as of the first of June, and I laughed at them for confirming I’d made the right choice so swiftly.

I Don’t Want To Share Profits With Zon

The other thing the May gen ai revelations brought home to me was something that didn’t sit well with me in April. I participated in a big indie author books sale then (the Naratess Sale), and I sold three books on Amazon. That meant I made them $3 and me $3. I resented that. It’s the tinniest of profits, absolutely nothing to a billionaire. But I couldn’t be happy about those three book sales (there are months where I sell no books at all), because I resented Bezos getting anything.

And that realisation made me not want to promote my books, to avoid Amazon profiting from them. At which point it was obvious the decision I would be happiest with is removing my books from Amazon, then promoting bookstores I like, who treat authors (and in the latter’s case; book stores as well as customers) well, like Itchio and Bookshop.org. So those are the kind of stores my Ruarnon Trilogy books page now promotes. Meanwhile, I’ve been tracking down local stores in other countries too, and listing them on this stores by country page.

So Where Are My Books?

Thanks to Draft to Digital, when I pulled my books off Kindle, they were already on Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, Booktopia and a few lesser known stores. Thanks to Kobo’s partnerships with nationally owned stores, they’re also on local country online stores, like bucher.de in Germany, Bol in Netherlands etc. I uploaded Ruarnon Trilogy epub files/ ebooks to Itchio, and DriveThru Fiction directly, to give myself more reach and readers more options. And my paperbacks and ebooks are available to libraries via Libby/ Overdirve, via Kobo as well. (All of my these links are on my books page.)

Update: later in 2025, I set up a direct store on Payhip, which, now integrated with Bookvault to print and ship paperbacks, allows me to sell my epic fantasy ebooks and paperbacks directly to readers. I got to design my own page, had full autonomy over book blurbs, pricing etc. And when I sell books, I only have to pay payment processing fees, not 30% of the price of the book to a store. So buying direct, as you’d anticipate, cuts out the middle man and gives the author more reimbursement for the blood, sweat and tears we put into our books (or extract from you when you read, depending on your genre choices 😉 )

Why Draft to Digital, and Itchio, and DriveThru Fiction and possibly also direct sales? For one of the same reasons I’ve never been exclusive to Amazon; I hate putting all my eggs in one basket. Twitter has shown how volatile that can be.(Yes, I had my largest social media following there before moving to Blue Sky).

[2026 Update: for more details on store distribution and going directly through stores, to avoid D2D’s 2026 low earning authors tax (yeah, I’m not buying the ‘this was our only way to ‘filter out’ gen ai line), see the Distributor section of this post.)

2026 Addition: What About Audiobooks?

I haven’t released any audiobooks (yet). But my friend Holliday has. And in this post she explains her experience of Audible, which is why she hates Audible and doesn’t recommend it to anyone. Then she introduces some alternatives.

What Does Being on Author not on Amazon Look Like?

I’d already refused back in January to utilise the two most popular ways for authors to make readers aware our books exist: paying Bezos to advertise them on Amazon, or Zuck to advertise them on Facebook. I’d also tried Bookbub ads in 2024, and found my graphic design skills (for my trilogy at least) were NOT cut out for getting Bookbub link clinks, let alone sales. And those are the three most likely paid ads to successfully advertise your book and build your readership…

Itchio Bundles

Having participated in an Itchio Bundle for Pride Month, which gathered 23+ books by 23 authors with aromantic main characters, I see the power of Itch book bundles to put underrepresented characters into the hands of readers who crave them. With every author promoting the same bundle on their social media; our reach is greater. And with book bundle profits split evenly between participating authors; we all earn something.

2025 -? Itch Bundles of Underrepresented Characters

I’m already planning a Nonbinary Books Bundle, for Nonbinary Awareness Week, July 14th to 20th (Ruarnon of Ruarnon Trilogy being nonbinary.) I’ll also do an Asexual Spectrum Bundle for Asexual Awareness Week, and ADHD Rep Bundle for ADHD Awareness Month in October. (Yes, Ruarnon ticks both of these identities as well, while the second main character of Ruarnon Trilogy, Linh, is aro-ace and her best friend Troy is diagnosed ADHD, but not the only ADHDer.)

Whether these bundles will be a thing year in year out I’m not sure. [2026 update: they seem to be slowing but still help get books out and earn me more then selling books individually.] But for this year at least, they’re a good way to meet and connect with more indie authors who share my marginalised identities. And a good way for us to help each other put our books into the hands of more readers, and give more people insight into what life with any one of those identities and more can be like. (They’re also an effective way to collectively market the first book in everyone’s series full stop).

I’ll definitely do an Autistic Book Bundle (or join someone else’s) during Autism Awareness Month (April) next year, with Rarkin, MC of my new Sythe Series being autistic. And perhaps consider broader themes and bundles, like Queer Normative SFF, or SFF Full Of Hope, both of which Ruarnon Trilogy very much ticks. (Technically Sythe Series does too, though its somewhat darker). [I went with Friendship Centred SFF in early 2026.]

In Person Author Events

Having got long covid a mere six months after releasing my debut novel, and not successfully balanced my work life with ongoing chronic illness (fibromyalgia) until this year, I’m FINALLY ready to contemplate attending in person events. If I time them right, I should have the energy to participate and enjoy them physically and socially.

With the complete Ruarnon Trilogy in paperback, and book one of Sythe Series likely to be out in August/ September 2025, I’m hoping to attend some local Sunday markets with my books. To start casual, local and small scale. I’ve applied for a booth at Australia Book Fair (the first ever) in Melbourne in 2026, and hope to attend Supa Nova in 2026 as well. Being a sociable person with a background in retail, and currently a teacher, I think I’ll enjoy meeting people at in person author events.

Online Book Promotion?

Ok, maybe I’ll set aside some time to write some more post-length blurbs for book 1 of Ruarnon Trilogy, make a few more graphics and start posting them at least once a month. Or fortnightly? Like many authors, I don’t like self promotion. And perhaps its my autism that insists that social media should be social, and is reluctant to post about my book with a link to it, like a straight up ad. But I definitely need to do more than my super sporadic and rare posts of previous years.

There’s author chats and daily writer prompts where I’ll also talk about my characters, world building etc (more details on both in my Bsky Newby Guide). And there are questions I’d like to ask other writers in my posts, and discuss, which would also involve me sharing more about my book.

I could consult paid promotion indie author advice of gurus like David Gaughran (who have ideas about marketing beyond Amazon) recommend.

Yes, this post hasn’t just been me sharing links I hope will help readers and authors alike, or aiming to be informative. Its also me setting goals and trying to keep myself accountable. If you’re a fellow indie author trying to do the same, I’d love to hear your ideas/ plans on book marketing in these crazy times. You can find me on Blue Sky, Mastodon or send me an email via my contact page and check out my Writer/ Author Discord on there too. Best of luck!

While you’re here, if anyone likes portal, epic, YA fantasy led by queer and neurodiverse characters… maybe take a look at my Ruarnon Trilogy?

The ‘Small Amount of Time Daily’ Model

There are those people who say: just do a little each day, like writing 500 words. Its not much time or work in that day. And over not too many weeks/ months you’ll have a novel/ established newsletter/ paid advertising campaign!

A big factor here seems to be that when’s life’s busy, its easy to say, ‘I won’t do it today because x,’ and ‘not tomorrow because y’. There’s a risk of not setting aside time to write/ market books and therefore not starting (as I well know, having not spent 9 months of 2023 marketing due to life and earning a living).

If you’re looking for a way to jam marketing into a daily/ weekly schedule under strain, that ‘short amount of time a day’ model may appeal. But personally, I have one main objection.

Some of Us Cannot Spare a Small Amount of Time

Some of us have a disability. Maybe marketing is ‘just’ an extra 20 mins in my day and that’s not much. But my back hurts and gravity is trying to pull me into the ground. My Fibro is DONE with today. It needs that 20 mins (and the next three hours), and same time the next day/ week/ month to recover from the rest of the day. I don’t control what I do on day’s I’m at my day job. My body makes that call and woe is me if I ignore and defy early warnings of increasing fatigue, and or signs my chronic pain is about to flare.

Maybe it takes you time and effort to get your brain out of work/ parenting/ other mode, to tune into something book/ marketing related (especially if you have ADHD). By the time you’ve spent ten minutes (or for ADHD three hours to days/ weeks/ months) trying to engage your brain on The Thing, you want/ need a solid block of time on that task. The first hour ‘on The Thing’ is passed and you weren’t able to properly engage with, or even start The Thing yet.

Need Solid Blocks Of Time?

I NEVER bother sitting down to write if I don’t have at least 1-2 hours. Otherwise I don’t remember who’s in the scene, where the scene is or what just happened, let alone what I’m writing now, or setting up to happen next. Marketing is similar. I want AT LEAST an hour to draft that newsletter/ blog/ design that ad graphic/ series of upcoming book teasers.

The ONLY ‘book marketing’ thing I do in less than an hour is run late to a social media author chat (you’ll find those listed on my Bsky writer chat list). And while technically talking about your characters and plots online could ultimately result in someone reading one of your books, its mostly an activity I do for fun, and connection with fellow writers.

Do What Works For You

So before considering when in the day/ week/ month to schedule your marketing, I’d first consider your ability to focus, your stamina and what length of time blocks you need for marketing (or writing) to be focused AND productive. IF a little each or most days of the week works for you, of course go for it! If it doesn’t? Ideally, I’m finding ‘how often’ boils down to ‘often enough to remember what I’m trying to achieve and how,’ and often enough ‘to feel like I’m making progress.’

When Did I Do All The THINGS?

Blog?

My blog could mean one afternoon a month editing the next blog, and penciling in ideas for the next few month’s blogs. Enough time to check I’ll have a blog ready to roll out at the same time this month, and enough ideas/ of a draft to have edited and published one next month. Ideally, some ideas and or drafts beyond that.

With that system in place, I’ve published one blog most months for nearly four years. This despite the time blindness and management barriers my undiagnosed, unmedicated ADHD posed for most of that period.

Newsletter?

I spend probably one or two afternoons very second month drafting and editing newsletter content and inserting images. Usually, that’s now within a week of sending out a newsletter. Initially though, I always began the next letter before sending out this one, to have content ideas already ticking in advance.
Again, in this case that helped me have a newsletter ready to go every two months for the last three years (quarterly initially, which wasn’t frequent enough to engage people).

Write the Next Book?

Writing/ editing the next book for me is more challenging than both of the above. As a distracted ADHDer, and autistic person who desires exploring story and character logic ALL THE WAY down the deepest rabbit hole, I love writing complex stories produced by whole days writing and editing. In my energetic twenties, Saturdays were rest from the new, challenging career of teaching, Sunday morning’s were reading to enhance my focus, and afternoons for writing. (Of course there were days my ADHD wouldn’t focus at all and I’d stare at a blank page or not even turn on my computer.)

When I was lucky enough to work only three hours a morning part time for a year (in 2018), I would come home from teaching literacy, read for an hour or two, then write for six to eight hours (going for an hour long run in the middle). Those days were brilliant for my undiagnosed, unmedicated ADHD. The teaching burnt off the restlessness I started every day bursting with. Reading when I got home calmed and focused my highly distractible brain. And I still had HOURS to focus and write. Than an hour to run off the resltessness and re-calm and re-focus my hyper, ADHD brain mid-write block.

Getting Marketing Goals Into a State to Determine WHEN To Do Them

First: pick ONE aspect of marketing to focus on. A social media account, a newsletter, a blog, seeking author interviews, getting your book up on all the platforms (details in Step 9 of this post) , or ONE type of paid ad campaign. As an who began social media with Facebook, Instagram AND Pinterest simultaneously, then mastered Twitter, I assure you its more effective to learn ONE platform/ aspect of marketing well first. THEN transfer your learning to a second a few months later. Otherwise its too easy to do multiple things with lack of clarity/ understanding, and thus ineffectively.

Once you’ve got your One focus, getting started is great, but the challenge (as everyone with ADHD knows), is sustaining your work. I find marketing hardest. Aside from individual blog posts/ podcasts/ youtube videos, its hard to break ‘book marketing’ into small, yet related, continuous tasks. Bookbub ads (the first paid option I experimented with) seemed big, and daunting and I put it off for probably over a year before trialling them.

Example: Breaking Learning Bookbub Ads Into Sessions

Once you’ve picked your One Thing, consider how to break it into smaller parts, likely to fit the time you have daily/ weekly/ monthly for them. When I took a break from teaching early in 2023, that involved three week’s full time testing Bookbub ads for my first trilogy (massive fail. I spent money and lots of hours, but my designs were WAY too far off the mark to be potentially worth it). Here’s how, if I only had a few hours daily, as opposed to whole days, I’d break down learning Bookbub ads.

1: Research

Read David Gaughran’s Bookbub ads book and browse sample Bookbub ads (like Top 10 Bookbub Ads of 2024), and take notes in the first few 1-2 hours slots, for a week (or two).

2: Design Ads

Spend the next few 1-2 hour slots designing my first ad images.

3: Compare My Ads to Successful Designs & Revise

Spend the next few hour slots (over around two weeks) examining each individual aspect of design. I’d break these down into; font & font size, background, text & background contrast, how cluttered the image looks etc. Then I’d compare design elements of my ads to my notes on effective design from Step 1 and tweak accordingly.

4: Test & Compare Results of My Own Ads

Run a test ad, then spend slots over the next week comparing and contrasting the amount of clicks it got to previous ads. Then analyse which design elements/ or whether the target author likely influenced clicks positively or negatively. Repeat step 3 with ad test conclusions in mind.

Repeat As Needed

By this point in my process a loop between step 3-4 involving redesign, reflection and re-evaluation could spread over as many sessions and weeks as needed to nail design. Or to conclude that would waste too much time and money (it did with my first book).

Photo Credit: Aron Visuals

When Might You Do All The THINGS?

When you’ve had a go at breaking things into manageable parts, and in so doing developed a clearer idea of what exactly you want to achieve in which time; you can consider WHEN to do All The Things. In deciding that, these considerations helped me, and may help you plan your marketing schedule/ routine.

1: Choose Your Focus

Realistically choose which authorly things you want to focus on in coming months. If you don’t have a website; DO THAT NOW. If you do, will you start a newsletter/ blog/ youtube presence? Build a particular social media platform/ your writer-author network? Or are you ready to consider promoting your book(s) on Amazon/ to a Wide audience? Or do you want to start local and look at public author events, or getting your paperbacks into a local bookshop?

If you’re unsure which of these Things to tackle next, or in what order to tackle Things plural, I go into detail, link resources and sequence The Things I’d aim to do before and soon after launching a book in this post.

How often a day/ week/ month do you need to work on marketing to stay in touch with your goals and keep making progress? (Note: ‘progress’ can include identifying ways that do NOT work and your reflections on why. I still call on-the-job-learning ‘progress’, as knowledge puts you in a better position to achieve in future.)

2: Block Out Other Comittments

What days/ times aren’t an option for you because of your day job? Because humans need sleep and or your kids need parents to raise them? What other comittments require how much of your time?

In blocking out non-writing time, please don’t forget to block out time to rest, recover, chill, smell roses, eat chocolate etc! In other words, don’t work yourself to death. Modern life is BUSY and we need BREAKS.

3: Identify Your Authorly Time Slots

Having blocked out time for life and wellbeing purposes, what time do you have left and how often, across a week (or even month)?

For my teaching career, all work days are a no for anything authorly (except social media, which is more social for me). Teaching takes a lot out of me physically, emotionally and cognitively, so if I taught that day, the evening is for rest.

If like me, your disability, ADHD distraction, autistic overload (or other) determines when and how much you can get done, use a good day to record Thing you’re working on, parts you’ve broken it into and sequence them. Then, each time your body and mind co-operate and allow you to make progress, make a quick ‘where to next’ note. With that note, after however long it next takes for the stars to align for you to tackle The Thing again, you’ll know where you’re at.
(I’m so glad I wrote a May 2024 Author To Do List, because I spent May moving out, June moving in and life happened for 6 months, so its now my Jan-Feb 2025 To Do List.)

4: Choose a Thing ( big picture focus) for The Year

What’s your big focus for the next few months, or even the year?

With my website established (tips on that in this blog), Newsletter established (Newsletter tips here) and blog established, they all get a couple of hours a month.

Last year I intended to focus on trialing paid ads, but didn’t get to begin FB ads after my Bookbub ones bombed because moving house and setting up (a chronic illness, autistic and ADHD friendly) house took up the rest of the year.

For 2025, my big overall focus seems to be how to promote my books wide (ie. beyond Amazon). My First Thing may be setting up direct ebook sales on my website. Ideally, I’ll do paperback ones after that (which I know will be more complicated).

My Big Thing 2 may be exploring in-house promotions. I’d like to check that for Kobo via D2D and see if I can access Apple in-house promotions that way. I also want to experiment with Smashwords Sales (when they FINALLY merge my Smashwords and D2D accounts, which will put all 3 Ruarnon Trilogy books on ONE trilogy page. They’re currently spliced across two different series pages, for the SAME series).

Becoming an Indie Author (Part 2: Book Launch)

July 8, 2022 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

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:

Cheryl Burman, Historical and SFF author.
Website
Blue Sky Social

Dreena Collins
(Jane Harvey)
Website
Bsky

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