Indie author marketing is the focus for this week. We’re making progress. Whispers from the Machine is so close now—I know I’ve said this before, but really, this time it is. It’s in the final stages. If things go to plan, test prints will be ordered next week, and then pre-orders will open shortly after.
All this means, though, is that I really need to deal with marketing. And oh boy, I hate marketing. In my naive and simple life, you would just write the book, click publish, and then it would do its own magic. No interaction required, and definitely no requirement to dip one’s foot into the world of social media.
Nope.
The Struggle of Being an Indie Author
As always, I’ll caveat this with: I am, and probably will continue to be, terrible at marketing. This post is in no way a recommendation or a guide on how to do it. It is more a rant about having to do it. If you want real advice, try someone like Claire Fraise or Bookfox.
Indie author marketing is something I truly have no background in. My loose plan from day one, beyond publishing the book, was to deal with it later. That “later” is now, and it was likely a mistake to wait. I, of course, will be looking to use paid advertisements on KDP, and maybe other platforms too. Although from my limited research, KDP definitely has (which is not something I support, but just a reality) the vast majority of the market. For a lot of successful indie authors, their primary sales by quite a margin are from Amazon.
Choosing KDP Ads vs. Publishing Wide
For that reason, my focus was to prioritize KDP and KDP paid adverts. However, this has now evolved; I will be publishing initally, for the first 90 days on Kindle Select, following which I wil review and lickly go “wide,” across other platforms as well. This will likely not help much with sales, but it will hopefully be a minor passive approach to wider marketing.
I decided to make this blog and accompanying website to be a central anchor to the book and series. It’s something that people can search for and land on, but this will likely not be active marketing either, however much I would love it to be. The site will likely be where people come after they have found the book and hopefully loved it.
Finding Joy in Blogging and Social Media
And honestly, I have loved blogging. I was apprehensive about it; I’m very adverse to putting anything out there about me. So to have a website, and then to blog about what I’m doing, felt very “not me.” But the process of writing a short, focused article each week has been very enjoyable, and I think importantly, it feels very natural. I nearly always look forward to sitting down and writing whatever is on the list for that week.
Sadly, as I said, the blog is hardly a solid approach for marketing—maybe in the 00s it would have been better. So I also had to open the can of worms that is social media. For context, I grew up through the digital explosion of the late 90s and 00s, and I loved it. I’m aware of what it is; in fact, I used to participate. But I quit social media about a decade ago. Coming back was not a decision I really wanted to make.
Instagram and the Stapledon Series Lore
But it seems necessary. So far I have limited it to an Instagram account (if you have one please do follow along!), the platform out of them all I always preferred and at least knew (or at least thought I knew) how it worked.
The “on-trend” approach seems to be one where the author sits in front of their computer, with a block of text floating in front of them, maybe looking away, then snapping to the camera at the end, or lip-syncing to some song I don’t know. That was not going to work for me. And not because I think this is bad, or because I’m above it, it’s just not me. Hats off to all those who do; you’re all far braver than me.
I decided I would try for a more low-key, in-world lore slow-release plan. Teasing parts of the Stapledon series historical timeline that builds up to where Whispers takes off. Even this, which sounded simple, has proven to test my limited design skills. Each week having to make multiple graphics, or videos, that capture elements of the book’s lore. Who knew being an author meant you had to be creative in so many ways, not just on the page?
Indie author marketing is, or probably should be, on my list of author skills I need to tackle or at least work on in 2026. I know there is so much more to it than websites, blogs, paid adverts, and social media. But there is always so much to learn in the whole writing journey while balancing work and family life. It is very inspiring to see so many other indie authors manage it, though—and not just manage it, but thrive in it.
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