Indie Pen Press

Writing the book is step one.

Marketing it, launching it and keeping the push going afterwards is the biggest chore in independent publishing, and the one most authors fail at. Five guides cover what comes next, in the order it happens, with every claim sourced and the unproven ones labelled.

Start with Before You Publish
Plate I. The five guidesIn order of use
  1. 1Before You PublishBefore listing
  2. 2Getting FoundOnce listed
  3. 3The First Ninety DaysDays 1 to 90
  4. 4The Long PushAfter day 90
  5. 5Promote for FreeAny stage

Five guides, one sequence

Each guide is a hub with the deeper articles beneath it. Start where your book is. The numbers are the order, not a ranking.

Begin at figure 1
1

Before You Publish

The decisions that are hard to undo once a listing has history: title, categories, keywords, formats, and the metadata that follows a book for years.

Before listingRead the guide 2

Getting Found

Amazon, Google and answer engines are one discovery problem, not three. What each one actually reads, and what nobody documents.

Once listedRead the guide 3

The First Ninety Days

A launch is a quarter, not a day. What to do each week while the listing is new, and what to stop doing.

Days 1 to 90Read the guide 4

The Long Push

What keeps selling after the launch buzz ends. The routine work that separates a backlist from a dead listing.

After day 90Read the guide 5

Promote for Free

Twelve strategies that cost nothing but time, with what each one can and cannot be expected to do.

Any stageRead the guide

The press publishes what it advises on

Twenty-four titles across fiction, non-fiction and biblical commentary, under the press’s own ISBNs. Six of them below.

All twenty-four titles
Where to buy. The press sells through its own store and Amazon, and reaches bookstores through Ingram.Prices on the store
A page from a Perivane Chapter Reference: conflict summary, timeline details and best quotes for chapter one of The Murder at the Vicarage
  1. 1Conflict. What the chapter is about, stated so it can be quoted in a pitch or a post.
  2. 2Timeline details. Every dated fact in the chapter, with the wording the book actually uses.
  3. 3Best quotes, and why. The lines worth sharing, each with a note on what it establishes.
Chapter Reference, page 6 of 175, from the published sample report.The Murder at the Vicarage

Marketing runs dry the week after launch

That is when a book needs it most. Perivane is the press’s own tool for the year after launch: one upload of a finished manuscript returns four cited documents, and the Chapter Reference is the one you use every week.

A Master Book Reference, a Chapter Reference, an Editorial Continuity Report and a Summary. Each ships as a PDF and as a Markdown canon-pack you hand to an AI assistant when you need a post, a pitch or a newsletter and the well is empty.

How Perivane works $99.99 a book, any length. Sold on perivane.com.

Latest articles

Every article is sourced. Where a platform documents nothing, the article says so and shows how to test it yourself.

All articles
  1. The First Ninety Days Do Not Bid on the Obvious Keywords
  2. Getting Found The Seven Keyword Boxes, and What Each One Is For
  3. The First Ninety Days Categories Are a Pace Problem, Not a Prestige Problem
  4. Before You Publish BISAC and Thema Codes: Two Systems, One Shelf

New guides and articles, by email

Get new guides and articles by email, with a note on what changed and why it matters.

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Richard French, founder and publisher of Indie Pen Press

A one-person press, on purpose

Indie Pen Press is run by Richard French from the Pacific Northwest. It publishes biblical commentary, speculative fiction and practical non-fiction, owns its ISBNs and LCCNs, and sells through its own store and Amazon, and distributes via Ingram. Every guide on this site is written from doing that work, not from watching it.

Richard spent more than four decades in technology. He helped pioneer the open-source web as General Manager of OSDN, the Open Source Development Network, operating properties including Slashdot and SourceForge. His career also included executive leadership roles in technology: Chief Operating Officer of Automation Anywhere, Vice President of Enterprise Platforms at Oracle, and Chief Executive Officer at Infoscape, Syntonetic and Avvenu.

About the press About Richard

Nine sites, one press

Each site has one job. The press and its guides live here.

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