About Indie Pen Press
It publishes biblical commentary, speculative fiction and practical non-fiction, owns its own ISBNs and LCCNs, sells direct and through Amazon, and distributes to bookstores through Ingram. It is not an agency, does not take submissions and does not sell publishing services.
What the press publishes
Three lines, all of them the work of one author. Prices live on the store, never here, because the store owns them and they drift.
Biblical commentary
Verse by verse commentary and study workbooks, including the J.C. Ryle Expository Thoughts line re-edited for modern readers.
Speculative fiction
Science fiction and dystopian fantasy, including The Emotion Collector series and the Trevelyn shorts.
Practical non-fiction
Journaling guides, and books on ethics and leadership drawn from scripture.
Plate I. The three lines. Every title is sold on indiepenpress.store.Twenty-nine titles in print
Why this site exists
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 that work in the order it actually happens, from the decisions that are hard to undo, through discovery and the first ninety days, to the long push that keeps a book selling after the launch buzz ends.
This site sells nothing. Books are bought on indiepenpress.store, Perivane is bought on perivane.com, and the guides stay free because they are the argument.
- Location
- Gig Harbor, WA
- People
- One
- Titles in print
- 29
- Publishing lines
- Three
- ISBNs and LCCNs
- Owned
- Guides published
- 5
- Articles published
- 65
- Sites run
- 9
The house standard
Most publishing advice is folklore repeated confidently. The standard here is narrower and slower.
Sourced, or cut
Every factual claim carries its source. A claim that cannot be verified is removed rather than softened, and vendor marketing is named as vendor marketing.
Silence is reported
Where Amazon or a retailer documents nothing, the guide says so, and gives you a way to test it on your own listing instead.
Hedged beats wrong
Shorter and more cautious than the genre norm, on purpose. That is the differentiator, not a compromise.
Plate II. The three rules every guide on this site is written against.
A one-person press, on purpose
Indie Pen Press is run by Richard French from the Pacific Northwest.
Every guide on this site is written from doing the work, not from watching it: the same keyword boxes, the same category decisions, the same ads that fail and the same descriptions rewritten twice a year.
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.
What else the press builds
Software for authors, and nine sites that put this advice under load.
Perivane
One upload of a finished manuscript returns four cited reference documents an author works from for a year after launch, not just at launch.
The network
Nine sites the press runs, each one a subject its books already sit in, and each one a working test of the advice in these guides.