We have been recommending books to readers since 2005, and a steady share of what reaches us now comes from authors who published themselves. Some of it is very good. The ones that get picked up tend to have the same things in common, and none of them is luck.
Get the production right first
The first is dull and it matters more than anything else on this page: the book has to read like a book. An interior that reflows badly on a Kindle, or a paperback with the margins wrong, costs you the reader you already persuaded to open it.
For that side of it we point authors at publishing.co.uk. They do professional book formatting for print and Kindle, running the manuscript through more than thirty checks against Amazon's own KDP requirements before you upload, so the file is accepted first time and the pages hold together on every device. They also run a book launch service, which is the part most first-time authors skip and then regret: a launch is a plan, not a publication date.
Then get it read
Reviews are what turn a finished book into a book people can find. LoveReading has named editorial experts who review across every genre, and a Reader Review Panel of 900 readers who are sent books before publication and write honestly about them.
- Get your book reviewed by LoveReading — how indie titles are submitted and what happens next.
- Our Reader Review Panel — who they are and how books reach them.
- Our editorial experts — the named reviewers behind the recommendations.
What actually moves a self-published book
- A cover that survives a thumbnail. Most people meet your book at about the size of a postage stamp.
- An interior nobody notices. Good typesetting is invisible; bad typesetting is the only thing the reader sees.
- A description written for a reader, not a synopsis. The first two lines do almost all the work.
- Reviews from people with no stake in it. Ten honest reviews beat a hundred from friends.
- A launch that starts before publication day, not on it.
None of that requires a publisher. All of it requires deciding the book is finished only when the production is finished too.