💡 Sutoscience by Amy Suto: 📚 Self-Publishing Secrets

💡 Self-Published Authors Can Go on Book Tour. Here's How I'm Planning Mine.

Amy Suto — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 10:17:32 GMT

For most of my career, I assumed book tours happened to other authors. Authors with a publisher. Authors with some dedicated person whose entire job is to call a bookstore in Portland and ask about their Tuesday availability.

I’m self-published, so I filed “book tour” under not-for-me, right next to “advance” and “someone else picks your cover.”

Then I started pitching bookstores for Let Me Be Your Ghost, and a lot of them said yes. So now I’m planning a book tour, by myself, with a lot of spreadsheets.

I filmed a video diary about it from Los Angeles, where I’m spending the month on launch prep (plus a few things I can’t talk about yet, which is the most annoying sentence a writer can type). I was drinking a San Pellegrino peach sparkling water the whole time, and for the record, it was delicious.

Here’s the written version, with a few things I didn’t say on camera:

⚖️ Two launches, one year, almost nothing in common

This year I’m releasing two books, and the launches could not be more different.

In January, Write for Money and Power came out with a whole team behind it. I had a publicist (the great Haley Raymond), a book marketer and a virtual assistant, all working in tandem for 4 months. Everything was digital. I ran Amazon ads and nothing else. I did a 12-hour Substack Live and interviewed 12 guests about the book’s themes, back to back. (The replays are still here on 💡 Sutoscience, all 12 hours of them.)

And it worked. Write for Money and Power hit the top 10 of all business books on Amazon. My favorite part is still the notes from writers who say it changed how they think about getting paid for their work.

Here’s what didn’t work: traditional press. A book that is this anti-gatekeeper had, shockingly, next to no luck with the gatekeepers. The big exception was an essay I wrote for Publishers Weekly, which Haley landed for me, and which drove some really good traffic.

Let Me Be Your Ghost is book 5 for me, and this time I’m doing everything myself. Part of that is because my last launch taught me exactly what I want, and part of it is the connections I made along the way. If this is your first book, I really do think hiring help is worth it. It’s how I learned all of this.

Here’s what’s been working so far:

NetGalley. It’s the most effective ARC platform I’ve ever used, and I’ve tried a lot of them. It puts your book in front of bookstagrammers, librarians, booksellers and press you’d never reach on your own. (Here’s how NetGalley works, from both sides.)
A big ARC campaign. Early readers mean early Goodreads and Amazon reviews, and sometimes libraries and bookstores ordering the book before it comes out.
Free chapters, right here. Posting Let Me Be Your Ghost chapter by chapter as I wrote it built the early fan base that became my beta readers, my ARC readers, and a lot of my preorders. Plenty of readers haven’t tried a romantic thriller yet, and a free chapter lets them try one.
Influencer outreach and a few experiments. I’ll tell you what worked and what flopped after launch, here and on YouTube.
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🗺️ So, about this book tour

The money that went to a team in January is going to in-person events, travel and ads this time. I’m running Meta ads for the first time ever, plus more Amazon ads, and the rest goes to getting me to all of these events.

The plan, as of today: a pretty extensive West Coast tour, maybe a little of the Southwest, and possibly an East Coast leg, depending on whether I can brave New York in the cold. I’ll be doing signings, talks, and a mix of both.

Putting on events isn’t new to me. I did a sold-out talk for the Big Brain Lecture Series, and I taught a sold-out class at The Love Potion Library when it opened in June. What’s new is putting my own book at the center of an event and saying, “Hi, I’m the author, and here’s my book.”

One date I can already share: I’m bringing Let Me Be Your Ghost back to The Love Potion Library in San Francisco on Tuesday, December 15, from 6 to 7:30pm. Bay Area friends, I’d love to see you there. ❤️

The rest of the dates go out here on 💡 Sutoscience first.

I also want to thank everyone who shows up in person. I know it takes time to get in your car and drive to a bookstore on a weeknight. So if you come, I’ll have some surprises for you. 🎁

🏪 How to pitch a bookstore (for my fellow indie authors)

If you’re self-published, you can reach out to bookstores yourself. I was really impressed by how many of them wanted to work with me. My pitch is 3 lines long:

Here’s my background.
Here’s what I can bring to the event.
Here’s the book.

Bookstores will often be interested in stocking your book and doing an event with you, especially if your book is set up through IngramSpark, which makes it easy for them to order. Setting up IngramSpark is its own adventure, and some of it is kind of complicated. Let me know if you want a tutorial video, and I’ll bump it up my list.

💸 Why the indie math makes this possible

When I sell an ebook on Amazon, I keep 70% of the sale (that’s Amazon’s rate for ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99). A traditionally published author might get somewhere between 10 and 30%, depending on the deal, the format, the advance and the publisher. I break down the real numbers in Write for Money and Power, which is still 99 cents.

More ownership means you need fewer sales to be profitable, and fewer sales to write full-time. I’m also lucky to have income from Substack, freelancing, consulting and YouTube, so no single book has to carry the whole house.

That’s what pays for the road trip. Owning your book means you get to decide what’s worth spending on.

🫶 Come find me

A few ways to help, if you’d like to:

Tell me where to go. Reply with your favorite bookstore and your city. I’d love to know.
Preorder the book. Let Me Be Your Ghost is my romantic thriller about a memoir ghostwriter who secretly informs on her clients for the FBI, then falls for her final one. It comes out November 18. Preorder one copy, in any format, from any retailer, and you get my unreleased book How to Write a Memoir free. It’s everything I’ve learned in more than a decade as a memoir ghostwriter (and, conveniently, everything my protagonist Lola uses). Upload your receipt at amysuto.com/ghost and it lands in your inbox right away.

💡 Preorder + claim your free book

And if I owe you an email right now: I see you, I’m a little slow at the moment, and I’m working on it.

Thank you for being here for all of it, the spreadsheets included. See you in person soon. 🍵

-Amy

💡 Beta Readers vs. ARC Readers: How I Find Both (Self-Publishing Secrets)

Amy Suto — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:03:58 GMT

The video above is part of Self-Publishing Secrets, my YouTube series on everything I’ve learned self-publishing my books, fiction and nonfiction. This one covers the two groups of people who read your book before it comes out: beta readers and ARC readers. The written version is below, links included. Let’s dive in.

Beta readers are your army of early readers. They read your finished draft and help you shape your last round of rewrites before the book gets locked. ARC readers come after that: members of the press, podcast hosts, book reviewers, and retail reviewers who read an advance copy so they can review it and spread the word when the book goes live.

When I was starting out with The Nomad Detective, I’d heard both terms, but I had to figure out how to actually use these readers on my own. I wish I’d had a guide, because they are so helpful.

📖 Beta readers shape the rewrite

Beta readers come in once your book is finished. When Let Me Be Your Ghost went out to beta readers, it was a complete draft at about 60,000 words, built on material I’d been developing for almost 10 years.

Every author approaches this differently, but generally beta readers are unpaid. (If you need a very quick turnaround, a small payment is sometimes offered.) In exchange, they get a thank-you in the acknowledgments and a free copy of the finished ebook once you’re done editing. They’re people who want to support you: friends, family, fellow writers, your community.

A lot of my beta readers came from my Substacks, Make Writing Your Job and Sutoscience. For Write for Money and Power, I asked who wanted to be a beta reader, and over 90 people raised their hands. It was honestly life-changing. People saw things in that book that went right over my head, and some of the best notes came from readers who didn’t like it, because they showed me what was a taste thing and what I had poorly articulated.

Every reader enters your book with their own emotional landscape (their taste, their history, where they grew up), so beta readers work almost like market research. If all of them agree on something, you should probably listen. If one reader has a one-off note, you can often solve it in the draft, or hang a lantern on it.

Hanging a lantern means putting the reader’s question right into the story. Say a beta reader thinks your character sounds dumb for blurting out a secret. Have another character call it out (”Wasn’t that supposed to be a secret?”) and let your main character answer (”It was. I just had to tell you.”). Now the reader doesn’t bump on it, and keeping them reading all the way through is the goal of every rewrite.

🔍 Where to find beta readers

There aren’t many websites for beta readers. The biggest source is actually Facebook groups. Search “beta readers” on Facebook, answer the questions to get approved into a group, follow the group rules, then post a call for beta readers with a link to an application form.

I always use an application. It makes people feel like they’re getting exclusive access to your book, and it helps you find the serious readers who would also be open to leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads when the book is out.

🚩 The AI red flags

With Let Me Be Your Ghost, I started getting a strange kind of application answer: multi-paragraph, very polished, and missing anything specific. It didn’t mention the book by name, or it was vague about why, even though the question was literally “Why do you want to be a beta reader?”

Some of those applicants said yes to reading the book and then asked for payment. Others fed the book into AI and sent me an AI summary of “notes” (a 13-page document for the first two chapters), plus a price range for the rest of the book.

My beta reader role is unpaid, a trade, and I say so up front. Beta reading is a lovely way to hone your skills, get to know authors, and see how your feedback is received.

If you want to get paid to edit, though, apply to paid editing roles on Upwork, Contra, or our writing job board at Make Writing Your Job. Start your rate low and raise it from there.

✍️ My one ask: 3 things you liked, 3 you didn’t

Every time I post a call for beta readers, I ask the same thing: read the book, then send me 3 things you liked and 3 things you didn’t. Everyone gets their own Google Doc with their name on it. Highlights and margin notes are welcome, but totally optional. I keep the bar very, very low because this is unpaid.

In exchange, everyone gets the book for free and a thank-you in the acknowledgments. For Let Me Be Your Ghost and Write for Money and Power, I also offered testimonials to beta readers building an editing practice, and I offered to promote them. So many generous souls went line by line anyway, catching typos and inconsistencies, way above and beyond. I’m so grateful for them.

📚 ARC readers spread the word

Once you’ve worked your beta readers’ notes into the draft, it’s time for ARC readers. ARC stands for advance reader copy, and you send those copies to members of the press, book reviewers, podcast hosts, Substack writers, and retail reviewers (the amazing people who review on Amazon and Goodreads to help other readers decide).

An early copy isn’t a one-to-one transaction. You can’t tell someone who requested your book that they now owe you a review, and you never interfere with the review they leave, good or bad. That’s the integrity of the process. (Some of my favorite books have the most horrendous one-star reviews.)

🗓 NetGalley, and when to send ARCs

NetGalley is the best ARC reader website I’ve ever used (not sponsored). It’s also expensive: about $500 for a listing that runs, I think, around 6 months. You list your book once the EPUB is locked (plus a PDF, maybe), readers request it, and you approve, decline, or block people. You can see each reader’s average review rating, and NetGalley reports who downloaded the book, who started reading, and who left feedback.

When readers leave lovely feedback, I email them a thank-you and ask whether they’d post their review on Goodreads and Amazon once the book is live. You can follow up a few times (up to 5), and then you’re done. Don’t ask members of the press for retail reviews, because they review on their own platforms. And you can never incentivize reviews. “Leave me a review and I’ll give you a discount” is off the table.

Some authors send ARCs 6 months out so the press has time to read. I’d say at least a month and a half to two months before launch. I’m a little bit of a chaos agent here: my ARC readers for Let Me Be Your Ghost get the book about a month before it comes out on November 18.

It can take thousands of readers to get to 100 Amazon reviews. Which brings me to the part that makes all of this easier.

💌 Why it all comes back to your email list

Every time I look for beta readers or ARC readers, I send the call to my email list first. It lives right here on Substack, and there’s a QR code at the back of my books so readers can join. On social media, you can post to a huge audience and have only 300 people see it, because the algorithm decides who does. An email lands in the inbox most of the time.

Here’s what surprised me: a big share of my preorders come from the people who beta read or ARC read for me, even though they already get the book free. Kevin Kelly popularized the idea of 1,000 true fans. Run it for books and it’s 10,000 readers buying a book that earns you $7. Those true fans stick with you book after book, and they’re the reason I get to do this as my job.

👻 Read Let Me Be Your Ghost early

My romantic thriller Let Me Be Your Ghost comes out November 18, and I’m looking for ARC readers (free early ebook, no reading deadline).

👻 apply to be an ARC reader here!

You can also preorder it from any retailer in hardcover, paperback, or Kindle, and I’ll send you my unreleased book How to Write a Memoir for free. Just upload your order confirmation on this page.

Tell me in the comments: are you self-publishing a book right now? I’d love to hear about it.