This is the first in a series of articles designed to offer a transparent look at a new fiction author’s journey in the world of independent publishing.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be writing a series of articles about my return to book publishing. It’s a completely different world today than in 2005, when I published “Darknet” and needed an agent (Deirdre Mullane), a publishing house (John Wiley & Sons) and had to wait a full year to see it published.

This time around, I’ll be publishing independently without an agent (initially) or a publishing house and it’ll be live on Amazon next month.

Let’s begin our indie author journey with a look at launch teams, also called advance teams, street teams or ARC teams (for Advance Reading Copy) in some places.

The idea is pretty simple: When your title hits Amazon, whether it’s an indie title or from a traditional publisher, you’re up against 7 million other ebooks. So in addition to making sure it’s the best damn book you can write, you also need to put considerable time into getting it seen by other readers. You need that escape velocity. [Read more…] about 8 tips on how to manage a book launch team