"I Use AuthorScale Every Day" — What SPS Live 2026 Taught Us

Last year we walked into the infamous Self Publishing Show, the biggest indie author conference in Europe, as visitors. AuthorScale was a very young company, and we were on practically nobody's radar. At some point we managed to catch James Blatch, the organizer and one of the genuine heavyweights of indie publishing, and pitched him on what we were building. He thought it sounded interesting. That was the highlight of the trip.

One year later, we were back as an official sponsor, alongside names like ProWritingAid, Reedsy, Spotify and Amazon KDP. Real leaders in this space. We still don't fully have words for that jump.

But the part that actually got us wasn't the booth or the badge. It was the authors who walked up to tell us, unprompted, that they use AuthorScale every day. Hearing those stories one at a time, face to face, made us very happy. You can watch the numbers move in a dashboard, but it lands differently when someone tells you in person.

The conversations that stuck with us

The corridor and booth conversations were half the value of the show. A few we keep thinking about:

PublisherChamp. We've crossed paths with Eiri and Marina a few times now, and at this point they're friends. Their analytics platform for author businesses is on a steep trajectory, and we spent a good chunk of the show kicking around partnership ideas that we're genuinely excited about. More on that down the line.

ProWritingAid. We sat down with CEO Chris Banks and Tom, their head of partnerships. Chris told us about a book he's written, The Writer's Mind, aimed at helping authors push through the hard stretches and keep going. You could see his eyes light up describing the bigger goal behind it. It sounds like the kind of book most authors could use on a rough day.

K-Lytics. Always good to catch up with Alex, an old friend in the Amazon-analytics world. He also sits on the board of Vinci Books, a VC-backed publisher (it grew out of James Blatch's own Fuse Books) trying to rethink the model: give authors better deals and keep creative control on their side, while taking production and worldwide distribution off their plate. We spent a long time trading notes on where short-form marketing is heading, and it was a real boost to hear him excited about how far we've come as a young company.

The lesson of the show

If there was one takeaway worth carrying home, it came from Sacha Black.

Sacha did seven figures last year largely on the back of TikTok. No ads, no newsletter blasts, no paid promotion. The headline makes it sound like a lightning strike. It wasn't. She's been posting consistently three times a day, for years, including on the days she was sick and didn't feel like it. Short-form success isn't an overnight event you stumble into. It's the compounding result of showing up long after the motivation runs out. We all know consistency matters. What stuck with us was seeing up close what it actually costs to sustain it, day after day, for years.

Our session: TikTok for Authors

We also got to run a session, "TikTok for Authors — How to Get Started." The short version of what we covered:

Short-form video is one of the most powerful marketing moves available to indie authors right now, and you don't need to show your face, go viral, or have a big following to use it. TikTok says it plainly: follower count isn't a direct factor in what gets recommended. You don't need 100,000 followers to reach 100,000 readers. What matters is watch time, rewatches, shares, and saves, and the only way to find what works for your readers is to post often enough for the algorithm to learn.

So the format has to make volume possible: easy to produce, scalable, and ideally faceless (many authors are more on the introverted side and would rather not show their face). The one we put at the center of our presentation was the Kindle-screenshot format: an emotionally charged, usually dialogue-heavy excerpt from your book paired with a one-line hook that opens a curiosity gap. It's also our latest feature: you can generate these posts in seconds inside AuthorScale, and a number of high-profile authors are already using it to drive millions of views. And it isn't a TikTok-only play. The same content works just as well on Instagram Reels (including Trials) and YouTube Shorts.

The thread running through all of it is the same one Sacha lives: consistency beats perfection, and the best strategy is the one you'll actually keep doing.

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Finally, a thank you to James Blatch, for building a show that makes all of this possible, for being a great partner, and for the inspiration. We're already looking forward to what's next.