For authors who are tired of shouting into the void
You wrote the book. Now comes the part nobody prepared you for.
QuillCraft is where authors build a readership — a portfolio, a review engine, an early-reader programme and a community, in one place, mostly free.
Publishing the book was the achievable part.
What comes after is a second job you never applied for: finding reviewers, chasing ARC readers, building a mailing list, working out where readers actually look, and doing all of it while writing the next one.
This is the machine for that second job.
The honest bit
Most books do not fail because they are bad.
They fail because twelve people know they exist.
You can write something genuinely good and still watch it disappear in a week.
Not because the writing was weak. Because discovery is a system, and nobody handed you the system. The platforms that could help you either want a monthly fee before you have made a penny, or they want a cut of every sale forever, or they are a social feed where your book is one post between a recipe and an argument.
Meanwhile the things that actually move a book — honest reviews, early readers who care, a mailing list that belongs to you, other authors who will vouch for your work — are all doable. They are just scattered across nine different tools, six of which want your card details.
What changes
One place. Built for the work, not for the subscription.
Almost everything here is free, and the parts that are not, we say so plainly before you click.
QuillCraft puts the whole second job in one place: your portfolio, the reviews, the early readers, the mailing list, the community, and the discovery engine that connects them.
There is no cut taken from your sales. There is no commission on a freelancer you hire here. Your mailing list is yours and exports as a CSV whenever you want it.
There is a paid tier. It buys tools, not visibility — nobody outranks anybody by paying, and nothing you have already earned is taken away if you stop.
The part nobody expects
Ten games that quietly do your marketing for you.
Free, seasonal, and mostly built out of things members were doing anyway.
Most of them do not ask anybody to do anything new. A bingo square ticks because somebody finished a long book. A community boss loses health because people wrote reviews. There is nothing to submit and almost nothing to fake.
What they do is put real books, real blurbs and real author pages in front of readers who are enjoying themselves. Cover Clash puts two covers head to head. Quote Drop asks which book a line came from. The Profile Treasure Hunt literally sends readers to author pages to find a hidden token.
Authors opt their own books in, wins are public, and losses are shown only to that book's author. Nobody's cover ends up in a popularity contest they did not agree to.
Book Quest Bingo
A card of reading quests. Squares light up when you earn them and you stamp them yourself.
Cover Clash
Two covers, one vote. Authors enter their own books.
Synopsis Showdown
Same idea, but the blurb does all the work.
Genre Sprint
A genre a week. Finish books in it before the week is out.
Profile Treasure Hunt
Clues hidden on author pages. Find them, bring them back.
Review Relay
A small team, one baton, a chain of reviews.
Match the Author
An opening line. Four authors. One of them wrote it.
Quote Drop
One quote a day. Name the book it came from.
Ranked Reading Battles
Two readers, one week, whoever reads more.
Community Boss Events
The whole site against one very large problem.
The engine room
Four exchanges, one honest rule: give to get.
Credits are earned by doing the work. They cannot be bought with a subscription.
Every exchange here runs on the same principle. You do a piece of work for another author, you earn a credit, you spend the credit to have work done for you. Nobody buys their way to the front.
Review exchange
Read a book, write an honest review, earn a credit. Minimum length enforced, self-review blocked, escrow on listing so nobody claims and vanishes.
Critique exchange
Manuscript feedback, chapter by chapter, with private file delivery. For work that is not finished yet.
Audiobook reviews
The same economy for narrated editions, with its own credit pool so audio work is never paid for with a print review.
Narration critique
Feedback on the performance itself, for narrators and for authors choosing one.
The four things it does
A portfolio, a review engine, an audience, and people.
Be findable
A real author page, book listings readers can filter by mood, pacing and trope, and one link that sends every reader to their own retailer.
Get read
Reciprocal review and critique exchanges, ARC campaigns with private tokenised downloads, and early listeners for audiobooks.
Own the audience
Confirmed opt-in mailing lists, broadcasts, newsletter swaps with other authors, and an affiliate programme we take nothing from.
Not do it alone
Forums, book clubs, a collaboration board, a freelancer directory, and private communities you run yourself.
How readers find you
Filters that match how people actually choose books.
Not just genre. Mood, pacing, tropes, themes, content warnings, spice level, length, rating.
Ask a reader what they want next and they rarely say "literary fiction". They say something closer to "something slow and sad that I can cry at" or "enemies to lovers, but funny".
QuillCraft indexes books the way readers describe them. Readers apply mood, pacing and trope tags as votes, so the labels reflect the crowd rather than the marketing. Content warnings and spice level are author-controlled, because a reader relabelling how explicit somebody else's book is helps nobody, and a content warning is only useful if it is accurate.
Then the deals board, the reviews feed, the community feed and the games all quietly push discovery back towards books that people are actually engaging with.
Your shopfront
An author page that does not look like a spreadsheet.
Pen name, bio, links, every book, every series, and a press kit you can hand to a blogger without writing an email.
Your profile is a real page at a clean address, not a row in a directory. Books carry covers, blurbs, series order, page counts, content ratings and retailer links.
Every book also gets a universal link. Send one URL and each reader lands at their own store rather than bouncing off a region they cannot buy from — and you can see how many clicks went where.
Press kits are generated from what you have already entered: cover art at usable resolution, your bio, the blurb, and the links, on one shareable page. No more assembling a zip file at midnight for a reviewer who asked nicely.
People
The other authors are the point.
Forums, book clubs, a collaboration board, a freelancer directory, and private communities you run.
Writing is lonely and publishing is worse. The community layer is not decoration bolted onto a directory — it is most of the reason the rest of it works.
Forums for the craft and the business. Book clubs that read together. A collaboration board for anthologies, co-writes and box sets. A freelancer directory for editors, designers, narrators and marketers, where we take no commission and handle no money — you arrange terms directly.
Established authors can run their own private community here: your own space, your own members, your own moderation, without renting a separate platform for it.
Launch day
Early readers, without the spreadsheet and the dread.
Run an ARC campaign, approve who gets a copy, deliver it privately, and see who actually read it.
Post a campaign, set how many copies you will give away, and let readers apply. You approve each one — this is your unpublished manuscript, and nobody should be able to help themselves to it.
Approved readers get a tokenised private download that is theirs alone. The file is never sitting on a public URL, and a link that leaks does not open a door for everyone else.
Audiobook ARCs work the same way, delivered as per-listener promo codes so you never have to host the audio yourself.
The list that is actually yours
A mailing list nobody can take away from you.
Confirmed opt-in, one-click unsubscribe, CSV export whenever you want it, and no per-subscriber pricing.
Collect subscribers from your author page or from an embeddable form on your own website. Every signup is confirmed opt-in, so the list stays clean and your mail keeps arriving.
Broadcasts send in small batches from your browser, with an hourly ceiling you control — which is what makes them work on ordinary shared hosting rather than needing a mail service with a monthly bill attached.
Newsletter swaps let you trade a mention with another author in a similar genre. It is the oldest growth trick in indie publishing and it still works better than advertising.
Publish as you write
Serialised fiction, with readers who come back on schedule.
Chapter by chapter, scheduled ahead, with reading streaks that keep people turning up.
Publish a story one chapter at a time. Schedule chapters ahead and they go live on their own. Readers follow a serial, get told when a chapter lands, and build a reading streak that gives them a reason to come back on the day rather than binge six months later.
It is the format that built a generation of web novelists, without needing to be on somebody else's platform to use it.
The audiobook side
Narrators, casting calls, and audiobook editions.
A directory of narrators, open auditions, and a review economy built for audio.
List an audiobook edition against your title with a sample and retailer links. Browse a directory of narrators with their samples and credits. Post a casting call and take auditions through the site rather than through forty emails.
Narrators get a real profile and a way to be found, which is the half of the audiobook problem nobody builds for.
We do not host or sell your audiobook. Editions are retailer links plus a sample, and ARCs are promo codes — which keeps you in control of the file and keeps this running on hosting you can afford.
The marketing kit
Everything you would otherwise pay a tool for.
None of these are add-ons. They are in the free account, because a marketing kit you cannot afford is not a marketing kit.
Universal book link
One URL, every retailer, per-store click tracking. Send one link to everyone.
Quote cards
Turn a line from your book into a shareable card. Generated on request, nothing to install.
Press kits
A single page with your bio, cover art, blurb and links, ready to hand to a reviewer.
Embeddable widgets
Put your books, your latest release or your signup form on your own website.
Affiliate links
Track referrals to your own book. We take no cut and process no money.
Banner placements
Buy a spot on the site if you want one. Optional, and never required to be seen.
The grown-up table
Translation and rights, without an agent.
List what is available, take enquiries, and talk to the people who buy rights.
Foreign language, audio, film and option rights are the part of publishing indie authors are most often quietly locked out of, because the conversations happen in rooms they are not in.
The rights board lists what you have available by territory and format, and lets interested parties enquire directly. QuillCraft lists and introduces. Terms, contracts, advances and payment are between you and them — we are not an agent and we do not take a percentage.
Details that suggest we mean it
Built by somebody who has read the complaints.
Readable by design
Text size, line spacing, line length, dyslexia-friendly type, higher contrast and reduced motion — all available without an account, because a setting that requires signing up is not an accessibility setting.
Three looks, your choice
Pick the theme that suits you: dark and quiet, light and warm, or sharp and businesslike. Members can override whatever the site is wearing.
Your work stays yours
Manuscripts sit behind tokenised private links. Uploaded files can never be executed. Nothing you post is sold on, and your mailing list exports whenever you ask.
Moderation that is answerable
Every moderator action is logged. Scoped roles mean a forum moderator cannot reach your billing. Reports get a real queue, not a black hole.
Honest counters
Ratings recalculate when a review is hidden. Challenge progress is derived from your shelves, so correcting a mistake corrects the number.
No dark patterns
Cancelling is a button. Nothing you earned is removed if you stop paying. Gated features say so before you click, not after.
Before you ask
The questions people actually send.
Do you take a cut of my book sales?
No. We never touch your sales. Retailer links go straight to the retailer, and affiliate tracking is yours — we take nothing from it and process no money on your behalf.
Is this another place I have to post every day?
No. Most of the site works on what you were doing anyway. The games in particular observe rather than demand: they notice you finished a book, they do not ask you to log in and click something.
What happens to my mailing list if I leave?
It exports as a CSV whenever you want it, including while you are still here. It was always yours.
Can I put my book in front of readers without paying?
Yes. Listings, discovery, tags, the deals board, the games and the community are all free. The paid tier is about running campaigns and exchanges at volume.
Will my cover end up in a popularity contest?
Only if you tick the box. Entry into the head-to-head games is per book and off by default, wins are public, and losses are shown only to you.
Who reviews the reviews?
Exchange reviews have a minimum length, cannot be written by the author, and can be flagged. Hiding a review immediately corrects the book's rating rather than leaving a stale average.
Do I need to be published already?
No. Serialised fiction, the critique exchange and the collaboration board are all aimed at work that is not finished yet.
Is my manuscript safe?
ARC and critique files are delivered through tokenised private links, never from a public URL, and the upload directories refuse to execute anything. A leaked link does not open a door for everybody else.
What it costs
Free is not a trial. It is the plan most people stay on.
One paid tier exists. Here is exactly what it changes.
Everything described above is free: your profile, your books, discovery, shelves, reviews, tags, the deals board, the community, serials, quote cards, press kits, the universal link, affiliate tracking, all ten games, and the leaderboards.
Author Pro exists for people running an active publishing business, and it buys capacity rather than status. Nobody outranks anybody by paying. If you stop paying, you keep everything you have already earned and made.
Always free
- Profile and portfolio
- Book listings
- Discovery and tags
- Shelves and reviews
- Reading challenges
- The social feed, forums and book clubs
- Serialised fiction
- Quote cards
- Press kits
- Universal book links
- Affiliate tracking
- All ten games
- Leaderboards
- Accessibility settings
Author Pro
- The review, critique, audiobook-review and narration-critique exchanges
- ARC and audiobook ARC campaigns
- Mailing list broadcasts
- The newsletter swap board
- Running your own private community
- A monthly grant of review credits
Why this exists
A note from the people building it.
Every tool an indie author needs already exists. That is the frustrating part. They exist as nine separate subscriptions, and the total is more than most authors make in a year.
So this was built the other way round: one place, most of it free, and the paid tier priced at what it actually costs to run rather than at what a growth chart would like.
It is not finished and it never will be — there is a public record of every decision, including the things deliberately left unbuilt and why. If something here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed. That is the whole promise.
Your next reader is already here.
A free account takes a minute. There is no card, no trial clock, and nothing to cancel.
Set up your author page, list your first book, and see who turns up.
AND IT COSTS NOTHING
Every member gets front-page advertising. Free.
Not a trial, not a credit, not a reward for posting. A slot, for anybody with a book.
Advertising is the part of publishing that most obviously costs money, and it is the part most authors cannot justify spending it on. So on QuillCraft it is free, and it is free for everyone.
Write a headline, pick the book, and it goes into a rotation seen by every member who signs in. There is no bidding, no budget, no daily spend to monitor, and nobody with deeper pockets outranks you. The only requirement is a book that has been through the queue.
A moderator checks it before it runs — the same check a listing gets, that it is real and the link works. After that it runs for a fortnight, you can see exactly how many people saw it and how many clicked, and when it finishes you can put up another one.
No spend, no bidding
There is nothing to buy and no auction to lose. Everyone gets the same slot.
Seen by every member
It appears when members sign in, and again through the day. Not buried on a page nobody visits.
Real numbers
Impressions and clicks, per day, on your own dashboard. Not an estimate.
Checked, not judged
A moderator confirms it is a real book with a working link. Nobody rates the writing.
A fortnight at a time
Two weeks per run, then the slot returns and you can advertise the next book.
Paid banners still exist
If you want a fixed placement on a page you choose, that is separate and it is still there.