Answers to common author questions.

Yes. The catalogue is free and is not a benefit of buying a package. Buying a marketing package does not improve your catalogue listing, and a free listing does not oblige you to buy anything.

No. A paid plan is optional and separate. You can list your book, and stay listed, without ever buying anything from us.

It enters a short moderation pass. We check the book is real, that the metadata reads correctly and that the cover is legible at catalogue size. If something needs fixing we tell you; if it is fine, it goes live and becomes publicly browsable by genre and by era.

A few days. We do not publish a hard service level for it, because we would rather give you a real number than a fast one we cannot keep.

They can browse it without a sign-up: search by title or author, filter by genre, filter by era, see a front page that turns over every day, and open any book to see its cover, metadata, price and edition links. A listing is a place to be found.

No. A public listing is not a guarantee of impressions, clicks, reads, downloads, reviews or sales. It makes your book findable. What happens next depends on genre, competition and your own continued work.

Use the request buttons on the home page or the services page, or the campaign enquiry form. Tell us which kind you want — a free giveaway, a $0.99 promotion or an honest review campaign — and we come back with scope, timing and price before anything is charged.

Yes. Campaigns are requested by conversation, not sold from a fixed shelf: we confirm scope, audience fit, timing and price with you first, so there is no campaign inventory to browse and no checkout to complete. The reader counts attached to the packages — ten at Momentum, twenty-five at Growth — are the established figures; anything outside them is a conversation.

A listing is your book's page on the catalogue. A placement is a slot we give it in front of readers — a giveaway window, a $0.99 promotion or a review campaign. A click is someone opening your listing. A download is someone taking a free copy. A sale is someone paying. Each is a different measure, and we do not use one as a substitute for another.

Yes. We recruit genre-matched readers, send complimentary copies and invite reviews. A free copy is never conditional on posting a review, giving a positive rating, or changing an existing review — and we do not pay for positive ratings or guarantee a score.

No. They are optional services. You can list your book free, and stay listed, without ever buying video, social media management, advertising or a campaign.

No. Expected ranges for lower-priced books can be estimated, but they cannot be guaranteed — they depend on reader behaviour, market conditions and platform performance. We control the work we commit to. We influence reach, clicks and conversion. We do not guarantee a specific number of sales, a bestseller position, a ranking, or a viral event.

Most of the early signal shows up within the first 2–4 weeks in views, clicks, and content engagement. Reviews, preorder momentum, and Amazon ranking lift usually become more obvious by month 2–3. The pricing page shows expected ranges by plan, measured against each book's pre-campaign baseline.

We start by auditing your book, listing, and launch position, then build the content and campaign structure around the right audience and genre. In practice, the first month is usually the setup and traction phase: content production, testing hooks, click-through optimization, and early campaign reporting.

The details vary by plan, but we track the things that matter: impressions, video views, click-throughs, conversion behavior, listing performance, campaign activity, and any relevant sales or preorder movement. We report what is measurable and useful at every stage of the campaign.

Every plan includes a defined set of services. Higher tiers stack more production, reviews, listing work, reader-list access, and campaign management. The full plan detail, pricing, and expected ranges live on the pricing page.

Yes. Upgrading, downgrading, or pausing is allowed at any time. Current ad spend is taken into account and applied as available credit toward the new tier. In other words, you are not locked into one plan forever — Atomic Shelf can evolve with your book.

Everything is handed over via secure transfer if needed — videos created, account information, and related assets. In practice, most content is already accessible throughout the engagement via your live progress report. You keep the work that was created as part of the campaign.

Longer commitments are a prepaid savings model. We have more time to compound the work, and predictable planning lets us pass better economics through to authors. 3, 6, and 12-month commitments are discounted accordingly.

Usually, we just need a link to your book or catalogue, plus any planned discount-deal dates when relevant. If your book has an existing audience or marketing materials, those can be helpful — but you do not need to have everything perfectly organized before starting.

No. You do not need to be on camera. We can work from your book metadata, genre positioning, and your campaign goals. That said, if you do want to appear, we can incorporate that too — but it is never required.

It depends on the plan, but the production cadence is built around the plan's target workload and campaign stage. The page and service map define the expected content and cadence by tier, and the numbers are tuned to keep production consistent rather than random.

Atomic Shelf manages the execution within the agreed scope: campaign setup, creative adaptation, target testing, reporting, and iteration. You keep the strategic relationship and access to the materials; we handle the operational work.

Money-back applies only to the specific service line items that were not delivered at all — not a blanket refund, and not triggered simply because results came in lower than the estimated range. If delivery happened but performance was below the expected range, we keep working, diagnose, and adjust at no extra cost rather than refunding.

The commitment covers the work we agreed to do: production, campaigns, review/recruitment work, listing optimization, reporting, communication, testing, iteration, campaign management, and delivery of included services. It does not promise a specific sales number or ranking, and it does not treat underperformance alone as a refund trigger.

We test, measure, and adjust. If the numbers show the current strategy isn't working, we diagnose the bottleneck and change course. The goal is a working system, not stubborn adherence to a plan that underperforms.

Yes. A new author is often exactly where a system like this is most useful. We build the underlying content, get the listing into shape, and establish the reader-list and discovery foundation before attempting larger-scale growth or ad spend.

Yes. Backlist strategy is often about refreshing discovery, improving conversion, reintroducing older titles into the reader ecosystem, and adding a strong funnel from content to purchase. The work is adjusted to your existing catalogue rather than treated as a single-book launch.

We support fiction, non-fiction, romance, fantasy, thrillers, literary fiction, and children's books through StoryPals. Scripts, ARC recruitment, reader-list placement, and ad targeting are all calibrated to the genre and book positioning.

Yes — audiobook marketing. We build discovery for an audiobook that already exists. See Audiobook marketing.

We run a full discovery campaign for it. If the audiobook was produced by another producer, or recorded by you or your narrator, we can still run the whole marketing campaign. Audiobook marketing stands on its own — you do not need any other service booked first.