PostShop for Writers
Book promotion without the self-promotion
PostShop Relay

A book stays alive as long as people keep passing it on.

Relay gives each of your books a reader page and a QR code. A reader scans it, or opens the link you text them, and from their own phone reviews the book, asks their library and nearby bookstores to carry it, and passes it to a friend.

$29a month

Start free

Free for one book, with no card. Upgrade to all of Relay from your dashboard.

Built by writers who run a literary press. For any book coming out soon, or one that’s been out for years.

A pen drawing: two phones, one scanning the other's QR code, at the centre of a web of circles. Around it, readers review the book on a sofa, hand a request across a library desk, point out a shelf to a bookseller, text a friend and share it over coffee, and beyond them new readers read on a bench, in bed, on a train and in an armchair.
A reader who scans your QR code can review your book, ask their library and their bookstore to carry it, and send the page on to a friend, who can do the same.
Your first five minutes

You don’t wait for readers. You start the conversation.

Relay works any day, with the people you already see. Three steps, and today your book is in front of five readers who can review it and ask their libraries and bookstores to carry it.

  1. 1
    Add your book.Scan the barcode on the back cover with your phone, or type the ISBN. Once per book.

    What it bringsIts reader page and QR code, ready at once.

  2. 2
    Send it to five people who’ve already read it.Your book club, a coworker, your cousin, the neighbour who borrowed your copy. Open your QR code and tap Text the link, or text REVIEW to your PostShop number.

    What it bringsFive readers who can review it and ask their libraries and bookstores to carry it today, then send it on.

  3. 3
    Add the person who talks about your book most.Text ADD and their number to your PostShop number. Outside the US and Canada, add them on your dashboard.

    What it bringsYour QR code on their phone too, in front of everyone they meet.

Then keep it going.

The same page and QR code, wherever your readers are.

  1. 4
    Wherever your book comes up.At work, at dinner, in a class, at the gym. Hold up your phone, or text the link to someone who said they’d read it.

    What it bringsThe page in their hand while the book is fresh in their mind.

  2. 5
    The last page of your book.If you publish it yourself: its QR code at the next printing, and its link in the ebook’s back matter.

    What it bringsEvery reader who finishes it gets the page, whether or not you’re there.

  3. 6
    Your newsletter, email signature and bios.Your reader page’s link, where people who know you already look.

    What it bringsThe link in front of readers who already know your name.

  4. 7
    A bookmark in every copy you sell or give.Print them from your dashboard, at home or at a print shop.

    What it bringsThe QR code goes home with the book and is there when they finish.

Picture this
I

One scan. Then it’s out of your hands, in the best way.

The woman at work from down the hall finishes your novel and tells you so in the breakroom. You hold up your phone; she scans the QR code. Before she’s back at her desk, she’s reviewed it on Goodreads.

That night she sends the page to her sister, who orders a copy. Her book club picks it for March. Two of them ask the library down the street to carry it. One writes to you to ask if you’d come and talk to the group.

Nobody did more than tap a phone. You did nothing at all after holding it up.

II

Everything that keeps it moving.

  1. One QR code, on your phone and on paper. Hold it up at work, at dinner or in a classroom, or leave a table sign and bookmarks behind.
  2. Passed on in one tap. The reader page goes by text or any message app, and everyone who gets it can send it on again.
  3. Your people carry it too. Add your partner, your sister, the friend who’s read it twice. The same QR code is on their phones, in front of everyone they meet. They share it rather than reviewing it themselves.
  4. Readers can write to you, if you opt in. Turn it on, and invitations to book clubs, readings and classrooms come straight to you.
  5. Still reading? A reader who hasn’t finished sets a reminder, so the moment isn’t lost.
  6. See where it’s spreading. Your dashboard names every library and bookstore readers asked and puts them on a map of the country, along with the towns where readers opened your book’s page and where they went to review it. A field note on the 15th gives you one next step, and a report on the 1st shows what readers did.

Reviews, library copies and bookstore orders are what all that passing-on leaves behind.

III

What it is, exactly.

You scan the barcode on your book once and we build its reader page. After that it is these screens, shown here for one of our own books.

A phone screen titled The Dark Prairie, by John Jarrett, showing a large QR code and the line: Point your phone's camera at the QR code to open the reader page. Below it, buttons to text the link, share it, or copy it.
1 · What you show Your book’s QR code, on your phone. This one is live: point your camera at it, or open the reader page.
The reader page for The Dark Prairie: the book's cover, its title and author, the heading Finished it?, and three buttons: Review on Amazon, Review on Goodreads, Review on Barnes and Noble.
2 · What your reader sees Your cover and a button for each store. A button opens that store’s own review form, where your reader writes and posts the review.
Further down the reader page: Want it at your library? with a button to use the reader's location or enter a ZIP code, and Want to see it in a bookstore near you? with the same two choices.
3 · Libraries and bookstores Your reader enters a ZIP code. Relay shows the request pages of libraries near them, and independent bookstores they can ask to carry your book.
The Print a sign or bookmarks page: a headline field reading Literary YA Adventure, a message field with one line about the book, and choices for the background and text colours.
4 · Your wording For your sign and bookmarks, you write two lines of your own and choose the colours.
A printable table sign for The Dark Prairie with the cover, the headline and line from the previous screen, and the QR code, above a sheet of four bookmarks carrying the same QR code.
5 · On paper A table sign and bookmarks with the same QR code, to print at home or send to a print shop.

Relay’s part is putting the right form in front of a reader while they are still with you, then showing you which libraries and bookstores your readers asked.

Library and bookstore requests reach more than 1,100 public libraries and 850 independent bookstores in the United States, with more added every week; reviews work wherever your readers are.

IV

What you get with Relay.

Before launch, or years afterset it up once

Start Relay before publication day and your reader page is ready when your advance readers are. They can review on Goodreads straight away, and anyone they send it to can pre-order the book from the same page. On launch day the Amazon and Barnes & Noble buttons appear by themselves, so the launch weeks, when readers are most ready to act, miss nothing. For the book you published last month or ten years ago, Relay is a second launch.

If your press has a shelf hereits shelf, your own page

Your press’s shelf belongs to your press, and so do the numbers from it. Relay is yours. Your dashboard names each library and bookstore readers asked to carry your book; the field note and the report are written about your book alone; and your book’s QR code is on your phone wherever you meet a reader, and on the phones of the family and friends you add to your account. Your press can send its shelf’s readers for your book to your page with one click, and each one is counted on your dashboard. Relay covers each of your books, whoever published it.

Turn things around for your book.

Reviews are what the next reader checks before buying. A library or bookstore that carries your book has bought it.

A pen drawing of a bleak landscape heaped with discarded books under a grey sky. A truck loaded with books drives away into it, past a roadside sign that reads: No reviews. No libraries. No bookstores.
Where a book goes when nobody asks.
A pen and watercolour drawing of a sunny town square with a library and a bookstore. An author holds out her phone with a QR code to two smiling readers, one scanning it with his own phone, while movers carry stacks of books from a truck into the library.
Where it goes when your readers do the asking.
V

Readers mean to help. But life happens and the moment passes.

A reader tells you at work, or over coffee, or in a message, that they have finished your book. They mean to say something about it somewhere. By the time they are home, the moment has passed and the store’s review form is four taps deep.

Libraries often add a book to their collection because one of their own cardholders asked them to carry it, so that request has to come from a reader who lives in the library’s district, on a form somewhere on the library’s website. It is a bigger thing to ask of a reader than a review.

Independent bookstores weigh what their own customers ask for when they decide what to carry. A reader asking their local store to stock your book is that kind of request. Relay puts all three on one page, in front of the reader while they are still with you.

—

Relay, in full.

$29 / month

A reader page for each of your books, a number of your own to text, a printable sign and bookmarks, reader reminders, the libraries and bookstores your readers asked and a map of where readers are, a field note on the 15th and a report on the 1st.

A writer you know has a book coming out soon, or one ready for a second launch? Give Relay as a gift.

Start free Put your first book in front of a reader today.

Full terms and privacy policy.

Who built this

A publisher can make your book available everywhere. It can’t be the reader who asks a library or bookstore to carry it.

We run Silent Clamor Press, publisher of a Kirkus-starred story collection and of authors recognized with the Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal and Pushcart Prize nominations. We list our books with the wholesalers that libraries and bookstores order from, and we send them out for review. What we can’t do is stand beside you when a reader finishes your book. We can’t ask that reader’s own library and bookstore to carry it, because those requests have to come from the people who live there. That work belongs to you and your readers. Relay makes it simple: one QR code.

Some of the books we publish. See the Silent Clamor Press catalog →

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