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

Reviews and shelf space sell books. The book you labored over has too little of both.

Relay is one QR code for your book. A reader who loved it scans the QR code from your phone. Their phone opens a page with a button for each store’s review form and a way to ask libraries and bookstores near them to carry your book.

Limited-time offer · save $10 a month

$19a month for your first 6 months

Start Relay free

Then $29 a month. Five days free before anything is charged. Offer open until December 31, 2026.

Built by writers who run a literary press. For a book that’s on sale.

A pen drawing: two phones, one scanning the other's 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.
I

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 a reading or a signing, 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 libraries and bookstores in the United States; reviews work wherever your readers are.

II

What you get with Relay.

See which shelves are being askedon your dashboard

Your dashboard names each library and bookstore your readers asked to carry your book, and how many times. A store your readers keep asking is a store worth walking into and introducing yourself.

A field note on the 15thone idea, written for you

Written from what readers did on your pages, the kind of writer you are, and the libraries and bookstores near you: one idea, and one next step for the next two weeks.

A report on the 1stbook by book

What readers did last month: how many opened your page, went on to a store to review, asked a library or bookstore to carry it, or set a reminder to finish.

III

It works with the book and the readers you already have.

Any book that’s on salehowever long it has been out

Relay works for the book you published last month and the one you published ten years ago. Before publication day, readers with an advance copy can already review it on Goodreads.

The reader who isn’t in the roomone tap sends the page

The page goes to them by text, or any message app. A reader who loved your book has usually told a friend; your reader page lets them send it on, so the friend can review it too, or ask their own library or bookstore to carry it.

A team behind your bookyou approve every one

Text ADD and a phone number, and your partner, your sister, the friend who has read it twice can text REVIEW to your number too, and put your book’s QR code in front of everyone they meet.

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.
IV

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

A reader tells you at a signing, or over coffee, or in a message, that they loved it. They mean to say so 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 who loved your book, asking their local store to stock it, is that kind of request. Relay puts all three on one page, in front of the reader while they are still with you.

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Relay, in full.

$19 / month for 6 months

Then $29 a month, the standard price. 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, a field note on the 15th and a report on the 1st.

Buying for a writer? Give Relay as a gift.

Start Relay free Five days is long enough to put it in front of a reader.

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 says they loved it. 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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