For authors
An app that lives on your reader’s phone
Your website, your newsletter and your social feed all wait for readers to come looking. An app does not. It sits on the home screen and taps them on the shoulder the day a book comes out.
The trouble with every other channel
More books were published last year than in any year in history. American publishers registered 4,172,222 titles in 2025, a third more than the year before, and roughly five in six of them self-published. Readers are not short of things to read. Holding their attention is the hard part.
Your website waits
A reader has to remember it exists, type the address, and check whether anything has changed. Most of them will not do that twice.
Social media decides for you
The feed shows your post to whoever happens to have interacted lately. Quiet followers stop seeing you altogether, and nothing tells you it has happened.
Your newsletter is read less than it looks
Apple Mail now opens messages by itself, before anybody has read them, which lifts reported open rates by fifteen to twenty-five points. Apple Mail is around half of all email opens, so the figure in your dashboard is flattering you. And whatever it says, it falls as the list ages.
What an app does instead
Once a reader installs it, it is on the home screen. No address to remember, no algorithm in the middle, no spam folder. A new release becomes a notification on the lock screen. Your blog posts arrive in the app as you publish them. The reading order is simply correct, and the whole backlist is there. None of it asks anything of you after launch.
What is in it
Every part of this is optional. We settle on what suits your books.
Release-day alerts
The day a book goes live, every reader with the app gets a notification. Nothing sits between you and them.
The backlist, in order
Every series and every book in the right reading order, with covers and links to wherever readers buy. No more out-of-date forum threads and fan wikis.
Settled in seconds
A reader standing in a bookshop can open the app and know at once which one they have not read.
Your world, gathered up
Characters, families, factions, a glossary, and a zoomable map with lore on the landmarks. Everything currently scattered across the internet, in one place, and right — because it came from you.
Your blog, inside the app
Posts arrive as you publish them, comments and all, and stay readable with no signal.
Progress and rewards
Readers mark off what they have finished and collect badges, and if you want, discount codes or other rewards you choose yourself.
Something to play with
Character quizzes, trivia, and a fandom bingo card. The things your readers already do to each other, built in.
Readable by everyone
Large type, screen-reader support, high contrast and read-aloud are built in rather than bolted on.
Questions authors ask
- If my app breaks, will you fix it?
- Yes. Bug fixes are always covered, no questions asked. The first two weeks after launch are part of the build, and after that every app sits on a monthly care plan that includes them.
- Why does an app need looking after at all?
- Because Apple and Google keep moving. New versions of iOS and Android arrive every year and the store rules change with them. An app nobody maintains eventually stops working. The care plan covers the store renewals, testing against each new version, security patches, monitoring, and a set number of hours each month for the small changes you ask for.
- What does it cost?
- It depends on the scope: how many series there are, and how much of your world you want built into it. I price it before any work starts, and the monthly care plan is quoted alongside it so there are no surprises later.
- What do you need from me?
- Your book list and release dates, permission to use the cover art, and your blog address if you have one. For the encyclopedia and the map, a cast-and-world document and a single high-resolution map image. I can draft the quizzes myself.
- Do I need an Apple developer account?
- Yes, and it should be in your name, so the app is genuinely yours. Apple charges $99 a year and Google charges $25 once. Those go through at cost. I do not mark them up.
- Who owns it when it is finished?
- You do. The app, the content and the code are yours.
- Is it on iPhone and Android?
- Yes. One app, both stores.
- Have you built one of these before?
- Yes. I built the companion app for a #1 New York Times bestselling author, through beta with her readers and her team. It is the first work in the gallery on the main page.
Curious what this would look like for your books?
Tell me about your series and I will come back with what it would take.
It takes about two minutes, and it does not commit you to anything.