Every feature, and the problem it kills
The complete author-side feature set, shipped and in build, each paired with the thing it takes off your plate.
- Features shipped
- 32
- Features shipped
- In build now
- 5
- In build now
- Taken from any sale
- 0%
- Taken from any sale
- To start
- $0
- To start
01 — Getting found
Readers find you on purpose, not by accident
The hardest problem in indie publishing isn't writing the book or selling it. It's that the reader who would love it has no way to know it exists.
You finish a book and the only readers who ever hear about it are the ones you personally tell.
A rated catalogue readers browseFree
Your book is included in the rated Bookrata library where values driven readers search for books that match their values, driving qualified traffic to your storefront.
What's inside your book is a disclaimer you write yourself and hope somebody believes.
Six categories, five tiers, one scaleFree
Sex, Violence, Language, Religion, Wellness and LGBTQ+, measured the same way on every book by someone who isn't selling it. The overall tier is the average of the two highest, so one spike can't hide behind a low average.
Readers who want clean books can't search for them, so your best-fit audience never arrives.
Comfort-cap filteringFree
Readers set a maximum tier per category and browse what clears it. Your book turns up because of what's in it.
You write to a niche but there's no vocabulary for it beyond a genre dropdown.
2400+ content and theme tagsFree
A controlled vocabulary readers actually search. Coming soon: a “must not have” toggle so they can rule things out as well as in.
Visibility is something you rent. Stop paying and it stops the same week.
Neutral orderingFree
No ads, no sponsored shelf, no bestseller list, no “customers also bought”, no algorithmic push. Nobody can outbid you for placement because there is no placement to buy.
The promotions that move the needle are editorially selected, and you're usually not selected.
No gatekeeperFree
Create an account and you're an author here. Every book is rated, not judged. No committee, no queue, no 30-day resubmission loop.
You have no credential a sceptical reader can verify.
Certified Clean badgeEarned
Awarded when the overall tier and every single category land at Tier 3 or lower. One category over and there's no badge — which is exactly why readers trust it.
Paid platforms let competitors hide their ratings while yours stays visible.
A rating badge nobody can buy offFree
Non-removable on every plan, including the paid ones. Nobody can pay their way out of being measured. Every book rated on its most current edition.
Your first book isn't on sale anywhere yet, so nobody will verify you as an author.
A path for first-time authorsFree
No purchase link required. A website and social link verify you instead, so a debut or a Bookrata-exclusive title isn't locked out.
02 — Selling
The sale is legally yours
Not “we pay you a royalty.” You are the merchant of record, the money lands in your Stripe account, and we take nothing out of it.
A retailer keeps roughly 30% of a book you wrote, edited and paid to produce.
0% platform feeFree
On every plan, including the free one. Card processing goes from you to Stripe at Stripe's rates — we're not in that chain.
You're not the seller. You're a supplier to the seller, with no say and no relationship.
You are the merchant of recordFree
Your Stripe account, your customer, your money, your refund policy. The transaction is legally yours.
Opening a real storefront means a website build, a payment integration and a monthly bill.
A storefront that costs nothingFree
Claim your slug, connect Stripe, publish. Series, ordering, cover art and metadata all managed from one dashboard.
Your store looks like a template because it is one.
Your branding, your domainPro
Background, surface and text colours, custom fonts, your own logo and favicon, and your own domain with DNS verification and TLS handled for you. Accent colour is free on every plan.
Someone else's name sits on the store you send your readers to.
Remove our brandingPro
The “Powered by Bookrata” mark comes off your storefront. The rating badge stays — that one is the reader's, not ours.
Readers at events ask for a signed copy and you have no way to sell them one online.
Signed and physical copiesPro
Author-fulfilled print sales alongside your ebooks, with an order queue and a ship action in your dashboard.
You want to give a book away to build a list, and your store won't let you price at zero.
Free giveaway listingsPro
Set a title free and readers claim it with a consented email. Still watermarked, still delivered properly, and the lead is yours.
Discounting means eating the cost yourself or not discounting at all.
A member discount you don't fund twiceFree
Bookrata members get 10% off. You receive the full discounted amount at 0% — we don't take a cut of a discount you funded.
Signing up to a platform means handing over rights or exclusivity.
Nothing becomes exclusiveFree
Keep selling everywhere you already sell. Your rights, your files, your list. If you downgrade, your data is retained rather than deleted.
03 — Owning your readers
You find out who actually bought the book
The single thing a retailer structurally cannot give you, and the reason most authors can't email a thousand people who already paid them.
You've sold a thousand copies and can't email a single buyer. The store knows all of them.
Purchaser email captureFree
Consented buyer emails on every plan — including the free one. Consent is the gate, not your tier.
Your list lives inside a platform and can't come with you if you leave.
Export your leadsPro
Take the list anywhere, including away from us. Capture and viewing continue even if you downgrade.
You can't put your own signup form, booking calendar or anything else on your own store page.
Custom HTML embedPremier
Your own email form or integration, sanitised and sandboxed so it can never touch a reader's session.
You made a trailer and there's nowhere to put it.
Video embedPremier
A YouTube or Vimeo trailer on your storefront, provider-validated server-side.
04 — Delivering
The file reaches the reader, properly, without a second subscription
Most storefront tools email a download link and consider the job done. Delivery here is part of the product, not an upsell.
Delivery is its own $200–$300 a year subscription on top of everything else.
Delivery includedFree
On every plan, with no monthly download cap to watch.
Choose between DRM that punishes honest readers and nothing at all.
Per-buyer watermarking, DRM-freeFree
Every copy is personalised to its buyer — a deterrent that traces a leak without ever restricting the reader who paid.
A reader changes phone and emails you asking for the file again.
Tied to the account, always re-downloadableFree
No expiring link, no download counter, no support email landing in your inbox.
Buying direct means the reader has to sideload a file, understand file structures, and find compatible software.
Browser reader and installable appFree
They read in the browser or add Bookrata to their home screen, with reading position synced, offline reading and an audiobook player inside it.
Selling the audiobook you already paid for costs another add-on and another bill.
Sell audiobooksPremieror $15/yr
Included with Premier, or a $15/yr add-on on Free and Pro. If an add-on lapses, buyers still own the audiobooks they've purchased and your files remain ready to sell.
05 — Knowing what actually worked
Not a royalty number three days late
Because the sale happens on your own storefront, the reporting can follow a reader from the click all the way to the money — which is where every retailer's dashboard stops.
You post, send a newsletter and do a podcast in one week. Sales move. You never learn which one did it.
Campaign links with full attributionPremier
Tag a link per push and follow it through clicks, book views, buy clicks and completed purchases. Attribution runs to the money, not to the retailer's door.
You have no idea how a buyer found the book, so you can't do it again on purpose.
Discovery reportingPremier
Which tags, filters and searches surfaced your book to the reader who bought it. No other platform can report this, because no other platform has a rated catalogue to filter.
Traffic arrives and nothing sells, and you can't tell where it falls apart.
A four-step conversion funnelPremier
Store visit → book view → buy click → purchase, with the drop-off at every step, plus impressions against clicks per title.
Abandoned-cart numbers are guessed from behaviour, so the revenue figures are soft.
Carts read from Stripe itselfPremier
Taken from the real checkout-session lifecycle rather than inferred — which is also what makes the revenue reporting trustworthy.
The only analytics on offer are the kind that track your readers around the internet.
Analytics that don't surveilPremier
No IP stored, location to country only, any demographic cut suppressed below five people, Do Not Track and GPC honoured. Fifteen panels in total — traffic sources, devices, geography, peak times, new versus returning, member buyers, reading completion and more.
Coming soon
One more thing, for audiobooks
If you've ever priced an audiobook, worked out what it would cost, and quietly put the idea back in the drawer — we're building something for exactly that. We're not ready to say more yet.
Shipping next — in build, not live yet
These five are in active development. Each has to clear build, staging and a feature flag before it reaches an author account, and none of them carries a promised date. They're listed so you can see where the storefront is going — not counted as something you get today.
Every sale is a one-off. There's no way for your most loyal readers to simply pay you monthly.
Author collection membershipsIn buildPro+
Sell 1, 3, 6 or 12-month passes to your own catalogue, with optional monthly auto-renew. 100% to you after card fees. You choose which books are included, and readers can still buy any of them outright to own DRM-free.
You can't run a launch week, a newsletter-only code or a price drop without doing it by hand.
Discount codes and timed salesIn build
Your own codes plus scheduled sale prices per listing, so a promotion starts and ends without you sitting at the keyboard.
A reader wants to buy your book for a friend and there's no way to do it.
Gift purchasesIn build
Buy as a gift; the recipient gets it by email and claims it into their own library.
Someone reads book one and never comes back for the other five.
Series bundlesIn build
Price the series you've already organised as one purchase. The buyer gets every book in it.
A reader finishes your book, loves it, and has nowhere to say so.
Reader NotesIn build
A verified owner writes to you; you heart it and reply once. Bounded on purpose, so an inbox never becomes a job. A next-book discount code on the reply follows in a later phase.
Start free. Keep 100%.
0% platform fee on every plan. Upgrade to Pro or Premier only when you want more.