Archive - The Indie Lab

Newsletter Swaps: The Free Growth Strategy Some Indie Authors Are Missing

Half the indie authors at any given virtual conference have never done one.

Jun 8 • Marcin Pilarczyk

I Formatted Books in Microsoft Word. Then I Found Atticus.

I still remember staring at a PDF export from Microsoft Word at 11 PM, watching the chapter headers float three millimeters off-center on every other…

Jun 1 • Marcin Pilarczyk

May 2026

The Dashboard Autopsy

How I Found the Leak That Killed My $5,000 Monthly Baseline

May 18 • Marcin Pilarczyk

The KDP Dashboard Autopsy Prompt

A No-Sycophant Forensic Audit for Indie Authors

May 18 • Marcin Pilarczyk

Amazon Attribution: A No-Nonsense Guide for Indie Authors

You spend money on Facebook ads.

May 14 • Marcin Pilarczyk

I looked at every beta reader platform on the market. Here's what I found — and why I ended up building my own.

A honest breakdown of BetaBooks, BetaReader.io, StoryOrigin, and Scribophile — from someone who used them all before deciding none of them were quite…

May 11 • Marcin Pilarczyk

Going Wide Isn’t Wrong. It’s Just Not for You Yet.

I told you going wide was worth considering.

May 7 • Marcin Pilarczyk

Module 6: The Flywheel

Momentum & Market Entry

May 6 • Marcin Pilarczyk

The KDP Briefing Nobody Gave You

A 2026 KDP Beginners Guide

May 4 • Marcin Pilarczyk

The Post-Apoc Novel I Didn’t Know I Was Waiting For

Overwhelming Chaos by Felisa Ordep

May 1 • Marcin Pilarczyk

April 2026

Built an AI Editor. Here’s What It Took, and What It Means for the Profession.

There’s a moment in editing – a good editing session, with a good editor – where someone sees your book more clearly than you can.

Apr 30 • Marcin Pilarczyk

The 3-Pass AI Edit: How I Stopped Asking AI to Fix My Book

There’s a failure mode that traps most authors who try AI editing.

Apr 30 • Marcin Pilarczyk