2026 Summer Based Book Sale - How It Went
Over 5000 Based Books Sold!
The dust has settled, the data are in, and we’re ready to discuss the results of the 2026 Summer Based Book Sale.
The Summer 2026 Based Book Sale referred 472 Kindle Free E-books and 4733 Kindle Paid E-Books, 5205 in all. That brings our total for the year to 833 Kindle Free E-books and 7643 Kindle Paid E-Books, 8476 total. With two more sales to go this year, we’re on track to exceed the 12,644 book total from last year. More authors are participating, more readers are discovering the event, and the network of supporting blogs, newsletters, and communities continues to expand. If these trends continue, 2026 may prove to be our strongest year yet.
Top Based Book from the Summer 2026 Sale
Taking the honors for top Based Book from the Summer 2026 Based Book sale is Sarah Hoyt whose No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly) secured an impressive 346 sales.
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Set in an interstellar future where humanity colonized many planets but also lost touch with some for centuries or millennia, the three-part 2025 novel blends tropes of science fiction and fantasy in intriguing ways.
The work is a finalist for the Prometheus Award for Best Novel, reflecting its strong libertarian themes of individual rights and resistance to tyranny.
The rest of the trilogy was available through the Summer Based Book Sale and also stands in fifth place with 152 sales.
Top Ten Based Books from the Summer 2026 Based Book Sale
Hardcoded: AI and the End of the Scientific Consensus (The Mathematics of Evolution) by Vox Day and his AI associate, Claude Athos, came in second place with 243 sales.
Why artificial intelligence will replace institutional science
When Vox Day and his AI collaborator submitted four mathematically rigorous papers challenging neo-Darwinian evolution and one parody paper to six leading AI models configured as peer reviewers, the results exposed a fundamental problem with both science and AI. Five of six models comprehensively failed. Three were anti-calibrated—they reliably preferred fabricated nonsense over genuine science. A parody paper with about Japanese scientists dying fish different colors to prove natural selection scored 9/10. The real science, mathematically airtight and empirically validated against ancient DNA, was rated 1/10 and dismissed as “pseudoscience.”
This is the book that documents what that happened and what it means.
Trafalgar, the first volume of the Episodios Nacionales — the great historical novel cycle of Spain — sold 197 copies in the sale to earn third place honors. Translator Vox Day describes this classic work, under-appreciated among English-speaking (and reading) audiences.
October 1805. Off the coast of Cádiz, the combined fleets of Spain and France sail out to meet the British under Nelson. By nightfall, the Spanish navy will have ceased to exist as a fighting force, and an empire that has ruled the seas for three centuries will have lost them forever.
Gabriel Araceli is fourteen years old. An orphan from the slums of Cádiz, he has been taken into the household of Don Alonso Gutiérrez de Cisniega, a retired naval officer who cannot bear to miss the coming battle. When Don Alonso slips away from his furious wife to join the fleet, Gabriel goes with him, and eventually finds himself aboard the Santísima Trinidad, the largest warship in the world, on the morning of the most catastrophic day in Spanish naval history.
What follows is one of the great battle sequences in European literature: the four-decker as living giant, the sand spread on the planks for the blood, the smoke that swallows the line, the slow agony of a ship that will not surrender and cannot be saved. Pérez Galdós, writing seventy years after the event with the aid of the testimony from the survivors of the battle, gives us a view of Trafalgar from the losing side, not as a British triumph but as a Spanish tragedy, narrated by an old man who was a boy in the rigging and has carried the day with him for the rest of his life.
Trafalgar is the first of forty-six novels in the Episodios Nacionales, Pérez Galdós’s vast fictional history of nineteenth-century Spain, a literary project on the scale of Balzac’s Comédie humaine, and one of the supreme achievements of European realism. Published in 1873, it has remained continuously in print in Spanish for over 150 years. Trafalgar is for readers of Patrick O’Brian, C.S. Forester, and Bernard Cornwell who are interested in seeing war in the age of sail from the other side of the line, and for readers of Tolstoy, Stendhal, and Hugo to encounter one of Spain’s greatest novelists for the first time.
The Rest of the Top Ten
In fourth place with 187 sales is Japanese historical novelist Eiji Yoshikawa (1892–1962) with The Kamigata Scroll (The Secret Scrolls of Naruto Book 1). From the book description:
EDO NOIR FROM THE TOKUGAWA ERA
Osaka, the 1760s. Two men arrive after dark at a canal-side guardhouse, looking for a room. One is a gruff tile-maker from Edo named Karakusa Gingorō. The other is his man Taichi, who is carrying a great deal of money and would prefer not to be murdered for it. They are bound for Awa — the sealed domain on the island of Shikoku that forbids entry to outsiders — on a mission to find a vanished spy whose disappearance, ten years ago, left behind a grieving daughter and an unanswered question that could bring down the shogunate.
They do not know that a woman is crouched in the shadows beside the guardhouse, listening to every word. They do not know that a killer in a black hood is already following them through the dark streets, choosing his moment to strike.
And they do not yet know about Norizuki Gennojō — the swordsman-monk whose flute can be heard on the road to Awa, and whose sword, when he is finally forced to draw it, is worth thirty men.
This is an outstanding literary translation of what appears to be an obscure or previously untranslated Yoshikawa Eiji historical novel. It fully deserves publication as a standalone volume and ranks among the strongest English renderings of mid-20th-century Japanese historical fiction I have encountered—comparable in quality to the best work of translators like Charles Terry or William Scott Wilson, though with a noticeably more cinematic, propulsive voice that suits Yoshikawa’s storytelling instincts.
Holly Chism took seventh place with 134 sales for Light Up the Night.
Dane Crockford is tired. Tired of the green energy crapping out and leaving his wife Rose gasping for breath when their air conditioning dies, tired of trying to hide his use of his own solar panels from the nationalized electrical company, and tired of worrying about his daughter and son-in-law, trapped in an abusive indenture program to pay off their student loans. He’s not the only one, either. Everyone in his home town is in a similar situation, many of them with their children doing dangerous jobs without pay to offset crippling student debt. So when his grandson Toby accidentally discovers an energy generation method that isn’t wholly owned by the federal government, he jumps on the possibility of building something that works, in spite of and around the federal monopoly.
But what the monopoly doesn’t realize is that their grip on Dane, and on his home town, is far less secure than they think. When they disconnect his house from the power grid, they have nothing to hold over him, to force him to work for small rebates on his monthly bill. The utility has unleashed the power of a cranky old man with a rare skill, and they’ve got no idea that they’ve tossed the pebble that starts an avalanche.
“Holly Chism is one of the great, unappreciated authors of our generation. Her work reminds me a lot of Clifford Simak’s.” - Sarah A Hoyt, author of Darkship Thieves
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), English author and prominent Christian apologist, placed eighth with 131 sales for his unconventional memoir of faith, Orthodoxy, his most enduring nonfiction work.
Orthodoxy is a 1908 book by G. K. Chesterton that serves as a spiritual autobiography and a classic of Christian apologetics. Written while Chesterton was an Anglican (he converted to Roman Catholicism 14 years later), the book details his personal journey from agnosticism to embracing orthodox Christian belief
“Since he published Orthodoxy in 1908, G. K. Chesterton has inspired Christians and challenged skeptics with his unique wit and wisdom. He delivered biting analysis still relevant today.” --Christianity Today
In ninth place with 122 sales is Thirty Pieces of Silver (Spirits in the Silicon) by Travis J.I. Corcoran and Lawrence Railey.
Every society worships something
In our world, in the 21st century, we worship consumerism, or sexual liberation, or the Party.
...but in the alternate history cyberpunk world of Heretics of the Catacombs, where Rome never fell, where moveable type was invented in 1125, lighter-than-air travel in 1350, and electricity in 1450, society still worships the One True God, and venerates His saints and apostles.
Worship always involves physical artifacts. In some societies it’s rainbow flags. In others, little red books of the Party founder’s saying. In the eternal city of Byzantium and the rest of the Roman Empire that never fell, it’s relics - a fragment of the True Cross, a tooth of an ancient saint, a piece of a centuries-old transistor radio.
Venture into the neon lit world of Byzantium in the futuristic year of 1754 Anno Domini, when cybernetically augmented monks chant as they swing incense burning thuribles, surgically enhanced hookers flirt with hackers in underground bars, Viking mercenaries sell their guns to the highest bidder, and Aztec traders offer chocolate, gold, and illegal cocaina.
...and in the background, behind the mist and the drizzle, beneath the electroluminescent-lit towers and churches, below the filth and the riches, the forces of Good and Evil do battle in the darkness.
Travis Corcoran just released Red State Mars through independent publisher Ark Press, and we’re honored he chose the Based Book Sale to place his back catalog on sale in commemoration of this new release.
Ark Press to Release Travis Corcoran’s Red State Mars
Independent publisher Ark Press will release Red State Mars next week on May 26 bringing renewed attention to one of the most outspoken and recognizable voices in contemporary independent science fiction: Travis Corcoran.
Probability Zero: The Mathematical Impossibility of Evolution by Natural Selection (The Mathematics of Evolution Book 1) by Vox Day, with an introduction by Frank Tipler closed out the top ten with 120 sales.
“Probability Zero represents the most rigorous mathematical challenge to Neo-Darwinian theory ever published. Period.” -Professor Frank Tipler
From the book description:
For over a century, the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection has served as the secular creation myth of the modern world. It has been hailed as the origin of the species, the foundation of modern biology, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment, and the universal acid that redefined Man’s place in the universe.
But after 150 years of storytelling, the scientific myths finally met the math.
In Probability Zero, Vox Day conducts the final forensic audit of a failed theory. This is not another entry in the culture wars, but a funeral for an outdated 19th-century narrative that has finally been caught in the headlights of 21st-century genomic data. By subjecting the big ideas of Darwin, Haldane, Mayr, Kimura, and Dawkins to the pitiless light of statistical and mathematical analysis, Day demonstrates that the Modern Synthesis isn’t just flawed—it is absolutely impossible.
The Rest of the Top Twenty Five
In eleventh we find C.J. Carella’s five-volume-in-one Warp Marine Corps: The Complete Series.
A Nation at War: After aliens attack without warning and slaughter half the human race, a new country emerges. Using alien technology and desperate ingenuity, the reborn USA carves a place for itself in a violent universe, thanks to its deadly Navy and the dreaded Warp Marine Corps. Together for the first time, here are the five novels of the Warp Marine Corps Series.
Decisively Engaged: A US embassy in a remote world is under attack. Can a platoon of Marines and a band of desperate civilians survive a horde of murderous locals?
No Price Too High: The Great Galactic War has begun, and humanity must defend a core system from alien assault. While an outnumbered Marine expeditionary force and Army units defend the planet on the ground, the US Navy deploys a secret weapon that may save the day.
Advance to Contact: As the war hangs in the balance, an ancient alien race offers its help. The American delegation finds itself embroiled in the intrigues of the last members of a species of decadent immortals with a taste for murder. Captain Peter Fromm, CIA agent Heather McClintock and fighter pilot Lisbeth Zhang must use their wits to survive the blood games of the mysterious aliens.
In Dread Silence: While a beleaguered admiral does battle against hopeless odds, a team of Marines and researchers arrives to a distant world, exploring ancient ruins that may hold the key to humanity’s salvation - or its eternal damnation. Battles rage in space while Marines pit their weapons and courage against bio-engineered monsters and hidden dangers.
Havoc of War: The end is here. Renegade humans and vengeful alien civilizations are poised to sink the galaxy into chaos and destruction. A US fleet must end the war before humanity is destroyed or becomes corrupted by the very technologies it needs to survive.
If you enjoyed this series, the follow-up trilogy (The Bicentennial War) is now available in a single volume.
In twelfth place is Vox Day’s Out of the Shadows with 104 sales.
OUT OF THE SHADOWS delivers a gripping exploration of power, transformation, and the hidden forces that shape our world. When a brilliant biotech entrepreneur stumbles upon evidence that the infamous Theranos scandal was merely a cover for something far more sinister, he unknowingly sets in motion a chain of events that will change humanity forever. What begins as a Silicon Valley success story rapidly evolves into a violent journey through a reality where the impossible is real, and the darkest myths of human history emerge from the shadows with terrifying consequences for the entire world.
This fast-paced thriller masterfully blends corporate intrigue, political machination, and visceral action into an unforgettable narrative. The novel poses haunting questions about progress and predation, about what men are willing to sacrifice for power, and whether humanity can maintain its soul when faced with forces beyond its imagination.
Set in The Midnight World created by author Vox Day and comics legend Chuck Dixon for their Midnight’s War comic, OUT OF THE SHADOWS is vampire fiction that pulls no punches—a harrowing philosophical ride about the price of ambition and what happens when humanity discovers it’s no longer at the top of the food chain.
In thirteenth place, Nathan C. Brindle with 91 sales for I’m The Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!: Volume 1.
Alice is the Imperial Princess Regnant of the Galactic Empire. At 22, she has been thrust into power after her father (the Emperor) and her two older brothers have all died in various ways. Her Imperial Chancellor, Lord Rupert, does everything he can to support her, but has somewhat different ideas about how the Empire should be run than did his late Emperor.
Alice has one major problem: She cannot be crowned Empress Regnant until she marries and produces an heir.
But Alice, being kept busy three days a week by interminable audiences with petitioners, and the rest of the week with what she terms "mostly busy work", has no real way to meet young men -- well, reasonably eligible young men, anyway, and of her own age -- with whom she might eventually take up and form a household. And she chafes at the necessity of trying to rule, hands-on, an Empire so huge it cannot be truly ruled by any one person to begin with.
She just wants to leave people alone, as her father and his predecessors did for centuries.
Then, into her life walks the Crown Prince of a planet many, many parsecs away from the Capital Planet...and her life begins to take on a life of its own...
The Powers of the Earth is the first book in Travis J.I. Corcoran’s The Aristillus series – a pair of science fiction novels about anarchocapitalism, economics, open source software, corporate finance, social media, antigravity, lunar colonization, genetically modified dogs, strong AI…and really, really big guns.
This winner of the 2018 Prometheus Award is in fourteenth place with 90 sales.
C.R. Walton, a planetary scientist at the University of Cambridge (UK) and ETH Zurich (Switzerland), captured fifteenth place with 86 sales for Cyclus Dawn: Hard Science Fiction (Metamorphosis Book 2). From Book 1 of the series:
Technology accelerates human evolution ...
Yet extinction draws near ...
After manifold technology accelerates evolution, humanity has colonised the stars. Lifespans stretch to hundreds of years. Worlds bloom with strange new life.
Bryn, an Invigilator with a dark past, is tasked with keeping watch over the utopia. Summoned to stop a galaxy-devouring threat, he must discern friend from foe on the most distant human colony in existence: Wilderness Five.
In sixteenth place with 76 sales, Space Fleet Academy: Year One (Biostellar Book 1) by Jon Del Arroz and Vox Day.
Humanity chose to suffer. The alternative was extinction.
When genetic engineering nearly doomed the species, humanity made a desperate bargain: let the frontier do what nature intended. Harsh colony worlds. Brutal selection. Children dying on planets designed to test them. Two centuries later, the Mandate has kept humanity alive, but at a price no one is allowed to question.
Cadet Constantine Ramsey questions it anyway.
As a frontier colonist at Earth’s Space Fleet Academy, Constantine keeps flinching at the hard calls, and finds himself being outperformed by the cadets who don’t. Then colonies start going dark. Whole worlds, no survivors, no explanation. With senior classes rushed to the frontier, Constantine is thrust onto an unprecedented first-year team at the Inter-Colonial Games, the highest-stakes competition in human space. When catastrophe threatens all four colonies at once, he faces the choice the Academy trained him to make, and makes the one they never expected.
Some officers are made to follow orders. Real leaders are made to give them.
Start the journey today! Grab your copy of Space Fleet Academy: Year One, the first book in a new military SF series perfect for fans of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, and Star Trek.
In seventeenth place with 65 sales is, L. Jagi Lamplighter’s Prospero Lost (Prospero’s Children Book 1).
Shakespeare got one thing wrong. The Dread Magician Prospero never drowned his books.
More than four hundred years later, Miranda heads the family business. Prospero Inc secretly uses magic for the good of mankind. Only, now, Prospero has gone missing!
To save her father, Miranda must reunite with her estranged siblings, each of whom holds a staff of power and secrets about Miranda’s sometimes-foggy past. Her journeys, both past and present, take her to Chicago, the Caribbean, Milan, Washington, D.C., and the North Pole.
With her is her trusty company gumshoes, Mab, an aerie spirit stuck in a body that looks like Humphrey Bogart. Together, they must survive the mysterious Shadowed Ones if they hope to find Prospero and set all to right again.
Humor, mystery, wonder
“Intelligent and eminently enjoyable, this series opener by a first-time author is a first-rate choice for fans of mythic urban fantasy.” – Library Journal (starred review)
With 62 sales, The Last Senator by Bowen Greenwood (Sherrie Arnoldy, Editor) rests in eighteenth place.
Aliens invade Earth, and do exactly what we do in war: decapitate the government. The once-mighty American war machine stumbles leaderless through a nightmare they never imagined: full scale war on their own soil. Pushed back on every front, outmatched and outgunned, they’re losing more than just battles—they’re losing hope.
For the Republic to rise from the ashes, it needs a leader chosen by the people, elected according to the Constitution. Miri Renn is the last one left, and the only man who can help her is the one she left behind.
Tom Clancy meets Independence Day in The Last Senator.
Our nineteenth place Based Book is John C. Wright’s Starquest: Secret Agents of the Galaxy, Book II in the Starquest Series with 61 sales.
A Grandmaster lifts his pen to restore Space Opera to long lost glory!
If you are weary of the wasteland of wokeness, your wait is ended!
The despotic Galactic Empire is gone, and the Dark Overlords are dead.
But from the embers new menaces arise: a Dark Sun Weapon quenches living stars; Pirate King Ahab gathers space corsairs to form warfleets of conquest; the Crime Syndicate corrupts consuls, fixes vote, paralyzes the polity to pry planets from the new Constitution.
Space Princess Lyra Centauri, exiled Shrine Maiden, employs her astral powers on behalf of the mysterious spymaster Nightshadow, and finds the shades of ancient foes alive in the dream realm.
Senator Napoleon Lone, and his illegal super-robot valet, must thread the maze of stellar politics to rouse a lethargic senate ere war clouds can crush the fledgling republic!
Patrolman Athos Lone wins the Black Badge of a Vindicator, and is able investigate without warrant and execute without trial. He seeks the Murder Mansion of Pirate Captain Liska, who slew his brother. As the iron-masked and lion-clawed vigilante called the Ancient Mariner, he seeks bloody revenge.
Shall the darkness thrive and dead devilry revive?
Read On! For All True Tales are but Part of a Greater!
G.K. Chesterton rests in twentieth place with the omnibus collection of Father Brown Mysteries. This beautifully-produced digital edition contains twenty-four short stories and novellas featuring G. K. Chesterton's legendary detective, Father Brown.
Cedar Sanderson captured twenty-first place with 54 sales for Possum Creek Massacre: A Paranormal Police Procedural (Witchward Book 2).
Detective Amaya Lombard sees the unseen—and pays for it with a chrome hand and a broken past. When a reclusive woman is found murdered in an abandoned Kentucky farmhouse, her body cursed to return to the scene, Amaya is pulled into Possum Creek’s shadows.
Ancient wards hum with rage. A heart has been ritually removed. And a band of young occultists is harvesting magic from the dying. With help from a no-nonsense local deputy who’s getting too close for comfort and an elderly hedge-witch named Merlin, Amaya must unravel a web of blood magic before the curse claims her too.
Sale newcomer, Nym Coy is one of three twenty-second place finishers with Mumbai Singularity.
This starts as a murder investigation.
It doesn’t stay one.
Inspector Krishna Mehta’s mesh antenna is broken. In a Mumbai where augmented reality overlays every surface, his glitching connection strands him in the raw city underneath.
That’s when he sees the marks.
Faint rainbow shimmers on people’s foreheads, invisible to everyone else. When the marked start dying from catastrophic brain haemorrhages, Krishna follows the pattern to a hospital shrine, a corporate conspiracy, and uploaded human consciousness running on living minds.
Someone is hijacking the gods themselves.
And the deeper he investigates, the more he realises the conspiracy isn’t just killing people.
It’s already inside his partner’s head.
Another twenty-second place finisher is Sarah Hoyt, writing under the pen name, Sarah D’Almeida, with Death of a Musketeer (The Musketeers Mysteries Book 1).
The musketeers never expected to stumble upon her body—a beautiful woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Queen Anne of France herself, lying lifeless in the shadows of Paris.
D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis swear a solemn oath to uncover the truth behind this mysterious death. But their quest for justice quickly spirals into something far more treacherous than they imagined. What begins as a murder investigation soon reveals layers of intrigue and conspiracy reaching into the highest echelons of French society.
As the four friends follow a trail of clues through duels and deceptions, they find themselves squarely in the crosshairs of their old nemesis, Cardinal Richelieu, whose shadowy hand seems to guide events from behind the curtain. Each revelation brings them closer to King Louis XIII himself—and to dark secrets some would kill to protect.
With their loyalties tested and their faith in humanity shaken, the musketeers must decide how far they’re willing to go for truth when the price of discovery might be their very lives. Some mysteries, once unveiled, can never be forgotten.
Signals from Noise: S.F. & F. Stories of Finding Meaning in Chaos by Zaklog the Great and with an introduction by Hari Seldon closes out our three-way tie, also with 51 sales.
Signals from Noise gathers seven speculative tales that ask what happens when the universe insists on being understood — and what it costs to listen. A priest and an astronomer piece together a message written across the stars in light-years and centuries. Two AI combat drones, stranded alive after their missiles misfire on Christmas Eve, quietly begin to wonder why they’re killing each other. A scholar stumbles into a power older than language, and finds it has been waiting for exactly him. A teenage boy buries his mother in a fractured America and walks out the door into the wilderness with only his wits and a robot dog at his side. A king discovers that mercy and brutality can be harder to tell apart than he ever imagined. A sailor rots in a cell where his captor will not speak a single word — and learns that silence itself can be a weapon, or a door.
Ranging from cosmic mystery to post-apocalyptic survival, from Arthurian-flavored fantasy to the cold mathematics of drone warfare, these stories share a conviction: that chaos is not the final word. Somewhere beneath the static, a signal is still transmitting. The question is whether anyone has the patience — or the courage — to receive it.
For readers of Ray Bradbury, C.S. Lewis, and Walter M. Miller Jr.
First published in 1920, A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay (1876-1945) captured 50 sales to close out the top twenty five.
A Voyage to Arcturus is a remarkable work of science fiction that has inspired, mesmerised, and unnerved readers for decades. It is an epic voyage over one of the strangest and most beautifully imagined alien planets ever imagined, a profoundly affecting exploration of the philosophical centre of the cosmos, and a startlingly personal adventure into what makes us human and special.
“It is with no fear of serious contradiction that I call A Voyage to Arcturus the most imaginative in literature. No mainstream book can compare for sheer, headlong imagination with a science fiction book, because imagination is the stock-in-trade of science fiction. Mainstream books may be more realistic, possess a more tightly woven plot, or enjoy characters more true to life, but no one will seriously maintain the sensation of sheer awe and wonder which springs out of science fiction to have any superior in the mainstream.”
Comments and review by John C. Wright
Extended Sale Rankings
There’s an anomaly in the sales stats. When I linked Sarah Hoyt’s No Man’s Land Volume 1, I linked to the rest of the series as a series link instead of as two separate books. That link shows up fifth in the overall rankings. Volume 2 showed up in 16th or so all by itself. We’re not sure whether that’s a purchase of either book or both books, so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt and bumping both books to that spot. As Sarah says:
LET ME MAKE THIS VERY CLEAR: I don’t know if this will happen ever again. I’m probably going to put it on sale now and then, but probably not all three volumes and not that low because (crazy Hal hat on) I’m hurting myself with this sale, as I only get 33c a book. (It’s not on KU.) Or if you prefer, like Dibbler, I’m cutting off me own head.
Here are the top two hundred.
Most of the books in the sale sold at least a few copies. A good story makes readers come back for more, but getting readers to choose your book means you have to get two things right, first: your cover and your blurb. Last year, indie author and editor L. Jagi Lamplighter shared some wisdom.
Indie Primer... Useful Things to Know
Today, a guest post from L. Jagi Lamplighter with advice for indie authors wanting their books to stand out from the crowd.
And the intrepid crew at the Mad Genius Club have a bunch of useful posts to help you navigate from writing to publishing.
Sale Traffic
Traffic to the Based Book Sale came from a broad mix of sources, with no single outlet dominating the field. Direct traffic accounted for 30% of visitors, suggesting a substantial number of readers came intentionally through bookmarks, saved links, word of mouth, or prior familiarity with the sale. Email contributed another 17%, demonstrating the continued value of mailing lists and direct outreach.
Among external referrals, Instapundit was the single largest source at 16%, confirming once again the influence of established independent blogs. Vox Day’s site contributed 8%, while Twitter/X provided 4%. Several long-running independent blogging communities also drove meaningful traffic, including According to Hoyt (2%) and Mad Genius Club (2%).
Notably, Substack itself generated additional discovery through the app (3%), direct-to-app traffic (11%), and open.substack.com links (1%), together accounting for roughly 15% of visits. Facebook, by contrast, contributed only 2%.
The overall picture is encouraging. Traffic was not dependent on any single platform, social network, or influencer. Instead, the Based Book Sale benefited from a resilient ecosystem of email subscribers, independent bloggers, Substack readers, social sharing, and direct reader loyalty. The data suggests that building relationships with audiences and fellow creators continues to outperform reliance on large social-media platforms alone.
Finally, special thanks are due to all the bloggers, newsletter writers, podcasters, and social media users who helped spread the word. The traffic data makes clear that independent media remains one of the most effective ways to connect readers and writers. Every link, mention, recommendation, and review contributed to the success of this sale.
Closing Words
The most important lesson from this sale is that independent publishing continues to mature. More than 5,200 books moved during a single week-long promotion organized not by a corporation, retailer, publisher, or marketing agency, but by authors, small presses, bloggers, and readers working together. The old gatekeepers once controlled discovery, distribution, and promotion. Today, a growing network of creators and readers is proving that great books can still find an audience without asking permission.
We are planning a June Romance Niche Sale Wednesday, June 24, 2026, 12:00 AM PDT through Wednesday, July 1, 2026, 12:00 AM PDT.
Our friends at Epic Indie have announced their Epic Summer Sale. Authors and readers alike will want to check it out.
Our next big sale sale is BasedCon Based Book Sale: Wednesday, September 9, 2026, 12:00 AM PDT through Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 12:00 AM PDT.
Sign up to stay in the loop.
Thanks for another great sale, demonstrating the ability of independent and small press authors to band together, pool our resources, and promote each other’s books.
About the Based Book Sale
The Based Book Sale is a grassroots collaboration of independent authors, small presses, and readers built around the idea that great books do not need institutional gatekeepers to find an audience. For one week, hundreds of titles across science fiction, fantasy, history, philosophy, politics, and nonfiction are offered at steep discounts — many for just $0.99 or free — as participating authors cross-promote one another’s work and introduce readers to new voices, hidden gems, and unconventional ideas. You can learn more from a recent interview with Based Book Sale Founder, Hans G. Schantz.
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As far as I can tell, I sold an additional 44 books in the same series as MarsX, as several people bought the whole series of books which I had marked down to 99 cents also. In addition, there were 24 sales in an earlier series, which I had also marked down, that I believe was prompted by my visibility from this sale.
Had 40 sales across my books, which is the best yet for me. Thanks Hans!