The Salt Archive
Placement where the next book gets chosen.
#1
On three lists
Delivered June 2025
The author
Lucas Hawthorne
Lucas Hawthorne spent eleven years in maritime archives before writing fiction. The Salt Archive is his debut novel.
The book
- Title
- The Salt Archive
- Genre
- Historical fiction
- Publisher
- Maris Press
- Extent
- 512 pages
- Campaign
- Goodreads Promotions
The challenge
A debut with no audience, competing in a category where discovery is almost entirely reader-to-reader. Nobody was going to search for this book. It had to appear beside the books people already loved.
The strategy
How we approached it.
01
Map the adjacent shelves
We identified thirty-one Listopia lists where readers of Patrick O'Brian and Hilary Mantel actually browse, ranked by traffic and by how contested the top ten was.
02
Earn the votes honestly
Real readers, matched to the book's themes, received advance copies. No vote farms. Every placement was built on people who had actually finished it.
03
Hold the position
Twelve weeks of monitoring and gentle re-engagement kept the book in the visible band rather than sliding out after the launch spike.
Before and after
What actually changed.
Measured against the ninety days before the campaign began.
Listopia placements
0
22
lists
Goodreads ratings
34
2,910
12 weeks
Want-to-read adds
410
19,600
47×
In the author's words
“I had no platform and no illusions. Twelve weeks later strangers were arguing about my book in the comments of a list I had never heard of.”
Lucas Hawthorne
Author, The Salt Archive
Gallery
From the campaign.
Next project
The Ninth Tower
A. K. Drake · Author Websites
Taking four titles for the next quarter
Let the right readers
find your book.
Tell us about the book. We will read it, tell you honestly what we would do, and only then talk about working together.
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