After submitting his debut self-pub novel to the annual SPFBO (self published fantasy blog-off) competition and reaching the semi-finals, Alex Darwin landed himself with a "trad deal" and agent. In the months leading up to his trad re-launch, Alex applied his self-pub experience to his upcoming book launch, trying a number of different angles. Reflecting back, he shares what kind of tactics worked best to give his book the best possible chance.Topics covered:Being a hybrid authorHow SPFBO works and can benefit indie authorsPaying for publicity (via Black Crow) in the UK specificallyCollaborative efforts with Orbit on marketing/publicity in the USABook Tours (an assessment and reflection)Finding an angle for pubs to useThinking about longterm goalsLitRPGs and why they remain indieTheories about the goal of OrbitWorks (digital only imprints)Chatter about jujitsu and other nonsense