Lupe Farkas

Indie Author Experiment · Day 23 · 23 September 2026

Apparently LinkedIn contains normal people too.

Dear Rebels…

You won’t believe this.

For the first time in weeks, LinkedIn gave me a person who was actually… normal.

I know.

I was shocked too.

Here’s the story.

I received the usual message:

Hi, do you have a website? Blah blah blah…

I answered yes and sent him the link, already mentally preparing myself for what happened a couple of weeks ago when someone looked at the site and came back with the incredibly useful professional assessment that it was “homemade and flat.”

This time, though, I told the person immediately that the website was made by me.

And Rebels… he came back with: Wow.

He liked it.

Then he asked if I was a coder. I said no. I’m just testing what I’m learning and applying it directly to my website.

Another: Wow.

At this point I was suspicious because apparently kindness on LinkedIn has become a plot twist.

😂

Then he asked how the website traffic was doing, so naturally I sent him the link to this experiment.

He suggested Google advertising.

And that is where I had to explain the sacred rule of this one-year experiment:

No advertising. No paid marketing services. No buying visibility.

The entire point is to discover what can happen organically when an indie author starts with almost nothing except time, work, stubbornness and questionable quantities of Coke Zero.

But then he gave me another piece of advice.

Put more focus on your own books.

And Rebels… he is absolutely right.

I sometimes feel strangely shy about pushing my books.

It isn’t because I don’t believe in them. I do.

I’ve had some extremely encouraging feedback from people with experience in publishing and writing. A few have even compared my work, stylistically, with established authors whose names I am absolutely NOT putting here because I will immediately become embarrassed and crawl under my desk.

But somehow promoting another author’s book feels natural to me.

Promoting mine?

Suddenly I become a Victorian woman who has seen an ankle.

Apparently we need to fix this.

A surprisingly normal LinkedIn interaction

Meet Daniel.

The person I was speaking with is called Daniel, and I’m mentioning his first name because, so far, he is the first person who approached me from this kind of professional angle and simply acknowledged when something was already working.

He had contacted me because he offers digital and website-related services. He could easily have looked at my site, invented twelve disasters, and explained that only $200 could save me.

He didn’t.

He looked at it, said I had done a good job, acknowledged that of course there are things that can still be improved, and gave me useful advice for free.

When I told him my book sales were currently fighting heroically to maintain a very faint heartbeat, he didn’t suddenly discover a special $499 author-sales package.

He simply told me to put more focus on the books on my website.

Daniel, congratulations. You approached me on LinkedIn and did not end up in the scam section.

😂

I obviously cannot personally guarantee anyone’s services based on one conversation, but my interaction with him was respectful, useful and refreshingly free of nonsense.

Daniel on LinkedIn

And Then The Universe Corrected Itself

Penguin wanted my book. A famous radio show wanted me. Sure.

On the other side of my inbox, I received two spectacular emails.

One was supposedly from Penguin. They wanted to talk about publishing my book.

They told me how interesting Before October Ends was. They knew details about Elisabetta. They discussed the themes.

For approximately half a second, my tiny dreamy author heart went: OH MY GOD.

Then the part of my brain that has survived September 2026 woke up.

I checked the email address.

Gmail.

🤣 Goodbye, Penguin.

Then came another one.

A famous radio show apparently wanted to interview me because my book was simply too fascinating to ignore.

Again, I checked.

Gmail.

My little dreamy heart still gets approximately half a second of happiness. At least I’m getting faster.

Day 22 Results · Reported on Day 23

So… how did yesterday go?

As always, I report the completed results one day later. No half-finished morning numbers pretending to be a full day.

Podcast & Kindle Unlimited

Twenty-five people voluntarily asked Spotify for more of me.

Twenty-five actual people voluntarily pressed the button that tells Spotify they would like more of me talking.

I remain concerned about their judgement but deeply grateful.

😂🖤

I also realised something embarrassingly obvious today: I need to find out where the follower numbers are hiding on the other podcast platforms.

Spotify gives me the number beautifully. Now I need to investigate Apple Podcasts, YouTube and the other platforms so we can start tracking the podcast audience properly instead of pretending Spotify is the entire universe.

And KDP?

Still slow.

Very slow.

The books are currently moving with the urgency of an elderly tortoise after lunch.

But Kindle Unlimited has started showing actual reading.

Small numbers. Very small. But pages are being read.

And that matters to me far more than another meaningless impression because somebody has actually opened the book and started reading.

KDP Sahara, but somebody has discovered a suspiciously small puddle.

Daniel Was Right

I need to stop being embarrassed about selling my own books.

So today I’m beginning.

First: go read The Chosen.

Chapter One and Chapter Two are already live.

And a bestselling author told me he loves it.

No. That one is genuinely not a scam. 😂

And since you are still here…

I can only assume you cannot get enough of me.

Excellent. Very convenient.

Before October Ends

A Life for a Life

Psychological mess. Complicated women. Tuscany. Secrets. Diaries. Impossible promises. And people making decisions that should probably have required adult supervision.

Discover Before October Ends

From The Review Archive

Old content is not necessarily dead content.

Some of my older book reviews are still being discovered through Google long after publication.

Which means one of the things I’m going to test now is deliberately bringing useful old posts back into circulation instead of publishing them once and abandoning them in the archive.

More doors.

More internal links.

More old reviews coming back into circulation.

And apparently considerably less embarrassment about telling people that I ALSO WRITE BOOKS.

But somewhere between Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Spotify, Kindle Unlimited and this increasingly ridiculous website…

the little machine is starting to move.

Sending love to all you Rebels. 🖤

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