Ingram has now launched its long-touted Covered platform. Covered is an alternative to platforms like NetGalley that offer advance copies of books. It will have a digital focus, initially offering ebooks in EPUB and PDF formats, with audiobooks expected to follow in the near future. The platform will be open to Ingram’s network of 50,000 or so booksellers and librarians, who will be able to order copies of books they like based on the advance reading the platform enables them to do.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
Where the platform differs from NetGalley is that it is only available to industry professionals. It won’t be possible for influencers, for example, to access review copies. This is an interesting move, which may seem counterintuitive at a time when the likes of BookTok are touted as the saviors of the doomed art of reading. But it will avoid ARC hoarding. And it means that literally everyone who is reading through the platform is only a click away from purchasing copies for a wide potential audience.
Indie authors using IngramSpark will be able to benefit from the platform and its network, setting up portals within the system that allow booksellers and librarians to buy direct and have orders fulfilled alongside the rest of their Ingram order.
Amazon Changes Bestseller List Updates
I want to give three headline-level takeaways from a very useful piece in the latest edition of Jane Friedman’s The Bottom Line, based on her deep-dive interview with Alex Newton of K-lytics. The Bottom Line and K-lytics are paid subscription sources, so while I want to report key information, I don’t want to take eyeballs away from where they belong.
First, Amazon is changing the way, or rather the frequency, with which it calculates the bestseller list. Instead of hourly updates to the charts, there will now be updates only once a day. As Newton points out, this makes it harder for a big push with a single marketing campaign to move the dial. This will inevitably make it harder for people to have one big sales spike and then be able to label themselves a bestseller.
Romance Still Rules, but Its Share Is Falling
Next up is some genre insight. Romance still rules the roost, with 48 percent of the top 100 titles in 2025. But that’s down from the previous year’s 60 percent. Within romance, as you might expect, romantasy is the leading subgenre.
Indie Authors in the Kindle Bestseller Charts
And finally, some very interesting figures on the extent to which indie authors feature in the Kindle bestseller charts. In terms of the top 100, in the US, 38 percent of titles are self-published, while in the UK, that number is just 16 percent (feels excuses about sales figures forming in my head already). Newton feels this is down to large publishers having better-planned and better-executed marketing campaigns when it comes to marketing for Kindle in the UK.
Thoughts or further questions on this post or any self-publishing issue?
If you’re an ALLi member, head over to the SelfPubConnect forum for support from our experienced community of indie authors, advisors, and our own ALLi team. Simply create an account (if you haven’t already) to request to join the forum and get going.
Non-members looking for more information can search our extensive archive of blog posts and podcast episodes packed with tips and advice at ALLi's Self-Publishing Advice Center.
