Is your author business running on systems,
or running on memory?
Fifteen quick questions about how you actually run things behind the books: your reader list, launches, ARC team, superfans, and where your week goes. In about five minutes you'll know your Author Business Type and exactly where your backend is leaking readers and sales.
Free. About 5 minutes. No sign-up to start; your email unlocks your results at the end.
Answer honestly. The score is only useful if it's true.
There are no trick questions and no wrong answers. Pick the option that best describes how things work today, not how you wish they worked.
Your answers are private. We use your email only to send your results PDF and follow-up from Author Command Center. Unsubscribe anytime.
Five parts of your author business that most authors run by feel
Each question maps to one of the systems that either supports your writing or quietly eats into it.
Reader Relationships
Where your reader list lives, whether it's segmented, whether you know which books each reader has read, and whether you could name your 100 most engaged fans.
Launches & Releases
How you manage a launch, how readers find out about a new book, and whether the process is repeatable or rebuilt from scratch every time.
ARC & Review Coordination
How your advance readers are recruited, delivered to, reminded, and tracked, and whether you can see who actually posted a review.
Series Completion & Superfans
What happens when a reader finishes a book, how you move them to the next one, and what you offer the readers who would happily buy more from you.
Operations & Your Time
How many series and pen names you're juggling, how bonus content gets delivered, and how much of your week goes to admin instead of writing.
Your Result
An overall score, your Author Business Type, and a clear read on which of these five areas is costing you the most right now.
Which one are you right now?
Your result isn't a grade. It's a description of how your business currently operates, and the most useful next step from there.
Type 01
The Scattered Storyteller
"I'm writing. I'm publishing. But everything behind the books is chaos."
Books are out and readers exist, but the list, the ARC team, and every launch live in different places and mostly in your head.
Type 02
The Hustling Author
"I'm doing all the things. Nothing is connected, and it's exhausting."
You work hard and it shows, but the tools don't talk to each other, so you are the integration. Growth means more of your hours.
Type 03
The Systematic Author
"I have systems. I just know they could work harder for me."
You've built real processes. The gaps are in connection, automation, and visibility, not effort. The next level is consolidation.
Type 04
The Business Builder
"I run this like a business. I want infrastructure that matches."
Backlist, direct sales, possibly an assistant. You need professional-grade systems and a dashboard that shows you the whole operation.
The money isn't only in writing more books. It's in the systems behind the books you already have.
The reader who loved book one disappeared into a retailer's algorithm, and you have no way to tell them book two exists.
Your most engaged fans would happily buy early access, bonus content, or signed copies. Nothing is set up to offer it to them.
Your backlist is sitting there, not working nearly as hard as it could, because nothing moves readers from one title to the next.
Every launch feels like starting over, because the process lives in your memory instead of in a system.
Your writing time keeps getting traded for admin, and you can't tell which of the admin is actually producing anything.
None of these are discipline problems. They are infrastructure problems. The assessment shows you which ones apply to you, in what order, so you can stop guessing.
Five minutes now. Clarity for the next twelve months.
Answer 15 questions
Multiple choice, about how your author business runs today. No sign-up first, no essay answers, nothing to prepare.
Enter your email, see your results
On the last screen, tell us where to send your report. Your score and Author Business Type appear instantly, and a PDF copy lands in your inbox.
Decide what to do next
Use the results on your own, or if you'd like the systems built for you, you'll see how the ACC Setup Intensive fits your type.
Created by an author who lived every one of these questions
Mary B. Barbee is an independent author, the founder of Mystic Valley Press, and a systems builder who spent years designing CRMs and automation for businesses before turning that experience on her own author business. The assessment reflects the exact questions she had to answer for herself.
It's the same framework behind the Author Command Center, the done-for-you Setup Intensive that installs the systems established fiction authors need to run the business behind their books.
Author Command Center is a Mystic Valley Press company
Find out how your author business is actually running.
Fifteen questions. Five minutes. A clear picture of where your systems stand and what would make the biggest difference next.
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