What you can do during your Toolchest free trial

By the end of this guide you will know what you can do with the Indie Author Toolchest for 14 days without paying, what waits until you subscribe, and what happens to your site on day 14.

The trial gives you a working author website and a dashboard to run it from. No card is needed to start, so you can build everything and decide afterwards.

Start your free trial

1. Open the Indie Author Toolchest page. At the top is a box headed Build your free author page in minutes.
2. Type your book's Amazon code into Your book's Amazon code (ASIN) or ISBN. On Amazon it is under Product details.
3. Type your address into Your email.
4. Click Build my free page.
5. Open the email we send you and click the link in it. The dashboard opens and your 14 days begin.

What you can do in the 14 days

Your site is public from the first minute, so readers can visit it while you build.

• Build your site: your Profile and design, your books and your Extra pages.
• Add books under My books.
• Collect subscribers through a Reader magnet and your sign-up form.
• Offer review copies to readers under Review copies.
• Make codes for events under Codes for events.

Your reader magnet, your free chapter sign-up and your book pages all work while you are on the trial.

What switches on when you subscribe

Five things wait for your subscription: selling your books, emailing your subscribers, gifting copies, sending review copies to press, and using your own domain.

Subscribers you collect during the trial are kept, so your list is ready the day you start emailing it.

Subscribe

1. While you are on the trial, a banner across the top of every dashboard page shows the days you have left. It is headed Keep your site live.
2. Click Subscribe now in the banner.
3. Choose Monthly or Annual.
4. Click Subscribe now again and finish on the payment page.

The plan is $12.99 a month or $120 a year. The pricing box on the Toolchest page shows the annual plan as $10.00 a month, billed $120 a year, which is $35.88 (23%) less than paying monthly. It also says the early-adopter price is frozen for two years from the day you join.

What happens on day 14

We email you reminders during the trial, including one three days before it ends. If the 14 days pass without a subscription, your site goes private and the banner changes to Your site is private.

Everything you added is kept: your books, your subscribers and your settings. Click Reactivate my site in the banner whenever you are ready, and your site goes back online.

Good to know

• An expired account is kept until 90 days after your trial began, which is 76 days after it ended. After that it is removed.
• An account that has made a sale is never removed automatically.
• You can send us a message from the Help screen even after the trial has ended.

Your next step

Work through your checklist on Home, starting with setting up your author website with one ISBN. When you want to compare the cost with doing it yourself, what the DIY author stack costs a year adds it up. After you subscribe, change your plan, update your card or cancel covers the billing screen.

You can try all of this free for 14 days, with no card: start at the Indie Author Toolchest.