SPF Community

The SPF Community is the public Facebook group anchoring Mark Dawson's Self Publishing Formula (SPF) ecosystem. With approximately 54,000 members as of late 2025, it is one of the largest marketing-focused indie author communities on Facebook — second only to 20BooksTo50K in size. Unlike many groups tied to paid courses, the SPF Community is open to anyone with no course purchase required.

Discussions center on the full marketing funnel: Facebook and Amazon advertising, book launch strategy, email list building, ARC management, metadata optimization, and platform monetization. Moderation is active and strict; no self-promotion is permitted. Members frequently search the archived post history for past discussions on ad creative, targeting strategy, and genre-specific launch tactics.

The SPF Ecosystem#

The Facebook group is the free entry point into a broader ecosystem built by Dawson and co-founder James Blatch:

• The Self Publishing Show — SPF's flagship podcast, which ran 400+ episodes before an 18-month hiatus. The show relaunched on February 6, 2026 (episode SPS-433), with James Blatch and romance author Cecilia "Cissy" Mecca as co-hosts. The back catalog covers a decade of indie publishing strategy. Mark Dawson is no longer the regular co-host but participates as a guest.
• Courses — SPF offers paid training at learnselfpublishing.com: Self Publishing Launchpad (~$597, 30+ hours covering pre-publication through post-launch), Ads for Authors (~$849, comprehensive Facebook and Amazon ad training), AI Marketing for Authors, and List Building for Authors. A Mastermind tier (~$1,499/year) provides live Q&A access with Dawson and Blatch.
• SPS Live — An annual London conference; 2026 marks its sixth edition, held June 11–12, 2026 at County Hall on the South Bank (the 2025 edition ran at Queen Elizabeth Hall and drew 900+ attendees). Past events have featured headline speakers including E.L. James, Lucy Score, Joanna Penn, and every Kindle Storyteller Award winner, with sponsors such as Amazon KDP, Reedsy, Draft2Digital, and BookBub. Digital tickets include the full session archive of past events.
• SPF Foundation — An annual scholarship program awarding up to 10 authors per year lifetime access to Launchpad and Ads for Authors, $2,500 in Reedsy professional services credits, and Written Word Media promotions. Applications open each January.

Mark Dawson#

Dawson is a British thriller author (the John Milton, Beatrix Rose, and Atticus Priest series) who self-published "The Cleaner" in 2013 and built a 7-figure annual income through systematic Facebook advertising. He holds USA Today bestselling and Audible bestselling status, with 6M+ copies sold. He founded SPF in 2015 with former BBC journalist James Blatch to share those systems with other authors. Dawson continues writing fiction and participates in Mastermind Q&As; Blatch has become the primary public-facing presence for SPF podcasting and events.

Who It's For#

• Authors learning book advertising — particularly Facebook and Amazon ads: the SPF ecosystem has among the most structured training available for this
• Fiction authors building a launch process — email list strategy, launch sequencing, and reader funnel building are core discussion topics
• Authors who want course-backed community depth — the free group is valuable standalone, but the course ecosystem provides a structured layer not available in purely peer-to-peer communities

Limitations#

• Marketing-heavy culture can feel overwhelming for debut authors with one book and a small budget; the community skews toward authors already in active marketing mode
• Genre skew — discussions favor fiction, particularly genre series; literary fiction and most nonfiction categories are underrepresented
• Facebook dependency — the entire free community exists on a single platform
• Podcast gap — The Self Publishing Show was on hiatus for 18 months (mid-2023 to February 2026); the new format with Cissy Mecca as co-host is still establishing itself

Alternatives#

For a broader, data-driven community with a rapid-release and writing-to-market focus, 20BooksTo50K is the closest peer at a larger scale. For wide distribution strategies outside Amazon/KU, Wide for the Win is the specialist community. The two communities serve different publishing strategies and many authors belong to both.