Mark Dawson's Self Publishing 101 Review: What You Actually Get in 2026

Last reviewed by Robert Prime — August 2026

If you search for “Mark Dawson Self Publishing 101 review”, the first thing to know is that the course you are searching for has not been called that for some time. The company’s own homepage says it plainly: “Self Publishing Launchpad – previously known as Self Publishing 101”.

The second thing: the public enrolment page will not sell it to you. It reads “IS CURRENTLY CLOSED” and offers a waiting list.

The third is stranger. We fetched thirteen live pages on learnselfpublishing.com — the homepage, the Launchpad waiting-list page, the Launchpad sales page, the summer sale page and every course page — and the phrase “Mark Dawson” appears on none of them. Nor does it appear in the podcast feed’s own description, which now reads “Join James Blatch has he navigates the fast changing world of indie publishing” (the typo is theirs). The site strapline is “with James Blatch”. The old domain, selfpublishingformula.com, 302-redirects to learnselfpublishing.com.

None of that makes the course bad, and some of it makes it better value than it was. But it does mean most of what you will read about “Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing 101” describes a product with a different name, price, front man and enrolment model from the one that exists today. Every figure below was pulled from the vendor’s own live pages on 6 August 2026, with sources listed at the end.

Our position, stated up front: we sell our own £197 course at course.publishing.co.uk, so treat this as the bias it is. That is why every figure here comes from the vendor’s own page rather than a secondary source, why there is a long section on the free material that makes buying anything unnecessary for some authors, and why we recommend Learn Self Publishing over our own product for two clearly defined reader types. We are not an affiliate and earn nothing whether you buy or not, which is more than most of page one of Google can say.

The short version

Currency conversions are indicative, calculated at USD 1 = GBP 0.7419 — the European Central Bank reference rate for 5 August 2026, retrieved via frankfurter.dev. Vendor prices are in US dollars, and the Launchpad page notes “Sales tax APPLICABLE TO UK AND EU”, so UK and EU buyers should budget for VAT on top.

What the course actually is

Self Publishing Launchpad is a self-paced video course for authors who have finished a manuscript and now have to turn it into a book that sells. The homepage describes it as “everything you need to know from the moment you type THE END on your manuscript” and rates it “Suitable for beginner to intermediate levels.”

The curriculum is published, which is more than many course sellers manage, so we can be specific rather than guessing. Eight modules:

Module two is where the guest teaching sits, and the names are good ones: cover designer Stuart Bache, who the page notes has designed for John le Carré and Stephen King; Bryan Cohen on blurbs; Dave Chesson, the man behind Publisher Rocket and Atticus, on metadata. There is also a “Tech Library” of software walkthroughs (Amazon KDP, Kobo, BookFunnel, Wix, Squarespace, Mailchimp, MailerLite), bonus modules on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook Live and Pinterest, and a back catalogue of webinars branded LSP University.

What is not published

Be clear about the gaps before you spend $597. The vendor publishes module titles and descriptions but no lesson-by-lesson syllabus with runtimes, no last-updated date per module, and no outcome data on students. The “over forty hours” figure is the vendor’s own and we could not verify it. The missing dates matter more here than in most categories: KDP’s promotional tools and Facebook’s ad interface both change repeatedly within a year, and you cannot tell from outside whether module four was filmed last quarter or four years ago.

One gap surprised us. The Launchpad sales page nowhere states how long access lasts — “lifetime”, “unlimited access” and “as long as you like” do not appear on it. The AI Translations page, by contrast, says: “How does lifetime access sound? After enrolling, you have unlimited access to this course for as long as you like.” Ask before you buy rather than assuming.

What it costs, and the enrolment window problem

The live sales page — at the faintly comic URL learnselfpublishing.com/launchpad-closed-616 — states “One time payment $597” and “payment plan 12 X $54”. Twelve monthly payments total $648, so the plan costs about $51 (roughly £38) more than paying once. The guarantee: “Simply reach out to us via email within 30 days of purchase to receive a full refund – no questions asked.”

Note the discrepancy in the vendor’s own material. Their help-centre article “What does the Launchpad course cost”, last updated 8 November 2022, still says “US$597 if paid in one hit” and offers “12 monthly payments of US$59 or 24 monthly payments of US$32”. The sales page shows 12 × $54 and no 24-month option. Take the sales page as current — and take the gap as a warning that even first-party pages drift.

Now the harder part. The public route to Launchpad, learnselfpublishing.com/launchpad, is a waiting-list page: “The essential course for launching your author business”, followed immediately by “IS CURRENTLY CLOSED” and a “JOIN THE WAITING LIST” button. On that single page we found three different reopening statements, all set in the same large display font: “COURSE OPENS: 29th APRIL 2026”, “COURSE OPENS: 2027” and “COURSE OPENS: 2026”. The first is more than three months in the past. The embedded sign-up form is named “Launchpad - Waitlist - 2026”, created 10 April 2026 and last updated 1 June 2026 according to its own metadata.

Here is the part no other review seems to have checked. The sales page is still publicly reachable, and both its buy buttons resolve to live checkout pages on the vendor’s course platform: one showing “$597.00”, the other “$54.00” with “Then 11 additional payments of $54.00”, each with a working “Place Order Now” button and Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and card options. We did not attempt a purchase, so we cannot tell you an order would complete — but the door marked closed is not locked.

Launchpad has historically sold in open-and-close windows rather than continuously, that is still how it is presented, and no reliable reopening date is published. Join the waiting list and get on with something else. Do not build a launch plan around it opening in a particular week.

One practical note: the summer sale gives 30% off with the code SUMMER30 and carries the footnote “*excluding Self Publishing Launchpad”. The discount you can actually use does not apply to the course you probably came here for.

Everything else they sell, with live prices

Launchpad is the beginner course. The revenue engine is the ads catalogue, and it is open. Prices come from each product’s own page.

The Craft Bundle needs an explanation, because its arithmetic does not follow the rest of the table. That page is not part of the summer sale: it carries its own banner reading “THE CRAFT BUNDLE SPRING SALE / SAVE $195!”, taking $594 to $399, roughly 33% off. Thirty percent off $594 would be $415.80, so the bundle is cheaper than SUMMER30 would make it — and a page still headed “Spring Sale” in August tells you how often these prices get reviewed. More usefully: Bestseller and Revise bought separately in the summer sale cost $208 + $208 = $416, more than the $399 bundle that also throws in the ProWritingAid module.

The sale page names no end date, so if you are reading this later than August 2026, check before assuming the code still works.

The Ads for Authors bundle at $749 (about £556 full, £390 in the sale) contains four ad-platform courses — Amazon, Facebook, TikTok and BookBub — plus bonus modules. If you plan to advertise on two or more of those platforms it beats standalone courses at $397 each. If it is only Amazon, buy the standalone.

Per hour, the SPS Live 2026 Digital pass at $99 is the best value on the site: “full professional recordings of all 32 live sessions” plus “more than 15 bonus sessions” and “immediate access to five previous conferences” — though conference sessions are patchier than a curriculum.

Who Mark Dawson is, and why his name matters less than it did

Mark Dawson is a British thriller writer, a former lawyer, and one of the genuine success stories of indie publishing. In April 2015 Forbes published a piece by Janhoi McGregor headlined “Amazon Pays $450,000 A Year To This Self-Published Writer” — though be precise: the $450,000 sits in the headline, while the body says only that Dawson “pocketed ‘six figures’ last year and he’s on course to make much more this year.” He co-founded the education business and co-hosted the podcast for years. The reputation is earned, and reviews treating him as a guru who has never sold a book are simply wrong.

A fair review has to include two further things.

The 2020 Sunday Times episode

In July 2020, Dawson’s hardback The Cleaner was removed from the Sunday Times bestseller top ten after Nielsen investigated his bulk purchase of 400 copies of his own book. The Bookseller reported it on 21 July 2020 under the headline “Nielsen Book to restate sales numbers for Dawson title after bulk purchase”; its standfirst says Nielsen restated the figures “after the author admitted to making a bulk purchase of his own book The Cleaner to secure his status as a ’top 10 bestseller’.” The full piece sits behind their paywall. Roger Packer’s self-publishing news site carried a fuller account, giving the cost as £3,600 and the chart movement as 13th to 8th, then recalculated to 15th. Wikipedia’s entry on Dawson cites coverage in the Guardian, the Observer, i and the Independent between 20 and 22 July 2020.

What is not in dispute is that he described the purchase publicly, on his own show, before anyone else reported it — a point in his favour that most write-ups omit. His stated reason was getting signed hardbacks to readers outside the UK in a trackable way.

He is not visibly running it any more

“Mark Dawson” does not appear on the Learn Self Publishing homepage, the Launchpad waiting-list or sales pages, the summer sale page, or any of the eight individual course and product pages we fetched. The podcast’s RSS feed lists James Blatch as the sole itunes:author and its description mentions only him; the most recent episode, SPS-458, published 30 July 2026, is presented by James Blatch and Cissy Mecca. The company still trades as The Self Publishing Formula Ltd in the feed’s copyright line, and support emails still go to selfpublishingformula.com. We found no public statement explaining the change and will not speculate about why.

Why this matters commercially: if you are buying to learn from the author of the John Milton books, read the module list first. The curriculum is taught by named specialists, not by Dawson. Arguably a better product. Not the product the search term promises.

Who should buy it

A caveat that applies to every line here: in August 2026 the course is waitlist-only through the front door. Read the profiles below as “worth your money when it reopens”, not as a purchase you can make this afternoon.

The author with a finished manuscript, no platform, and no idea what happens next. The exact reader Launchpad was built for. Forty hours of structured video from finished draft to launched book, in order, with software walkthroughs, is worth $597 if it saves you six months of guessing. It very plausibly does.

The author who has published one or two books badly and wants to reset. The testimonials cluster around this profile — wrong cover, wrong blurb, unused mailing list. A systematic pass over the whole platform beats another tactical course.

The genre fiction author writing a series. Almost everything in the curriculum — reader magnets, list automation, read-through, launch teams, Facebook ads to book one — is built on series economics. If you write commercial fiction and plan to keep writing it, the model fits.

The author who wants ads, not the basics. Skip Launchpad, buy Ads for Authors. It is open, discounted, and the strongest thing the company sells.

Who should not buy it

Anyone writing non-fiction, memoir or a business book. The curriculum is fiction-shaped: reader magnets, series read-through, Kindle Unlimited economics and BookBub deals are fiction mechanics. A non-fiction author selling a £30 book to a professional audience needs a different playbook.

Anyone whose book is not finished. The course starts at “THE END”. With half a manuscript, you are buying motivation, not tools.

Anyone who has not yet checked that their book is technically publishable. Every year we see authors spend hundreds on marketing training while their interior fails Amazon’s own requirements. Sort the file first. Our free KDP readiness audit costs nothing, and formatting starts at £69 if it finds problems.

Anyone on a tight budget who has not exhausted the free material. See the next section. This is the recommendation that costs us money to make, and we mean it.

Anyone shopping for a shortcut. The sales page is refreshingly blunt: “This is an honest tutorial on how to be a professional indie author – if you want a get-rich-quick scheme, look somewhere else!” Believe them.

The free version of this course is better than most paid ones

This is the section reviewers with affiliate links do not write.

The Self Publishing Show podcast. The public RSS feed carries 457 episodes, from SPF-000 on 19 February 2016 to SPS-458 on 30 July 2026, free in audio and video — one of the largest bodies of indie-publishing education anywhere, produced by the company that sells the course. An author working through the back catalogue would learn most of what Launchpad teaches. What they would not get is order, structure, or a decision at the end of each lesson. That is what the $597 buys: sequence.

Reedsy Learning. 55 courses in August 2026, most free, many delivered as ten-day email courses. Ricardo Fayet — who teaches the $397 Amazon Ads for Authors course on Learn Self Publishing — has a free Amazon Ads for Authors email course on Reedsy. Start there before you spend $397; if the free version tells you what you needed, you have saved £295. (Reedsy also sells paid video courses: How to Plan a Novel at $49, How to Write a Novel at $1,399.)

David Gaughran’s Starting From Zero. A free video course — the button reads “Enroll for free” — running to 27 lessons across 6 chapters, from an author whose books on indie marketing are among the most widely recommended in the field. Gaughran sells nothing expensive and has spent years documenting publishing scams. If you only do one free thing, do this one.

The Alliance of Independent Authors. Not free, but cheap and structurally different: a non-profit membership body, not a course seller. Its joining page displays prices in pounds — GBP 89.00 a year for Associate, GBP 109.00 for Author, GBP 129.00 for Authorpreneur (assessed, requiring evidence of 50,000+ book sales in two years or equivalent revenue). Ongoing advice, watchdog listings of dodgy service providers and a community, for less than a fifth of Launchpad’s price. Full refund within 28 days.

How it compares to the obvious alternatives

If you write fiction series and want the deepest single library of indie publishing training available, Launchpad plus the Ads bundle is the strongest package on that list, and we sell nothing that replaces it. If you want ongoing, vendor-neutral guidance rather than a one-off purchase, ALLi at £89 a year beats any course including ours — publishing changes faster than a filmed curriculum can. Neither of those calls favours us, and both are the honest answer.

Why the search results for this course are so poor

Worth saying out loud, because it explains what you have probably just read elsewhere. Search “Mark Dawson Self Publishing 101 review” and page one delivers a review published by a company that sells competing self-publishing programmes. It still calls the course Self Publishing 101 and gives two different prices: “The most recent price we could find for Self Publishing 101 was $549 (if you pay in a lump sum.)” in one place, and “(currently $497 or $49 for 12 months)” in another. Neither matches the vendor’s live page, which says $597 and 12 × $54. A buyer following that review would reach checkout expecting to save $100.

Also on page one: multiple sites offering “Mark Dawson – Self Publishing Formula 101” for between $40 and $63. These are unauthorised resales, and we are not linking to them. Beyond paying a stranger for someone else’s intellectual property, you would be buying a static rip of a course whose value sits largely in what a rip cannot include — the Tech Library walkthroughs of platforms that have since changed, the LSP University webinars, the community, the refund window, and any updates made since the files were copied.

That is the state of the results Google has to choose from for this query, and it is the main reason this review exists.

How to decide in ten minutes

1. Is your manuscript finished? If no, stop. Buy nothing.
2. Is it fiction, ideally a series? If no, Launchpad is the wrong shape for you.
3. Have you listened to ten episodes of The Self Publishing Show and read one of David Gaughran’s books? If no, do that first. It costs nothing and tells you whether you like this approach to publishing at all.
4. Do you need sequence more than you need information? If yes, the $597 is defensible. If you are comfortable assembling your own path, it is not.
5. Do you need it in the next three months? Treat it as unavailable. Join the waiting list, buy Ads for Authors if advertising is the gap, and get on with the launch.
6. Whatever you decide, use the 30-day refund window properly. Watch the first three modules inside 30 days, not in month four.

What we would do with £443

For an author with one finished commercial novel and no platform: spend nothing for a fortnight. Work through Gaughran’s free course and Reedsy’s free Amazon Ads email course. Join ALLi at £89. Fix the book file so it passes KDP cleanly. Then, with roughly £340 left and a far better idea of where your gaps actually are, buy the one paid course that addresses the gap you identified rather than the one the search results pushed at you. If the answer after that fortnight is still “I do not know what order to do any of this in”, that is exactly the problem Launchpad solves, and $597 for forty hours of ordered, refundable video is a fair price. Join the waiting list without embarrassment — or compare our own two courses, which are open today.

How we checked

Every price and quote above was retrieved on 6 August 2026 from learnselfpublishing.com — the homepage, /launchpad, /launchpad-closed-616 (the sales page), /summersale, /craft-bundle, /podcast-sps-audio and the seven remaining course pages — plus the two courses.selfpubform.com checkout pages linked from the sales page, and the Self Publishing Show RSS feed. Third-party figures came from publisherrocket.com, allianceindependentauthors.org/members/join, reedsy.com/learning/courses, courses.davidgaughran.com and learn.bestpageforward.net. Prices and enrolment windows move without notice — this vendor’s own help centre is nearly four years out of date on the price — so open the vendor’s page before acting on anything here.

Related guides

• Book launch checklist
• Amazon ads for authors
• Amazon Ads vs BookBub Ads
• Self-publishing costs in the UK
• Book marketing for UK authors: the complete guide

Frequently asked questions

Is Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing 101 still available?

Not under that name. It is now Self Publishing Launchpad, and the vendor’s homepage states it was “previously known as Self Publishing 101”. As at 6 August 2026 the public Launchpad page reads “IS CURRENTLY CLOSED” and offers only a waiting list, with three conflicting reopening dates on the same page: 29th April 2026, 2026 and 2027.

How much does Self Publishing Launchpad cost?

$597 one-off, or 12 monthly payments of $54, as stated on the vendor’s live sales page in August 2026. That is roughly £443, or £40 a month, and the page notes sales tax applies to UK and EU buyers. A 30-day, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee is stated.

Is Self Publishing Launchpad worth it?

It depends on the reader. Yes for a fiction author with a finished manuscript, no platform and no idea of the correct sequence of steps — the value is the ordered path through forty hours of material, not the information itself. No for non-fiction authors, unfinished manuscripts, or anyone who has not yet worked through the free material from the same company, David Gaughran and Reedsy.

Does Mark Dawson still teach the course?

No — not visibly. His name does not appear on the Learn Self Publishing homepage, the Launchpad waiting-list or sales pages, the summer sale page or any of the eight course and product pages we checked in August 2026, and the site strapline reads “with James Blatch”. The curriculum is taught by named specialists including Stuart Bache, Bryan Cohen and Dave Chesson, and recent podcast episodes are hosted by James Blatch and Cissy Mecca. We found no public statement explaining the change.

What is the free alternative to Mark Dawson’s course?

The Self Publishing Show podcast, from the same company, has 457 free episodes in its public feed going back to February 2016. David Gaughran’s Starting From Zero is a free 27-lesson video course. Reedsy Learning offers 55 courses, most free and many as ten-day email courses, including a free Amazon Ads for Authors course by Ricardo Fayet — the same instructor whose paid version on Learn Self Publishing costs $397.

Why are cheap copies of Self Publishing Formula 101 for sale online?

Several sites on page one of Google offer the course for $40 to $63. These are unauthorised resales. Aside from paying a third party for someone else’s intellectual property, you receive a frozen copy of dated material with no community access, no refund window, and none of the updates a course about Amazon and Facebook advertising depends on.

Should I buy Launchpad or the Ads for Authors bundle?

Buy Ads for Authors if your book is out and the gap is getting it in front of readers — it is open, at $749, or $525 in the current sale with code SUMMER30. Buy Launchpad if you have not yet published, or published badly — except that its public enrolment page is closed, and it is excluded from the sale.