Three guides, one per job. Each says plainly what works today and what does not, because finding out the hard way is worse.
Before you can make a squad we check you are the author you say you are. Readers are trusting a stranger with their time, and this is the only thing standing behind that.
Name it after the series or the pen name rather than the book, unless you only ever plan to write the one. The web address is fixed once people start sharing it.
Every squad starts with sensible point values and four tiers. You can change all of it in Squad settings and Rewards.
The one thing worth thinking about: make the gap between tiers feel crossable. If your first reward costs 1,500 Hype and a task is worth 20, that is seventy-five tasks, and most people will do four and stop.
Applications arrive under Members, on the Applications tab. You see their answers, whether this is their first squad, and how long they have waited.
Write your own questions in Application form. "Which platforms do you post on?" tells you far more than a blank box. Keep it to three or four: past that people give up halfway.
Post a task under Tasks. Your squad sees it immediately.
Submissions land under Approvals with a link to their actual post. Open it, then approve or reject.
Approving awards the Hype in the same moment, so it can never say approved without the points arriving. If you reject, you have to say why, and they see it. "Link is private" is useful. "No" is not.
Points nobody can spend stop feeling like points. Put something on the shelf in Rewards in the first week, even if it is small.
The best rewards cost you almost nothing and cannot be bought anywhere. A signed book costs money and postage. Naming a character costs an afternoon and is worth far more to the right reader.
Costs you nothing
Costs an afternoon, worth a great deal
Things that cost money
Deleted scenes, early chapters, character art. Each piece is gated to a tier, so climbing towards it is worth something.
Every reader gets their own copy. Their name and a code unique to them is drawn faintly over the page. If a screenshot turns up anywhere, you paste that code into your portal and it tells you whose copy it came from, how many times they opened it, on how many devices, and how far they read.
Send an ARC through the platform and every copy is stamped with the reader's own name and a code, on the title page and the foot of every page. If one turns up on a piracy site, you paste the code into your portal and it tells you whose it was.
Forty posts spread across a week is noise. Forty posts inside ten minutes is a trend, and that is the difference between your squad being pleasant and your squad being effective.
Set a time. Write the copy now, while you are thinking about it. It stays hidden from everybody until an hour before, so nobody posts early with text the rest of the timeline has already seen.
Two ways, and the difference is scope.
A personal assistant is added to your account and covers every squad you have now and every one you make later. Set it up once. They get everything except billing by default.
A team role covers one squad. On the Members screen, pick what somebody is from a dropdown: Assistant, Admin, Moderator, Approver, Fulfilment, or Graphics. Choosing one sets every permission at once.
Yes. Additional squads are $10 a month or $80 a year on top of your first, and they are entirely separate: their own members, rules, calendar, rewards, and Trust Score. Add one from Billing.
Your squad goes read-only. Nothing is deleted, members keep their Hype, and everything comes back if you return. We will not hold your work hostage.
Yes, under Team and permissions. Eleven separate permissions, so you can let somebody approve submissions without letting them ban members or see billing.
You can add a correction, and it shows as a correction. You cannot delete or edit what is already there. That is what makes the ledger worth anything to a member.
No, and you cannot. There is no review task type in this platform, so an ARC sent through it structurally cannot require one. Asking for a review in exchange for a book is against Amazon's terms and is the commonest reason authors lose reviews.
When most of your squad is awake and on their phone, which is usually early evening rather than nine in the morning. If a lot of them are in another timezone, check before you pick. The copy is hidden until an hour before either way.
They can photograph the screen, and nothing in a browser stops that. What the watermark gives you is a deterrent, because a reader who can see their own name behaves differently, and a name if something does leak. Anybody promising more than that is selling something that does not exist.
A year free from the day you join, then $75 a year and $10 per extra squad for as long as you stay, against a standard price of $200 and $80. A badge on your profile and your squad. We do not ask for a card until 31 days before that free year ends.
No. It is there for planning a launch month, and it stays a draft until you publish it. Plenty of squads run on tasks alone.
We ask for two things, and both are required: the event website and a ticket link. Together they show the event is real and somebody can actually attend it.
You also give us the city, the region, and the country. The middle one changes name depending where you are: a state in the US, a county in Ireland, a prefecture in Japan. The form asks for the right one once you pick your country.
Choose event squad when you create it. That changes what you get: a lineup, volunteer shifts, a countdown calendar, and folders for venue maps and signage. You do not get a reading room, because an event has no chapters.
Under The event. Venue, dates, doors, ticket link and whether tickets are on sale. Then the four things attendees actually ask about:
Your squad sees all of it on their own page, so they can answer questions without asking you.
Add authors one at a time, or upload the spreadsheet you already have. Download the template, fill it in, upload it back. You see exactly what will happen before anything saves.
Include their email if you have it. If it matches an account here, they can confirm their own materials from their own account.
Every accepted author and vendor gets their own folder, created the moment you accept them and linked to their card on the lineup. They upload their own graphics and copy. You can add to it too, and anything you add is marked as yours. Nothing in it reaches a single reader until that person confirms their materials.
When somebody drops out, nothing is deleted. They move to a separate list your squad can toggle to, greyed out, with the reason if you gave one. A reader who spent two weeks promoting that author deserves to be told rather than finding the card quietly gone.
Anybody added in the last fortnight is marked as a new addition, so your squad can see who joined without reading an announcement they may have missed.
Four separate forms, because a vendor needing power and an influencer describing what they would post have nothing in common. One form asking both serves neither.
Every squad starts with sensible questions already written. Change any of them, add up to twelve of your own. Each form has its own shareable link, and nobody needs an account to apply, which matters because an author you invite may not have one yet.
Post the jobs with times, how many people, and what it is worth in Hype. Members claim them themselves. Capacity is enforced, so two people cannot take the last slot at the same moment.
Influencers are the loudest part of an event squad, and they are judged on what they actually post rather than on a follower count.
They log each post: the platform, a link to it, what kind it was, and roughly how it did. You look at it and set what it was worth. The Hype lands in their balance the moment you do.
One button plans a month backwards from your date: thirty days out, fourteen, seven, the night before, the day itself, and the day after. It arrives as a draft, so nothing reaches your squad until you publish it.
You get this month and three ahead, so you can plan a whole run-up rather than a fortnight. Publish and unpublish freely.
Your task list is written for events, not for book launches. It is grouped by when the work happens: the run-up, the last two weeks, on the day, and afterwards. Save the date, spotlight an author, spotlight a vendor, tickets are on sale, share the access information, photo of the queue, thank a vendor. Picking one fills in what it is worth.
Most of what an event squad can win comes from the authors and vendors attending rather than from you. Record who gave what, and the squad sees it: "signed hardback, donated by Rowan Vale" is worth far more to a reader than "signed hardback".
An event has something an author does not: access. The best rewards here are not objects, they are being somewhere before everybody else or seeing something nobody else sees. Most cost you nothing but a decision.
Access, which costs you nothing
Donations from your authors and vendors
Things you already have
This is the one that makes the platform useful during your event rather than only in the weeks before it.
Put a station at each booth, panel, or table. A code shows on a screen there, readers scan it, and they earn Hype. That is a reason to walk to a vendor they would otherwise stroll past, which is worth more to that vendor than anything you could say in a newsletter.
Signing times, interviews, workshops, photo ops, games. Published times people turn up for rather than slots they book, because an event with a queue does not need software to manage the queue.
Cover models are a fifth kind of person at an event, and frequently the reason somebody bought a ticket. They have their own application form asking what actually matters: which covers they have been on, whether they are happy doing photo ops, whether they would do an interview.
The single most effective thing a squad can do, and it takes five minutes to set up. Pick a moment — tickets going on sale, the lineup reveal, the morning of — and everybody posts together.
The copy stays hidden until an hour before, so nobody goes early with text everyone has already seen. Late posts still earn half for a day, because somebody at work is not somebody who let you down.
Yes, and it is worth encouraging. Their squads and yours are separate, and their readers are exactly the people you want at your event.
Change the date under The event and post an announcement. Your squad and everybody's Hype stay exactly as they are.
Yes, one squad each. Additional squads are $10 a month or $80 a year. Keeping them separate means the countdown and lineup make sense.
The code underneath the QR still works and anybody can type six characters. Failing that, open the same link on your own phone and walk it over. Tell vendors to bookmark the link a week early rather than hunting for the email on the morning.
They can, and it stops working within a few minutes. That is why the code rotates rather than being printed once.
It stays. Your squad did the work of promoting them and taking it back would be the fastest way to lose them. The author moves to a dropped list rather than disappearing, so nobody is left wondering.
No, and that is deliberate. The folder is theirs. You can add to it, and anything you add is marked as added by you, but nothing reaches readers until that author confirms their materials. It is the reason authors trust event squads here.
You decide each one, because a reel that reached twelve thousand people is not the same as a story nobody saw. As a starting point: twenty for a story, thirty to fifty for a post or reel that did well, more for something that clearly moved tickets.
Yes. Claiming a shift needs a membership, which means they have accepted the rules and you know who they are.
Browse at lithypesquad.com/discover. Filter by trope rather than genre: "enemies to lovers, only one bed" gets you closer to what you actually want to read than "romance" ever will.
Read the rules and tick the box. The first eight are the same in every squad: five about how people treat each other, and three about reviews, disclosure, and keeping it safe for work. Your author adds their own on top.
Then answer their questions. Be specific. "I post on TikTok and I read three romantasy books a week" is more useful than "I love your books."
Your squad page shows what you can do today and what each is worth. Post it wherever you normally post, then press I did this and paste the link.
Your author checks it and the Hype lands in your balance. You get an email either way. If it is turned down they have to tell you why.
ARCs, signed copies, character art, and in some squads naming a side character. Your balance and what it buys are both on your squad page.
Some squads put deleted scenes, early chapters, and character art behind their tiers. Climb far enough and it opens.
That is worth understanding rather than discovering. It is not us watching you read. It is the reason an author is willing to put an unreleased chapter in front of forty people at all, and it means please do not screenshot unreleased work into a group chat, even a friendly one.
Everything else, share freely. That is the whole point of you being there.
Signings, conventions, and festivals run squads here the same way authors do, and they work slightly differently.
Most of what you can earn at an event happens in the room, on the day. Bring your phone.
Some authors send early copies of a book through the platform. You cannot ask for one and you cannot earn one with points: the author chooses, one person at a time.
As many as you like. Your Hype is per squad, so points earned with one author cannot be spent with another.
The author has to give a reason and you see it. Usually it is something fixable, like a private link. You can submit again.
Your author sees your display name, your handle, and your email because they have to be able to reach you. Other members see your display name and handle only.
Yes, and it is one of the three rules. "I was given a copy" is enough. The FTC expects it, and it protects you as much as the author.
Unreleased work is marked with your name and a code that is yours. It is there so a leaked screenshot can be traced back, which is the only reason an author is willing to put an unreleased chapter in front of forty people. Read it, enjoy it, just do not screenshot it into a group chat.
Yes, and events take those applications separately. You are asked where you post, what you would actually post about the event, and how often. Then you log what you shared and the organizer sets what it was worth. It earns considerably more than ordinary membership.
Yes, from your account, immediately. Your profile, messages, and sign-in records go. Points you earned stay in each squad's history but stop being linked to you.