One ordered runway, built by someone who almost missed launch day.
Tohm is a pre-launch runbook for indie and nonfiction authors who want one ordered, dated checklist per timeline rather than stitching together free 30/60/90-day checklists. Enter your release date and get a personalized schedule with persistent checkboxes that track your progress across sessions in a saved plan. This page is the founder story, the case for structured runways, and the honest place where social proof will land once authors ship their books with us.
Read this if:you’re a solo author evaluating whether the roadmap approach fits the way you actually launch, and you want to know who is building it and why.
Built by a debut author who almost missed launch day.
Tohm started as one launch spreadsheet, the kind you stitch together the night before reviewer outreach goes out and then forget how to read two months later. The first version was private. The public version is one ordered checklist per runway — a personalized, dated schedule bound to your release date with persistent checkboxes that track your progress across sessions in your saved plan.
The founder launched a nonfiction title independently two years ago — editor-on, no marketing team, no agency, the work held in the same set of hands that wrote the book. The launch went fine on paper. The week after launch went badly because the plan ended at launch day and the algorithm did not.
So the roadmaps are built back-to-front: the 48-hour run sheet is the spine, the work before launch is everything that makes the 48-hour run sheet executable on the day. Every tier you can pick from Tohm is the runway that founder would buy with the benefit of hindsight.
The 30/60/90 checklist never matched my actual calendar.
Every free checklist was a list of tasks. None of them carried dates the way the work did. The week my ARCs were out overlapped the week my pre-order flipped on, and the publication checklist had no opinion about that.
Templates are not a runway.
A template hands you a blank shape and asks you to fill it in. A runway hands you a date and asks you to keep up. The first run is for the launch; the second is for an audience you cannot lose momentum with on day two.
The 48 hours after release matter more than the month before.
Amazon’s ranking window opens wide the day a book goes live and closes fast. If day two is silent, the chart goes silent. Every runway I draft now ends with a written launch-and-48-hour run sheet so the silence does not happen by accident.
“The work after launch day is the work you cannot outsource. The roadmaps end where most checklists stop.”
A runway is a calendar. A checklist is a list.
Free 30/60/90-day PDFs are template-shaped. Author SaaS bundles are platform-shaped. Tohm is runway-shaped — one ordered document per timeline, built to be read once and worked through from start to finish.
Date-driven, not task-driven.
A runway carries dates the way the work does. The week your ARCs are out overlaps the week your pre-order flips on, and the runway has an opinion about that. A free PDF checklist hands you a list and leaves the sequencing to you.
Tier-shaped, not generic.
A debut on a quarter-long timeline is not a fourth-edition memoir on a four-week sprint. The three tiers are the same shape stretched against different week counts; pick the one that matches your real calendar, not the one that loads fastest on a blog.
One ordered deliverable, not a stack of templates.
Each tier ships as a single ordered runbook with weekly tasks, dated milestones, and the deliverable the week produces. You read it top to bottom. You do not stitch it together. You do not template-hop.
The free 30/60/90-day checklists shipping in every author resource roundup are template-shaped. They list the same tasks regardless of whether your launch is a sprint or a quarter. They have no opinion about the 48 hours after release. They do not carry an ads worksheet or reviewer-outreach dates. Tohm is built for the author who has already tried the free checklist and felt the calendar fall out of it.
The 4-week runway is free if you want to feel the difference before paying.
Read the story. Then pick a runway.
Every tier is one ordered interactive checklist — a personalized, dated schedule built from your release date, with weekly tasks and persistent checkboxes that track your progress across sessions in your saved plan. The 4-week plan is free; the 8-week and 12-week plans are one-time purchases with no subscription.
What authors say after they pick a runway.
Testimonials from solo indie and nonfiction authors who shipped a book on Tohm.
Testimonials coming soon — replace this block when social proof lands.
Editors: swap each skeleton card for a real quote, attribution, and optional run-tier badge. The section ID
#social-proofand the data-testid above are stable so deep links and tests keep working.