Building a Readership from Outside Publishing: One Novelists Channels – Social Media Explorer

A novelist who comes to publishing without a literary network starts with a blank address book. Jeremy Bradley-Silverio Donato arrived at publishing from a career in business and organisational leadership, and he has kept that career going while promoting a book.

The book is Three Days Grace, published by Indigo River Publishing on 12 May 2026 and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It places five people in a Paris hotel for 72 hours. Bradley-Silverio Donato, an American author, has lived in Paris since 2019.

He has not published a breakdown of which channels sold books, and this piece does not guess. His public footprint still makes a useful map for any writer in the same position, because each channel he uses is visible and does a different job.

Channels you own

His website, jeremycbradley.com, works as the fixed point. Every other mention can send a reader there, and he controls what they find.

His Substack, jeremycbradley.substack.com, adds something a static site cannot: a direct line to a reader’s inbox. A newsletter belongs to the writer in a way a social feed does not, since no platform decides who sees each post. For an author with limited hours, a channel that keeps its audience between books is worth more than one that resets with each algorithm change.

Both channels suit a writer with a second career. A post can wait in drafts until an evening is free, and once published it keeps working while the author is busy elsewhere.

Those two give him a home. The next layer puts him where readers already gather.

Channels where readers already are

His Goodreads author page connects him to the site where readers rate, shelve and review novels. Goodreads reviews are public, they accumulate, and they sit beside the book’s listing, so a prospective reader sees them at the point of decision. As of 27 September 2026, Three Days Grace held a 4.39 average there across 116 ratings.

Instagram, at @jeremycbradley, gives him a visual channel alongside the written ones. The lesson from his footprint is to give each account a clear purpose and link it back to the site, so a reader who finds him anywhere can find the book.

Channels you borrow

The largest audiences belong to other people. Bradley-Silverio Donato writes for Forbes as a contributor through the Forbes Business Council. His column of 27 August 2026, “Lessons About The Operational Mindset After Writing About Family Secrets”, argued that organisations decay around what nobody says out loud, which is the subject of his novel transposed to a workplace. A business reader who finishes that column has met the book’s central idea without being sold to.

Press coverage does a similar job at the literary end. Kirkus Reviews, YASS Magazine, QueerAF and Independent Book Review have all covered the book, and each reaches a different reader: trade buyers, queer readers, podcast listeners, indie fiction fans. Kirkus gave him a line he can quote anywhere, calling the novel “a dark, dramatic, and thoughtful reflection on the traumatic aspects of love and family.”

Events complete the borrowed layer. According to the author, he has appeared at literary and LGBTQ+ cultural events in Paris, London, Amsterdam and Oxford in connection with the book. Live audiences give a writer something no feed supplies: a reader who has heard the voice behind the prose.

Recognition feeds all three layers. Three Days Grace won Silver in Fiction at the 2026 Living Now Book Awards and the LGBTQ+ Fiction category at the 2026 American Fiction Awards, credentials that travel across a website, a newsletter and a pitch to an editor.

Two careers, one reader

The model has a theme running through it. He uses his business writing and his fiction to point at each other, and he does not hide either one.

“I’ve never believed seriousness in one part of your life requires abandoning curiosity in another.”

His advice to other writers in the same position is direct: “give yourself permission to pursue more than one identity.” For an author building a readership from outside the trade, that permission doubles the places a reader can meet you.

Jeremy Bradley-Silverio Donato is an American novelist living in Paris and a Forbes contributor. Three Days Grace is published by Indigo River Publishing and distributed by Simon & Schuster.

jeremycbradley.com · jeremycbradley.substack.com · @jeremycbradley