Recently I’ve been watching with interest new forms of collaborative publishing. I’ve also noticed (with dread) a whole bunch of micro-publishers who will accept your manuscript and take a healthy cut, but then make an ugly product and screw up the marketing.
I understand it can feel safer to publish with a team or a group. I understand giving away some of the earnings is OK if it means someone besides you (who knows what they’re doing) has some incentive to make the book beautiful and then sell a ton of copies. After all, that’s the basis of the entire publishing industry.
The problem these days is that the big publishers who know what they’re doing are inundated, and financially crippled, and instead of taking risk on new authors they are waiting to see which self-published books become popular and then making an offer.
And the small publishers or micro-presses either charge you a big publishing fee, or they merely understand “how” to publish, but can’t actually put together a beautiful product or do a flawless book launch to reach bestseller status.
But I can!
So I’ve decided to try something new; I’m going to use my considerable online platform, my design skills, and my marketing magic to help indie authors publish their books for free. Instead of paying me my normal rates, we’ll split the earnings 50-50. That’s more than you’d get with any traditional publishing contract.
However, since most self-published books never sell more than a few hundred copies, I’m only going to accept books that I think I can turn into major bestsellers. If we sell 10,000 copies (assuming $1 profit on each copy sold), I’ll make back my normal rates, and you’ll get $5000 – a decent start. But because we’re partnering, I’ll keep marketing the book, and we’ll keep selling. Hopefully we’ll hit 100,000 copies, which will make us both very happy.
Considerations
- I’m looking for mainstream, popular genre books
- Short books, erotica or series are fine
- We’ll start with the ebook (editing, formatting, design, marketing)
- If we sell more than 10,000 copies, we’ll make a print version available
- Having your own platform or other books that have sold well is a bonus
- We can use my publishing imprint (Creativindie) or you can use one of your own
- If we don’t sell 10,000 copies in the first 3 months, you can have all your rights back
- Even if we do sell 10,000 copies, you can still have your rights back
I’m very flexible and I’m not going to screw you over with some complex contract. This is a way for you to get high quality design and some marketing/platform building help, without spending a dime. But there’s no good reason to give me 500K if you sell a million copies. If your book is selling really well and you don’t need my help anymore, just let me know – I’ll give you all the files so you can publish yourself.
However, if you don’t want to mess up your Amazon page/reviews, it might be easier to just renegotiate my percentage – maybe I’ll just keep 5% as a project management fee; I’ll maintain and update your Kindle and Createspace pages and stay on top of everything. If I’m interested in your book, I’ll basically let you dictate the terms of our agreement – provided I get paid enough to mitigate my risk.
Please note, I’m going to be very picky, and I’m going to say “no” to most projects – this doesn’t mean I don’t like your book, just that I don’t think I’ll be able to sell enough copies to make it worth my time. I’m also not going to read through each submission fully; I’ll skim it and spot-check. If the writing and story seem amazing, I’ll take a closer look. I’ll probably only take on one project like this a month.
I set up a new website for this publishing endeavor, but I won’t spend much time on it or actively seek manuscripts until 2015:
You can send your manuscript to me at [email protected] if you’re interested, but I’ll probably file it for now until I’m ready to really concentrate on this joint-publishing deal.
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