UPDATES: I wrote this post years ago, when it was just an idea, but have figured out it’s not worth my time to do the editing, cover design and marketing unless I’m also involved in creating the plot outline – so we’ve created a new program where writers get credit, but are only paid a one time advance without royalties. This means we can reinvest any profit in the marketing, so that hopefully, eventually, I also get paid for all the work I’m putting in. If you’d like to read more about that, here are the details and a place to apply. CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS.
We are NOT accepting manuscript submissions, but here’s the original post below:
For several years I’ve been playing with the idea of starting a publishing company, for these reasons:
1. What a “publishing company” mainly does these days is formatting and design work, with possibly a little bit of marketing/author platform building. As one of the world’s best known book designers, I can do that better than most.
2. Most publishing companies do very little strategic marketing. Since I’ll already be building genre-specific marketing platforms, resources and tools for my own fiction, I could easily use those to sell other people’s books as well.
3. I’m quitting all client services, because they don’t scale, but I have some amazing tools now. I’d love to be able to help the best quality books hit the market quickly, look beautiful, and get a ton of readers and reviews. I’m particularly well placed to make that happen for YA, paranormal romance and urban fantasy authors.
4. I put up a site a year ago outlining how this publishing company would be structured: the main difference is that I would email you a “yay or nay” response within 48 hours, and publish within one month (depending on editing).
However, I would only take on projects that I felt had enough commercial appeal to earn more than what I’d charge for all the publishing services involved (about $5000). I’d consider anything, but only take on projects that had the greatest earning potential.
You can check out www.readipress.com for more info: though I won’t start it up soon, I may be ready to run with it someday.
