Should you publish with us or should you self-publish?
Publishing with us
We publish a small number of literary works every year: poetry, short stories, scripts, and longer fiction. If you have a manuscript ready, we'd be very happy to read it and assess it. But please be aware of the following:
● We accept submissions in March and October each year.
● We do not pay advances.
● We have a very limited budget to advertise or promote works, and this is usually restricted to advertising on Amazon, but we may also submit books for review to major outlets.
● We offer commercial discounts to bookshops, but we do not offer books on a 'sale or return' basis. This can make literary works unattractive to bookshop owners. Authors receive $1.00 per sale to bookshops.
● Most sales will occur through our website. Our current rate for authors is $3.00 per sale.
As I hope you have understood from the above, you are unlikely to make lots of money!
We issue all our books with an ISBN which means your work is able to be found by any bookseller searching anywhere in the world. We also lodge copies of the book with the National Library of Australia and the State Library of Victoria, so your work is archived and preserved.
But the best reason for emerging writers to publish with us is simple: we don't tie you to producing future work and we make no claim on your future work. In other words, should the work you publish through us lead you to becoming well-known enough to attract the interest of a large publishing house, you are free to publish your next bestseller with them. And we don't steal (even a percentage of) your film, television, or games rights, either! So you're free to accept that blockbuster deal from Hollywood. All you'll hear from us is best wishes!
If your work is accepted for publication under our impress, we will provide a contract for you to review. A sample is available here. We are always willing to discuss individual changes with our authors, but we don't have a lot of room to move, particularly with regard to payments. But if you have any good ideas, we're always willing to listen.
If we accept your work, you will be asked to provide a word processor file which is formatted to help us when we create the book block. You can read our requirements for formatting a manuscript after acceptance here - but you don't need to worry about it until we've given you the glad tidings.
● We accept submissions in March and October each year.
● We do not pay advances.
● We have a very limited budget to advertise or promote works, and this is usually restricted to advertising on Amazon, but we may also submit books for review to major outlets.
● We offer commercial discounts to bookshops, but we do not offer books on a 'sale or return' basis. This can make literary works unattractive to bookshop owners. Authors receive $1.00 per sale to bookshops.
● Most sales will occur through our website. Our current rate for authors is $3.00 per sale.
As I hope you have understood from the above, you are unlikely to make lots of money!
We issue all our books with an ISBN which means your work is able to be found by any bookseller searching anywhere in the world. We also lodge copies of the book with the National Library of Australia and the State Library of Victoria, so your work is archived and preserved.
But the best reason for emerging writers to publish with us is simple: we don't tie you to producing future work and we make no claim on your future work. In other words, should the work you publish through us lead you to becoming well-known enough to attract the interest of a large publishing house, you are free to publish your next bestseller with them. And we don't steal (even a percentage of) your film, television, or games rights, either! So you're free to accept that blockbuster deal from Hollywood. All you'll hear from us is best wishes!
If your work is accepted for publication under our impress, we will provide a contract for you to review. A sample is available here. We are always willing to discuss individual changes with our authors, but we don't have a lot of room to move, particularly with regard to payments. But if you have any good ideas, we're always willing to listen.
If we accept your work, you will be asked to provide a word processor file which is formatted to help us when we create the book block. You can read our requirements for formatting a manuscript after acceptance here - but you don't need to worry about it until we've given you the glad tidings.
Self-publishing
There is only one way for most writers to make any money these days, and that's to sell their work themselves. I know, everyone dreams of being a best-selling author with a fat contract with one of the global publishing houses, and should that dream come true for you, I rejoice in my heart. However, most writers will not be best-selling authors. Sorry. And many don't even aspire to it. They know that their work is likely to be appreciated by an audience of hundreds or thousands, but not millions. These authors are of no interest to the major publishing houses. That is not to say that they shouldn't make anything out of their work.
If you were to have a contract with a commercial publisher, you might make around $1.00 for every book you sold. You have to sell a lot of books to make any money. And I know what you're thinking... "But a commercial publisher will promote my book! My book will be placed in hundreds of bookshops and available through the internet!"
No, it won't.
Promotion costs money. Commercial publishers spend money on promotion for books that will sell in bulk. Successful fiction in Australia - and I'm talking about award-winning novels, pitched for general readership - may sell as few as 500 copies. What if your work is of specialist interest only? What if you are trying to publish a first collection of poetry?
Do it yourself. Swallow your pride (or more correctly, your inaccurate conception of the publishing industry) and publish the book yourself. It is no less a book for that. Our books are priced so that you can expect to pocket a markup of $5.00 to $10.00 or more.
Where do you sell your book? Anywhere and everywhere. Farmers' markets, fetes, on your blog, at poetry readings, wherever you like. Local libraries very often have 'meet the author' sessions where you can talk about your work and sell to anyone interested. Set up a card table in the middle of the city and sell a few copies. You only have to sell 100 of your own books to make as much money as the award-winning, broke author who is published by a commercial outfit.
If you were to have a contract with a commercial publisher, you might make around $1.00 for every book you sold. You have to sell a lot of books to make any money. And I know what you're thinking... "But a commercial publisher will promote my book! My book will be placed in hundreds of bookshops and available through the internet!"
No, it won't.
Promotion costs money. Commercial publishers spend money on promotion for books that will sell in bulk. Successful fiction in Australia - and I'm talking about award-winning novels, pitched for general readership - may sell as few as 500 copies. What if your work is of specialist interest only? What if you are trying to publish a first collection of poetry?
Do it yourself. Swallow your pride (or more correctly, your inaccurate conception of the publishing industry) and publish the book yourself. It is no less a book for that. Our books are priced so that you can expect to pocket a markup of $5.00 to $10.00 or more.
Where do you sell your book? Anywhere and everywhere. Farmers' markets, fetes, on your blog, at poetry readings, wherever you like. Local libraries very often have 'meet the author' sessions where you can talk about your work and sell to anyone interested. Set up a card table in the middle of the city and sell a few copies. You only have to sell 100 of your own books to make as much money as the award-winning, broke author who is published by a commercial outfit.
Have a look at some of the books we publish...