Being a young publishing company works to our advantage, and our authors, too, as we have no established processes, practices, corpulent bureaucracies, or personal fiefdoms to protect, like traditional presses. And in this digital age with all new systems, we can operate efficiently and with strong profit margins.
August Words Publishing partners with our authors to produce commercial books aimed at specific segments of the book-buying marketplace. We believe the author knows their audience far better than we ever could, is the best conduit for building a book-buying fan base as detailed in the theory of 1,000 True Fans and Long-Tail Economics. We couple that with our design, sales, and marketing knowledge of how to best garner that audience's attention in a very crowded marketplace. We will invest hundreds of man-hours in designing, producing, marketing, and distributing your books. We expect you to invest as much in their promotion to your target audience.
As a young press we are unable to pay advances, but we feel we more than make up for that by developing a valuable series brand, providing professional editorial input, listening intently to author input to design a beautiful book series, charging no fees, and rewarding our authors' work with royalties 3-4 times the industry average. Plus, we give authors opportunities through augustwords.org to increase their revenue stream far beyond book royalties. For instance, authors can be paid mentors, speakers, even sell items such as “special occasion greetings” or “dinner with your favorite author.”
Just as augustwords.org shares a percentage of all sales with literary and literacy charities, August Words Publishing shares these larger profit margins with our authors. We pay higher royalty rates simply because we can. We feel it is the right thing to do. So, no, no catches here. You produce a fine manuscript, we produce a fine book, and together we share in the promotion and the profits.
books
We will provide:
- Publication as trade paperback and conversion to digital Kindle editions
- ISBN numbers for trade paperback and Kindle
- Registration of copyright
- Distribution to bookstores through Ingram (the world's largest distributor) and online in English through Amazon in the US, Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, Australia, Brazil, India, and the Netherlands
- High-visibility promotions and preferred placement from Amazon, available only to publishers (not self-publishers), such as Kindle Daily Deal, Kindle Select 25, Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, Matchbook, email campaigns, site campaigns, and pricing promotions
- Listing of your book in the augustwords.org bookstore
- Royalties far superior to average
- Individual end-of-year 1099 statements of income for IRS
- Contracts on a per-book basis
As an author you will be expected to provide:
- Manuscript prepared according to our guidelines
- Any necessary assurances, clearances, or releases
- Extensive and continued author promotion to help drive sales as you know your target audience better than anyone
quantity discounts
As an August Words Publishing author, you will be able to purchase paperback books in multiples of 25 at a sizable discount. In fact, many of our authors make most of their author profits from back-of-the-room sales following talks.
writing guides under 10,000 words
We will provide:
- Publication as downloads within weeks
- Distribution through our augustwords.org bookstore
- Registration of copyright
- Generous royalties, reported and paid quarterly
- Individual end-of-year 1099 statements of income for IRS
As a writing guide author you will be expected to provide:
- Manuscript prepared according to our guidelines
- Any necessary assurances, clearances, or releases
- Author promotion to help drive sales
The publishing industry has changed radically in recent years. The majority of book sales - and more notably, the only significant profits - are no longer made in traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores. Many publishers are quagmired in the past, trying to maintain profit margins based on an outdated business model, confused by the transformation into this highly-digital world. They continue to do what they've always done, expecting their authors to handle the rest by themselves.
But where others see change and chaos, we see opportunity. While we’ve been in publishing for decades, always thinking “outside the book,” augustwords.org and August Words Publishing were recently founded to take advantage of the winds of change by working smarter and creating new avenues of revenue for authors (our favorite people).
