Unconventional Press

The publisher for alternative romance writers

Our unconventional approach

We are a digital-first indie publisher specialized in alternative romance short fiction. Our mission is to help talented authors bring joy and excitement to readers! Transparency is our most important value, and we work with our authors in a partnership of equals.

This is how we work

We are a small indie publisher, not a vanity press or a "hybrid" publisher. We never charge for our service, and only make money when our authors do. This means that we have to choose carefully who we publish, since we invest money and time in every writer that we take under contract.

Full transparency from the start

Let's talk about money

Our royalty deal

What separates us from larger publishers is that we can't pay our authors an advance. On the bright side, our royalty agreement is probably the best one in the industry, because we share all profits equally with our authors (50:50). For example, when publishing with Amazon Kindle, which pays out up to 70% of an ebook's price, author royalties can be up to 35%.

Editing

We only take on authors with an excellent manuscript that is (almost) ready for publishing. After general proofreading we focus mostly on improving the discoverability of the book to make it rank well in the Amazon store. This can include recommendations about changing the book title, subtitle, chapter titles, and (for first-time authors) also their pen name. We know that this might sound like a lot, but our authors always have the last word and keep creative control in every step of the process.

Our job is to take a different perspective

We want to sell as many books as possible

Design and Marketing

To maximize the impact of our authors, we invest in a professional book cover tailored to the targeted reader group. We also write a professional cover text and author biography. Now all these pieces need to be put together: we layout the ebook so that it looks good and is conformant with Kindle standards. One of the most important things that we do is to create powerful tags and keywords for the book so that it can be found and purchased by a large audience.

Distribution and Reporting

After the book launch comes a lot of paperwork. Our authors get detailed monthly royalty reports and payments from us for the duration of their contract. In addition, we send them all tax documentation, and can also point them to relevant resources on how to file their taxes correctly. To maximize sales, we continuously monitor and tweak keywords. Finally, if a book is selling well, we make the author an offer to convert it into an audiobook for further distribution in the ACX network (Audible, Apple Books, Amazon).

Precise, reliable, and compliant with taxes

Do you have a great book?

We usually contact promising authors ourselves, but also look at complete manuscripts that we receive. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have a book that you would like us to publish!
Unfortunately, due to the volume of submissions, we are unable to provide detailed feedback to authors that we reject.

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