Book Alliance authors work for the collective in multiple ways. They take the lead in marketing and publicizing their own books, and if they can copy edit, proofread, lay out a page, index a book, design a cover, or convert a book to an epub, they will undoubtedly be put to work doing a few of those things, both for their own books and for someone else’s (in the latter case, for pay). Alliance authors also perform the other myriad tasks that keep a publishing enterprise humming, from negotiating a distribution contract to selecting an offset printer to balancing the books.

The cost to publish our books—to edit, design, print, ship, publicize, and market them—is borne by the members of the collective. (We’ve found that the stark minimum for effectively publishing a first-edition hardback for a modest audience is about $15,000. The price rises considerably with a larger print run and more ambitious marketing.) If a prospective author can help pay to publish their own book, that’s great, but it’s not required. Each member contributes financially to the alliance according to their means, and an author who has little or no money to contribute will not be turned away. Our decision to publish a book is based solely on its merits, not on how well-to-do its author is. The Book Alliance does not ask authors about their finances before deciding whether to publish their manuscripts.

Our goals at the Book Alliance are broader than just publishing books. We aim generally to leave the world a little better than we found it, and one way we try to do so is by supporting independent bookstores, which are so vital to every community lucky enough to have one. Unfortunately, selling books in brick-and-mortar stores comes at a steep cost to tiny publishers like us. On a $30 hardback book sold in a physical bookstore, perhaps $27 goes to the printer, shippers, distributors, booksellers, and other important intermediaries, which, however, leaves the author and the Book Alliance with a pittance to split. (At bigger publishing houses, the author’s and publisher’s take is larger because greater economies of scale enable the publisher to capture important savings in printing and distribution.) By contrast, on a $13 ebook sold online, the Book Alliance and its author make a pretty handsome profit of about $8 between them. The difference in profits between ebooks and printed books is a big reason why many small presses and nearly all self-published authors focus their sales efforts on e-commerce.

We understand the value of ebooks to readers—we read ebooks ourselves from time to time—but too often ebook sales undermine sales at brick-and-mortar bookstores, and when a bookstore dies, its community suffers a deep wound that may never heal. In order not to undercut the hardback sales on which independent bookstores depend, the Book Alliance initially prices its ebooks somewhat high. In the short term this means less revenue for the Book Alliance and its authors and other creators, but in the long term we’re building relationships with booksellers who we hope will hand-sell our books. In the end we believe those booksellers will help us grow so we can capture some of the aforementioned economies of scale and channel more earnings to our authors and other creators.

Writers who are considering publishing with the Book Alliance may be wondering how they could ever make money under our model. They will be happy to know that royalties at the Book Alliance are much more generous (as a share of the cover price) than at large publishing houses. All profits from an alliance book go to its author and other members of the collective. We have no executives or investors exacting tribute. Additionally, the Book Alliance does eventually lower the price on its ebooks, generally around the time of the paperback release, which gives authors the chance to realize more substantial gains. Authors accustomed to earning $1 (or less) per ebook at a traditional house will be agreeably surprised to earn $4 or more with us. Another group of authors who may do well under our profit-sharing model are those with a large following of readers to whom they, the authors, can sell books directly. Traditional publishing houses limit such sales or the profits from them, but the Book Alliance encourages them. On a $30 alliance hardback, the author’s profit from a direct-to-reader sale will likely be $10 to $15 per book.

Unfortunately, as a small and lightly capitalized press, we’re not able to offer advances to authors. Writers who need funds to underwrite their work and who can’t line up a grant or two would be better served by publishing with a more traditional house.