ALLi News Editor, Dan Holloway
Reporting on a new publishing model is always interesting. And the news from Author Equity coincides with the Readmagine conference in Spain, where it announced the first titles on its roster, so it makes an ideal story.
Authors Equity is a new company that operate on exactly the model its name suggests, with authors receiving equity in their book as it were instead of advances and royalties on it. Rather than offering authors an advance (oh, here we go,you say…) it focuses on profit-sharing. The company claims this enables it to take more risks, and that it places authors at the centre of the creative process with access to a talented network to work on their books, and with a larger than usual percentage of sales revenue.
The company launched in March and the latest announcement is timed to coincide with the company celebrating its first 100 days. That announcement of the ten selected titles for the company’s initial offering makes interesting reading. They include cutting edge industry figures like Seth Godin, as well as tech founder Reid Hoffman. In an age where the industry is outwardly concerned with misinformation and a lack of integrity, the company takes what I can only describe as a contrarian stance in including a title from outed exaggerator James Frey.
As I said, I’m always interested in new models. How new this is, I’m not quite so sure. It is clearly positioning itself as such, though. It does have a whiff of Unbound about it. And many of the purported benefits also accrue to indie authors. The fact so many of the first lineup are so well-known also suggest that the model might rely on existing contacts to work, something that will be disappointingly familiar to many (and something that makes one wonder why, if you had that following and wanted to go a nontraditional route, you wouldn’t go indie).
