The Collective Book Studio is an independent publisher dedicated to creating high-quality, beautifully crafted books that celebrate diverse voices and empower storytelling. Our unique publishing model creates a true partnership between author and publisher, meaning our authors can spend time doing what they love while we take care of everything else.
Partnership Publishing
Partnership publishing is an innovative model where you, the client, invest money upfront to bring your book from concept to finished product.
How It's Different
Partnership publishing is an innovative model that combines the advantages of traditional publishing quality with the creative control and high royalty potential of self-publishing. As a partnership author, you benefit from nationwide distribution, a team of industry experts dedicated to editing, design, and marketing, and the same professional standards seen in traditionally published books. With our partnership model, you retain creative control over your work while maximizing your royalties, allowing you to focus on creating without sacrificing quality or reach.
Partnership publishing provides a responsive approach in a rapidly changing marketplace. This model brings expertise and flexibility, offering a professional alternative for authors seeking a supportive yet high-quality publishing experience.
In traditional publishing, the publisher invests in all developmental aspects of the book, including editing, design, marketing, and distribution. While this is a proven model, it often involves high selectivity, with publishers primarily focusing on established authors or high-profile titles to reduce financial risks.
Self-publishing can be an accessible option due to its low barrier to entry. However, authors in this model often face challenges such as limited national distribution and the responsibility of managing all aspects of book production. This can impact the book's quality and overall visibility in the marketplace.
At The Collective Book Studio, we believe that Partnership Publishing is the ideal blend of quality, reach, and author control. This model empowers new voices while maintaining the high standards that readers expect.
Partnership Publishing
We need a clear understanding of your vision for the book, as well as a sample of the writing, in order to evaluate whether your book is a good fit for our list.
An outline and/or table of contents is helpful for understanding the scope of the project; a sample chapter lets us see your writing style; and a bio lets us see why you are the right person to be writing this book.
Further, we’d like to see a clear vision statement that nails down your concept and who it is for. We also love some general ideas about proposed word count, format, etc., which helps us begin to build out costs and put together a possible budget and timeline for the project.
A vision statement is a short description of your book, maybe 2 or 3 sentences long that answers these questions:
This will function as an elevator pitch, a way to quickly describe your project when someone asks you what your book is about.
The Collective Book Studio is a partner publisher. We are not a traditional publisher and do not pay an advance to purchase the publishing rights. Instead, in this partnership arrangement, the author pays for our services and retains the creative control and the rights, and collects a large portion of the income from sales.
We put together a custom quote based on each particular project. The quote is a combination of the creative fees as well as the cost of printed books.
When the Collective works on a book, we assemble a team of experts that step in to help develop the project. We find the right editor and designer for your content, and work with production to ensure that your product is packaged beautifully. In addition, we generally create an electronic version (ebook) to sell online.
We then work with you to successfully market and sell your book. Our distribution partner, Simon & Schuster (S&S) has a dedicated sales force to ensure your title is widely available.
In addition to the creative fee, the author is responsible for the cost of printed books. The final cost depends on the book's format and the total number of copies that you decide to print (we'll, of course, provide guidance here).
We recommend that authors allocate a marketing budget of $3,000 to $7,500 to fully support their book's promotion. Please note that The Collective Book Studio does not cover costs associated with travel to trade shows or author events.
If you are a self-published author who is looking for different results, we are happy to take a look at your book with the understanding that we would re-edit, re-brand, and re-publish your work.
Payments will be made as follows: 1/3 of the Creative Fee due upon signing of contract; 1/3 due upon delivery of manuscript to The Collective Book Studio; remaining 1/3 due upon delivery of print-ready book files. Then, 1/2 book printing payment due upon delivery of files to the printer; remaining 1/2 due upon shipment of books to the warehouse.
With the 50/50 royalty split, you would be receiving half of all net proceeds. So, for a book that retails for $15, the wholesale price (50%) is $7.50.
Approximately 20% of that is pulled out for distribution (we don't have an exact percentage, because each account has a different discount structure, and it depends which accounts end up taking your book), shipping, fees etc, landing us at $6. The author and The Collective split this 50/50. So it would be $3 each book in this scenario.
The 50% of royalties retained by The Collective cover all warehousing fees, membership and table costs at all major book shows, Edelweiss Database fees, sales rep fees, catalog fees, digital galleys, sales presentation decks, marketing materials, everything involved in setting your book up for mass distribution, filing for copyright, etc. It takes a lot of effort, time, and money to launch a book, and the 50% of royalties covers some of these costs.
When you work with our team, you not only end up with high-quality printed books, but your book is also introduced to the market just as it would be if published traditionally.
Our sales and distribution are handled by Simon & Schuster, ensuring that the books we publish are available wherever books are sold—both online and in brick-and-mortar stores. S&S has an extensive sales force that is dedicated solely to their client publishers.
Yes! As a Collective Book Studio author (excluding custom packaging clients), your title will be made available everywhere books are sold. Our distributor, S&S, sells into accounts including:
Our books are distributed internationally by S&S. The International sales force is committed to selling client titles everywhere S&S has rights. In support of global sales, S&S has sales organizations across the world through offices in Canada, UK, Australia, and India.
Our team will support your book's marketing within the book trade. This includes targeted email campaigns, newsletter features, placement in all relevant publisher directories, and creating graphics and ads for your Edelweiss listing (a catalog tool accessible to all book buyers).
Your book may also be featured at select trade shows, depending on the discretion of our Publisher and Distributors. We’ll handle Amazon optimization, including A+ content, and submit your book for trade reviews in industry publications like Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Shelf Awareness.
We also produce a seasonal print catalog, present your book at our bi-annual sales conference, and develop marketing campaigns for relevant sales channels. However, we do not guarantee paid online or print trade advertising.
Any marketing materials specifically created for your book, such as ARCs, BLADs, bookmarks, or stickers, will be the responsibility of the author to cover. We recommend that authors allocate a marketing budget of $3,000 to $7,500 to fully support their book's promotion.
Please note that The Collective Book Studio does not cover costs associated with travel to trade shows or author events.
Additionally, The Collective Book Studio has an in-house PR professional dedicated to promoting the brand. We offer opportunities for round-ups and other seasonal pitches at the publisher’s discretion.
Unfortunately predicting sales is nearly impossible. Book publishing always involves a certain amount of risk, and it's very hard to know which books will take off in the market.
What we can tell you is that since our model is a partnership, we only succeed if our authors succeed, and we don't take on titles if we don't think they have potential in the market. Since the creative fee and print pricing only cover costs, we only make money when our authors make money.
While we don't have a crystal ball and can't guarantee a certain number of sales, we certainly will work as hard as we can to ensure the success of your book.
We generally publish books about ten months to a year from when we receive a finished manuscript. Though we can create books faster than traditional publishers, we need to follow the sales schedule of our distributor in order to set books up for success in the market.
You retain all rights to your content and never have to buy back the rights to your book. We file for copyright in your name. We do ask that you grant The Collective Book Studio the exclusive right to publish and distribute the book for a minimum of seven years. If the book is selling and you want to keep reprinting with us this will renew automatically, but if you want the files back at that point they are all yours.
In this model, we create the book for you (basically working as a packager) but we do not distribute the books. We oversee the developmental editing, design, and packaging, but we don’t retain the distribution rights or sell the book into any trade market. You would receive finished books (as well as final files) to sell and distribute however you wish.
The Collective Book Studio follows the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Hybrid Publisher Criteria, ensuring our model provides the transparency, quality, and author support outlined by industry standards. You can learn more about partnership publishing and the criteria we adhere to here.
As part of our ongoing pledge to be responsible stewards of our planet, The Collective Book Studio only uses Forest Stewardship Council-certified printers. This means that all of our printers adhere to strict environmental guidelines when sourcing paper and constructing our books. In 2022 we made a commitment to print our books using soy-based, environmentally-friendly inks on recycled or FSC-certified paper.
