Welcome! This page is intended to be your go-to resource for questions, guidelines, and materials throughout the life of your book. It serves as a repository of the information that we verbally share in meetings. We recommend bookmarking this page in your browser for easy future access to important information.
Author Portal
We hope that this Author Portal empowers you and educates you about the often complicated world of publishing.
To get started, we recommend that you read through this entire page thoroughly and bring any follow-up questions you may have to your future marketing check-in. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the portal, you can use the shortcuts below to quickly access specific resources.
Author Portal
For questions about the editorial or design status of your book, please email your developmental editor.
For questions about your contract, royalty statements, or sales reports, please email
sales@thecollectivebook.studio
To order copies of your book for personal use, please fill out the Author Bulk Order Form here.
Organizations and companies can order bulk quantities of Collective Book Studio titles. Please direct your contact to our bulk order form, located here. We will not accept book orders via email.
For marketing inquiries, including questions about your marketing plan, please email publicity@thecollectivebook.studio
To upload reviews, blurbs, features, articles, or interviews for your book please enter them into this form.
Authors & Publicists should use this form to upload and share upcoming events, festivals, and appearances.
For questions about your ebook or audiobook, please email Elisabeth Saake (Director of Operations and Acquisitions) at elisabeth@thecollectivebook.studio
Author Portal
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’s your book about?”
Also, while you are writing your book, the Vision Statement functions as a touchstone to keep you on track and keep you from going off topic.
These are the basic steps in the production process, from manuscript to finished book. The milestones will correspond to the production schedule that will be provided to the author from the editor.
This should include the final table of contents and a fully written chapter. The editor will review it, make changes, and leave queries for the author to review.
Once the author and editor agree on those edits, the author can use the edited chapter to help them finish the rest of the manuscript.
The Collective will also use the edited early delivery materials to start the designer working on the book design and the team will start thinking about what is needed in terms of visuals.
The manuscript should include all the elements in the book. If the author plans to have a dedication and/or acknowledgements, let the editor know, though that information can be added later in the process.
At this point the editor will review the manuscript and make developmental edits in a macro way. The editor will go back and forth with the author to make decisions on edits and other parts of the content until it is ready for the copyeditor.
The editor will send the author the preliminary designs for review and feedback. We'll take the feedback from the author and that of pertinent folks from the Collective and eventually all agree on the design template. If there are any visuals, the editor and designer will come up with a few possible ideas and discuss them with the author.
The manuscript will go to a copy editor, who will review it mostly for grammar, punctuation, consistency, and other errors.
The editor will send the copy edited manuscript to the author for review. At this time the author can make changes (using tracked changes in Word) and the author will email the updated file back to the editor.
The author will return the manuscript with any additional changes to the editor. Any disputed changes will be discussed between the editor and author and resolved. The editor will ready the manuscript for a final "clean up" edit and resolve any final edits as needed.
The final manuscript goes to the designer, who will flow the manuscript into the approved design. At this point, in an ideal world, there should not be any more changes to the content, except to make corrections.
Sometimes when the content is seen in its designed form, it becomes clear that we need to tinker more with the words, but for most books, that shouldn't happen.
The first round of galleys will go to the author as a pdf file. The author will review the file and, using Adobe Acrobat, will indicate if any changes are needed. The editor will also review the galleys and a professional proofreader will also review them.
The author returns the marked up galley file to the editor. The editor will collate the author changes, proofreader changes, and editor changes into one file. The editor will send that file back to the designer to update the designed galleys.
The editor will send the updated galleys to the author for review. They can be marked up just like the first galleys and returned to the editor.
At this point, we hope there won't be many things to change. The editor will review the galleys again as well as the professional proofreader.
The author sends the marked up pdf file back to the editor, who will collate corrections like at first galleys. Time at this point will be very tight.
The editor will send the final galley file to the author, mostly so they can see that all the changes have been made.
It is a last chance to review the entire book and check things that are hard for editors or proofreaders to confirm, such as the spelling of people's names.
The final files are transmitted to the printer. Printer proofs will come at a date to be determined, which the Collective team will review and the author will be able to see.
This is more of a technical stage in which the publisher makes sure the colors are printing properly and there aren't any transmission errors that affect the look of the book.
Take a deep breath—Now we wait.
At this point, the books have been printed and a small quantity are sent via air shipment so we can see it in real life and use some of them for promotional purposes.
The author will be sent one of these advance copies. The rest of the shipment arrives in the warehouse about 6 weeks later.
More Waiting...
The full shipment of books arrives at the warehouse, where it will be inventoried before books are shipped out to the various accounts and customers.
This is the official on-sale date of the book (that will be the date on the Amazon page, for example).
This gives the warehouse time to ship out the books to accounts and for the accounts to get those books on their shelves by the time all the publicity hits.
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.
Reach out to publicity@thecollectivebook.studio for recommendations on dedicated PR firms that may fit your unique goals for the launch of your book and your author platform.
The marketing tasks for you as the author at this early stage are planning oriented and help you to establish a roadmap for success.
Here are some tasks for you to tackle early on in the process as time allows:
It is good to start thinking about your social media accounts and establishing an author website. Learn more about this in our FAQs section.
This needs to be completed by 4 months before your pub date.
Please Note: Goodreads does not accept data feeds from publishers and instead gets their data directly from Amazon.
Your book’s metadata is fed out to online retailers with preliminary specs, description, and design elements about. This generally occurs 8 to 9 months before pub date. In the 4 to 6 weeks following this upload, you may be able to find your book listing online.
Sales Conference is a seasonal conference where we present titles to the S&S sales team. During this event, our sales reps get direct insight into our upcoming titles and a full overview of our marketing and publicity plan for your book.
From there, our sales reps use the information they learn at the Sales Conference to sell your book into big retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other specialty accounts like Indie Bookstores and gift stores.
Sales Conference is largely just a presentation on our end, it isn't really a dialog, so while we can get a general sense of how a title is landing, it's not a forum for much feedback.
If there is specific information that needs to be shared after the conference, your developmental editor will be in touch.
Approximately 3 months prior to your pub date your book will go live on our website. This will include all of the same data and images that are fed through from S&S to all on-line portals.
Additional assets will also be added here including (if applicable) the trailer, flip video, book guide or any other supporting assets.
Books will also be available to pre-order at that point through our website and with links to other retailers. On your pub date, the book will be available to purchase direct through our website as well.
This is when a number of advance copies (typically 15 to 30) arrive for early sales, PR and marketing outreach. These are pulled from the regular stock that arrives by boat/train and shipped by air to expedite arrival.
The marketing team sends these advances to our sales team and key accounts, as well as to trade review media, booksellers, librarians, and book bloggers for early reviews.
The marketing team will work with you and your publicist (if you have one) to determine the correct amount of advances to order.
In the weeks approaching pub date it is important to encourage your networks to preorder as many books as possible.
Pre-orders signal to retailers the level of demand, influencing how many copies they stock. By building buzz and anticipation before launch, pre-orders set the stage for a successful release and can help sustain sales momentum beyond the first week.
Pub date is the day that your book is released (e.g., goes on sale across retailers). This is one of the most important dates in the life of the book, because friends, family, media, booksellers, and other partners will naturally gravitate towards promoting your title on this day.
Pub date is also the day that you saturate your social media with book promo, and push hard for sales and reviews. For more specific pub date to-do’s, reference the FAQ list.
As long as you are promoting your book, there will be the opportunity for press coverage. As these key dates and press hits come along, make sure you share them with our marketing team.
Author Portal
Have a question but don’t see an answer below? Email your question to faq@thecollectivebook.studio and we’ll update our FAQs for you and other authors. We’ll also reach out directly to make sure you get the answers you need for your book specifically.
The final files for your book will be made available to you after your title officially passes “OK Press.” At this time, the printer is given the “okay” to print your book and all materials are officially final for the 1st print run.
Our team requires 1-2 weeks to archive and package the final book materials. Once the files are ready, you will receive a Dropbox link to your official Author Assets Folder. All final book materials will be stored in this folder, including:
We recommend that you bookmark this link and reference it for any material needs in the future. We also strongly advise our authors to archive or delete old versions of the book from their devices to avoid confusion.
We recommend that you bookmark this link and reference it for any material needs in the future. We also strongly advise our authors to archive or delete old versions of the book from their devices to avoid confusion.
S&S is our distributor. They are based in New York, and have a warehouse in Jackson, TN. S&S’s sales team handles outreach to accounts including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, independent bookstores, gift stores, etc. to get your book into stores.
Your book will be available everywhere books are sold. That means that while not every retailer will have copies on hand, it should be available for order online, or customers can request a copy in store.
Most stores, including Barnes & Noble, have an inventory or store locator tool that will let you know whether they have copies on hand.
If you would like your book to be sold in a particular store, there are a few steps to take:
If it’s an independent bookstore, you can introduce yourself and your book to the buyer. Make sure to mention that the book is distributed by S&S and available through Ingram.
If it’s a chain location of a larger book retailer, like B&N, you can introduce yourself to the buyer/manager and ask that they order copies from their Distribution Center (DC).
If it’s a national retailer like Anthropologie, talking to specific locations won’t help much. What you can do is focus on your publicity and outreach efforts to create buzz around your title, thus giving our sales rep more good things to share with the buyer
Author photos are requested as a part of the initial kick-off form. While these can certainly change over time, we always ask that all book contributors always submit a photo of themselves so we can use it for early sales materials.
Your final author photo should ideally be:
Your author photos should NOT be:
Yes! If you need to offer a discount for a particular event or marketing opportunity, we can create a promotion code for a particular date range. Please note, this discount code is only applicable at The Collective Book Studio online store.
You’ll need to register through Amazon’s Author Central. Please note that we cannot do this on your behalf, as your author profile is linked to your personal Amazon login details.
Upload your photo and author bio. This step is important to increase visibility in Amazon’s algorithm.
First, you need to log into or create a Goodreads account. Then, you visit your title page, and submit the application to “claim” your book. For more info on this setup process, visit Goodreads.
*Note about Goodreads: Goodreads does not accept data feeds from publishers and instead gets their data directly from Amazon.
If there is an issue with key title data (author name, pub date, etc.) Please let us know and we will work with S&S to update the metadata.S&S is able to request changes through Amazon, which will eventually feed onto the platform (please note that S&S has no control over this timeline, but typically it takes about 3-7 days to get corrected).
We are unable to influence formatting issues on Goodreads or impact when they ingest new data. We understand that this can be extremely frustrating. Often the best path forward is for authors to reach out directly to the volunteer Goodreads Librarians who manage the site.
You can get early reviews for your book in several ways, including:
ARCs - A printed and bound version of your book in it’s earliest stage. ARCs are usually mailed to a list of reviewers and media contacts. They are most commonly made from the 2nd Galley interiors of your book and take 4 to 6 weeks to create once files are available.
DRCs - A digital PDF version of your book that is uploaded to industry-facing platforms such as Edelweiss and to our sales team at S&S. DRCs are automatically uploaded and managed by the Collective Book Studio team.
Advance Copies - Early copies of your book sent via air directly from the press. These are generally used for high-profile media connections and key sales accounts. Advance copies arrive 6 to 8 weeks before the bulk of your books land in the warehouse.
Your book’s metadata is fed out to online retailers with preliminary specs, description, and design elements. This generally occurs 8 to 9 months before pub date. In the 4 to 6 weeks following this upload, you may be able to find your book listing online.
This initial upload is a work-in-progress that is buried on sites and consumers can only find if they are actively searching for your title. All marketing copy for online platforms is drafted by The Collective Book Studio. It is optimized for sales within the book trade and consumer SEO.
Early (non-final) versions of the cover and interiors might be part of this initial data feed. This same data that appears in online retail sites feeds into the portals used by our sales team and they often require visuals early (before materials are finalized) to sell-in the title successfully to accounts. These visuals will be updated in the feed and replaced with final versions when they become available.
*Please Note: We have no direct control over Amazon categories. We can try to influence categories with keywords and BISACs, but some of the categorization also has to do with consumer behavior and what other types of books are often searched or purchased with a specific title. Meaning, consumer behavior can influence where a book is categorized on the Amazon marketplace.
Please let us know right away if there is an issue with key title data (author name, pub date, etc.) and we will make the correction in the S&S portal. This new data will feed out from S&S and various sites will ingest the data on their own timeline (which we can’t control).
We are unable to influence formatting issues on Goodreads or impact when they ingest new data. We understand that this can be extremely frustrating. Often the best path forward is for authors to reach out directly to the volunteer Goodreads Librarians who manage the site.
We also have no direct control over the retail price Amazon, or any other vendor, chooses for your book. Once Amazon, or any retailer, purchases physical copies of your book from Simon & Schuster's warehouse, those books become their property.
Because they own the inventory, they have the right to set the retail price as they see fit. This means they can choose to sell the book at the full jacket price, offer it at a discount, or even raise the price depending on their own sales strategy.
We have no direct control over Amazon categories. We can try to influence categories with keywords and BISAC codes, but some of the categorization also has to do with consumer behavior and what other types of books are often searched or purchased with a specific title.
Meaning, consumer behavior can influence where a book is categorized on the Amazon marketplace. Those Amazon categories are not something we can directly choose.
2-3 months prior to your publication date we will have a flip video of your book available on both our YouTube page and in your book’s listing on our website.
All marketing copy for online platforms is drafted by The Collective Book Studio. It is optimized for sales within the book trade and consumer SEO.
The online marketing copy will evolve as your book moves through production and the pub date approaches. Early (non-final) versions of the online marketing copy are part of the initial data feed and is used for early sell-in to accounts by our sales team.
We are not able to customize online marketing copy based on author requests. However, if you see an error in the online data please reach out.
Preordering is available for books as soon as they become available online at the following online retailers:
To order copies of your book for personal use, please fill out the Author Bulk Order Form.
Please note that if you are planning to use these books for resale, these books can only be sold for private parties, corporate gifting, libraries, and schools.
Organizations and companies can order bulk quantities of Collective Book Studio titles. Please direct your contact to our bulk order form. We will not accept book orders via email.
Orders placed through the Author Fulfillment form will be delivered within 10 to 14 business days. All orders are shipped via UPS Ground unless a specific rush date is specified.
For book orders under 100 units, shipping costs will be applied to your royalty statement for this period. For book orders over 100 units, an invoice will be sent out for payment prior to shipping your order.
For maximum support, we encourage your readers to purchase their books directly through The Collective Book Studio's website.
Your book can also be purchased "everywhere books are sold"—that includes Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, gift stores, and independent bookstores. Even if a store is not currently stocking your title, they can always special order it.
Plan to arrive 15-20 minutes before the event begins.
Most authors choose for their website domain to be their name or their book title. If you want to be known as a leader in your field, or your identity/experience is very important to your book, then your website should probably be your name.
If your book stands on its own, and you’d rather the content is highlighted first, then a title-specific domain may be more appropriate.
There are many routes to creating a great website, whether that’s hiring a web designer or building one yourself through WordPress, Squarespace, etc.
A great, customizable, and low-maintenance option is PubSite. The Collective Book Studio authors get special discounted rates at this time. Reach out to sales@thecollectivebook.studio for more details.
Once your book goes to press, all of your book’s files/assets will be added to an author assets folder in Dropbox. If you have trouble locating this folder, or something is missing, contact the marketing team.
While your website can include any number of things, these are the most important things to feature:
Home Page
Your homepage should feature your book(s) and have a brief description of who you are.
Buy Books
This page should include images of your book and buy links to top bookselling sites.
About the Author Page
Go in-depth about who you are and, perhaps your journey as a writer/professional. You may also choose to add a page here with different versions of your bio for media usage.
Social Media
It’s also a great idea to make sure that you have links to all of your social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
At the very minimum, you should include the following retail platforms on your site:
If you have an eBook available for sale you should also include links on the following platforms:
If you are holding signings and events in partnership with a specific local bookstore, you can also highlight the buy link for that bookstore.
At this time, it is not necessary to add bulk ordering information to your site. If you would like to add something, you may add a simple line saying the following:
"For bulk ordering information click here."
Link that text to this URL: https://thecollectivebook.studio/pages/ordering
There are tons of great author websites out there, but these are some of our favorites:
Author Portal
Royalties on Direct Sales are paid out in the same royalty period that they are received by The Collective Book Studio.
Distribution Sales are entered into the system one quarter (90 days) behind when payment is received. Author royalties are reflected on statements the following quarter. The Collective Book Studio does not receive the net royalties until three months after the actual sale.
See below for important royalty statement dates. Click on the left and right arrows within the table to toggle between years.
The fiscal quarter of your book is determined by the book’s pub date. Your first royalty check will be issued within a 90-day period after the closing of the relevant fiscal quarter.
For example, if your pub date was November 1st 2024, your first statement and royalty check would be issued by September 30th, 2025.
Your royalty statements will be sent via email from statementportal.net [at] mailgun.statementportal.net
Statements will go to the email address you confirmed in the Contributor Information Form.
If you are having trouble locating your royalty statements, please search for the email address above in your spam folder. If you are still unable to find your statements, please email sales@thecollectivebook.studio
Royalty statements will be issued 90 days after the closing of each fiscal quarter.
For example, if your pub date was November 1st 2024, your first statement would be issued by September 30th, 2025. Your second royalty statement would be issued by December 30th, 2025.
These are called adjustments and are noted in your statement under Statement Summary > Advances and Expenses. They can include shipping charges, co-op advertising fees, sampling for the sales team, warehouse work orders, award submissions, or other shipping/marketing expenses.
For questions about a specific adjustment, contact angela@thecollectivebook.studio
Author Portal
So you just scored an amazing press hit, review or blurb? First off, congratulations! Second, we want to know about it and help you shout it from the rooftops!
In order for The Collective Book Studio team to robustly support the sales of your book and keep your book’s metadata clean, we need to know about any and all press hits as soon as possible. We need as much information as possible so we can correctly format it to feed it directly online and to our distributor.
In this section, we outline how you or your publicity team can share your latest press hits with our team. All confirmed, live press hits need to be shared with The Collective Book Studio in one of two ways:
This form contains all necessary fields to input press hits and directly feeds into our database.
After submitting, external users have the opportunity to view all press that has been input into our system for each title. The goal in sharing this is to be as transparent as possible about what we have access to at any given time. If you have questions about what is shown in this view, please reach out to publicity@thecollectivebook.studio
Author Portal
Have you just set up an awesome book reading, author appearance, event or book fair? Congratulations! We want to hear all about it and help you promote it!
To ensure that The Collective Book Studio team can support your event, please inform us about any author events as soon as they are planned. The moment an event is on your radar, share it with us! If anything changes or gets canceled, let us know! We’re happy to help where we can.
Please use the form linked below to enter your event information. If you need assistance, please email kaitlynn@thecollectivebook.studio
After submitting, external users have the opportunity to view all events that have been input into our system for each title. The goal in sharing this is to be as transparent as possible about what we have access to at any given time. If you have questions about what is shown in this view, please reach out to publicity@thecollectivebook.studio
Author Portal
At The Collective Book Studio, we’re dedicated to celebrating our authors’ successes. We actively identify and submit books for awards where they are eligible, aiming to maximize visibility and recognition for each title. These include, but are not limited to, the following:
Please contact publicity@thecollectivebook.studio, and we will advise you if the submission is worth your time. Some awards are pay-to-play, geared towards self-publishing, and not worth the time or money to apply.
Please reach out to publicity@thecollectivebook.studio, and we will get you stickers if they are available. A fee may apply.
