How to Publish Your Book By Crowdfunding: Inkshares ep11

Jeremy Thomas is the CEO of Inkshares, which offers a mix of crowdfunding model and the services offered by a traditional publisher. Inkshares was founded in 2013 to create a differentiated offering, In many ways they are similar to a traditional publisher, but they rely on the interest and funding of readers and booksellers. Once a book meets the threshold for number of pre-orders, this startup publisher provides editorial, cover design, printing and distribution for that book. Jeremy and I talk how Inkshare’s model has evolved, his take on international presence, non-English language publishing and audiobooks, and finally, his advise for authors.

Listen To The Podcast Episode By Clicking Below

Discussion with Jeremy

    • Jermy has a degree in Spanish and started a career in Software development. He has written a book called Social Software.
    • After a stint with KPMG, he worked as a Chief Technology Officer(CTO) for PopExpert. Later he joined Inkshares as the CTO and fourth co-founder and currently he is the CEO of Inksharess.
    • Inkshares believes in bringing efficiency in the system of publishing, and was started in 2013 with a differentiated offering to the authors. Inkshares uses crowdfunding as a model for selling of books. The authors pitch their books to the readers and the readers can pre-order the books they like.
 Inkshares is a reader driven book publisher.
  • 99% of the authors are rejected by big publishers. Stephen King’s debut novel was rejected 30 times, for example.

How the Crowdfunding model works

  • Inkshares believe in having a broad number of readers., and crowdfunding is an effecctive way of getting new readers. Currently 60% of an author’s book sales come from strangers.
  • Focuses of the business is on business development and marketing efforts for tracking authors who write startup books, science fiction and fantasy.
  • Since 2015 they have partnered with Girl Friday Productions which is an editing house based out of Seattle. Inkshares along with the editors follow a rigorous process with the author to capture the plot and fine tune it. Copy editor works on the grammatical issues and cover designer works on the cover concept apart from the layout.
  • Children’s books are printed in China and then shipped to California, who in turn mail them to the readers who have ordered the copy. They have partnered with Ingram for distribution.
  • In terms of time, they take only one third to half the amount of time than traditional publishing for books to reach the stores. (6 to 8 months from the time the manuscript is ready to reach the store, provided that the pre order goals are met)
  • People can pre order the book also through their ecommerce store front and royalties are paid to the author every week. For sales through website the payment is credited within 2 days and for wholesale channels it is 90 days.
  • They currently has their payment channels in 16 countries . There are a few authors from Australia, France and one author in Malaysia who have published through Inkshares.
  • Currently authors from India need to have a US bank account and a Social Security Number to sell through Inkshares. Or they can do so through Paypal.
Links and Resources: Ways to Reach Jeremy: Email: jeremy at inkshares dot com
This post was updated on 2016-02-02