With writers and publishing pundits of all kinds advocating mix-and-match pick-the-best approaches to getting your work published, another new hybrid platform may – or may not – offer interest and potential to authors, and lessons to traditional publishers. Inkshares, which claims that “we’re building a new publishing ecosystem that connects authors and readers,” works with a simple model, which it demonstrates through some smart pieces of layout: “Authors pitch, the crowd funds, we publish.”
“Inkshares is a crowd-driven publisher,” the site’s blurb continues. “Our goal is to connect writers with readers and provide a flexible set of developmental and marketing resources. In doing so, we can bring quality literary work to life, paying authors more and costing readers less. We’re crowdfunding meets publishing.” Individual works are developed as projects, and the Inkshares team handles editing, production, and distribution, whether ebook, printed book, or both.
Company CEO Larry Levitsky “has more than 25 years of executive management experience in internet technologies and book publishing [which may or may not be a good sign], with such leading companies as Microsoft, Real Networks, and McGraw-Hill. At Microsoft, Larry managed the book publishing and Interactive Press divisions.” Inkshares also claims to be able to offer higher royalties than traditional publishers through its crowdfunding model, though whether this then supersedes the large number of Kickstarted anthologies and other crowdfunded publishing projects, let alone managing to “craft the new economic backbone of twenty-first century publishing,” is still not proven.
I’d welcome any reflections or thoughts on the Inkshares offering and its potential. Experience from actual writers who went through its system would be even better.
