As mainstream publishers increasingly look to successful indie books for low-risk acquisitions, aspiring authors who are frustrated by the gatekeeper system of agents increasingly look to indie authorship as a means of proving themselves and their work worthy of a mainstream publishing contract. The only problem is, the most promising indie books are lost in a vast, undifferentiated sea of material. Plenty of indie books sell well and rack up great reader reviews, but only the biggest breakout hits register on publishers’ radar.
The Publetariat Vault is the answer.
Publishing Acquisitions Pros
If there were some way to identify the best-selling, best-reviewed self-published books in any category at any given time, and learn how effective a platform each of those books’ authors have assembled to date, would you want access to that information?
Your boss says she wants a Young Adult thriller, novella length, with supernatural and romance elements, a female protagonist and the option for a series. Finding indie books that fit all these criteria in the Publetariat Vault would be as easy as checking off a few boxes, entering a few keywords and clicking a Search button. Better yet, once you’ve found some likely candidates, you could view their sales ranks (where this information is reported by booksellers), their reader reviews, synopses, excerpts, author profiles, links to the authors’ websites and blogs, and more.
It would be like having a publishing crystal ball. There’s no need to guess at which books will appeal to readers, nor which authors will take an active role in promoting their books, when you’ve got actual sales data, reader reviews, links to author platform pieces and more at your fingertips.
Indie Authors
In an effort to attract publisher attention, you’ve got a fine-looking, well-reviewed, respectably-selling book in print, and you’ve put a lot of time, money and effort into your author platform as well. Unfortunately, publishers haven’t noticed.
If there were a service designed to facilitate publisher searches of indie books, making it easy for them to find books that meet their specific needs, are well-reviewed and selling in respectable numbers, would you want your book to be listed with that service?
Your YA thriller novella with supernatural and romance elements, a female protagonist and the option for a series may be the exact thing some acquisitions person is searching for—particularly in light of your reader reviews and sales figures—, but how will he ever find it? If he doesn’t already know your name or the title of your book, there’s no Amazon, Lulu, Smashwords, or even Google search that will point him to directly to you or your book.
In the Publetariat Vault, he can find your book based on genre, keywords, recommended reading level, protagonist gender, or numerous other specific criteria or combinations of specific criteria. And once he does find your book, he won’t have to scour the ‘net to find all the other pertinent information he needs before deciding whether to contact you to request a full copy of the book for acquisition consideration. He can view everything there is to know about both the book and you in a single location: sales rankings (where this information is reported by booksellers who carry your book), reader reviews, synopsis, excerpt, your author profile, links to your author platform pieces and more.
Any contact or publication offers resulting from your Publetariat Vault listing would be strictly between you and the publisher. It would be up to you to retain a literary agent or attorney for contract negotiations and future services related to your book, Publetariat would have no rights to your material and no stake in the deal. The Vault’s only function would be to bring commercially viable indie books to the attention of publishers who want them.
The Publetariat Vault is now in development, with an anticipated launch this summer. Watch Publetariat for more information and updates, and in the meantime, post your comments and questions about the Vault below.