This may be your chance. New collaborative publisher is looking for proposals/queries for fantasy novels.

Last winter, I was getting depressed about my inability to attract a traditional publisher and was thinking about trying the self-publishing route when my debut novel was unexpectedly picked up by a new-fangled publishing company in western Canada.

Indie Ink is trying to straddle the growing divide between traditional publishing and self-publishing. The traditional guys pay all the publishing costs in exchange for a thin royalty (5-10%), but they also take over most of the creative control, leaving authors out of the loop on design, title, marketing, etc.

The self publishers are at the other end of the spectrum, giving you 100% of creative control and 100% of the revenue, but they charge you 100% of the production costs, and upsell you on other services like distribution, marketing etc. They can't lose, and you take all the risk.

Indie Ink is trying to balance this equation. Like a traditional publisher, they have an editorial review process, accepting only a fraction of the submissions they get, and they put a lot of money into the production, distribution and marketing side of things. But unlike the traditional guys, Indie thinks book projects work best when both parties have equal skin in the game. So their deal is that the costs should get split between the author and the publisher. And so should the royalties. They aim for a 50/50 split on both, although in practice, projects can end up anywhere between 40/60 and 60/40 once the negotiating dust has settled.

My novel (Strange Places) was Indie's first title in the fiction market - a market they now want to grow beyond just my work. So, being their resident expert on both fantasy and the internet, they've asked me to see if I can generate some quality submissions in the fantasy category.

That's where you guys come in.

I know there are a bunch of you out there with finished, or near-finished manuscripts in hand. If that's you, and you think the collaborative publishing model is something you'd be interested in exploring, we'd love to see a proposal. We're looking for something new. Something that isn't elves and dwarves, or sparkly vampires, or teen-romance with were-beasts. Remember what fantasy used to mean? Fantastical? That's what we're looking for. Hit us with something fantastic.

To do so, send an email to submissions over at indieinkpublishing.com. Just a plain text email, please. No attachments or links to other material. If we like the pitch, we'll ask for that kind of stuff later. Tell us about your story and about yourself as a writer. Make us salivate to see the actual manuscript. And do it in no more than about 600 words.

Let's show the old-school publishers that there's a better way to do this - a way where the authors are treated like business partners instead of children - where everybody gets a say in the product that goes out, and everybody gets a decent chunk of the successes when they happen.

Now hit me with that something fantastic.