As many may recall, in July, after a few years watching independent publishing go from vanity press to a viable path to publication, and after kicking the idea around, we took the plunge and decided to experiment with a project we are calling Writer Unboxed Publishing. We had no idea how the project would evolve – we needed a guinea pig! I offered up my novel Steel and Song: The Aileron Chronicles Book 1, to gauge the feasibility of such a venture.

Since then we’ve gathered valuable metrics. We’re still in the discovery phase of WU Publishing, but one thing is clear: the response of the WU community to both the proposed venture and to Steel and Song has impacted our thinking in unexpected ways. An engaged, active population is one of the strengths of the WU brand, and while we anticipated WU would be supportive in general, we were blown away by the magnitude of support and enthusiasm. I want to thank everyone who bought a copy, tweeted, Facebooked, blogged, left a review, and were in general amazing. We could not have asked for a better launch.

If we move ahead with this project, we’d like for WU Publishing to be more than an independent publisher. Because the strengths of WU are unique (and awesome), we would want WU Publishing to align with WU’s culture and leverage those strengths to both the benefit of the authors who are considering publishing under the WU imprint, and readers who are looking for unboxed books.

How we leverage those strengths to produce successful books is what we are currently focused on. Those strengths are: [Read more…]