I want to tell you something I have been sitting on for a little while.
A few months back I tried to reach out to indie authors directly — through DMs, through email — to tell them about a little corner of our website I had been building. A place where they could list their ebooks and sell them to readers, and keep every single dollar that came in. Nobody bit. And I understand why. When a stranger slides into your inbox talking about money and your book, every alarm goes off. It does not matter how genuine the offer is. It sounds like a pitch. It sounds like every other platform that promises exposure and takes 30%.
So I am trying something different. I am just going to tell you about it here, out loud, and let you decide if it is something you care about.
I have been in book production for a few years now — interior layout, cover design, EPUB conversion, the work that turns a manuscript into something that looks like a real book. I love that work. But over time I started noticing something that bothered me. Authors would come to us with genuinely good books. We would help them produce a file that looked as clean and professional as anything coming out of a big house. And then they would go list it on Amazon or one of the major platforms and get somewhere between 35 and 70 cents on the dollar. They did all the work. They wrote the thing. They paid for production. And then they handed most of the money to a middleman who did not write a single sentence. I am an Aquarius. I have a whole thing about fairness. This bothered me more than it probably should have.
So I built a shelf.
It is a section of the Editority website where indie authors can list their ebooks for sale. When a reader buys your book, 100% of what they pay goes directly to you. Not 70%. Not after fees. All of it. We do not take a cut. We do not charge a listing fee. We are not trying to be a platform. We are a small boutique studio in San Diego that believes authors should be paid for their work. What we get out of it is simple: a reason for readers to come to editority.com, a community of writers around our brand, and the satisfaction of doing something that actually helps people — which sounds corny but is true.
Digital only for now — EPUB or PDF. Any genre, any length, fiction or nonfiction. First books welcome. Backlist titles welcome. The only things we do not list are content that harms children or encourages real violence. Everything else is fair game.
Email us at info@editority.com with your book title, a short description, and your file. That is it. We will have it listed within five business days and we will help spread the word as our audience grows. No contract. No exclusivity. No catch.
I know “no catch” sounds like the oldest trick in the book. So I want to be plain about what is actually happening here. Editority makes money from production services — layout, cover design, EPUB conversion. That is our business. The Shelf is not a revenue play. It is a values play. We want indie authors to make more money from their work. We want readers to find books they would never have found on a big platform. We want to build something the publishing industry actually needs more of.
If that resonates with you, send me your book. If it does not, that is okay too. The door stays open.
Diane Polanco is the Managing Director of Editority, a boutique book production studio in San Diego, CA.
*The Shelf lives at editority.com · List your book: info@editority.com
We Built a Bookshop. You Keep Every Dollar.
