Sunday 8 May 2016

Wuthering Ink


I really want to shout about this for two reasons. Firstly, it's a project involving Bem Le Hunte. The reason that caught my attention is because her novel The Seduction of Silence is, and probably always be, my favourite novel of all time. You can now get the e-book for AUD 2.99 on their website.

Secondly, Wuthering Ink is about fair trade publishing. Paying authors fairly for their work, and championing experimental and exploratory fiction. My own publisher Ghostwoods Books has a similar ethos, splitting profits 50/50 with authors, and I really hope this is the way of the future.

As Stephen Sewell says on the Wuthering Ink website:

We have been suckered into the idea that what the internet is useful for is flogging stuff, and so we have forgotten its truly liberating promises. Like the actors, directors and writers who established the United Artists studio to wrest creative control back from the executives and moneymen, we wish to reclaim the book for the people whose hearts and souls go into them, and for the readers who cherish them. Our readers will be offered the challenge of engaging in what we used to call literature. The time is ripe, the stakes are high and the old world is dead, but the light that is shining through the crack of the future is blinding, and we know it's time to act.

Readers, please help support these brave new initiatives. It isn't right that years of work result in royalties as low as 12.5% on a paperback or, as Le Hunte quoted, 25% on ebooks. Publishing is a collaborative undertaking, and each contributor deserves fair pay. 

To really get a sense of the problem, read Wuthering Ink's About page.

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