What steals shelf space in your home? If you’re a reader, it’s bound to be books, so Shelfstealers seems like a great name for a publishing venture and indeed this is a company that’s gearing up to launch very soon.
Shelfstealers is the brain-child of Sheryl J. Dunn and Marzena Romanowicz, respectively an ex-corporate lawyer and a chemist. However, they do have writing and publishing credits. Sheryl’s first novel was an award winner and she’s been an editor, while Marzena was Creative Director of a print publishing house.
Creative mind-set
While digital publishing houses seem to be springing up every day, Shelfstealers seems to have a better chance of success than most, because they’re bringing a very creative mind-set to publishing as witnessed by two of the programs they’ll be trialling. The first is the Clear Eyes Book initiative which will be donating audio books to international and national organizations that serve people with visual disabilities. They’re currently auditioning people to record these books, so if you have a good speaking voice this might be your chance to shine.
Watch Us Write
The second innovation is the Watch Us Write program, which essentially allows readers to collaborate, by a process of commenting and interaction, with their favorite writers in creating a book. Dunn accepts that not all writers will be amenable to this, saying, “Not all our authors will join the Watch Us Write program because some authors can't bear the thought of discussing their work or revealing their early drafts and machinations. Other authors believe, as did Norman Mailer, that . . . it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension." For readers who want to take part in Watch Us Write there will be an initial membership fee of $9.99 plus a monthly charge of $3.99 to participate, but they are promised a copy of the e-book and audio book they’ve contributed to once it’s finished.
Shelfstealers tagline is "great books the majors missed," though they’re currently looking for an alternative with a competition that offers more than $250 dollars in prizes.
Interaction with readers
From the above it can be seen that Shelfstealers is very focused on interaction with their readers and not just in the business of selling them books. The concept is still in the very early stages and Dunn doesn’t see them being in full publishing mode for a year by which time they hope to have 50 books in their stable. She says, "We want submissions in virtually every fiction and non-fiction category except poetry (for now), screenplays, erotica (i.e., stories whose primary focus is erotic, but we do accept stories with erotic scenes), excessive violence (e.g., violence for its own sake), pornography, religious (but spiritual is fine), rants, and non-fiction subjects where we (or our beta-readers) don’t know enough about the subject and we cannot find an expert to help us to vet the book."
This still leaves a lot of ground to be covered and the books they already have on their shelves include Wishing by M.L. Watson, a magic tale; Joe Peace by Kerry Dunn (no relation to Sheryl) takes a fresh look at the good cop/bad cop routine and On Double Tracks by Leslie Hall Pinder, short-listed for the Canadian Governor General’s Award for Fiction, about an Indian land claims court case.
Authors accepted for publication can expect to be paid a 50% royalty on gross sales of e-books and audio books, though they’ll be expected to stump up for cover art. With print, authors receive 50% of net sales (i.e., after the cost of the POD book) and the author is expected to pay the $75 print set-up costs.
I Spy for Shelfstealers
With the publishing industry being in such a state of flux, only a fool would predict where it will all end and which formats or delivery systems will survive. Shelfstealers is a brave attempt to add something different to the mix by really involving the reading public in the publishing process. Dunn’s take on it is that, "Readers will help us to find good books and authors and will earn credits towards purchases in our Bookstore for doing so, i.e., we’re giving our readers a piece of the action through our I Spy for Shelfstealers program. As far as we know, no other publisher or bookstore is doing anything like this (unless you count customer loyalty programs, which we will definitely have too). Another way of looking at this program is that instead of having book reps who visit physical bookstores to sell books, we’ll have a force of Spies who will be spreading, by word-of-mouth (still the best way of getting a book to go viral), the news about the books they referred to Shelfstealers."
This is truly applying creative thinking to real-world commercial problems and should be applauded. Whether it works or not will depend on authors submitting good work to get published and the readers actually buying the books, even if it’s only to steal more shelf space.
Gurmeet Mattu - Gurmeet Mattu was born and lives in Glasgow, Scotland, but is of Indian (Sikh) descent. He trained as a journalist at the Polytechnic of ...
