Frequently Asked Questions
What are your submission guidelines?
Submission guidelines may vary from project to project. Please see a generalized explanation of submission guidelines, on the submissions page, and make sure to check each project for specific requirements that may apply.
What rights are you asking for and what payment are you offering?
Rights asked for and payments offered may vary not only from project to project, but from contract to contract. Were Stephen King to allow us to publish one of his stories, he would assuredly offer us fewer rights, and expect higher payment for them, than we would require and accept from the average submission. That said, we try to be very fair and equitable with what we ask for in relation to what we ask for . Generally, at this time, we are asking for worldwide, nonexclusive, English Language Publication rights, for both print and electronic, for as long as the anthology remains “in print,” which is a now outdated misnomer meaning “still being made available for purchase.” We are using Draft2Digital as our distributor so that we can take advantage of their royalty sharing program, and that is what we offer as payment: royalty sharing. Please see individual project submission guidelines for more information and final confirmation of rights asked for and payment offered.
Do I really have to have a Draft2Digital account to get paid?
Yes. At this time, we are exclusively using Draft2Digital as our distributor for our upcoming projects so that we can take advantage of the Draft2Digital royalty sharing program, and that is what we offer as payment to our authors: royalty sharing. Using Draft2Digital’s royalty sharing program saves us a lot of time, effort, and costs in regards to sending out payments and dealing with taxes. (Anyone who has ever paid an author a 25¢ royalty with a check that cost $2.00 to buy, print and then mail out, and then have to report it to the IRS with a 1099 form that costs another $4.00 to deal with, knows the pain of the expenses of a publisher.) In addition, royalty sharing allows our authors a chance to make considerably more money for their stories than we could have initially paid them for inclusion in our anthologies. In order to receive these royalty share payments, each author has to have, and maintain, a Draft2Digital account, as Draft2Digital pays each person directly. If you would like to use our affiliate link to sign up for an account with Draft2Digital, it would be appreciated, but not in any way required. https://www.draft2digital.com/knightwritingpress
I still don’t get how the whole Draft2Digital thing works…
It seems complicated but it is really not. We are using Draft2Digital as our sole distributor. By doing so, we can take advantage of the Draft2Digital royalty sharing program. This means that when earnings are paid out from Draft2Digital, they will be paid directly to each person at the same time. This is the fastest way to receive earnings, as it removes the time lapse of sending them to the publisher who then has to redistribute them (which sometimes happens months later).
I still don’t understand how much you pay for your stories?
While it can and will vary from project to project, generally royalties are divvied up into equal shares for not only contributing authors, but supporting roles, such as editors, cover artists, formatters, etc. As a generalized example, an anthology with 15 authors will have the royalties divided into 22 equal shares (which comes out to approximately 4.5% each). One for each author, and one each for the editor, cover artist, cover designer, interior print book formatter, eBook formatter, technical support, and publisher. Each contributor generally receives the same amount of shares, unless filling multiple rolls (such as formatting the print book and the eBook, in which case they receive 2 shares.) Each contributor must have a Draft2Digital account to receive payment for their shares. When Draft2Digital pays out royalties earned, they divide them up based upon percentages entered by the publisher for the contributors. In this example, an eBook priced at $4.99 earns, according to Draft2Digital, an estimated $2.97 in royalties per sale. This means each contributor with one share would earn approximately 13¢ per sale of each eBook. How does this stack up against other payments? In order for each author to earn the equivalent of a token $5.00 payment for a story, we only need to sell 39 copies of the eBooks. After that is where this idea begins to earn its keep: the more copies we sell, the more money the authors earn, which potentially allows for much more than a token $5.00 payment. On top of that, every author who promotes an anthology they are in is promoting, and potentially earning, for themselves as well all other contributors of the book. Working together to promote, there is no real limit on what contributors can earn from the anthology.
Can I submit my novel to you?
No.
Will you publish my novel?
No.
Why won’t you publish my novel?
Why would you want us to? As a very small press we have no budget and limited ability for marketing, so you would get none of that from us. Which means you will likely have very limited sales. Like ten books, maybe. Eleven if Mom buys one to give to your Aunt. On top of that, if we published your book, we would take a percentage of your sales for the costs of our efforts, which you assuredly would feel were nominal at best and would grow to resent. If we were to put actual efforts into you book, we would require final say in edits, formats, and design (both interior and exterior), and then we would take a larger percentage of your sales to pay for that. And chances are, without a marketing budget, there would not be enough sales to pay for that. So, in addition, we would charge you up front for those services. But we do not currently offer any services, so we would have to charge you premium, going-out-of-our-way rates for any services we provided. By that point, you will be thinking you could have self-published or found someone else with a large enough budget to pay you for the rights to publish your book instead of you paying us to publish your book. Seriously, why would you want us to?
What primary services do you offer?
At this time we are not offering any services. We are concentrating on publishing anthologies.
Do you offer editing services?
We are not offering editing services at this time.
What are the rates of your services?
At the time Knight Writing Press was offering editing services, the fee was $50 for a short story up to 6,000 words. Novels were negotiated after sample pages had been exchanged, with typical rates being around $0.005 per word. That is no promise that, should editing services be offered again, the prices will remain the same.
What is a Books2Read Universal Book Link?
A Books2Read Universal Book Link is created by Books2Read and opens a web page that lists all of the online storefronts that a particular title can be found for sale. Many booksellers approve of this link as it does not favor any one bookseller, but rather allows the customer to choose their favorite provider. While nice, they are fallible and may not list all places a title can be purchased. More information can be found at their website: https://books2read.com/
I see you are an Amazon Affiliate. Why do you have links to other bookstores?
We love and support all booksellers, and we encourage you to do so as well! One of our favorites is author, author! which has worked with us in the past to set up pre-orders that couldn’t be done anywhere else. We love you, Laura!