WalrusInk ePublishing
Walrus Family Values
Fair-Trade Publishing Editors, Authors, the Value of Intellectual Property, and the eBook imperative 1. Ethical ePublishing in the 21st Century WalrusInk is a publisher much like any publisher. It’s an old-fashioned sort of business based on collaboration between authors and editors—content and presentation. We’re updating this model for the 21st century by going back to the basic concept of forging relationships, where editors and authors choose to work together toward a common goal. Essentially, we’re in this together! WalrusInk is made up of editors and publishing professionals with a shared sense of values that has made us friends and encouraged us to find a way of working together. We’re all deeply committed to new technology in particular, ePublishing generally, and to ethical behavior. We value people above profits, quality before quantity, and what’s useful and enduring beyond what’s popular and fashionable. We enjoy working with smart people, we believe in mutual respect, and we’re committed to producing a first-rate product. We’re convinced that ethical behavior is essential to our long-term success, and we’ve identified three principles as key: Fairness, Mutual Respect, and Equity. Here’s how we intend to apply them to the WalrusInk Publishing and Business Models. 2. Fairness vs.u0026hellip;
Working with WalrusInk
1. Iterative Beginnings—Ideas, Conversations, u0026#038; Agreements a. eBook Project Definition: Turning writing ideas into publishing realities You are a writer and we are editors, so we automatically have a mutual interest—getting from point A, a good idea, to point B, a successfully published eBook. We exchange email, we talk, we seek additional common ground with the goal of defining a project to work on together. This is the project definition phase. Have we mentioned that writing books is hard work? It can be even harder if one starts writing without a clear definition of the scope and scale of the project. This is why we like to spend time up front on a basic set of project documents. We know that much will change as the work progresses, and we’re able to implement changes without wreaking havoc by starting with a well-defined structural framework. b. Project Specification Documents: Elements of Substantiation This collection of documents is both a means of defining the project and the basis of our working agreement to publish an eBook. The process of writing these documents is iterative and the results are plastic in that we expect to make adjustments, changes, and improvements as ideas becomeu0026hellip;
Getting to know you
Editorial model
Business mechanics
Marketing matrix
Accountability
About WalrusInk
Unlike Athena, we have not come forth full-blown from the head of Zeus or any other god. Instead, we are creating ourselves from the primordial ooze leftover from publishing’s past. Feel free to watch the process or even to participate. There’s nothing to see now, but we are full of ideas, many of which are just about ready to bubble forth and expose themselves to the rude reality of light and the indignity of public inspection. We encourage openness and expect you to treat what you read in this blog by hurling whatever you feel like hurling in our direction. Please let us know your thoughts, because it’s no use being a wallflower when we’re looking for partners for the next waltz. Speak up, be heard, and you can count on us doing the same for you, though always with utmost respect. And while we like to believe that our posts are carefully considered, finely crafted, and thoughtfully presented, there is always room for disagreement, improvement, and even reconsideration. If it’s possible to be simultaneously thought-provoking and explicitly humble, such is our goal. You can think of our blogs as an invitation to a dialectic. We may not agree completely,u0026hellip;
Walrus Wisdom
1. Sic Semper Tyranus: WalrusInk Anger Management We are a group of Editors who value good writing, and are happiest working with smart, interesting people and custom crafting materials for publication. In fact, we are a forward-thinking ePublishing company unburdened by manufacturing processes or outdated financial models. We are experienced, opinionated, time-hardened publishing pros, and are nonetheless particularly fond of authors. We are also tech-savvy, aesthetically-sophisticated, and even relatively-well educated, but please don’t hold these things against us. Perhaps more importantly, we share certain values that have as much to do with the creation of WalrusInk as anything. (Disclaimer: This part may strike you as hopelessly idealistic, a cynical lie, or both, so you’ll just have to suspend disbelief and try to imagine that we’re realistically idealistic.) Honesty, transparency, fairness, and mutual respect are important to us. No big deal, you’re thinking. These are pretty basic values. But unfortunately, these terms have lost much of their currency from careless overuse, so I’ll try to differentiate by listing some of the standard business practices we abhor and eschew. We do not believe in the “business imperative.†This term is trotted out as an alternative to the more childish “because I saidu0026hellip;
Contact
Working with WalrusInk
Introduction to this section to come
In this section
Getting to know you
Editorial model
Business mechanics
Marketing matrix
Accountability
The WalrusInk Agreement
Comments
3,147 responses to “Working with WalrusInk”
Comments
3,147 responses to “Working with WalrusInk”