Canonbridge LLC is a second-tier independent publisher located in Iowa.  It was established in 2007 to encourage and publish new writers who demonstrate talent and the potential for solid growth.  With more than 40 years of combined experience, its founders have seen the structure of Canonbridge grow quickly from one imprint to four, a single title to the capacity to publish an average of 50 titles a year in print and digital formats. 

Canonbridge LLC is proud of its dedication to professional ethics and its responsibility to the writing community.  As members of both the Midwest Independent Publishers Association (MIPA) and the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Canonbridge supports publisher education and campaigns for its authors and the industry going into the new decade.  In March of 2010, Canonbridge established Writer Connect, an online community for writers who are serious about their work, whether Canonbridge authors or others.  Canonbridge also sponsors the Writer Connect Write A Banned Book initiative in September.

FAQs

1.  What is your general philosophy?

     We hold to a high standard of ethics and consider honesty the best policy.  Our authors comprise men and women from all walks of life writing in all genres who work together to support each other as a team and as members of the Canonbridge family.  We are small, which is okay.  We're pretty new.  We fall into what is considered the "small print"/"small publisher" group.  Whether or not we'll be mid-level depends on how it is interpreted.  According to AAP's requirements, we will likely always be considered "small".  According to parameters we've seen other places, we anticipate reaching mid-level in the next 3-5 years.    

2.  Am I financially responsible for the setup of my book?

     Our authors are not financially responsible for anything that has to do with getting their books published.  We are not a vanity press.  Everything involved with getting an author's work published is our responsibility.  We do not charge fees.

3.  What is your submission policy?

Generally speaking, it goes like this:

A.  Send a query email, no attachments.  We ask for a window of a couple of weeks, and we do have a caveat of 30-60 days (in case we're on the bus or something), but we will respond.
B.  If we ask for a sample, we will ask for a general synopsis - try to keep it to 5 pages or so - and 3 or 4 chapters.  Absolutely give us 30-60 days to read and respond.  We have clear spots when we can respond sooner, but we're often buried up to our eyeballs in work, so be patient, please.
C.  If we ask for the full manuscript, we will tell you how long it will take to respond.  That will vary - again according to our time frame - but when we get to that point, we will be more specific with you, as an individual author, and tell you how long it will take us to read and discuss further options.

Total time can range from a month to 3 months right now.  As we grow, it might take longer, but by the time you get to a full manuscript request, you'll know when to start biting your nails.

For more details, please see the submission guidelines on the Submit page.

**Caveat for 2010:  We are swamped this year, and happily so.  However, this means we have had to institute a moratorium on unsolicited/blind queries from 15 May to 30 November.  We will begin accepting unsolicited queries again on 1 December.  Thanks for giving us this time to catch up.**   

4.  Attorneys have said your contracts are author-friendly.  Why?

     This directly from Maggie:  "I have seen some horrible publisher and agent contracts in the past several decades.  Legalese is a nightmare.  Often it is complicated.  It doesn't have to be, and why on earth gouge the author just because the bureaucracy of the big publishers has ground along with 80-100 year old policies they are loathe to eliminate?"
     We don't consider our authors just a "stable" full of racehorses with the philosophy that when they aren't making enough money, shoot 'em.  We want to offer the best possible sharing situation for all of us, and that includes the author. 
     We had two intellectual property attorneys work with us, tear it apart, put it back together, and streamline it.  We've had author's attorneys look it over, just chomping at the bit to try to give us a black eye.  They can't, or so far no one has.  Our last revision came with the help of Tucker, Georgia area attorney Jason Graham.  I cannot recommend him highly enough for his graciousness and his gentle manner, but mostly for his keen eye and dedication to the author, just as much as anyone else, when it comes to the author/publisher contract.  We would recommend him to all authors, even those who aren't ours, just to make sure they're protected when they're considering book contracts.  

5.  Do you offer advances?

     We do not.  More than 80% of books on the market don't make enough to cover the advances the authors have received.  That is, realistically, the only money the lion's share of authors will ever see, whether it's $500 or $5,000.  Big publishers will give you 10-15% of net sales, but it's a moot point until after the book has made a large enough profit to cover the advance.
     Agents "respectfully decline" to work with small publishers like us because, quite frankly, there's no money in it.  I've seen this said many times over in agent's blogs, and it is true.  As a retired agent friend of ours told us recently, "The business is awful.  There are some agents that do enjoy the work of their clients, but far too many of them are tuned in just to the bottom dollar.  You're not going to make any immediate cash for them if you don't give advances.  They're not keen on working just for a percentage, especially if they think they have a cash cow in their hands.  That cash cow, however, is only as good as the over-booked publishing house that's willing to take it."  We would rather work directly with the author.

6.  What method do you use to print, and how is it different?

     At this time we use print on demand (POD).  What we find interesting is that this is so easy to do, does not leave a great deal in returns, destroys fewer trees, and the accounting with it saves money, takes less time, causes few headaches and the need for therapy for everyone is greatly diminished.  That said, we do print runs.  We can send thousands of books anywhere anyone wants.  The more print runs we do, the less it costs per book to print.  But, then, you have warehousing costs, that everpresent possibility of remainders, and bigger shipping costs.  Why would we do this?  Why would you want to have to incur such a negative balance against your royalty ledger? 

7.  How do you distribute to booksellers?

     We are part of the bigger Ingram family.  Our printer is within that family, Lightning Source, based in the Nashville, TN area.  Through them, we have seven major distribution lines in the US:  Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Rittenhouse and NACSCORP.  We have 16 in the UK, which then serves all of Europe.  The books are in a live-feed online catalogue programme through these distributors.  Booksellers - all booksellers - have access to and the ability to order books through one or more of these distribution partners. 
     As for getting books into retail stores, that usually happens locally with authors, but honestly, it is tough on a national level.  Barnes and Noble has informed many of our authors - and us - that we are too small and they will never carry POD titles in any of their big-box stores.  We still send, religiously, all of our books to their Small Press office in New York, as they require in order to place them in their stores.  Truth?  It's fine with me that they handle things the way they do.  Remarkably, you won't find our eBooks in their Nook store because, when I asked for information a year ago, I heard nothing in return.  A friend of mine uploaded his as requested last August in anticipation of their release at some point, and yet of all the titles he sent, four showed up, and it took nine months for them to finally appear.  They just don't have a good handle on it, and they're scrambling just like everyone else.
     We love the indies.  The care you get through an indie both as a publisher and as a patron far outweighs that received from a big-box.  Big-box sales are declining, if you are watching the AAP reports, while the indies who stand their ground in this harsh economy are holding their own and, in some cases, seeing a rise.  Look at Powell's.  Look at Barbara's in Chicago and Prairie Lights in Iowa City. 

8.  What are your marketing strategies?  Do you give guidance to authors with their own marketing? 

     Canonbridge promotes from the website through links on the releases page and the opportunity to read samples on the Buzzr page.  We are viral like our authors with Twitter and FB, plus our tweets appear on LinkedIn.  We send global press releases, press to local papers and media outlets, and because we're part of IBPA and MIPA, all of our marketing materials go out at least quarterly, if not once a month, with every single promotional thing they do.  We subscribe to Publishers Marketplace, where we have a web page and are seen by thousands of people every day.  We have some connections to indie booksellers that gets us  in front of their faces, book by book, and we send out major-city-specific target releases that promote the books as material that would appeal to particular demographics.   
     We send out information to Book TV on C-Span 2, NBC, CBS, FOX and ABC, and yes, we do, indeed, send out releases and information to Oprah. 
     As for how we guide our authors, we often ask them to work with each other, though we do make suggestions and we give them access to whatever we can give them in the process.  We encourage book talks and discussions with book clubs over scheduling book signings.  As said in our philosophy, we are all a family.  We are here to help each other.  The business of writing and publishing one's title should never be a cutthroat competition.  That's not what it's about, even if others infer that it is.  It's about the author and writing what's in their heart, and it's about readers who are thrilled to read just exactly that.

Remember, we're in this together.

9.  How often do you pay royalties?

     Right now, we pay twice a year, in September for January through June and in March for July through December.  There are two reasons for that:  1) we do not get immediate downloads from our broker for several months, and 2) our small staff can only do so much in a given time period.

10.  Your royalties are very generous.  How can you do this when bigger publishers say they can't? 

     Bigger publishers have massive overhead.  Have you seen the property taxes on a big building in Manhattan?  Imagine paying heating, air conditioning, water, sewer, salaries, office equipment, marketing materials, warehousing, distribution, etc.  Also, don't forget risks on publication and the paperwork involved with a bureaucracy.  We don't have all of that.  Instead, we share with our authors.
     So how generous, you ask?  It's the same with everyone.  We can't see any reason to treat any one of our people any differently than the others.  We offer 50% of net sales to our authors, which is shared with the cover designer and/or illustrator of their book.
     We have illustrators and designers we'll be happy to connect with authors if they don't have someone in mind already, but this is entirely up to the author.  The reason we work this way is because the authors we have now want to have a say in how their covers look, often know people they would like to use and and by putting the illustrators or authors with them to work through it, it becomes a better look all the way around, and everyone is happy. We'll give our input during the process, of course, but arrangements between illustrators/designers and authors are entirely up to them.
     That said, if people expect the publisher to handle all of the artwork and cover design decisions, this should explain part of why the author gets such a small percentage of royalties.  After talking to our authors, it seems they like the comfortability of knowing their covers are in good hands and an open line of communication with the designers.      

11.  Do you do eBooks?  How are they distributed?

     Yes, we do.  We have both Kindle and ePub.  The Kindle is distributed, of course, through Amazon, while ePub is distributed primarily through Powell's, but also available other places.  ePub is compatible with the Nook, iPad, Sony eReader and several others.  The unfortunate idiosyncrasy with individual readers is that they don't all appear the same.  It's not the platform, it's the way the platform is processed on the individudal reader.  That said, we have Walt Shiel's Five Rainbows do our formatting for us.  Talk about quality work!  His company is fabulous.

12.  What is the Canonbridge Ning community and why did you start it?

     The Canonbridge Ning community is for serious writers who want to work with other serious writers.  It is, in a sense, an ongoing writers' workshop.  Critiques, groups, forums all appear there.  It's not a place to find an agent or a publisher.  It's for writers working with other writers.  It's private.  You can only get in if you know one of the other authors or you write to us at info@canonbridge.com and ask for an invitation.  Mind, we did start it, but we are not the perpetuators.  The members of the community are the perpetuators.  These are not just our authors, either.  In fact, most of them are not.  Some have agents, some are seeking agents, some work with us, and I do believe one or two are published by others. 
     Why did we start the community?  We were tired of seeing public sites where everyone went around trashing someone else's work because of a personality conflict or just plain meanness.  We also didn't like to see "yes" people who couldn't give a single line of constructive criticism to anyone for anything.  We were irritated with the general "Find Your Agent Here!" platform that preys on and feeds into the unrealistic fantasies of so many who could be really good if they just had solid, practical feedback.