Alinar Publishing is a place where independent authors can sell their work on the internet. We describe ourselves as a self-publishing co-operative because we don’t charge anything for our services and the site is run for the mutual benefit of all the authors. It’s a great opportunity for authors who prefer to retain control of their work and who are willing to work hard promoting their books. We expect our authors to provide us with professionally edited manuscripts and cover art to the correct specifications and in return we convert and upload the stories to Alinar Publishing, distribute them to sites like Fictionwise, and pass the earnings to the author in full. 

We are talking with Maria Morpeth and Felicity Heaton, co-publishers at the new ePublisher, Alinar Publishing. Welcome to Love Romances and More, we are looking forward to learning more about your new venture.  

Alinar Publishing is creating a buzz amongst readers and authors, could you tell us about your vision for the company? 

Maria M. & Felicity H.: We want it above all to be a place where authors are happy and where they’re valued. Creating that kind of trust is the foundation stone of any e-publishing company. We want it to be the kind of company in which the authors feel a personal investment and where they feel that everyone is rooting for their success. That feeling of mutual benefit is very important for us. 

Alinar Publishing is the result of the combined efforts of Maria Morpeth and Felicity Heaton, both of you being successful, published authors. Could you tell us why you decided to establish your own e-Publishing company?  

Maria M. & Felicity H.: I’ve (Maria) been in e-publishing before, so I’ve seen the other side of the coin as it were. Alinar is here not to displace traditional e-publishers, but to offer an alternative to those authors who want to maximize to the full the wonderful opportunities that the internet is providing us with regards to publishing. The three things we hear most from authors is that they’d love to have more control over their books with regards to editing, and covers. They’d love to be able to write outside the box if that’s where their inspiration lies, and that they’d like their books to have a higher profile for longer. We’ve tried to address all these things at Alinar. A typical Alinar author is one who knows the importance of proper editing and proofreading and can organize and work with freelance editors to achieve a manuscript of a high standard. We don’t have submission guidelines because we trust the authors to write what’s best for them. Being a non profit making organization frees us from the commercial aspects of having to produce stories in certain genres, certain ratings etc. We know full well that sex sells on the net, but if one of our authors decided not to write an x-rated story, that’s okay with us. And lastly, we’ve really gone out of our way to keep all the books in our catalogue in the public eye, with the use of a random book feature which pulls books from the back catalogue, a featured section which does the same and an author column where they can have their say. 

What do you feel Alinar Publishing has to offer authors and readers that is not currently available from existing ePublishers?  

Maria M. & Felicity H.: Well, full royalties for a start, LOL. We pay our authors every penny they earn and deduct only external expenses such as distributor fees. Our authors do the bulk of the work so we think they should be rewarded accordingly. And control over what they produce and the way it’s edited. We do discuss content with authors, but ultimately it’s their story and we respect that. We can do that as we’re not seeking to make a profit from them, only to offer them an opportunity. 

The idea of a publishing co-operative is unique to Alinar Publishing; could you give us an overview of how this works and what the advantages are for authors and readers?  

Maria M. & Felicity H.: I think we’ve outlined most of the advantages to authors above. Authors get to keep control of their vision all the way down the line from the original concept of the story to the way it’s presented to the market. And they get to keep the money they earn. For the reader it’s an opportunity to buy and read what we like to call “The Director’s Cut” of the stories we publish. Because our stories aren’t filtered through submission guidelines or a publisher’s vision we hope we can offer something a little new and exciting. We are definitely trying to widen the scope of e-publishing with this venture. We do have sensual romance, but we have authors who’d like to offer more mainstream books and we feel it’s a good time to do this.  

How does the site work? Our authors organize their own editing, proof reading and covers. They then send us a bundle with everything we need to convert the stories to the various formats. Stories are then discussed and proofed a few more times to make sure they’re in the best possible state and then they’re uploaded to Alinar and distributed to companies such as Fictionwise. At present we’re offering a PDF versions and an HTML version on Alinar. Fictionwise offers upwards of ten different versions, so hopefully we’re catering for everyone’s needs. We buy ISBN numbers in bulk and sell them to authors who need them, at cost price which is currently, £2.00 or $4.00. 

We’re looking to widen distribution avenues in the future. Authors are then expected to work hard promoting their titles and Alinar too. If they do this, everyone benefits. We pass on the royalties quarterly by Paypal. We have a simple contract that is non exclusive to allow the author to pursue other sales avenues, including print publishers, if that’s what their ultimate goal is.  

We’re working to raise the profile of the company with a combination of paid advertising, forums, free reads and word of mouth. And it’s great to see our authors out there not only promoting themselves, but the company too. Alinar recently got a mention from Jude Johnson during her BBC radio Wales interview, which was exciting. In the future we hope the authors will want to contribute towards joint cover ads in places like RT. 

How would an author be considered to join your co-operative? 

Maria M. & Felicity H.: Because there are only two of us running the company and because we’re both authors too we decided to go by personal invitation only. But we are open to discussion with experienced, previously published authors who’d like to have a go at self publishing. We do literally work for free and it’s important that authors understand that and are willing to put in the hard work required to produce their own book. Authors who are interested are welcome to mail us and tell us a little about themselves, why they want to go into self publishing, what benefits they feel they can bring to Alinar, and what they’re working on. 

Alinar Publishing has an impressive line up of authors to kick off your opening; which talented authors can we expect to see publishing at Alinar Publishing?  

Maria M.: I’m grateful that these authors have had the confidence to want to publish with us. The concept is working so well at the moment because all these authors believe in what we’re trying to do and are willing to work really hard to make the dream come true. Both Felicity and I publish our work at Alinar alongside, at present, Eve Asbury/Gayle Eden, Kallysten, Jude Johnson and Jane Hill. As far as new authors are concerned we’re already working almost to capacity so our growth will reflect that. We’re hoping that Lily Graison, who writes romance, will be joining us soon. And we’ve also caught the interest of my builder’s son, Lee Howarth who’s been inspired to write a YA which he wants to publish with us. He was a finalist in a recent BBC writing contest so I’m looking forward to see what he comes up with.  

Felicity H.: It’s great that so many authors want to work with us. We’ve had such a wonderful response from authors, including ones that we’re not currently working with. People are really interested in the site and the way we’re running it. We do have other authors that are working on stories so hopefully we’ll be able to introduce some new faces in 2007. 

Which genres can readers expect to see published at Alinar Publishing? 

Maria M. & Felicity H.: At the moment we’re selling mostly romance, but we’re open to every genre, fiction and non fiction apart from erotica. We will be selling steamy romance, but not stories that stray into the sex for sex sake area. Sexual content can be graphic, but needs to reflect plot or character growth. Rather than selling one kind of story we’re here as a retail outlet for whatever the author wants to write and what they think they can sell. We do understand though that the bulk of our offerings will most likely be romance either category or mainstream, with perhaps science fiction and fantasy coming in second. 

Alinar Publishing will be offering a range of romance genres at varying sensuality levels; can you give us an overview of your rating system? 

Here are our ratings, which you can find on our site. 

General – stories we feel are suitable for all readerships and ages. 

Simmering – these stories may contain any of the following – infrequent swearing, mild, behind-closed-doors sex scenes and mild violence. 

Sensual -  these stories may contain any of the following – swearing, descriptive sex scenes usually limited to euphemism, and moderate violence. In paranormal books, this rating also applies to stories with blood play of a sensual/sexual nature. 

Sultry – these stories may contain any of the following – frequent swearing, graphic and explicit sex scenes, and moderate to extreme violence.

Do you have plans to offer your titles in print format in the future? 

Maria M.: That will be up to the individual author as this is self publishing, but we will be encouraging them all to offer print versions of their books. Queen of Hearts and Dragon and Hawk are already available in print and Alinar posts a link to the print version of all the books on our site. We all realize that there are a lot of readers out there who’d prefer the print version of the book and this is a great way make use of print on demand. Authors can choose the pod publisher which works best for them and use Alinar as an additional sales outlet for that book. Revenue for sales would go straight to the author from the pod site and this saves us the extra admin that would be involved if we organized the print versions ourselves. 

Felicity H.: I agree with Maria that POD is up to the individual author. I already have my long western historical in POD at lulu.com. It’s easy to use that site to create paperbacks so instead of redirecting valuable time and resources away from Alinar Publishing, we’re letting authors do that for themselves. That way we can concentrate on getting new e-books out. 

What can readers expect to see in the coming months? 

Maria M.: We have two wonderfully sensual Christmas regencies by Gayle Eden (who also writes as Eve Asbury), which are for sale right now. One is a short story called The Christmas Ball and the other a novella called Winter Heart. 

Valentine’s Day will be our next promotion and we hope to have some short stories to offer for that. We have four authors who are currently writing books with Alinar in mind, and I’m getting my previously published books back onto the market, some as free reads. They include my long historical In the Dark With You which will be published in two parts. Felicity has an awesome Vampire Realm series that’s she’s putting the finishing touches to. Jane Hill has a book of ghost stories called The Prayer Tree and Jude Johnson has the sequel to Dragon and Hawk called Celtic Fire coming out early next year. 

Felicity H.: I can’t wait to get my hands on that. I was so engrossed in the first story when preparing the e-book for the website! 

Do you have anything you would like to add? 

Maria M. & Felicity H.: Hmm, what have we missed out? A feature of our site is that in return for joining our forum you get access to a free reads folder which we’re encouraging all our authors to contribute to. We think that free reads are a great way to allow the reader to sample the author’s writing style. We’ve tried to make the site a little more interactive than most in that our authors can write articles on anything of interest to the column, and readers have a place called The Lounge, where they can ask the authors questions.   

Maria M.: We’re aiming for quality over quantity and to keep the running of the site manageable for Felicity and myself. Rushing books to market invariably means that quality suffers and we really want to make sure that each book gets as much attention as it needs and goes to press in the best possible state. It’s probably a good thing to mention here that post production work on a book takes easily as long as writing it and an author should allow for that. It’s not just a question of writing the book and it magically appearing on Alinar the day after we receive it, because it won’t, LOL. An author should be prepared to polish the manuscript as many times as needed before it goes on sale.  

Thank you, Felicity and Maria, for taking time out to talk with us about Alinar Publishing, where can readers find out more about your upcoming releases?  

Maria M.: Thank you Dee and Love Romances for giving us the opportunity to do this. We believe passionately in what we’re doing. I hope the site and content reflect that. We want readers as well as authors to benefit from this. We have some great stories being released in the next few months and we hope that readers will drop by and see what’s new. We value our readers greatly and they’ll always be made most welcome.  

Felicity H.: Thanks Dee. If people would like to know more about our upcoming releases, they can look at the coming soon section of the site – www.alinarpublishing.com. We’re still working on adding some stories to the system though. People can also check out the authors’ personal websites. They’re all listed on the author pages on the site.