Independent doesn't have to mean alone

At Emrae Publishing, we believe that authors deserve more than choosing the lesser of two evils. We seek to collaborate with authors who have the grit of an indie author but need a little help getting there.

Meet Our Authors

The Emrae Vision

We believe trad publishing has lost its way in the service of massive conglomerates and balding billionaires, leaving important voices out of the conversation, and we know self-publishing isn't accessible to a huge percentage of writers.

At Emrae, we don't charge authors any fees. Instead, we take on projects we're passionate about and invest our time and talent to get these stories into the hands of readers who crave the kind of representation the industry often overlooks.

Because we operate on a profit share model, everyone is incentivized to give every book their all.

Our Approach

We love indie authors because we are indie authors. First and foremost, our goal is to keep as much of the power as possible in our authors' hands. We partner with authors we believe in and only take on a few manuscripts at a time to make sure everything we put out is the best version of the story.

Once you submit, the editorial board reviews your manuscript and decides if we're the right fit for the story. If we make an offer of representation, your book will be assigned an editorial team. The publishing and marketing process runs in tandem as we get your book ready for release, always in total collaboration with you. We act as advisors every step of the way, but ultimately it's your story and vision we're bringing to life.

We're building a readership with our current authors and partnerships with indie bookstores and merchants across the globe. We'll leverage these relationships in addition to our influencer program to get your book a solid start.

We don't post and ghost here. We're all invested in the long-term success of your book and career, because we don't make money unless you do. We'll keep marketing your work in perpetuity, and you'll receive quarterly reports and royalty payouts.

Submit a manuscript

FAQs

If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to contact our editorial team.

CONTACT US

What kind of manuscripts are you looking for?

Emrae strives to represent the voices that the traditional industry seems to ignore. We're a board of queer, neurodivergent women looking to further enrich our catalog with black and brown voices, disabled voices, and perspectives the world desperately needs to hear from.

We're open to many genres, and just because you don't see it on our site right now, doesn't mean we aren't on the hunt for it! Shoot your shot; we want to uncover compelling narratives from romance to cookbooks.

How does profit share publishing work?

This is a great question, and transparently, we're figuring it out.

We're looking for partners who are comfortable operating outside of the playbook and take a chance on a model that seems a little out there.

Currently, our authors keep 60% of every royalty. Emrae then takes 20% to help keep the lights on, and your editorial team splits the remaining 20%.

This goes across all channels, including merch, etc.

How can you possibly sell books without Amazon?

You'd be surprised how many readers are really into a publishing house that doesn't distribute via Amazon, but we get it. It's scary.

We focus most of our energy on direct sales to readers via our website, and we do that by building brands behind our authors that readers want to engage with.

We also distribute via Draft2Digital across dozens of other smaller platforms.

We partner with dozens of indie bookshops across the globe to get our books in more hands, and intend to double down on these relationships as we grow.

There is a certain amount of mindset shift required to not engage with Amazon, for both authors and readers. We're passionate about educating readers on the benefits of supporting indie authors and publishers directly, and have seen a lot of support from the community!

Now, you cannot sell books anywhere without running into a billionaire eventually. We know this. The reason we're anti-Amazon and not anti-Barnes & Noble, for example, is the vast distance between your run-of-the-mill billionaire and Jeff Bezos. Amazon specifically prohibits authors from thriving by requiring exclusivity to participate in Kindle Unlimited and Audible, undercutting retail prices on books without author or publisher consent, and running competitive sales on Independent Bookstore Day.

The intention is to profit as much as possible off the backs of artists and small businesses, and we're not down for that.

What's your stance on AI?

Not in our house.

There are many more interesting and inventive ways to destroy the world than forcing a language model to steal and regurgitate other authors' work into a lackluster book.

Should a manuscript sneak past us and somehow evoke enough of an emotional response that we take it on and later find out AI was used, the author will be terminated and banned from our publishing house.