Welcome to Cooperative Ink
A Creative Collective
Mission Statement
Welcome to Cooperative Ink, a coalition of artists, writers, and musicians from around the world, featuring a diverse body of work, from games to books, music, and more. If you’re an experienced artist, writer, or musician interested in joining the cooperative, please contact us at fuqua.cs (at) gmail.com. Thank you for your interest.
Traditional publishers have usually been somewhat conservative in the projects they take on, limiting risks because getting a book to market in the past required significant investment. As large publishers have shrunk in number by gobbling up each other, they’ve become even more hesitant to take chances on new authors and new ideas, resulting in today’s homogenized market of copycat copycatting. Occasionally, something new breaks through. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me come to mind, both starting out at small, independent publishers before being bought by major conventional publishers who set about exploiting every copycat possibility that could be connected to their work.
Traditional publishers have systematically narrowed offerings into predefined marketing niches of limited diversity, squeezing out authors whose work goes beyond the boundaries. Meanwhile, writers whose work is accepted by traditional publishers find themselves saddled with increasing responsibilities that were once the publisher’s sole domain — promotion, design, production, and more. In short, publishers took care of business to allow the writer to get back to what he/she did best — write. Today, writers find themselves increasingly burdened by the bulk of promotional and production work while receiving a shrinking percentage of a book’s net earnings.
Enter technology and the path to accessible independent publishing, enabling writers and artists to get their work to audiences without the assistance of conventional publishers. Technology upended the music industry in the 1990s, and now it’s doing the same to the publishing industry. Still, some aspects of conventional publishing are a must for independent pursuits as well — specifically, editing, production and marketing. That’s where cooperatives come in.
Cooperative Ink, like other independent publishing cooperatives, is a collective of professional writers, musicians and artists from around the world, creative individuals with decades of experience in traditional publishing who have decided to seek broader audiences for their work through independent publishing. Cooperative Ink’s strength is built upon creative people assisting creative people, from basic editing to book layout to publishing, from drafting news releases and development of conventional media contacts to managing social networking and personal appearances — all with the goal of providing a diverse variety of books, music, and entertainment to an audience seeking more than the umpteenth version of the latest conventional publishing copycat darling.
Please visit the individual websites of cooperative members to explore their work, from fiction to music to art.
For more information about Cooperative Ink and its members, please contact us at fuqua.cs (at) gmail.com.
Traditional publishers have usually been somewhat conservative in the projects they take on, limiting risks because getting a book to market in the past required significant investment. As large publishers have shrunk in number by gobbling up each other, they’ve become even more hesitant to take chances on new authors and new ideas, resulting in today’s homogenized market of copycat copycatting. Occasionally, something new breaks through. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me come to mind, both starting out at small, independent publishers before being bought by major conventional publishers who set about exploiting every copycat possibility that could be connected to their work.
Traditional publishers have systematically narrowed offerings into predefined marketing niches of limited diversity, squeezing out authors whose work goes beyond the boundaries. Meanwhile, writers whose work is accepted by traditional publishers find themselves saddled with increasing responsibilities that were once the publisher’s sole domain — promotion, design, production, and more. In short, publishers took care of business to allow the writer to get back to what he/she did best — write. Today, writers find themselves increasingly burdened by the bulk of promotional and production work while receiving a shrinking percentage of a book’s net earnings.
Enter technology and the path to accessible independent publishing, enabling writers and artists to get their work to audiences without the assistance of conventional publishers. Technology upended the music industry in the 1990s, and now it’s doing the same to the publishing industry. Still, some aspects of conventional publishing are a must for independent pursuits as well — specifically, editing, production and marketing. That’s where cooperatives come in.
Cooperative Ink, like other independent publishing cooperatives, is a collective of professional writers, musicians and artists from around the world, creative individuals with decades of experience in traditional publishing who have decided to seek broader audiences for their work through independent publishing. Cooperative Ink’s strength is built upon creative people assisting creative people, from basic editing to book layout to publishing, from drafting news releases and development of conventional media contacts to managing social networking and personal appearances — all with the goal of providing a diverse variety of books, music, and entertainment to an audience seeking more than the umpteenth version of the latest conventional publishing copycat darling.
Please visit the individual websites of cooperative members to explore their work, from fiction to music to art.
For more information about Cooperative Ink and its members, please contact us at fuqua.cs (at) gmail.com.
Copyright 2019
Cooperative Ink
Cooperative Ink