Why Laurel
The publishing industry was built to protect publishers. With Laurel, the rights, the royalties, and the timeline are yours by default — not something you fight for.
Begin your book →The reality
Insiders describe an industry where the terms favor the party doing the printing, not the one doing the writing. The author gets a royalty; the publisher gets a business.
A traditional deal is a licensing agreement that heavily favors one party — and it isn’t the author.
Insiders describe books that miss early targets getting quietly shelved, with rights rarely returned.
The royalty statement you depend on is kept by the party that benefits from keeping it low.
What to watch for
A legitimate deal licenses specific rights and includes a reversion clause — the exit. A predatory one asks you to transfer your copyright outright, “forever” (in the US, your life plus 70 years). With no reversion clause, the work may never come back to you.
Some contracts only return your rights once you hit sales or royalty numbers that the publisher both sets and calculates. There’s no neutral scorekeeper — as one insider put it, “a trap with a math problem attached.”
You must offer your next book to the current publisher first, and you can’t go elsewhere until they formally decline. Left open-ended, that single clause can freeze an entire career.
The default, not the fight
Register your rights and carry your own ISBN — not a platform’s. You’re the publisher of record.
Register · ISBN & MetadataEvery sale on a dashboard you log into, calculated by platforms with no stake in keeping your numbers low.
Sales & RoyaltiesPublish when you choose, everywhere — Amazon and beyond — and move your files whenever you want.
Where to Publish · DistributionNo first-look clause, no imprint, no holding company. You decide what you write next and when it ships.
The whole platformKeep yours — rights, royalties, and all.
Begin your book →