We were exhausted by an industry that asks authors to pay for the privilege of being published, or surrender the lion's share of their work to conglomerates who treat manuscripts as inventory.
Before Chicory and Thorn existed, we spent years watching talented writers get squeezed from both sides. On one end: vanity presses dressing themselves up as legitimate publishers, collecting thousands of dollars from authors desperate to see their names on a spine, then delivering nothing but a box of books and a hollow congratulations. On the other: the conglomerate machinery of legacy publishing, where debut authors are given a brief season of attention and then quietly dropped when their first sales figures fail to justify the marketing budget.
Vanity publishing is the industry's worst-kept secret. The model is simple — charge the author, not the reader. The publisher assumes no financial risk, provides little genuine editorial care, and profits regardless of whether the book finds an audience. Authors are left holding inventory and paying for a credential that the broader literary world has learned to ignore. We refused to build something like that. We refuse still.
Legacy publishers are not the answer either. Royalty rates for debut authors at large houses typically hover between eight and fifteen percent on print sales, with less favorable terms on digital. Advances are applied against those royalties, meaning an author rarely sees an additional check after the initial payment. Worse, the debut author is a calculated risk: allocated minimal marketing support and released into the market to catch or not. If a book does not perform in its first twelve weeks, the relationship quietly dissolves.
Chicory and Thorn was built to refuse both of those futures. We do not charge authors a single dollar. Not for editing. Not for layout. Not for cover design. Not for anything. We invest in the manuscript because we believe in it — and our royalty structure reflects that belief. Authors earn a meaningful percentage of every sale, structured across tiers that grow with the book. The more it sells, the better they are compensated. Our tiers are unmatched in the independent press space because we designed them that way from the very first day.
We believe an unknown author with an extraordinary manuscript deserves the same care as an established name — perhaps more. The press exists to be that care. If you have found your way to this page, you may be one of those authors. We hope you will consider letting us be your stewards.
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