One Hand Publishing

The Best of both Worlds

By selecting and combining the best quality from both traditional and digital publishing world, E-book publisher Iguana Books is hoping to provide both the convenience of self-publishing, and the quality associated with traditionally published books. The new start-up’s focus on e-books will be more selective than many other self-publishing platform, and authors will be charged a fee for design and editorial work in advance of publication.

Greg Ioannou, the child of the Editors’ Association of Canada’s president, says: “We’re not going to put our name on [a book] unless it’s been professionally edited [and] professionally designed, [and] is the sort of thing one of the major publishers would put out.”

The newly redesigned website is expecting to launch later this week. It features includes:

- Author pages and e-commerce capabilities

- A platform where authors accepted for publication can pre-sell e-books to offset editorial fees

According to Ioannou, the publisher wants readers to tell them what to publish and what not to, therefore a book will go into production only once it has sold enough pre-sale copies; the ones that don’t sell won’t.

Similar to Smashwords, authors will receive a royalty of 85% of net proceeds from Iguana e-book sales. Titles will be available for sale through major e-book retailers such as Kobo, Amazon’s Kindle Store, and Apple’s iBookstore.