We work with expert freelancers to ensure a fair and transparent exchange for both writer and supplier.

Publishing a book is not just about the writing - it is a collaborative effort that requires skilled and trustworthy editors, proofreaders, designers and illustrators. Ensemble brings together teams that work together with a common goal: to produce professional products within a reasonable timeframe and budget. The writer retains full control and oversight of the project while benefitting from the support and experience of a like-minded team who are in turn being paid fairly for their work.

Ensemble Publishing wants to create a process that makes publishing more accessible, equitable and transparent. There are no barriers to publishing with us, we help anyone who wants to write, regardless of what or how much they intend to publish. We facilitate editorial support necessary to producing high quality products while ensuring everyone is being treated fairly.

By improving the standards of ‘self-publishing’, we hope to close the gap in quality and reputation between it and mainstream publishing, making it a valid and more respected way for underrepresented voices to be published and promoted. We believe this will improve literature as a whole and in doing so provide current and future generations with access to accurate representations of cultures, people and ideas.

We have the financial model of an agent – we don’t make money until the writer is making a profit from their book, and then we take a royalty. We liaise with the writer from the beginning in order to understand their goals for the project, establish a realistic timeline that fits their budget, and then help set up contracts with suppliers that we trust. Any costs that the writer incurs is accounted for as an expense to be recouped from sales before any fee (royalty) is taken by Ensemble.

The writer retains control of their work, but Ensemble manages accounting and sales figures as well as covering any publishing set up costs related to relevant platforms, ISBN registration, subscriptions etc – this too is recouped from sales of the book before any profits are distributed.

Our Values

Disruptive Collaboration

Ensemble is named to highlight the power it will draw from bringing together groups of people to support and enable writers from all backgrounds and elevate their voices.

We recognise that working for change can only be effective and fair when it is done together, with clear eyes on where the impact will be felt and how to make that impact positive and informed.

Open & Fair

We intend that by making our design and process open to all, both to engage with, view and understand, we will encourage fairness at all points of our activity. This includes all those currently engaged with the publishing and bookselling industry as it stands, we do not wish to take from some to benefit others, instead we want to work for a fairer deal for all parties involved, with a clear sense of how the scales are currently set, and how to ensure they balance.

There are lots of words that feel as though they have been made bloodless by overuse; transparency and accountability are two such words. We want to make sure that we aren’t replicating biases and injustices, and the best way to do that is to make our systems and decisions as clear and visible as possible. We prioritise fairness and communication to ensure everyone is properly treated.

Radical Care

We strive to make care and compassion a keystone of our practice. Not only will this allow us to encourage and support those who are not currently heard, it will refocus our metrics for success on health and personal outcomes. We call this care radical because it replaces financial motivations in an entrenched capitalist system. We want to ensure that we are not only making things fair, but kind.

We consider the impact both of our final output as well as our processes. The stories that need to be told can be difficult to read, and we will always make sure our readers and our writers are supported and protected when the content they engage with has the potential to be harmful to them in any way. We want writers to feel heard and understood, but the essence of a community is working together in a way that values all input and protects all players.

Intersectional Diversity of Voices

A key objective of our organisation is to champion all voices, because each story will have a unique perspective that is important and should be celebrated in the same way that the more entrenched stories have done throughout history. We support a literary record that is representative of life as it is for all, and that means an intersectional and diverse collection of experiences.

These words have recently become less impactful as they are co-opted by larger organisations to quiet a very real concern surrounding representation in all facets of the modern world. Diversity has to be complete and holistic, it is a whole: representation should not be only representative. We acknowledge the presence of bias, conscious and unconscious, in all decision-making, and are designing our process to reduce instances of gate-keeping. We wish to ensure all voices are visible in our processes and our outcomes.

Empowered Equity & Access

Despite the seemingly large number of options currently open to writers, the publishing industry is less accessible than ever, and it is necessary to understand existing barriers and their origins in order to meaningfully address them. We will work towards services and activities that are fully and easily accessible to all, beginning with the education to make informed choices about the reality of the status quo. Our work will attempt to modify and work around such barriers, but ultimately we want to remove them entirely by working together with the people who are most affected.