Our values, views and aims

When Jenny was a little girl, she told her mum that one day she’d like to write a book. Her mum’s reply was, ‘That’s lovely, darling, but for every one that gets published, a thousand don’t.’ And for the next 45 years, that one comment marked the end of Jenny’s writing career – before it could even start.

But with 21st century technology, it’s now so much easier for everyone to publish the book that they’ve always had inside them. And it doesn’t have to be a best-seller. It could just be your legacy.

While we at IndieMosh believe that everyone has the right to publish, we also believe that every reader deserves a decent read, so we are strong advocates for editing, proofreading and associated services.

Just because you’re not aiming to make money from your publishing project doesn’t mean we’re going to stand by and let you publish something which will embarrass you (and us!). So if we review your manuscript and then recommend an edit before you go any further, we’re not trying to upsell you, we’re trying to protect your reader from a poor investment. And there’s no use spending money on publishing if you’re going to get terrible reviews which say ‘Should have been edited’.

It’s true that no book is perfect, and most readers will forgive a mistake here or there. However, they won’t tolerate poor grammar or consistently incorrect punctuation and spelling.

So the moral of the story is: If you’re not prepared to invest in your book, why should the potential buyer?

The hard part about publishing has always been reaching an audience. And for Aussie writers that’s been really hard due to our geographical location.

With 21st century print on demand and ebook technology and distribution services, Aussie authors can now make their books available across the world. Major buyers will always be in Australia, the UK, Europe and the US, but if your book takes off, then with the help of our print and distribution partners (including Ingram, Amazon, Smashwords, Findaway Voices) you will be able to reach readers in markets as diverse as Japan, Mexico, India and Brazil.

The one thing we’ve always advocated for, been passionate about and done our best to educate our authors around, is the use of print on demand services and releasing ebook versions when publishing your book.

Aside from that, IndieMosh processes and systems are mostly paperless and we all work from our individual homes, so our staff have minimal impact on paper consumption and fuel emissions.

With print on demand services, you’re not wasting trees. A book is generally only printed when someone wants a copy. It’s then packaged and shipped to its destination, in a truck with many, many other deliveries. So there’s no gambling on how many copies to print, no wasted packaging and no wasted fuel.

If you didn’t use print on demand, you’d have to invest in a print run of 1,500-2,000 copies, and to make it affordable, you’d probably have to have them printed in, and shipped from, somewhere outside Australia. Then you’d need to engage a distributor to try to sell them to bookshops around the country, and then they’d need to be shipped to those bookshops. If they didn’t sell, then the bookshops would ship them back and they’d probably end up being destroyed. Sure, they might be recycled, but it’s still a huge waste that could have been avoided. And there’s been a lot of fuel wasted in the shipping of the original consignment, then the shipping to the stores, then the return shipping back to the author-publisher again.

While the first Kindle (an ebook reader developed by Amazon) was released in 2007, it took us roughly a decade to reach a tipping point with new authors where most accepted that they should also have an ebook version of their publishing project. Sure, some books aren’t really suited to the ebook format, but it’s great to now see many of our authors asking for ebook-only releases and skipping print altogether. So why are ebooks so good for the environment?

An ereading device such as a Kindle can often hold as many as 1,500 ebooks. Think that through. That’s 1,500 books which haven’t had to be printed. And 1,500 books which haven’t had to be packaged. And 1,500 books which haven’t had to be shipped.

Then take it one step further. How many bookcases would you need to hold 1,500 books? How many trees would need to be cut down, or how much MDF, glue and laminate would be required, to create those bookcases? And how much shipping would be involved supplying firstly a store or a warehouse, and then supplying you with the necessary bookcases to hold all those books?

Now think about how many natural resources have been saved to create and store those 1,500 books.

And this is why we love ebooks at IndieMosh!

We’re lucky to live in a country where education is free and we have access to knowledge and resources for our children to learn. But there are countries around the world where things like this can’t be taken for granted.

As part of our philosophy of paying it forward, we make a small donation to the Sydney chapter of Room to Read Australasia for every publishing package sold. Room to Read is a global non-profit organisation working to transform the lives of millions of children throughout Asia and Africa by improving literacy and gender equality in education.

Find out more about Room to Read and why we support it here: https://indiemosh.com.au/about-us/room-to-read-australasia/