About
2022 RE-LAUNCH
Blogging is changing and seen by many in the industry as a sandbox for ideas and monitisation. It’s become an outlet that rewards those that cater for the fantasies and interests of the population, with several blogging sites gaining revenue from the career writers, who much like anyone who seeks profit from blogging is running website integrations and plugins. Or at least this is the attitude of WordPress, our long time blogging serivce. Pressure Ink is at its backbone an idea-sharing site, to capture and captivate the interests of a few within the broader population. It is a place for me where my random literary creations have a place to rest, while I focus on other publications.
With the 2022 re-launch, we are bringing back to the basics of Pressure Ink—the integration between personal thought and scientific venture. It’s the breaking down of matter to fulfill the understanding that life gives to me. With this mission in mind, the website has been stripped down to its foundamentals, focusing on sections such as Stories, Ink Studio, Science, Lifestyle and Books (publisher status since 2020). With a change in hosting engine we bring other minor improvements such as a text-centric reading experience, a better search tool, and an improved layout for discovering new reading materials.
We strive for the best online publishing experience, one that rewards the process of creation as much as the creations.
HISTORY OF PRESSURE INK
Pressure Ink was founded in 2016 as an online science communication platform aimed at reaching transdisciplinary readership. We explore the meaning of our natural and physical world by fully integrating several scientific disciplines, thereby dissolving the non-physical boundaries that separate them. Unlike the more traditional and better known interdisciplinary approach, we can explore beyond the scope of a single discipline and envision solutions for real-world problems. Inspired by the song Under Pressure by Queen, Pressure Ink started as Pressure Video Productions in 2013. Although not many videos were produced under this name, the name Pressure was quickly adopted for music compositions. This then became Pressure Ink. Originally the word Ink was merely a word play of the Inc. abbreviation, which made the name Pressure somewhat more complete. However, the name, which implied the Ink was somehow involved, was not so fitting for music production, and the brand name was soon dropped altogether. In 2015, a group of post-graduate students at the University of Sheffield held meetings to develop an online framework for science communication, which aimed to analyse and report on-going research in science and technology. After a few months of inactivity, largely due to the group members’ academic responsibilities, resulted in the collaboration breaking up and the online framework was not established. However, in early 2016, Pressure Ink was founded as a solo project by our founder and its website established. Later in 2017 a trademark application was submitted. Since 2018 Pressure Ink has been a registered trademark.
PUBLISHER STATUS
Pressure Ink registered as a publisher in October 2020, following the release of Life De(fined), a memoir about kidney disease. As a recognised publisher, we are carrying forward to using this to publish manuscripts that have been stored for many years. Pressure Ink President and Founder will take on the role as lead novelist and is setting the standards for our publications, and despite that his style of writing is very different to known styles, we are confident to reach new readers in the coming years. At the moment, we are limited to self-publishing books on Amazon Kindle Store, though we offer advice on how to self-publish and will provide a service to first-time, amateur novelists and writers who wish their work to gain online recognition, such as registering ISBNs with their associated books, proofreading, editing and typesetting. We are particularly driven to assist those who want to self-publish, but are not nor seeking to be professional writers. We will alternatively encourage others to self-publish and create their own publishing identity, as that will offer them greater ownership over their work, but might receive less publicity depending on how much presence they have online.
Self-publishing is a very attractive method to publishing, because it leaves the entire workflow under the control of the writer. Publishing traditionally, is often a cohort of different service professionals working to release a book, much like finding a new job. Manuscripts are read by recruiter-like services, before passed on to publishers, who then will filter through large number of manuscripts. If there is interest in a manuscript, the writer will have to keep to deadlines, ensure the manuscript style and topic remains relevant for the publisher (publishers set standards in the type of books they want to publish), and royalties are tightly controlled. Unless the writer is very well known or the book is expected to gain a lot of revenue, authors might be offered an advanced payment, but typically, as starting writers, income is gained by royalties. Using the self-publishing route, the royalties are still largely controlled by the publisher and/or the distributer, and essentially the market. However, if the product is available as an electronic copy (digital product), then the author may be able to absorb most of the costs (overheads) and compensate for them in the retail price for the book. Usually this business idea becomes profitable when authors sell several titles. When using other marketplace services like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), authors should invest their time in understanding the royalty plan structure. Amazon strongly incentivises authors to accept the higher royalty option, though authors must be aware that this gives Amazon the right to offer the e-book on the Kindle Store, free to all subscribers and copies can be lent between connected individuals. Payment structure is based on number of pages read, and not on times the e-book has been added to bookshelf, for example.
Pressure Ink instead would offer advice on self-publishing, offer title registration, document proofreading, editing and typesetting for publication on KDP, though we can expand to other marketplaces should there be a need. Amazon recommends that ISBNs are only purchased for physical copies of the book, as they will provide ISBNs for the e-book. However, we think that for an author to maintain a level of ownership for their work, it is best for their work to be registered by a known publisher, instead of a publisher that is known for using the mass-publication strategy. We find that the e-book distribution service that KDP offers works well with the level of professionalism that we have. We, however, find their binding of books to be of a lower standard, although still reasonably good. The main disadvantage is binding costs, which bring down the revenue from the book to about the same as an e-book, while listed at three times the value on the marketplace. That is why we strongly recommend publishing e-book instead. Also, as book prices get higher than $10, people are less bothered to buy them.