Creating stories with the purpose of being told, not sold.
Other pages about Carminica
Motivation, Determination, & Persistence
Over the course of the last several years mainstream media has begun to make way for independent titles. Why?
In the current state of the creative industry, there is a massive disconnect between the publishers, creators, and consumers.
Publishers overwhelmingly focus on the pursuit of profit at the detriment of their creators and consumers– pumping out instance after instance of low quality and overpriced content.
Creators are often put in a terrible position; low pay, high expectations, tight deadlines, and angry communities all lead to all around exploitative and toxic zeitgeist in the industry as a whole.
Consumers, just like in this list, come last. They are served unfinished, poorly made, rushed, and pandering media time after time on a silver platter– all for a premium. We are building a new space where the love of the art and its creators comes first.
What makes us, us?
we love laborers <3
We are a worker focused organization. Creators write the terms of their contracts, will always own the rights to their own IPs, and open communication is the name of the game. Use of AI in any way is strictly prohibited.
Collective Ownership & Leadership. Working with us not only means you have a say in how Carminica is run, but also that you own a stake in the organization through the IP you own. If you don’t own any IP, you still get a say!
Quality and Realism are imperative. In all matters, we strive for the highest possible quality. Our stories emphasize realism; all characters are written as they would behave in the scenario they find themself in, and act as genuine and complex people would. We strive for zero plot armor, meaning anything can happen, including the failure of protagonists. We have zero instances of tokenism in our content, and never will. Although any creative endeavor is likely to have a message, but unlike other companies we will never have flat, uninspired narratives, and characters that exist solely to cater to a group. Our stories are for all, we do this for the love of the art; we tell stories, not sell them.
Your work, your profit. We cut out the middlemen, meaning there’s nobody scraping off the top. This affords creators more profit per work sold, and all laborers are entitled to profit sharing.
We can’t be bought. It’s written into our founding documents: Creative vision comes first in all matters.
Additionally,
We are a fully remote employer. We believe that remote work is conducive to a good work life balance and also that real-estate is a waste of money.
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Carminica Obsidion Collective is a for-profit publishing house built on a simple idea: authors should keep their rights, their earnings, and their creative freedom— while still getting the professional support of a traditional publisher. Our mission is to give creators a place to build their careers and own their creations.
We are built on long-term support, creative autonomy, and author earnings. We bypass the need for agents through direct communication and negotiation, vet submissions based on creative integrity rather than expected profit, and never take away authors' rights.
Creating stories with the purpose of being told, rather than just sold.
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In traditional publishing, authors must find an agent who will take their work, works with their genre, and has relationships with fitting publishers. Then they must hope to be read and accepted– all before signing away their First Rights, their ownership of their intellectual property, and any meaningful say in how their book is published. If they do, they then earn roughly $2 or less per book after meeting an average $10,000 sales deductible.
Carminica was built to eliminate every one of those barriers. No agent is required, we read all submissions and communicate directly. Our authors keep their rights, IP, and voice in every decision. We bypass middlemen to enable higher earning potential, and we prohibit AI in all creative materials. One of our latest authors earns $24.50 per book; we aim to pay 70% of profits. The author remains our primary focus from drafting to selling; the more the book earns, the more everyone earns.
We serve authors who want to turn writing into a career: new writers who have struggled to publish, authors with finished manuscripts seeking a publisher who will do right by them, and previously published authors ready to earn from their work. For all three, alternatives that preserve ownership are insufficient.
Self-publishing is a long, frustrating process requiring authors to handle legal work, business operations, and marketing alone. More and more, self-publishing companies are emerging, filling the need of preserving ownership by performing the tasks necessary for self-publication on the author's behalf. However, they aren’t publishers. Legally speaking, they act as agents, providing services directed by the client. This is an important distinction because it limits what they are capable of doing for an author; after all, self-published work is still often refused by reviewers and bookstores.
Other alternatives aren’t much better. Vanity presses remove roadblocks but offer no platform or selling support. Run-and-done publishers format and print a book, then likewise leave the author to sell it themselves. University presses serve students, not careers, meaning they’ll do right by authors but won’t pursue their success. None offer the combination of professional quality, continuous support, and author ownership that Carminica provides.
We are already operating, have published work, planted the seeds of a network of authors and readers, and were the first for-profit organization to sponsor the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s Young Writers Awards in 2026. We are now official partners of the Hall of Fame, granting us access to their resources and experienced literary networks.
Our values are at our core: long-term care of labor first, quality second, profit third. Supporting the people who make the magic happen is the recipe to lasting success. We’ve cut out unnecessary middlemen, removed the dead weight, and put the people with the most knowledge and skill in charge of their sectors. Carminica is necessary because we have built a better, more efficient, and economical publishing system.
“ok, ok, ok,” I hear you say,