—WHY WE EXIST
Why AuthorWings exists in a market built to mislead authors
Most companies selling publishing services to indie authors do not show prices on their websites. They will not quote a number until a sales agent has your phone number, your manuscript word count, and forty minutes of your evening.
AuthorWings was built against that pattern. Every price is on the page. Every rate is benchmarked to the Editorial Freelancers Association rate chart, the closest thing the industry has to a public standard. Every author keeps 100% of royalties and 100% of rights. That is the entire premise. The rest of this page explains how the studio got built and what it refuses to do.
—HOW IT STARTED
How a scammed first-time author built a different company
Fazila finished her first manuscript in 2023 while working from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She lived through the playbook described above. Hidden pricing. Forty-minute calls that climbed in price. Fake Amazon approvals. Deposits that vanished. She lost a meaningful amount of money before she stopped writing checks.
What changed her view was not the losses. It was the conversations. At book fairs, in indie author forums, in writing groups across three cities, Fazila kept meeting first-time authors with the same story. Different companies, identical pattern. Authors who had spent years writing their book were losing thousands of dollars in their first month of trying to publish it, and most were too embarrassed to say so out loud.
That is the company she built. Prices on the page. Rates benchmarked to a public, third-party authority. Royalties and rights kept by the author, with no exceptions. AuthorWings launched against the pattern, not alongside it, and the people it serves are the authors Fazila wishes she could have hired in 2023.
—THE INDUSTRY PROBLEM
What the publishing services industry hides from indie authors
The pattern repeats across hundreds of companies, and it works because first-time authors do not know what to compare against.
The first signal is missing pricing. Competitor sites bury rates behind contact forms, then route the lead to a sales agent trained to anchor high. The second signal is the upsell loop. A $10,000 ghostwriting package gets quoted, then editing is presented as a separate $4,000 add-on, even though no professional ghostwriting deliverable should ship without editing built in.
The third signal is the imaginary gatekeeper. Sales agents talk about Amazon as if it were a gated platform, with editorial reviewers, approval committees, and quality boards that supposedly stand between an indie manuscript and a live book listing. None of that exists. Amazon’s KDP platform is self-service. What the agent is selling is a higher tier dressed up as a clearance fee, and the price climbs by thousands once the author believes the gate is real.
The fourth signal is the rights grab. Hybrid publishers charge authors $8,000 to $30,000 to publish a book, then take 30% to 50% of royalties for the life of the title and hold the ISBN, the distribution account, and sometimes the copyright itself. The fifth signal is the disappearance. Payment clears, the project lead stops responding, the company rebrands six months later under a new name. Writer Beware, run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, has tracked this pattern for over two decades and maintains a current archive of overseas operators targeting indie authors.
The cost is not only financial. Authors who get burned once often stop writing entirely.
—WHAT WE STAND ON
Three principles AuthorWings refuses to compromise
These three principles came out of what she lost in 2019 and what she watched other authors lose since. Every service line, every contract, every hire at AuthorWings is tested against them.
Transparent Pricing
Every service page on this site shows a price before any contact form. No discovery calls required to learn what a package costs. No anchored-high quotes that drop only after objection. The number you see is the number you pay, and the scope behind it is written in plain English.
EFA-Aligned Rates
AuthorWings rates are benchmarked to the Editorial Freelancers Association rate chart, the closest thing the industry has to a public standard. The EFA is one of the leading authorities on professional editorial and ghostwriting compensation. Aligning to that standard is how authors verify they are paying market rate, not a markup.
100% Royalties And Rights
Every author who works with AuthorWings keeps 100% of royalties for the life of the book and 100% of rights, including copyright, ISBN ownership, and full distribution control. The studio is paid for the work delivered, once. After that, the book belongs entirely to the author.
—WHAT WE ARE
Built for authors who keep their rights
When she launched AuthorWings, the goal was not to start another company in an industry that already had too many. The goal was to build the one she had needed in 2019, and the structure of that company had to be different from the start.
AuthorWings is an author services company, not a publisher. The distinction matters. A publisher acquires rights and pays royalties. An author services company is hired by the author, delivers the work, and walks away.
Six service lines run under one roof: ghostwriting, editing, book design, publishing setup, marketing, and coaching. Same writers, editors, and designers across every tier. No royalty splits, no rights claims, no ISBN held hostage. The author hires the company, owns the book, and keeps every dollar the book earns.
—WHAT WE WON’T DO
Six things AuthorWings will never do to an author
Most publishing services companies tell authors what they will deliver. AuthorWings tells authors what it will never do, because the failures of this industry are not about missing services. They are about practices that cross lines no honest company should cross.
—SEE THE NUMBERS—
Get your book costed in two minutes, before any conversation starts
The cost calculator does what most publishing companies refuse to do. Enter your word count, choose the services you need, and see a real price for your specific book. No discovery call. No quote that climbs once you are on the phone. The number on the calculator is the number on the contract, and you can take it to any other company in the industry to compare.