Who We Are
Unfiltered is an imprint of Meze Publishing that specialises in creating humour and gift books with online comedians. By compiling their posts and interactions, we can bring the best of any online presence to not only existing fans and followers but a whole new potential audience in print. Unfiltered’s first titles, published in 2021 and 2022, have been fantastic successes and we are always looking for the next social media star to entertain our readers.
How does it work?
Step One – Marketing
We help you create marketing assets, including a front cover and sample spreads. Once these assets are ready, you’ll promote the book for an initial period of pre-orders. We’ll tailor our expectations about posting according to your platform, as we always want it to appear natural and know constant plugging can annoy followers. But we do expect you to promote the book on your channels and share details of how to pre-order it. The number of pre-orders dictates how many books we print. We will also be marketing the book by reaching out to our bank of press contacts; our authors have appeared on LadBible, Bored Panda and The Times Radio.
Step Two – Presales
Once presales reach a minimum of 500 copies, we greenlight production and an initial print run of 2000 copies. At this stage, you’ll receive 15% of the presales and then once the book is in print, you’ll receive 15% of all sales on a monthly basis. At this stage we can plan the content, narrow down what styles of design would work well for the interior, and decide on the size of the book.
Step Three – Production
Once we know we’ve got a sure-fire hit on our hands, you’ll need to send us all the content that will feature in the finished book. We’ll agree realistic deadlines for this, and then edit all your content for consistency and accuracy, taking into account any spelling and grammar errors that might need to be kept in as part of the book’s humour. Once editorial and photography are complete, your book will be laid out according to the designs created for your initial marketing assets to produce a visually coherent and accessible end result.
Step Four – Printing
Once complete, the book will then be proofread by us and a final version will be approved by you before we send it to the printers and gear up for the publication date!
Step Five – Retail
On the back of your pre-orders, we will work closely with you to follow a coherent strategy that combines your sphere of influence with our extensive network of contacts to continue selling the book through large distributors and independent businesses all over the country. We will also talk you through typical retail discounts, strategies for finding the best retail opportunities, how to use your sphere of influence and any other creative ideas. As of 2022, we have Australian and North American sales and distribution as part of our offer, so we will explain the discounts and profitability of selling overseas to ensure it works for your title.
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“Our best sellers have always been books whose authors collaborate with us to reach the people who most want to buy it, whether this is an existing fan base or your target market.”
FAQs
It differs for every project but on average it takes between six months and a year to create and publish a book, depending on the number of contributors involved.
Our books can be found in a range of bookshops, gift shops and supermarkets – the exact retailers will depend on your book’s target market so we can always make sure it’s in front of the right audience. Our books are often stocked in Waterstones and WH Smiths and we frequently work with Selfridges, Booths, Harrods, Waitrose, Oliver Bonas, The V&A Museums, The Natural History Museum, Daunt Books, Toppings, Books for Cooks and many more.
Yes – our wholesalers distribute abroad and will make the book available on Amazon.com and Book Depository, who ship worldwide. We have a distributor in Australia and North America too, which specialises in making sure the relevant books appear in bookshops and gift shops. We also work with a foreign rights agent, and we can discuss this further if this is the right avenue for your book.
Free for the first year, then monthly charges apply depending on the number of copies we are holding for you.
We will send you a breakdown of the book sales every three months after publication, and you will be paid the following month.
It depends on the deal we agree with you, but our standard rate of commission is 25% on all sales.
If you are a specialist food photographer or professional designer, we can negotiate you taking on some of the work during production to reduce costs. We tailor all our quotes to the client and make sure you are getting the best value for money.
No – our packages include everything! The only time you may incur additional fees is if you decide to print more copies of your book after the contract has been signed, or if the project takes more of our time than expected where we are not responsible for the delays. We will always discuss this with you throughout the project and make sure you are aware of any potential fees to avoid them wherever possible.
You will work with our in-house PR and marketing team and their extensive network of contacts. As a rule, we do not pay for extra publicity and instead use our connections and content to arrange free press and interviews. However, if an opportunity arose that seemed pivotal to the book’s success, it would always be up for discussion.
No, we don’t use food stylists in order to keep your costs down. If you wanted to hire someone or have us appoint a stylist for a photoshoot, we can work this into the contract. The photographers we use have a wealth of experience with food styling and can usually provide props and backgrounds for the shoot, along with plenty of creative ideas to make your food look its best.