Most independent presses lose sales long before a reader is involved — to metadata a retailer quietly rejects, an ONIX feed no library ingests, or no route into the trade at all. Spinework Studio fixes what is broken, and sells the books of presses nobody else will represent.
What we do
A press with broken metadata cannot be sold by anyone, so that comes first. What follows depends on whether the trade will represent you — and that is a question with a real answer, not a sales conversation.
A free diagnostic. Fifteen questions on how your press runs, scored against what the trade actually requires, with the three gaps costing you most and a straight answer about what to do next. No account, no details until you want the report.
The named gaps and what closing each one takes — in effort, in time, and in what it changes. Written for a press that intends to act on it rather than file it.
Metadata management as an ongoing service. Titles kept correct and complete, ONIX 3.0 generated and validated before it goes out, and your presence in the library and review channels maintained rather than hoped for.
For presses the trade will take. We prepare the list, the numbers and the case, and get you in front of a distributor. If you clear their bar, being represented beats anything we could sell you.
For presses the trade will not take. We become your distributor: stocked direct-to-trade on returnable terms, print-on-demand for the long tail, with a ledger that shows exactly what sold, what came back, and what you are owed.
Telling you which of these you need. Most presses are sold the most expensive answer; the assessment exists so you can see the cheap one when it applies.
How it works
Fifteen questions, four minutes. You get a score, your three sharpest gaps, and which of our answers fits your press.
Nothing else works until this does. Descriptions, subject codes, comparable titles, ONIX that validates — the unglamorous work that decides whether a book is findable.
Retailers, wholesalers, libraries and reviewers, each with their own requirements and their own deadlines. Kept current rather than submitted once and forgotten.
If a distributor will take you, we help you get there. If none will, we take the inventory ourselves and you see every copy on a ledger you can audit.
Who this is for
The large distributors publish a bar of around eight titles a year. Several hundred presses sit below it doing serious work with nowhere to go. That is who we built this for.
Four good books a year and immaculate records still will not clear a distributor’s threshold. Nothing is wrong with your press; the threshold is not about quality.
Twenty titles a year and metadata that falls over at the first validation. Fixable, and worth fixing — a distributor will want you once it is done.
A decline is information, not a verdict. Usually it names something specific, and specific things can be addressed.
Books are moving and you cannot say which, to whom, or what came back. That is a reporting problem, and it is the easiest of these to solve.
The Readiness Report names every gap, what closing it takes, and the order to do it in. If your list is already sound, we will point you at Channel or a Pitch Pack instead.