Black Sheep Library
A storefront and submissions pipeline for an indie publisher
An independent publishing house's e-commerce book barn, author profiles, manuscript submissions and merchandise marketplace.
The problem
An independent press runs two businesses at once: selling finished books to readers, and receiving manuscripts from writers. Those are different audiences with different needs, and most publisher sites do one properly and bolt the other on as a contact form.
The approach
Two audiences with opposite needs share one platform: readers who want to browse and buy, and writers who want to submit. Most publisher sites build the first properly and reduce the second to a contact form, which loses manuscripts and frustrates the exact people the press depends on. Here submissions are a real pipeline with state, so a writer knows where they stand and the publisher has a queue rather than an inbox, and the storefront keeps the catalogue structure the press actually uses.
What we built
- An e-commerce storefront for the catalogue
- Author profiles that give each title a face
- A manuscript submission pipeline rather than an inbox
- A merchandise marketplace alongside the books
Built with
Where it stands
Readers and prospective authors each get a path built for them, on one platform the publisher can run without a developer.
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