Confession time: I’ve had a secret brewing for a little while. For the past few weeks, I’ve been working with a group of writers on an experimental project: a co-operative web-based publishing imprint named Radial Works Media.

What is a co-operative publishing imprint? It means that as a group, we share our talents for free with each other. As individuals we have expertise in editing, content development, layout and cover design, and when one of us has a short story or book we feel is ready to be published, we all work together to make it the best it can be.  Each author keeps the royalties from their own work, but we publish with a group imprint logo that signals to readers that they can expect each book we put out to be up to our high standards for content, editing and design.

So, why am I so excited about this? Because it’s a completely new model for publishing, one which I think you may see a lot more of in the future. It’s been really cool these past few weeks experimenting behind the scenes, ironing out the details, and getting our first short story ready for publication. And best of all, by sheer coincidence that story happens to be one I wrote.  It’s called:

As of today, it’s available to borrow for free for Amazon Prime subscribers.  However, if you don’t have Amazon Prime, it will be free to download tomorrow (Thursday, March 1st 2012) for a period of 24 hours.  Alternately, if you’re following me on Twitter, send me a mention and I will direct message you a free review copy.

As for the story itself, it’s science fiction with a touch of horror; more details can be found at the Amazon page.  But really, it’s just the start of some awesome content coming down the pipeline from the Radial Works authors.  If you want more information about RWM or our process, we have a blog that will have updates posted soon.

It should be obvious to just about everyone at this point that the publishing world is in the process of being turned on its head.  Some people see the rise of self-publishing as the future and assume that traditional publishers are destined for extinction.  Others believe that without traditional publishing, there is no way to filter out noise and prevent readers from drowning in a sea of mediocrity.  I’m not going to pretend that Radial Works is some giant revolution in publishing; its simply a combination of ideas that have been around in various forms for some time.  But I think if we can execute on our vision, then we have a chance to alter the debate by changing the way the industry looks at self-publishing.  And the best part is, everyone else gets some really awesome stuff to read in the meantime ;).

Stay tuned for more, it’s going to be an interesting year…