Membership

Covenstead Press

Purveyors of Fine Esoterica

Membership Information

Covenstead Press has three levels of membership. The first level is Covenstead Press' CEO, who does the bulk of the editorial work and takes the financial risk. She works with the four partners who include an intellectual property lawyer, a graphic designer and three others with publication and editorial experience. Non-Author profits are divided amongst the CEO, partners and worker-members at a flat rate of 33% CEO, 33% other partners and 34% worker-members. The Author Profits (royalties) are determined by the author.

The bulk of Covenstead Press' work is done by the partners, but the lifeblood of Covenstead press is its worker-members, individuals who exchange sweat-equity (work on books and manuscripts) for access to free books and a share of Covenstead Press' profits.

Membership in Covenstead Press is free to those who have submitted a manuscript, but the lifetime membership fee of $250 applies to anyone else. This fee will defray the cost of the free books and other things new members will be provided with, and will also help to limit the membership. We will cap membership completely at 500 people.

All of our artists and authors can be member-workers for life for free.

Requirements for Worker-Members:

With the exception of those who have published a book or book-cover that year, Worker-Members are required to provide sweat-equity at least once quarterly every year, or their status is set to inactive. An inactive member does not gain any profit-share until he becomes active again. If a Worker-Member is inactive for four consecutive quarters, he loses his Worker-Member status completely, and can only become active again by joining again-which may or may not be available, and may come at some expense.

Sweat equity is pretty easy to earn, but it is not required of people facing a personal or financial hardship, as long as they contact membership before they become inactive. We're pretty flexible, though.

Worker-Members are required to be in regular virtual (email) contact with Covenstead Press, unless they are in the Buffalo, New York area and are doing physical, not virtual, sweat-equity. A mailgroup exists to facilitate this virtual contact.

Of course, we are not fully functional yet, so this is all subject to change!

Becoming a Worker-Member:

To become a Worker-Member, send an email to membership@covensteadpress.com and explain that you'd like to join Covenstead Press and what kind of sweat-equity you can provide. A brief statement about yourself should be enough.
In the near future, members will be required to accept a membership agreement, but that has not been finalized at this time.
Worker-Members will be required to provide their full name and tax information if they expect to be paid a profit share for their work. This will be part of the formal membership agreement packet, which will not be distributed until at least the first quarter of 2007.

Becoming a Worker-Member by authorship or graphic design:
Authors should follow the submissions guidelines to submit a manuscript. If you are a qualified graphic designer, you may join Covenstead Press by successfully creating a book cover for one of our in-house books. While graphic design does not get you royalties (although you could potentially work that out with an author) successfully designing a book cover does net you the same membership-for-life status that our authors receive.