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Five things we will never do to you.

Five things we will never do. We will never own your ISBN. We will never own your KDP account. We will never touch your royalties. We will never publish a single page of your book without your signed approval. And you can leave us at any time, with your manuscript and your rights intact.

1. We never own your ISBN.

On every standard package, your name is on the ISBN registration. You are the legal publisher of record.

An ISBN is the unique identifier attached to a book at every retailer in the world. Whoever holds the ISBN is recorded as the publisher of record. That record follows the book through Amazon, IngramSpark, Barnes & Noble, the Library of Congress, and every other distribution channel. It does not change.

On Digital Debut, Professional Launch, and Authority Standard, you buy the ISBN in your own name from the Guyana ISBN Agency or Bowker, and you register your imprint name if you want one. Team Shaw Caribbean Press appears nowhere on that registration. The book is legally yours from the day it lists. On the Shaw Authority Package, where our imprint sits on the spine for credibility reasons, the contract spells out that you retain copyright and all royalties regardless of which name is on the ISBN registration. We explain this in detail on the Imprint Model page.

2. We never own your KDP account.

You create the Amazon KDP account in your name, with your tax information and your bank wiring. We never hold the login.

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is the single largest book retailer in the world. The account that publishes a book on KDP collects every royalty that book ever generates. If a publisher controls your KDP account, that publisher controls your income. Several Caribbean and US hybrid publishers have been criticized for exactly this arrangement, where authors discover years later that they cannot withdraw their own books because the account is not in their name.

At TSCP, you create the KDP account during onboarding. You enter your own tax forms, including the W-8BEN if you are a Caribbean resident publishing to the US market. You enter your own bank wiring. We sit beside you on a screen-share to walk you through it the first time. After that, the credentials are yours and yours alone. The same rule applies to your IngramSpark account, your Apple Books account, your Kobo Writing Life account, and any other distribution platform we set up on your behalf.

3. We never touch your royalties.

Every cent of royalty flows directly from the retailer to your bank account. We never sit between you and your money.

We are paid a one-time service fee for the work we do. Editing, design, formatting, distribution setup, launch coordination. That fee is fixed and published on the package page you choose. After the book is live, we are not in the payment chain. Amazon pays you. IngramSpark pays you. Apple Books pays you. Your royalty statements show your name and route to your bank on your retailer's standard schedule.

This is the single most important protection in the contract. It is the one that the Federal Trade Commission has named in enforcement actions against vanity presses in the US, and it is the protection most Caribbean authors do not know to ask for. If a publisher offers you "70% of net royalties" or "we handle the Amazon account and pay you quarterly", that publisher has made themselves your bank. We refuse to be your bank. Your retailer pays you. We send invoices for our services. The two flows never touch.

4. Nothing publishes without your signed approval.

Three signed approval gates protect you through the project, from edited manuscript to designed cover to final proof.

A book project has many points where things can go wrong. The wrong edit changes your meaning. The wrong cover misrepresents your book. The wrong typo lands in the final print file. To stop these from becoming permanent, we built three approval gates into every project.

Gate one is the edited manuscript. You receive the editor's pass with all changes tracked, and you must sign off before anything else moves. Gate two is the cover and interior design. You receive proofs as PDFs and you must sign off before the file goes to the printer. Gate three is the final pre-print proof, the version the printer or Amazon will produce verbatim. You must sign off before we click publish. If you do not sign, we do not publish. There is no twentieth-hour deadline that overrides this rule.

5. You can leave at any time.

Right-to-decline at any milestone. Exit clause that returns your manuscript and your rights.

We work with authors who want to be here. Forcing someone to finish a book they no longer believe in produces a bad book and a bad experience for everyone. The contract gives you a right to decline at every milestone. Decline the editor's revisions and we revise the contract. Decline the cover and we redesign once at no extra cost. Decline the final proof and we go back to design. None of those declines end the relationship.

If after honest effort the project is not working, the exit clause activates. You pay only for the milestones already delivered, you keep every file we produced, your manuscript stays yours in full, and we return any unspent deposit within fourteen business days. You are free to take the work to another publisher or to self-publish. The contract explicitly says we will not take any action that interferes with you doing so. No non-compete. No first-refusal on your next book. No hidden ownership of derivative rights. Clean exit.

The service level we hold ourselves to.

You will hear from us within one business day in Guyana time on every inquiry. Editorial review for accepted manuscripts is same-day, with most pieces turning around in four to eight hours from our global team. Design feedback turns around within two business days. Final proof turnaround is one business day after sign-off, because by that stage the file is locked.

If a milestone slips on our end, the contract includes a slip credit: we credit five percent of the milestone fee for every business day past the agreed date, capped at twenty-five percent. Escalation runs directly to the founder. There is no customer service tier where a complaint disappears. You write to hello@tscpress.net, and if the issue is not resolved in three business days, you write to theon@tscpress.net.

How to end the relationship.

At any milestone, you may write to hello@tscpress.net stating that you wish to invoke the exit clause. We acknowledge within one business day. Within fourteen business days, you receive every file produced to date in editable format, a written confirmation that all rights in the manuscript revert to you, and any refund owed under the milestone schedule. We do not require a reason. We do not negotiate to keep you. We do not retain copies of your manuscript beyond what we are legally required to keep for tax purposes.

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Frequently asked questions.

What happens if Team Shaw Caribbean Press goes out of business?

Your book continues to exist and sell. On Digital Debut, Professional Launch, and Authority Standard, your KDP, IngramSpark, and Apple Books accounts are in your name with your bank wiring already in place, so a TSCP shutdown does not affect distribution at all. On the Shaw Authority Package, the contract includes an imprint-transfer clause: if TSCP ceases operations, all rights revert immediately to you with no fee, and we provide a notarized assignment of the ISBN registration to your control.

What happens if I want to leave TSCP after publishing?

Nothing stops you. Because your ISBN is in your name and your retailer accounts are in your name, you simply update your books with a new editor or new designer for the next edition, and TSCP plays no further role. There is no exclusivity clause and no right of first refusal on your next book. If you took the Shaw Authority Package and want our imprint off the spine in a future edition, the contract lets you remove it on a new ISBN at any time.

Does TSCP take a percentage of my book royalties?

No. On every tier, you receive 100% of royalties directly from Amazon, IngramSpark, Apple Books, and every other platform we set up. We are paid a one-time service fee, which is published on the package page you choose. We never sit between you and your royalty income, and we never have a way to deduct from it.

Who owns my KDP account?

You do. The account is created in your name, with your tax forms and your bank wiring, during onboarding. We help you set it up on a screen-share so you do it right the first time, then the credentials are yours. We never hold the login. If you ever change your mind about TSCP, you change the email on your KDP account and we are gone from your distribution chain.

Ready to see the packages?

Every package on our pricing page has these five protections written into the contract. Choose the one that fits your book and your budget.

See our packages

Team Shaw Caribbean Press is a registered Guyana publishing house. An imprint within the La Caribeña News and EICCIO Advisors group. Adopter of the Independent Book Publishers Association's eleven-point hybrid publisher criteria.