Questions answered. Methods explained.
Doing It All Yourself
Yes. That is not false modesty or a marketing line — it is the point. The tools exist. The platforms exist. The only things required are a clear creative vision, the willingness to learn a new working method, and enough conviction to publish without waiting for someone else's approval. None of those things require a publishing contract, an agent, or a budget.
Start small and stay in charge. Pick a project you already have a clear sense of — a short story, a chapter, a piece you've been stuck on — and use AI to work through it with you. Give it a brief. Push back on what doesn't work. Redirect it when it drifts. The goal is not to see what the AI produces. The goal is to see what you produce with the AI as your instrument. That distinction is everything.
Less than you think. A capable AI model — Claude, GPT-4, or similar — and a word processor will get you most of the way. For publishing, KDP handles print-on-demand and ebook distribution globally, at no upfront cost. For an imprint, all you strictly need is a name, a logo, and the will to use them consistently. Everything else — cover design tools, formatting software, website builders — can be layered in as the work demands it.
You don't need one to publish. You need one if you want to publish with intent — as a recognisable, consistent creative enterprise rather than a series of disconnected titles. An imprint signals that you are building something, not just releasing something. It costs nothing to establish and everything to maintain. That cost is editorial rigour, consistency of voice, and a genuine point of view.
Choose a name, design a logo, register an ISBN prefix if publishing in print — Nielsen in the UK, Bowker in the US — and let the quality of what you publish do the rest. Amazon KDP gives you a free ISBN number if you publish through them. But you cannot use it on other platforms.
You need two things: somewhere to present yourself, and somewhere to present your catalog. They don't have to be the same place — and there are advantages to keeping them separate.
For your main site, a platform like Wix gives you a professional presence without requiring technical knowledge. For your catalog — the live, updateable record of your published works — consider a separate, lightweight solution. Pitch Dark Press uses GitHub Pages for its Manifest: free, fast, version-controlled, and built collaboratively without a web developer.
If you have a clear idea of what you want, the tools — and the AI — will help you build it.
Publish. Not when it's perfect. Not when you're ready. Not when the industry gives you permission. Publish when the work is as good as you can honestly make it, and then stand behind it. Everything else — the tools, the workflow, the credits, the platforms — is in service of that one act. The rest is administration.
Publish and Be Damned
Pitch Dark Press
Pitch Dark Press is an independent publishing imprint operated by Kev Martin — writer, former professional actor, and voice artist based in Devon, England. It publishes fiction and non-fiction across multiple genres, both sole-authored and in Proauthorist collaboration with AI.
It is the motto of the imprint. It means: publish without waiting for permission, without softening the work for approval, without fear of consequence. The phrase has historical precedent — the Duke of Wellington used it when threatened with exposure. It has been repurposed here as a statement of creative and editorial intent.
The Pitch Dark Collective is the designation used for works produced under the Proauthorist model — collaborative titles where human and AI worked together as a named creative partnership. The Collective is credited on the cover and copyright page of all qualifying works.
Proauthorism
Three principles underpin the practice. First, transparency — be clear with yourself and your readers about how the work was made. Second, authority — you hold the creative vision; the AI executes within it. Third, accountability — the work is yours. Its quality, its failures, its successes. Once those three things are in place, the mechanics will follow naturally from the work itself.
There is no single industry standard yet — which means you have the freedom to set your own. The Pitch Dark Press model uses named personas with specific creative roles, credited transparently on the copyright page and in any relevant metadata. The key requirement is honesty: don't obscure AI involvement, and don't overclaim it. Credit it as you would any significant creative collaborator, with the appropriate caveats about what that collaboration actually involved.
No. Proauthorism is a philosophy of creative authorship that happens to use AI as one of its tools. The distinction matters. Using AI to generate content is one thing. Using AI as a creative instrument — directed, challenged, edited, and overruled by a human author with a clear vision — is something else entirely. Proauthorism names and formalises the second thing, and insists on transparency about when it is happening.