These operate under a different contract to that applied to short stories for the Underdog Anthologies. Fear not, at no time is any author expected to pay for anything. You are the producers, you are the ones who get paid.
Whereas with the Underdog Anthologies, Leg Iron Books pays for one use of the story, once (twice if you include the end of year omnibus from UA8), with novels and short story collections we pay royalties based on sales.
Basically, this means that rather than a one off payment, the profits from sales are split 70% to the author and 30% to Leg Iron Books. The contract runs for five years and if the author is not happy with the results when the contract expires they can take all rights to their book back. No hard feelings. Copyright remains with the author throughout. You never, at any point, sign away your copyright and you wil never be asked to pay a penny to Leg Iron Books for anything. Editing, cover images, all taken care of.
Profits, especially from print books, will be small. Print costs take up most of it. Even so, Leg Iron Books takes all of the risk. If it sells, the author makes money. If it does not sell, the LI Books investment in covers and editing is not the author’s problem.
More details are available under ‘Fiction and non-fiction guidelines’ in this menu.