Transparency Report 1

A guiding principle that was vitally important to me when co-founding Transistance Press was the goal of being active members of the transfeminine literature community. I wanted to better contribute to and help uplift a community that I loved, in a time when we are facing ever-greater systemic challenges and oppression around the world.

The past 13 months have seen both of us grow significantly. Our goal in establishing the press was to “uplift trans creativity and preserve open access to our literature.” We knew at the time that this was a lofty goal for two people to achieve, which is why we wanted to take things slow and to find our feet properly. Going into 2026, we are far better equipped to face the challenges ahead than we were going into 2025.

Did we make mistakes? Absolutely. But, in learning by doing and breathing in the experience and knowledge of those around us, we have gained valuable lessons. We’re really excited for what’s ahead.

The Importance of NSFW Work

The first two releases of Transistance Press lean heavily into adult themes and content. This is on purpose.

Resisting the political pressures that conflates trans identity with pornography, and profane and immoral content is vital in meeting this moment. It is important as trans artists that we refuse to self-censor, and express our sexuality in a way that is true and healthy for us. Silencing the voices of trans people is something that we see coming from outside, towards the trans community, but also from inwards, as compliance in advance. We stand against that.

Protecting sex work, smut, and other maligned parts of the broader trans experience is an important part of preserving the honest and real experiences of trans people. Preserving our community’s unique connection to sex, sexuality, and sexual expression is a vital part of any attempt to preserve authentic trans art and creativity.

The sexual expression of trans people deserves to be celebrated and safeguarded.

By The Numbers

Since January 2025, we have sold over 1,000 units. More specifically, as of 16 January 2026, we have sold 329 copies of From the Inside and 677 copies of Machines of Consent - both by my co-founder and partner Sophia Turner.

Like many in our community, we took a big bet on Itch.io, a digital storefront that primarily sells indie games. Despite significant worries around the future viability of Itch as a storefront due to concerns around censorship at the behest of payment processors, this bet has been a successful one. Over 85% of our sales came from Itch, which aligns with our expectations as it was the platform we pushed people towards, for a number of reasons: the availability of DRM-free digital content - meaning you own your Transistance ebooks, the cut of gross sales we receive being significantly higher than other storefronts, the ability to easily bundle our books with those of other authors to sell together at a discount - which is a proven way to ship units and incentivise customers to buy, and Itch’s ability to tip in addition to the listed sale price of the book.

This ‘name your price’ functionality underpinned our strategy when it came to pricing our books. For example, during the month-long pre-order period for Machines of Consent, the listed sale price to pre-order the book on Itch was US$1. The average price people paid over that period was US$2.86. By setting the price that low, we were able to sell 248 pre-order copies of the ebook on Itch, of which, 59% of people paid the listed sale price. We successfully subsidised the cost of getting the book into more readers hands by leveraging people having the ability to pay more than the listed price if they chose to do so.

Building the Pipeline

You might have noticed that in 2025 we only released two books. This was a deliberate choice. Whilst we were excited to announce the launch of Transistance Press, we were also cognisant of the fact that neither of us had published a book before. We knew that, geopolitically, we were more shielded from the forces targeting transfeminine literature by virtue of being based outside the US or UK, and we wanted to take advantage of that. However, we knew we needed to gain experience if we wanted to invite the community we care for to place their trust in us.

Our goals with our initial releases were to mature the pipeline we could offer authors who wanted to work with us. To publish a book, there is a well-defined series of steps it must go through to be developed and refined throughout. At a high level, this consists of assisting in the initial drafting, the developmental and structural editing, and copyediting to produce a coherent final cut of the work. There is still immense effort from there to get a book into readers hands, from cover design and layout, to marketing and accounting.

To be frank, we are not all the way there yet. Despite Machines of Consent going through four beta readers, we have had several people reach out to us after the book’s release, identifying typos and other copy errors in the manuscript. What this shows us is that we need a significantly better approach to copyediting, which we are committed to developing in our future releases. This example is only one of a number of pain points that we have identified over the past 13 months that we are committed to improving.

Conclusion

I also wanted to take a moment to say we are deeply grateful for the support of our fellow trans authors, editors, and publishers. Finding the audience we have inspires us to forge ahead, and grow, both as individuals, and as a press. Being longlisted for The Transfeminine Review (TFR) Award for Best Transfeminine Fiction of 2025, and winning the TFR Award for Best Science Fiction show us that, whilst we can be critical of our failures, the community is excited about our successes. For that, we are deeply thankful.

Lastly, I want to highlight some other recent successes from within the community:

J. Ursula Topaz’s acerbic critique of queer publishing was bitingly funny, and a well-deserved winner of this year’s TFR Award for Best Contemporary Fiction.
Bailey Saxon and her 2025 releases and for winning the TFR Award for Best TG/TF or Transition Fantasy for Song of the Dryads.
Tris Husband releasing faer debut novel, Keeping The Peace, and winning the TFR Award for Best Mystery/Thriller/Suspense.
Kara Buchanan’s follow up to her smash hit debut, Magica Riot, with Magica Riot Full Bloom, and for Magica Riot winning the TFR Award for Best Audiobook (along with her narrator Emma Martello).
And lastly, our dear friend Autumn Wolff, who saw the crowdfunding campaign for her next novel hit its goal in less than a day.

Until next time,

Aurora Foo
Editor, Transistance Press

Transistance Press: Key Statistics (December 2024 – January 2026)

Note: dates are listed in Australian English formatting
Key dates
Transistance Press Launch: 12/12/2024
From The Inside Release: 18/01/2025
Machines of Consent Release: 07/10/2025

Sales (as of 16/01/2026)
Total across both releases: 1006
Machines of Consent: 677
From The Inside: 329