Transferring a book from publishers to self-published...?

Hi my name's Sheza and I did manage to publish my first book (a memoir) with a publisher in the UK called "Chipmunka Publishing". As time has gone by I've become increasingly fed up with them and believe that I have, in a sense, actually been conned.

A thread about them has already been done in case you want a bit of background info regarding who they are ---------->

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92347

The book's going nowhere. Few are ever going to read it seeing as Chipmunka have NO promotion to speak of for ANY of their books (other than the CEO Jason Pegler's own book "A can of madness"), they do not get ANY of their books into any shops, sell at ridiculously expensive prices (in such a time of austerity) and the author will see little of his royalties (if any).

My book was called "The Undesirable"
( http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1849913293/?tag=absowrit-21 ).

Basically, I want out. I want out so that I can get this book as an e-book, on Kindle, Lulu whatever (forgive me, I'm new to this so I don't know all the options as yet) - Is it possible for me to do this if I had already signed a contract with them in 2010?

Can I just withdraw and then see into getting the book out elsewhere.

The whole experience with Chipmunka has left me feeling a failure already (so much for the "empowerment" this Jason Pegler speaks of). I wish to completely 'terminate' from Chipmunka (yep, almost a 'vanity press' in disguise, despite, strangely, actually receiving Arts Council Funding in the UK) but Mr Pegler is a very arrogant man.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,
Sheza.

Basically this is the e-mail I sent him when he asked me why I'd like to terminate my contract. Reasonable?


"Hello Jason,
I'm not good with promotion, either down to cyncism or lack of self-belief, but I think that essentially there has been extremely limited promotion with Chipmunka (the 'self-promotion guide has had very limited help and authors depend on their publishers for promotion more than you think).
Only two bookshops actually stock 'The Undesirable', only due to my own efforts. Although there was no financial reason for me doing so, seeing that paperbacks are sold at quite a price considering the times of economic austerity that we are currently living in. So to buy it full price and sell it cheaper means that the author is at a loss. At full price nothing gets sold. Without promotion no one is going to buy from a first-time author they have never heard of. I have had positive reviews with one person even stating how similar the abusurdist theme of the book reminds him of Camus (she actually wrote to me personally). But I feel that I have taken it as far as I can with Chimpunka. There has been almost no promotion and a book limited to friends, family and word of mouth has left me feeling, not empowered, but actually quite a 'failure'. I have a second book I want to get done but I'm already trying hard to get over the feelings of 'failure' from the first (especially all the more so considering 'The Undesirable' is a memoir). I can't help wondering if I could have done this differently elsewhere.
Yes, there is confusion now stemming from the fact that I don't know where to go now. I leave the Undesirable with Chipmunka and allow it be a stationary, unread book that fades into greater obscurity by the day (seeing as those who have bought it already have)? There is an audience out there, a publisher is supposed to assist the writer in finding it. So far it was either people who already knew me on Facebook, people who knew me personally and that's it. Then there's the rather uncompetitive prices that Chipunka sells it products at.

Such is the market for Kindle, e-books, i-reader - If I was to say that I would like it available there at greatly reduced cost, would this be possible? Many authors have done this, of course many did it via self-publishing instead (at least they managed to see their own royalities that way).

Sheza."

Jason is known not to reply to people he thinks are being "rude" or "not behaving themselves".