Fractured Fiction Publishing:
The press will be launching it’s first title(s) on January 1st, 2012. It’ll be the beginning of a new era in fiction. If you want to be among the first to get on board, now’s your chance; it would be cool to say you were one of the first authors when we’re A Big Deal, right?
Given that they only opened for submissions on 11th September 2011 (according to their website), 4 months is in no way long enough to review submissions and put together an effective promotion, sales and marketing strategy. This to me is a red flag.
Also, without any information on who is behind the company there's nothing to support the claim that they will be "A Big Deal".
Fractured Fiction Publishing:
Here at Fractured Fiction Publishing, we’re focusing on two kinds of fictional works; firstly, pastiche and other takes on classics, and secondly, stories that defy convention in truly unexpected ways, leaning towards the dark end of the spectrum. We’re disappointed with the lack of professional, specialised treatment of these tales, and we want it to change.
This is quite broad and I wonder how they're going to focus their sales efforts for this. Also "pastiche" could become a complicated area for them legally depending on what they're pastiching and whether it's still in copyright. I note that they're doing an anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories which is predominantly out of copyright, but I'd be wary about doing anything more modern.
Fractured Fiction Publishing: (BOLDING MINE)
All individually contracted stories will be at a 50% royalty rate. That means you’ll get 50% of the profits on every sale of your work. Not bad, eh? This is because we understand that you’ve done a lot of work already, and we want to reward it. But it also means that publishing is a two-way street. We’ll take on a lot of promotion efforts, but we need your help – after all, no-one can promote your story better than you can.
Sounds like they're paying 50% on net, which is less of a good deal for authors. It would be good to know what Fractured Fiction take off. I'd also want to know what concrete steps they'll take to sell and market the book to fulfill their promite that it become a success.
Fractured Fiction Publishing:
Anthologies will have the royalties divided evenly between all of the authors, the cover artist, and the editor. Usually, we’ll try to have either 8 or 18 authors per anthology.
I'd want clarification on this because it looks like that 50% net is being split between 8 and 18 people.
Interestingly, on the Sherlock Holmes anthology, the royalties are set out as follows:
Fractured Fiction Publishing:
Compensation will be 10% of profits on this volume for one year, as is standard for Fractured Fiction anthologies. Authors will also recieve a free print copy.
Again, I'd want clarification on what is meant by "profits" but also whether each contributing writer gets 10% or whether that 10% is the whole pot split between all the contributing writers. (I'm guessing it's the former but the wording isn't exactly clear).
I also don't see why royalties should only be for a year. There's no informaiton on whether Fractured Fiction is releasing books only in print format or whether they'll be in both print and electronic. Either way, royalties should (as an industry standard) continue to be paid for as long as the book is being sold.
There's a lack of information about what rights are being taken and where books will be sold. Given that they talk about print books, I'd want to know whether they've got deals in place to sell books directly into stores or not.
So basically, wait and see whether they're still around in 2 years and if so, what the author experience and sales are like.
MM
