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Dailey Swan Publishing (Casey Swanson)

doctri

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Anyone have any experience with them. They (Casey Swanson) seem like a reasonable establishment. Any thoughts out there?
 

priceless1

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They sure have a lot of "coming soon" pages on their site. When I get to my office computer, I'll check to see who distributes them. They certainly publish a lot of genres - something that's hard for a small press to do because it requires editors knowledgeable in all those genres. Most small presses specialize.
 
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Anna Magdalena

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A quick glance tells me it looks very new. Lots of pages are 'coming soon'. I'd have a lot of questions to ask if I was thinking of approaching them. No mention of any distribution or sales team. And I've never heard of a publisher asking you to bind your manuscript for submission. But I'm willing to be put right on this.
 

doctri

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Thanks priceless. I queried them and they asked for a full manuscript. For some reason, that makes me nervous! I get the impression that it is a fairly straight forward POD type publisher.
 

c2ckim

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Be careful Doctri- they claim everything that is sent to them becomes their property cuz the publisher is just too busy to send it back if they don't want it!
 

doctri

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Be careful Doctri- they claim everything that is sent to them becomes their property cuz the publisher is just too busy to send it back if they don't want it!


I was worried when I read that too. So far, I haven't sent them anything.

I'm sure a lot of you know how I feel. After four months of submitting, twenty rejections and one request for a partial (from whom I have heard nothing and who will not answer emails) you tend to get a little desperate.

My novel is Christian fantasy-fiction...apparently a tough sell even in a strong economy.
 

M.R.J. Le Blanc

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Be careful Doctri- they claim everything that is sent to them becomes their property cuz the publisher is just too busy to send it back if they don't want it!

That would be enough for me to decide not to send them anything. I don't know if that claim would have any weight, but I wouldn't want to find out the hard way.
 

priceless1

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Be careful Doctri- they claim everything that is sent to them becomes their property cuz the publisher is just too busy to send it back if they don't want it!
Yes, I saw that, too, and wondered exactly what they mean by "it's ours." Just because something dumps into their mailbox doesn't mean anything more than you mailed something to them. There is no contract or agreement of publication, so they "own" nothing. It's a noob statement. Hell, I'm busy, too, but so what? That's hardly the author's problem or fault. Deal with it.

She's done it again. Beat me to it. That lady must have go-faster stripes on her sneakers.
Heh, sorry, Anna. I'm operating on an extra cuppa this a.m.
 

cdoctor13

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This is just strange or red flags. You decide. From their "new authors" page:

Dear Writer,
Welcome to Dailey Swan Publishing. At Dailey Swan we’re not just a Giant Monolithic Publishing House, more responsive to their favored agents than a well written story. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)
That's because their favored agents usually come bearing well written stories. That's why they are favorites.

At Dailey Swan Publishing, we’re looking for just that; an interesting story with a twist. Something that we can work on with the author to fully develop, bringing more to the world of the Written World.
So you are looking for a favored agent or a story with an interesting twist?

To submit your novel to us, we give you two choices.
The first is to email us here at Dailey Swan Publishing.
Just use the link on this page and send us your outline, and sample pages from through-out the book. We need a good random selection, maybe half a dozen pages. Please, it's hard to tell what might catch our attention so don’t worry about which ones.
What the...? Random pages? What does that tell an editor?
All submissions will be reviewed by me, personally. Nice thing about being the publisher of a small publishing house. I get to choose what I publish. I do tend to get bored if everything looks the same though.
And this means what to a submitter?

The second way would be to submit the entire book, in a binder, to the Pinole address. Again, everything we get will be looked at. However, don’t send me your only copy. All submissions do remain our property. In other words, with everything I have to do, there’s just not the time to return every submission that gets rejected.
In a binder. Okay, that's a first for me. All submissions do not remain your property! You did not contract for it and claiming so is a violation of copy right law.
Rejections do happen, and when they do I will personally contact you by phone or e-mail and tell you why. Who knows, maybe we’ll like it after changes.
I look forward to seeing your work,
Casey Swanson
Publisher
Well, a personal rejection is OK but still the whole submission process is just odd.
 

Stacia Kane

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I think they mean the physical pages you send become their property--meaning they won't return them--not that everything sent to them becomes their intellectual property.

Not that it matters. There are enough red flags here to decorate a barn.
 

doctri

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I had a feeling my gut instinct regarding this was right. You guys have been really helpful. I will keep my ms and keep logging rejections from agents!
 

priceless1

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Midpoint is an independent distributor whose clients consist of small trade presses who don't have their own sales teams. Their sales folks pitch their catalogues to the genre buyers of chain stores, indies, and libraries. Midpoint is one of the larger indie distributors.This is a good thing because it's how we get our books on store shelves.
 

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I think they mean the physical pages you send become their property--meaning they won't return them--not that everything sent to them becomes their intellectual property.

I agree. They just mean the paper. They don't want to have to hassle with returning manuscripts.

The fact that they're distributed by Midpoint is a decent sign, as is the fact that they're keeping their list small (I first got a question about them in August 2007, so they've been around for at least a year and a half).

But I have to say their covers look pretty bad, and the random pages submission thing...well, that's just strange (it's also a classic newbie mistake). Plus, the owner's own book is published by the company. So while this seems like a well-intentioned publisher that's doing some things right, there's enough question to inspire caution, IMO.

- Victoria
 

doctri

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I am aware that they are working on titles for 2011. For what it's worth.
 

David McAfee

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Actually, having an actual distributor (as opposed to just being listed in Ingrams, etc.) is a good step, as far as I know. It means they are trying to sell books to readers, not the author's friends and family.

In my admittedly inexperienced opinion, it seems like while they might be a little clueless, they are not altogether crooked. If I'm wrong, veinglory, please feel free to correct me.
 

doctri

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No. I never thought that. I was just interested if anybody knew anything about it. I don't. Perhaps I should have thought of that before I queried her, but I never really expected her to ask for a full ms so quickly. It sort of caught me unprepared. I suppose I should have expected it when it says right on the website that you can send a full ms right off the bat. But, I didn't want to do that. I wanted to give her the option of rejecting the book from the query before dealing with the hassle of copying and sending an entire ms.
 

frandavea

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It is odd they would request random pages from throughout a ms. I went ahead and did it, anyway. We'll see what happens.
 

doctri

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It is odd they would request random pages from throughout a ms. I went ahead and did it, anyway. We'll see what happens.


When you say you "did it anyway", do you mean you sent random pages, or you sent a full ms? I sent the random pages and she asked for the full ms. Now, I have cold feet. I'm not sure why.
 

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I exchanged several emails with her and it's confusing to say the least. I must have asked her three times if email/pages were okay, but she said, finally, that she wouldn't get around to printing up the sample pages until around July. She says she gives priority to hardmail fulls because the "the writers went to the trouble of doing it."

Throughout all three exchanges, she did not make a lot of sense to me. Perhaps somebody else can have a go and find out what these random pages mean. I asked her if she wouldn't prefer consecutive chapters sent email via my agent, and she never answered the question.

However, she did express interest in two of my queries. And right now, I just can't afford the shipping/postage/printing/paper and everything that goes with it to mail off two fulls.