[Publisher] Cedar Fort, Inc.

Adding link.

My father published a number of books with Cedar Fort before he passed away 4 years ago, and even one post-mortem. He was always happy with the publisher, Lee Nelson, and with his treatment there. His books are still selling, a couple of them better than others, and my mother still receives royalty checks regularly. The company has really expanded over the past 5 or 10 years and I would say is quite reputable. I know they have some big titles that sell really well. For the book published after my father passed away, I was in contact with Lee Nelson and one of the editors regularly, and they were both extremely professional. The only thing I would say is that you might need to be on top of some of the publicity, as I think they may not push your book as much as you might like because their list is growing so quickly and I don't know if their staff has quite caught up with it. Hope this helps.

They are perfectly legit. They do drive a hard bargain. No advances and no wiggle room in the contract. They pay 10% on gross. They give nice critiques on rejected manuscripts and often offer to re-consider a rewrite based on their suggestions. When they really like a manuscript, they jump on it without the usual waiting time.

The contract is a weak one, absolutely non-negotiable, with no spelling out as to what they are buying. They pay 10% royalty on everything, including e-books, with no sliding scale according to print numbers sold. They pay 50% to author on subsidiary rights (also not spelled out), and 50% on movie rights, instead of the standard 90%.

There is a clause in the contract asking for first refusal on the author's next book in that subject. If the author plans sequels, they are stuck with that contract unless the CFI turns them down.

Their acquirings keep strange hours and are often impossible to reach. One wonders how they get any work done. If you feel your book is worth better, pass on this publisher.

They do have good distribution and start publicity right away, long before publication date. The humor on their website does not translate to how they confer with agents.

PS. Their newer contracts don't require first refusal on the next book, no matter the subject, but they DO require the author to tell them about an outside offer,so that they can have the chance to make a counter-offer.

Awesome Acquisitions

...has just posted twice in Paying Markets, but they don't list a website, nor do they list a real person's name associated with their company. When I google them, I come up with a company that can't possibly be them and a whole bunch of unrelated posts and blogs, some of which refer to Amazon acquisitions.

Has anyone heard of them? Know their rep or what publishing house they work through?

I didn't want to just assume based on email. As a techie, I've seen lots of people use email addresses from one domain but actually be working for another company.

But you're probably right. Thanks for pointing it out.

EDIT: Still, what is Cedar Fort's rep? Anyone here work with them before?

I've heard of them (never worked with them). They've been around for a while (1986 I think), and they have a few imprints. They have a focus on books for the LDS (Mormon) market, but they seem to have solid distribution since I've seen their books in lots of the big box bookstores, even a few with front of the store displays for non-local authors. They also have good YA and MG fiction market (they might have a good market on other fronts too, but I was looking at the YA/MG books because that's what I write). I think they like their books to be on the wholesome side, but they seem to do very well for themselves and their authors.

I am working with them. They accepted my Christmas pamphlet about a month ago. The Christmas pamphlets are short stories. Mine is about 5,000 words. They are sold like cards with envelopes.

They recently sent a preliminary image of the cover and asked for my opinion. I made a few suggestions but it's really well done and would be fine the way it was.

They no longer have the right of first refusal clause. They've changed it so if you get an offer from another publisher, you have to give them a chance to match it. Since they are a rather small publisher, this wouldn't be a worry if you wanted to go for a bigger market.

They've been great to work with so far and I hope to work with them on more projects in the future. Their YA books sell fairly well. They have several titles that have sold over 5,000 copies.

My pamphlet, The Candy Cane Queen, will be available this Christmas.

Christmas can't come soon enough this year.

I haven't noticed their books in regular bookstores outside the Mormon corridor. But a friend of mine went to the book fair in Frankfurt and said they had a presence there. It sounds like a good sign.

I saw one of their books at Cosco one time, FWIW.
Congrats Sperrynluv!

Sorry, but we don't like working with them. They don't like working with agents, either. They made an offer on a book they had first refusal on and made promises in the acceptance letter, then sent a contract.

They had made some troubling changes to their contract from two years ago, did not include any of the promises in the contract, and would not negotiate. In our case, because we wanted some changes we felt were necessary for our client's safety, we were met with complete silence until the deadline for signing was over. Then they cancelled the offer because the deadline had passed without our client signing the contract.

A couple of months later, they contacted the author without our knowledge and offered to publish his book if they didn't have to deal with us. Fortunately, he told us about it.

Not good.

Now that's just rude. Not even Baen (infamous for preferring to deal with the authors) would do something so professionally suicidal.

Two Cedar Fort authors have released a statement saying their book was cancelled because one of the authors is gay.

Find another publisher folks. These guys aren't on the level.

Well, certainly after seeing that little diatribe made public. Not a good thing. However (and not really playing devil's advocate here, just noting something): if I were a LGBTQ author, I probably wouldn't look at a Mormon-affiliated press in the first place, just because this issue might be raised in the future.

I hope Woven finds a much better home with great sales and support from its new publisher.

I have bought 4-5 of their cookbooks. They are great quality and amazingly cheap. They are also one of the few publishers of cookbooks who considers the situation of single people who won't buy bulk amounts of ingredients and cook whole chickens. So just as a customer I think their books are great.

But the cancelling of a gay author changes things completely.

EMaree said:

Two Cedar Fort authors have released a statement saying their book was cancelled because one of the authors is gay.

Click to expand...

I read the email chain. Yikes! I would avoid on principle.

Another author's reaction to Cedar Fort Books:

I sent them my first manuscript, The Priestess Prophecy, in 2009. They accepted the book for publication, but their contract was downright predatory. I called to try to negotiate some of the terms. They kept giving me the runaround--pushing me to sign before the contract expired. They told me the only person who could change the contract was Lyle Mortimer, and he was on vacation. I transferred to another employee, who apparently hadn't been briefed on the "Lyle's outta the office" runaround. That's right. Mortimer was upstairs.

I stood my ground and Lyle finally called me. At which point he yelled at me and told me if I didn't want to sign the contract as it was, he had twenty other authors eager to fill my spot.

That's when I walked out.

Click to expand...

Wow. Definitely one to avoid on principle.

I don't get why some people think that their bigotry makes them morally superior to those who are not bigoted, rather than the reverse.

They didn't drop the author because he was gay. They knew he was gay when they signed him. There was a disagreement on the author bio, tempers flared on both sides, and the contract was dropped. I've read the email chain and think they could have worked things out if everyone had kept a level head. Neither side was willing to budge. They are a small company that relies on getting their books in local bookstores and Cedar Fort was concerned the wording in the bio would make these bookstores refuse to carry the book. (They published The Reluctant Blogger which has a gay character positively portrayed in it. They aren't bad people.)

As I mentioned earlier, I had a Christmas pamphlet published through them. I had a great experience and it sold well for a small market. I would work with them again. They have some really talented editors, designers, and marketing people. That said, they aren't for everyone. Research small publishers before submitting. The contract I signed last year was different from what was mentioned above. The royalty was %15 of sales price and the percentage went down if sold at a discount. They sell a lot at a discount so I didn't get %15 on very many pamphlets.

I think we know that. Most people just don't see why an author should have to budge when it comes to accurately referring to one's life partner, and not allowing a double standard or white-washing approached be applied.

They did know he was gay. They shouldn't have assumed he would lie about that for them. That is not something he should have to "budge on" and more than an author should have to agree to a level of obfuscation about their gender or race.They offer a compromise that compromised his principles, so he didn't take it.

Kind of wondering if they've gotten to the advance stage yet, what with distribution and book store placement. Seems they've been in business a while. I would think they'd anticipate agent submissions, especially for non-fiction.

tri