This has nothing to do with "knocking someone down".
As soon as I read the line that Brian posted, my thoughts went to Capri Publishing and then Heliographica Publishing and then . . .
But, I could be wrong. Prove it to us.
What's your experience in publishing?
Have you ever run a company before in any capacity?
What's your business plan?
Have you secured sufficient funding to get this business off the ground
What's your plan for getting books into bookstores?
Who's your distributuor?
Who're your editors?
How much experiece do they have editing novels or non-fiction?
How many authors do you expect to publish a year?
Who's handling publicity for your company?
Who're your sales reps? How many do you have?
Who're the artists you have lined up to do covers?
Can people see a copy of the contract to compare it against other standard publishing contracts?
And I ask these questions, not only as a member of Writer Beware, but as someone who ran a small comic publishing company in the 90s and who remembers what I went through and how much money I personally ran through to do A 32 page quarterly comic book. And this was with a lot of input and support from people who were successful small comic publishers who guided me away from many of the pitfalls I nearly plunged into.
If you've never been in publishing, it is a business like no other out there.
And the biggest worry most of the people here have is not for the publisher, who if they fail are out time and money, but for the authors who's books get tied up, may lose first print rights, may lose the rights to the book completely if the contract isn't clear should the publisher go under, etc.
We want publishers to succeed. I want places to submit my books to and to be able to make money off my work.
BUT, my primary concern is always for the authors.
