Uprising:
We're a startup publisher founded by veteran software engineers, television producers and online marketing experts focused on developing new fiction and select non-fiction, primarily for digital distribution.
Do any of your founding members have experience in publishing?
Uprising:
Our first set of titles will be released in Summer of 2010.
Your website says Spring 2010. You might want to change that.
Uprising:
Unlike traditional publishers, we also give our authors a much higher percentage of gross sales.
A higher percentage gross of sales that might not happen is no incentive.
Uprising:
We are interested in books stuck in the blind spots of traditional publishing: cross-genre novels, etc. We're especially interested in series that cater to a technically savvy readership such as fantasy and science fiction. We will consider most fiction genres other than horror or erotica and within other genres we have a general aversion to sexually explicit material. We'll consider non-fiction memoir and biography, especially if it's funny. We also have a special place in our heart for political fiction. We're looking for strong literary characteristics in all submissions regardless of genre -- we're not looking for pulp genre novels.
You're spreading yourself thinly, especially if you don't have any established presence or credibility within those genres that you can build from.
Uprising:
We don't want to talk about who we are as individuals because it would more than likely invite further scrutiny of who we are as individuals -- which would more than likely hurt our feelings and I know the nice people on AW don't want that. What you want to know is whether or not we're for real and whether or not we're scam artists.
Who you are as individuals is perfectly pertinent information to request, given that you're making a series of representations about your business. If I was investing money in your business, then I'd want to know your background and experience to delivery on your business plan and investing my book with you is in no way different to that.
Uprising:
To address that issue, all our contracts have rights reversion clauses if we shut our doors or fail to sell a negotiable number of copies or reach a certain revenue target. So, if you sign with us and we can't sell your book or we go out of business, rights will revert back to you.
Realitistically, the big problem with start-ups like yours is bankruptcy and on a bankruptcy, the liquidator/administrator will keep hold of all the assets, i.e. including publication rights, to try and maximise the return for creditors. Your contract might say that authors will get their rights back if you go bust but in practice, they may well find that they get nothing.
Uprising:
The development of viral videos, mini-documentaries about a book's subject matter, video interviews with the writer are absolutely crucial to our marketing strategy and as extra content for rich mobile editions.
According to your research, how many book buyers buy a book on the strength of an internet video or interview?
Uprising:
Jeff Bezos (the CEO of Amazon) recently told his employees that Amazon has sold 48 Kindle editions for every 100 print editions sold this holiday season. (Someone told us this in the elevator at Amazon, so consider the source.)
What source? You spoke to someone at an elevator at Amazon. You could have been speaking to a cleaner for all I know. What Bezos tells his employees and what he tells the market are two different things and me, I trust what he goes public about.
Uprising:
Although we do not release books on hardcover (we think the $25 price point turns too many people away and makes it difficult to launch new authors), all books will be released on trade paperback.
Are you publishing by POD or are you doing print-runs? If it's the former, you're going to find it difficult to get books into stores, if the latter then you're increasing your storage costs and taking a bigger risk that your strategy doesn't work.
Uprising:
Let's take membership in the SFWA as an example. You haven't sold a legitimate book unless the publisher is on a predefined list. That's a pretty clear cut example of the game being rigged against startups. Many reviewing publications have a similar list of "legitimate" publishers. I think dropping this barrier would invite in all the self-published crazies, so I understand why it's necessary. I'm just saying there is a barrier and it has a concrete impact on PR and marketing strategies, particularly until our name gets on those lists.
Not at all. SFWA is an organsation for authors, not publishers - like CWA and RWA - it exists to protect published authors. Once you establish yourself, you can apply for membership.
Uprising:
If writers were our target clientele, we'd publish books about writing. Writers may overlap with our target market, but not in a way that's statistically significant.
That seems to be a very foolish statement to make in an on-line forum, populated with web-savvy people who are in an excellent position to participate in or work against whatever web-based viral campaign you try to set up. I'll certainly bear your comments in mind should I see anyone advertising your company or your books in any of the communities I frequent.
Uprising:
Never mind that relentlessly clinging to doing things the way they've always been done is precisely the kind of arrogance and complacency that's created the opportunity, but you take my point.
It's only an opportunity if you're still here in 2 years time to talk about how you were able to make it work for you. At the moment, it's a gamble.
Uprising:
What we think will be a trend -- and is already a trend -- is an emphasis on viral marketing and social networking to launch new writers.
Except that you cannot control viral marketing or social networking - all you can do is put something out there and hope that enough people talk about it for it to catch fire. Then you need to have something in place so that people can readily and easily buy the book once people are talking about it. Do you have distribution in place so that people can walk into a store and connect the book on the shelf with the book that people are talking about, or are you operating an order-only distribution policy (because if it's the latter, you'll find that people will lose interest at the idea of having to wait for something).
MM
