Ah, I see what you're saying now re: advance against royalties. But I think you're comparing apples to oranges here. A traditional publisher will give you, generally speaking, 15% for a print book and somewhere around 25% for an ebook. They can do this because every client they sell to pays the same price (again, generally speaking) for the book, which happens because they don't sell direct to the public; they only sell wholesale. An epub/POD publisher doesn't sell wholesale, which means that there is no fixed wholesale price, and what they sell a book to one person for will not be the same as to another, depending on third-party costs (which a traditional publisher rarely incurs). On a per-unit basis, however, I'm doing better with GPP than I would with a traditional publisher. Wholesale of my book would have been about $7.50 in print, 15% of which would equal $1.13 in royalties per copy. Not nearly as much as I'll make per unit this way, so I'm not sure why it matters that they pay royalties per net revenue of a unit rather than in a fixed per-unit price. There are provisions in the contract that prevent net revenue from ever dropping below a certain point (in other words, they can't just one day decide to sell my ebook for $1.99), so in that sense the authors there are protected, as well. If I'm missing something still about the point you're making re: this issue, please let me know; I definitely want to understand.
First-time novelists even at large houses tend not to see a particularly large advance. I've worked for Avalon Publishing (now Perseus Book Group) and Pearson/NAF and have seen advances as small as $1000 and almost never over $5000 for first novels. Of course there are dramatic exceptions, but they are just that--exceptions. Yes, that's more than $750, but the royalty per book is much smaller, which means it takes you a lot longer to outsell the advance, if you do at all. Also of note is that when it comes to primarily epubs, $750 is a huge advance. Many, many epubs (possibly most? I can only speak to my own research here) don't pay advances at all. Many others come in well under that.
I don't know about other PODs, but GPP has a distribution deal with Ingram, which means the book will show up in the catalog and can be ordered like any other. Not many stores stock gay erotica (and not many major publishes publish it, so there was certainly that for me to consider as well when looking at publishers), but I would not be shocked to see a copy on a specialty store's shelf. I can't speak to the intention of GPP overall, but certainly for both author and publisher the money is better if customers buy ebooks rather than print books, and there is a heavy focus on that. The marketing primarily targets e-reading communities, as well. Will it be worth my while in the end? Only time will tell, but fingers crossed for now; within a few hours of the book's release (which was the last time I spoke with my editor), I'd sold 22 ebooks and 20 print books (print books are a presale). Small numbers for sure, but not for the first part of day 1 with a micro-publisher who has no other inventory yet
Re: promotions, I can only speak to what's being done for mine, but some of the things we've planned that they are providing:
*Cover art print raffles (and holy crap, did you see the cover art she commissioned for my book?! It's AMAZING.)
*Materials for book signings (bookmarks, signage, fliers, etc)
*A budget for book signings within driving range (no airfare, alas
)
*Review copies for print and epubs/blogs that cover the genre
*Banner ads in likely reader zones (like adultfanfiction.net)
*Video book trailer
*Aggressive social marketing and networking
*Careful cultivation of an active reader community onsite
*And some other very cool things that I don't know if I'm at liberty to discuss before they're done--but stay tuned; one of them had me squeeing
So far, she hasn't said no to anything I've asked for. The day may well come, but so far so good. The personal attention has been amazing.
There's no denying some huge benefits to publishing with a major house. Epub/POD publishers are not the same animal at all, and they bring with them their own positives and negatives, just like a big house would. But that's not really the issue at hand here; I was merely coming on to say that my experience at GPP has been fantastic, and while I'd certainly understand a writer's reticence to sign with a new house, these people are as legit, hardworking, focused, and full of vision as they come.
EDIT: One other bit about the marketing I forgot to mention that I think is actually really smart is the affiliate program they run. It's a pretty aggressive program in terms of how high a percentage the affiliate makes (15% of gross sales made through the site). Applicants are carefully screened and encouraged to review the books they link to/only recommend those they truly enjoyed. Word of mouth is great, but word of mouth with incentive is more likely to move some paper (metaphoric or otherwise
). It doesn't cut into author revenues very much (and really, if the buyer wouldn't have found the site without the affiliate link, then it doesn't cut in at all because you've made a sale you wouldn't have otherwise), and it helps to discourage people from sharing the ebook (why torrent it if you can make $1.50 for every referral?), which in theory reduces piracy (though who knows in practice). I've seen a handful of other epubs run similarly carefully screened referral programs, but few make it so worth someone's while to engage in.