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Sunpenny Publishing / Sunberry Books

Bushdoctor

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http://sunpenny.com/

Has anyone heard of this publisher? Some of the statements on the website make them seem like a vanity publisher or at the very least a POD masquerading as a Traditional Publisher. They also have a vanity arm called Sunberry Books www.sunberrybooks.com which seems to operate independent of Sunpenny.
 

Donna Pudick

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They're in the UK and don't want email submissions. Their business model is strange, with two types of publishing. Study the website really well. Read it all and check for unacceptable stuff.
 

Momento Mori

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Okay, so the company has:

- no advances

- no royalties until they determine that the book has paid back its production costs OR royalties on only 20% of net payable only after 6 months has elapsed

- you'll have to pay to get your rights back if you want to cancel the contract

- the author will be doing the bulk of the marketing

- no books placed in book stores, nothing to indicate what on-line venues the book is sold through

- none of the staff have a background in publishing

- involved with an open vanity press

- complete bullshit about what it takes to get a book in stores:

Sunpenny Website:
New publishing companies are expected to produce at least 10 books before (a) the book world acknowledges them as a "real" publisher as opposed to a self- or vanity-publisher, and (b) before therefore many of the large book chains will stock their books (most chains work only through distributors such as Gardners, Bertrams, Ingrams, Baker & Taylor, etc, some of whom won't even consider taking you on until you have at least 10 books published). The first 10 barcodes issued reflect that fledgling status, so any time someone experienced reads your book's barcode they can see that it's done by a new publisher who hasn't yet hit the magic number 10.

It's a bit of a Catch 22 - until you have those 10 first books (well, 11 really - the next batch of barcodes issued is a generalised batch of numbers and no longer reflects your status, though it can still be checked on via the ISBN database), you won't be stocked - but until you're stocked, you won't make money. So you have to have a LOT of capital in order to produce and market those first 11 books, because you won't actually start making money until you've sunk a lot of money in.

This means that fledgling publishers (like ourselves) have to either have lots of capital, or lots of time and very patient authors.

MM
 

Deb Kinnard

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I'm kind of small-press experienced (books #7 and 8 come out this spring) so on a friend's suggestion I looked at this site. I have to say they didn't impress me and I won't be subbing anything at the present time.
 

CaoPaux

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Looks like Sunberry is being remade into a Children's/YA imprint. Site currently "Coming Soon" (and its blogs haven't been updated since '09). Sunpenny is relatively current.
 

CaoPaux

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Updating URL for Sunberry: http://www.sunpennybooks.com/sunberry-books/

New "imprint", Ridgeback Author Services. No dedicated page, yet.

ETA: site's suspended, but there's recent TW/FB activity. We'll see if it returns.
 
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