Mystic Moon Publishing / Wicked Nights

I just made it past the "18 and over only" filter and the first thing I find is them looking for people to "Sponsor" a story.

We are an erotica publishing website that offers free reading to our readers. We publish short stories of 3000 words or less in most cases. We were founded in 2010 and have been doing well in search engine rankings since then. The website is new, but we hope to make it one of the best paranormal erotica websites out there.

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If it's free reading, I don't get how the writer makes money. Nor do I get how well these short stories do, they're not avaliable anywhere else it seems.

When and what do we pay?

We pay on the 6th of the month for the previous months work. Pay is one cent per word for single stories and negotiable for series works. We pay via PayPal only.

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So they pay, but the reading is free? I fail to see where exactly their income is coming from if they're asking people to sponser stories and offer free reading. Where's the money coming from? Methinks there should be some more clarity here.

I'm always wary of sites that don't reveal the staff anyway, so I'd like to see that too. But what there is doesn't inspire too much confidence. I can offer my own stories for free on my own with probably the same results.

I beleive Wicked Nights is part of Mystic Moon? http://mysticmoon.co.cc/

The misspellings and grammar errors on the site ("Become our fan on Facebook... You know you want too") are not confidence-inspiring.

I wanted to address the posts here.

I run Wicked Night and Mystic Moon. Mystic Moon Publishing is for my work only. I have never claimed to publish other peoples work. I have a couple of friends that have work there, but it's by choice.

Wicked moon is a free read website. I pay out of my pocket because I don't think anyone should be asked to write for free. Writers are paid a penny per word for their work. I don't think this is horrible compared to some websites that pay $3 for full rights forever. I ask for one year.

I make my money through ads and story sponsors. The sponsor thing is just an idea. I don't know if I'll keep it there or not. This is not my main source of income and I'm starting slow as to not get overwhelmed.

The grammer stuff is because I'm not an expert writer. I have always struggled with it and am working on improving my writing.

I don't expect everyone to want to submit a story and that's fine. I also know that you want to protect yourself and your work and that's fine too. I just felt I should address these issues before they got out of control.

Thanks so much,
Stacey

Thanks for the explanation, Stacey, and welcome to AbsoluteWrite.

staceytg said:

I wanted to address the posts here.

I run Wicked Night and Mystic Moon. Mystic Moon Publishing is for my work only. I have never claimed to publish other peoples work. I have a couple of friends that have work there, but it's by choice.

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(My bold.) But on this thread, here at AW, which you started, you're requesting submissions to Wicked Night. You say,

staceytg said:

Wicked Night is looking for short story submissions. We want paranormal erotica under 3000 words. Pay is per word and for one year first rights. Take a look at the website for guidelines and how to submit. www.wicked-night.co.cc

Thanks

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(My bold again.) You ARE offering to publish other people's work; but although you're offering to pay writers for their work you don't seem to understand how rights work. And with all due respect I am sceptical of your ability to attract readers to your site: how do you plan to do that? Because if your site has no readers, there's little point writers losing their first rights in order to publish with you.

To be fair, Stacey said that Mystic Moon is for her own work only; she's soliciting work for Wicked Night.

The rest of your concerns certainly apply.

Mystic Moon Publishing has announced it's open to submissions.

Yep, we are open to subs now. I hired an editor and have the books listed at All Romance EBooks as well as several other outlets.

Also, if anyone has any concerns, they may talk to Ashlynn Monroe and Angel who are published with us as well as several other companies.

I have worked very hard to answer any questions about my company and to make it a nice and fun place to submit. Sales have been very good and I try to take care of my authors.

Submissions will close again once I get to 5 or 6 authors accepted. I want to take it slow and get things right.

The website also has a new url : www.mysticmoonpublishing.info

If anyone has any questions, they can direct them to me at [email protected] or my personal email at [email protected]

Thanks,
Stacey Thompson-Geer

I'm a little confused. Are they paying .01 a word and a one year contract for the novels too? Not a bad way to make $800! And they pay the month after publication!

I don't see any indication that those rights apply to Mystic Moon, only Wicked Nights.

It would be nice to see who the staff is, and what their experience is in publishing.

I would also suggest a name change given that Mystic Moon Press was an unrelated fiasco.

Wicked Night and Mystic are publishing in two different ways.

Wicked Night is paying a penny per word for the free read section of the website (Limit of 5000 words). The rest is royalty pay at 40%. Mystic only offers royalty at 40% paid every three months. I started with the free read offerings and it went well so we expanded to offering longer erotica.


I didn't know there was a conflict with the name until I got a more official url last week. I'm still making up my mind on what to do about that.

I did decide to close the Mystic Moon side of the company. There is too much crap going on because of a name. I honestly didn't know about the Press one. I simply liked the name.

I fear the damage is already done because of something as simple as a name, but there is nothing I can do about that now.

I simply wanted to do my own thing and got slammed pretty hard. I guess it's a good lesson on what not to do. I do have some great authors that are sticking with me through the mess and I will continue to do the work I do no matter what.

Stacey

So you just closed it rather than changing the name?

veinglory said:

So you just closed it rather than changing the name?

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In a way. Everything moved to the other website, Wicked Nights. I already had that website.

Ashlynnmonroe:
I've had a positive experience working with Wicked Nights.

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Okay. Are you able to share whether Wicked Nights just has ebook rights to your work or do they have a print option? Where are your books being sold from and what kind of sales figures have you had to date?

Ashlynnmonroe:
The name confusion is unfortunate.

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Yes, but it was also avoidable. A simple Google search on the name before setting up the business would have revealed the existence of a similarly named company and its strained reputation.

Ashlynnmonroe:
Stacey has been honest and fair.

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I don't doubt that for a moment.

Unfortunately there's more to publishing than being honest and fair with authors. So far as I'm aware, Stacey's experience is restricted to self-publishing. What is she doing/able to do for Wicked Nights authors that those authors can't do for themselves by going through Lulu or another self-publishing entity?

Ashlynnmonroe:
I've been paid for my work in a royalty percentage standard to the industry.

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As I understand it from what Stacey has said on this thread, royalties are 40% - is that correct?

Is that 40% on the cover price of the ebook or is it on net? If it's on net, how is net calculated?

I note that your novel is sold on Wicked Nights for $1.99. That means you get (at best) 80 cents for each book sold. Now, while 40% might be an ebook standard royalty rate, one of the romance writers here will be able to tell you whether $1.99 is a standard ebook cover price. Personally, I think that looks pretty low, and you're going to have to sell an awful lot of books to make any nice money from it.

Also, I see from this thread that royalties are paid quarterly. Is there a minimum level that must be earned before royalties are paid out or are royalties paid regardless of level? (I ask because many publishers set a minimum threshold that must be met or else royalties will roll over to the next quarter).

Ashlynnmonroe:
If you have, questions email me at [email protected]. I'm also on twitter and facebook so please feel free to talk to me.

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Or you could talk to people here. There are loads of people contributing to this site so there's plenty of opportunity to 'meet' and talk to people.

MM

Momento Mori said:

I note that your novel is sold on Wicked Nights for $1.99. That means you get (at best) 80 cents for each book sold. Now, while 40% might be an ebook standard royalty rate, one of the romance writers here will be able to tell you whether $1.99 is a standard ebook cover price. Personally, I think that looks pretty low, and you're going to have to sell an awful lot of books to make any nice money from it.


MM

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Depends on the length. None of my novellas or full-length at Ellora's Cave, Samhain, Liquid Silver, etc are priced under, oh, 2.49 or so. The high volume of sales at EC allows me to earn some decent money on a 10-15 word story though.

EC has some shorter guidelines for Quickies now. Those 7-10 stories sell for 1.99-ish. Again, though, EC has a built-in audience and high sales.

Something I'm not seeing that I know readers always want to know are what length the story they're pay for might be, an excerpt so they can try before they buy, and some indication of heat levels on the romance titles.

Ashlynn, I don't mean to speak for Mori, but I don't think you've offended anyone. I also don't think you're really seeing the reason for this section of the forum.

This is a place about hard facts. Numbers. Books sold, dollars earned.

Happy thoughts about small publishers don't come into play here. People aren't interested in how happy you are. They want to know if your publisher is able to sell books.

What reason could anyone have for submitting to Mystic Moon / Wicked Nights? What does this publisher do (other than some kind of intangible happiness) for authors? What are the royalty rates? How well do books sell from the publisher's site? Other sites? What kind of time, energy and money does the publisher invest in promoting itself, authors and books?

I'm glad you're happy. That's lovely. But happy isn't what everyone wants. Some people want to make money from their books.

(And quoting your post statement by statement is a means of creating dialog)

jennontheisland:
Ashlynn, I don't mean to speak for Mori, but I don't think you've offended anyone.

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Sorry, Jenn, but she did offend me albeit not on this thread. She's also published by Wild Horses Publishing and in commenting there (since deleted but I quoted in my response http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193953) she accused people of being "disrespectful" about her publisher and then made a passive aggressive remark about people here not wanting authors to succeed. It's crap and I called her on it. If she doesn't like that, then that's up to her.

What I will say is that Ashlynn sent me a PM, which I won't reproduce (although I am seriously tempted) but which managed to be even more offensive. Effectively, she told me that she was deleting her comments here because no one was interested in hearing about her true experiences with either Mystic Moon/Wicked Nights or Wild Horse.

Again, I call bullshit.

The real reason she's deleted her posts (IMO) is because she doesn't want to be told about pitfalls about her publisher and has no interest in escaping the "I'm a published author" bubble. That's fine. It's her decision.

What infuriates me though is people who do that and then claim that people here are "anti author" or "anti small publisher" just because they don't like hearing things that might raise alarm bells. It's not true. It's delusional to claim it and frankly, I get tired of seeing it raised time and time and time again.

She said herself in her PM to me that she wasn't interested in debate. Again, that's up to her. I have a horrible, horrible feeling though that in 12 months time we'll be hearing from her again when she'll be sharing when things didn't go so happy happy and wondering what she can do about it.

Like you ask, Jenn, why would anyone want to submit to these publishers when they don't seem to do anything that you couldn't do yourself with Lulu. It's the allure of being able to believe that you've actually been chosen and are good enough that sees people sign up with entities like this and then in 99.9% of cases, the tears of remorse come when it's too late and everything has gone knickers up.

MM