Loucks-Christenson Publishing / Snowy Creek Romance

starlight said:

After wasting my first manuscript on PublishAmerica, I am only interested in publishers that are going to get my book into brick and mortar bookstores.

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Here's how to do that:

Go to a bookstore and find the publishers who have books on the shelves. Only submit your work to them.

These kind of comments are valuable to you as a writer?

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Why, yes they are. I'm currently querying my romance novel to agents. Eventually, if that fails, I'll start querying publishers, beginning with the biggies and moving down the list. Your behavior assures that your company isn't on my list.

To which your response is likely, so what? After all, there are thousands of desperate writers out there. Witness the fact that Publish America still finds poor schmucks to sign up. But an experienced writer, one who is dedicated to the craft, and informed about the business, is unlikely to submit to a publisher who throws snit fits on public forums. Which could result in a decrease in the quality of submissions. Note, I said "quality," not "quantity."

You started off this thread well enough. While your credentials aren't specific to publishing, I gave you the benefit of the doubt, and saw your experience in media as an asset. IOW, something that could be translated into sales.

Unfortunately, as the thread continued, you pretty much came unglued. It's no fun to be under scrutiny. But as a businessperson, you should expect it and respond in a calm, professional manner. (Misusing and misspelling legal terminology really doesn't help your case.)

I don't victimize my authors. I am not responsible for other publishers who have taken advantage of their authors.

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I believe you have the best of intentions. But that's irrelevant if your contract sucks. Here's something that folks should keep in mind when dealing with publishers. The current management may be wonderful. But what happens if there is a change? Bankruptcy? Illness? Sale of the business? Suddenly the nice, author-friendly management could be gone and the authors are stuck with a terrible contract.

I recently turned down a contract with a small press for this reason. The current owners get glowy reviews here at AW, but their contract is a train wreck. If this publisher had been upfront about their contract terms (and not claimed to be open to negotiation, which they weren't), it would have saved both parties a lot of time. (Them, more than me, as they had to read my entire novel. I took one look at the contract and immediately knew it was a disaster.)

snowycreekromance said:

At least I'm woman enough to use my real name, where most of the people here are hiding behind aliases so they can spread their rumors, lies, and slander and publish libelous comments thinking they won't get caught.

Lisa

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(my bold)

Lisa Snowycreekromance, my real name is Jane Smith, and I am not libelling you when I write that, judging from your comments here, it's clear to me that you don't have the experience or the expertise required to publish anyone well.

You are discrediting yourself with your posts here. Please: stop being so angry with everyone and take a breath or two. Answer the questions you've been asked: if I'm wrong and you do know what you're doing your answers will make you look very good indeed. If I'm right, however, and you are incompetent, then you will demonstrate that very nicely. Either way, we will then all be able to stop wasting our time here and go back to work.

snowycreekromance said:

These kind of comments are valuable to you as a writer?

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Well, your lack of responses are, yes.

I was going to explain to you why your covers are being described by some people as looking like POD, and how to resolve the problem--it's a fairly common problem, and easy to resolve.

Really, you're not doing yourself a favor here. You could still turn it around--it's ok to be inexperienced, and not get things perfect.

It's OK to say, gee, that's not how we work, and is that in fact what writers want? Is that the standard ?

There are a lot of people here who could and would happily work with you, and support your endeavor, freely, because everyone here--writers, editors, designers, typesetters, publishers and book readers loves books, and as a publisher, you produce our drug of choice.

But now? I'm not about to offer professional expertise with you waving lawsuit threats around.

It's just not cool.

BenPanced said:

The way questions aren't getting answered?

Volumes.

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QFT.

And when someone tosses around the word "lawsuits" and "court" without any reason I have to wonder how much said person really knows about the industry.

A void can say as much as a stack of paper can.

Sheryl Nantus:
when someone tosses around the word "lawsuits" and "court" without any reason I have to wonder how much said person really knows about the industry

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Agreed. Not only this, the people who throw around the words "lawsuits" and "court" often fail to realise that any court action is going to bring attention to their business and I for one would have my lawyers all over the company's books and business dealings to establish a fair comment and/or truth defence.

MM

Medievalist said:

Well, your lack of responses are, yes.

I was going to explain to you why your covers are being described by some people as looking like POD, and how to resolve the problem--it's a fairly common problem, and easy to resolve.

Really, you're not doing yourself a favor here. You could still turn it around--it's ok to be inexperienced, and not get things perfect.

It's OK to say, gee, that's not how we work, and is that in fact what writers want? Is that the standard ?

There are a lot of people here who could and would happily work with you, and support your endeavor, freely, because everyone here--writers, editors, designers, typesetters, publishers and book readers loves books, and as a publisher, you produce our drug of choice.

But now? I'm not about to offer professional expertise with you waving lawsuit threats around.

It's just not cool.

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I know this pub doesn't deserve it, but I'm extremely interested in what you have to say. I feel like I, too, can spot a POD cover a mile away, and I would love to know what it is that publishers using this method are doing wrong. Especially since I've now seen a few off-set printed books that I thought looked POD.

If you'd rather not share the info here, do you think you could PM me ?

Since I was the one who specifically said they looked POD, I thought I'd offer why I said it. If I can lol It's hard to explain, but you can just kind of tell amateur graphic work. Things don't blend together well, it doesn't have that same flow. Their covers reminded me a lot of my own early graphic work from college which I can tell you now were not good. I think it really comes down to experience; professional graphic design probably involves a lot more than just knowing how to use a graphics/paint program.

I don't think there is any excuse for a bad cover. I contacted a known cover artist on my own, she has worked with the top e book publishers and her work is wonderful. When asked, she said she could create a cover for me and it would cost between 50-100 bucks. This also included the files for e and for print.
When I see bad covers, it really makes me wonder why?

Snowy Creek Publishing

I would caution anyone considering this publisher! From Nov. 2010 to-date my contact has been less than what would be considered reasonable. After receiving my four mms. query, a request was made for me to develop an individual chapter by chapter outline for each ms.. The next request was for complete mms. along with a request "to remove any obsene dialog in order to make them more Christian." During this charade I received all sorts of complementry comments. After nearly three months and a period of not hearing from them, my emails over the last three weeks have disappeared into some black hole without any response.

That would seem to clearly indicate reason enough to conclude they are less than than what they represent themselves to be.

[email protected]

So, you submitted your reworked ms when? Three weeks ago, is that correct?

I don't think that's a really long time to wait, but of course I don't know what else has happened.


Their sites still have missing links, blank pages, no excerpts, and available titles from only two authors.

Snowy Creek Publishing

Dear Stacia,

Sorry for the misleading time periods. The final submission was completed in early Dec. with the understanding that some decision would be made at the start of the New Year and the inference of a pending contract. The three week period mentioned only encompasses the three attempted contacts without answered emails mearly attempting to check the status, is the problem.

Obviously there can be a host of reasons for a delay, but the mere courtesy of an answer or some notification that there is some type of delay doesn't seem to be beyond what would be considered reasonable.

[email protected]

None of the website links in this thread for this publisher currently work; they all lead to either "Website Expired" or "[Browser] could not connect."

I checked them because I heard something earlier today that led me to believe this house may have closed. I've asked for more info; since I asked for it privately & confidentially I won't be able to share any of it here without the person's permission, but if the house has closed I'll at least be able to confirm that.

They had one author who had several titles with them, if memory serves; I hope she's managed to get her rights back if they have shut down, and can move on. (ETA: That author's Snowy Creek Romance novels are no longer listed on her website.)

As far as I know, this publisher is shut down. That may not be the case; apparently Lisa has stopped answering emails or phone calls, and has been incommunicado for quite some time. She hasn't made the last royalty payments due and hasn't reverted any rights to any of the authors (that I'm aware of. I'm hoping to speak to someone else who might have more info on this).

All of her personal websites are showing as expired or unable to connect; there's been nothing on her Facebook page, and her radio show site hasn't been updated and shows no upcoming shows; 1/11/11 is the last episode mentioned.

All of which looks damning, and certainly the situation for the authors etc. of Snowy Creek is extremely upsetting, but let's hope it's simply a case of a disappearing publisher, and not that some tragedy has befallen Lisa herself.


I did hear from more than one person involved that the publishing house was always a secondary concern to the stores etc., which made communication always spotty/delayed.

I've gotten confirmation that royalties owing from July of last year onward have not been paid. I'm not sure if any royalties were ever paid to either the authors or the editors.


Very sad.

Yeah. I've just gotten a look at one of the contracts for this publisher. It requires the author sign over copyright. Forever.

Holy @#&%, dude.


ETA: I have never in my life seen a contract this bad, foreals. Signing over copyright for life is the tip of the iceberg.

I've also seen a contract, and I can confirm what Stacia says above.

That's the worst thing, but there are other things wrong with the contract as well--including a clause that suggests that authors may be pressured to make bulk purchases of their own books prior to publication.

- Victoria

If you click the link to "Our Ebook Store," you get a blank page, and the link for "Distribution" gives us this very interesting text (bolding mine):

For over 25 years our sister company has been providing countless publishing services to our long list of authors, publishers, and businesses nationwide, so in 2005, when we opened our publishing company it was based on all those years providing our services to like businesses.

All our titles are distributed through them for both our brick and mortar stores, and all our online stores. Our books are sold online, mail order, or in person to our long list of customers, our private store lists, corporations, businesses, and most if not all our titles eventually are placed in outside distributors catalogs, online stores including Amazon, BN,

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In other words, they're not in chain stores at all. I don't even see the tricksy "available to order" verbiage here.

and most of our select titles (ones we own the copyrights to) are distributed worldwide. If we don't own the lifetime copyrights, we can't place these titles into our worldwide list of distributors.

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Sp not only are they still demanding the author sign over copyright, they think they have to own copyright to distribute internationally.

For the record, if a publisher wants to "distribute" books internationally, they have the author sign a contract granting them printing/distribution rights internationally (the contract wording might say "World Publishing Rights" [or "World English"] or define whatever specific territory, like "North American and United Kingdom" or whatever). There is zero reason, ever, why a publisher needs to OWN the copyright (outside of some work-for-hire situations. Later on the Submissions page they mention work-for-hire, so perhaps this refers only to the books in their specific series imprints, but it's not clarified). Certainly the contract I saw was not work-for-hire.



The "Snowy Creek Books" page says:

Welcome to Snowy Creek Books™

We are currently accepting agented-submissions in woman's fiction, mystery, and romance genres.

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Their Submissions page mentions this again:

1. Snowy Creek Books™ accepts only agent-submitted complete manuscripts. We are open to pitches only from authors who have been traditionally published. We will contact you if we want to see your manuscript.

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I cannot imagine any legitimate agent who would submit to this publisher.


In addition, it has a list of "Distributors:"

Distributors:


Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Bow Wow Detectives®

Meow Meow Detectives™

Ecompass Media™

iTunes

Google Books
White Wolf Creek™

Indie Bound

Mystery Lovers Corner™

Lisa's Walk The Talk Show™

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How exactly does a radio show distribute books? How does an imprint distribute books? (I notice Lisa has registered trademark for "Bow Wow Detectives.")

The question of distribution is one which came up when Lisa had her hissy fit all over this thread, which I can only assume is why there is now so much on the website about distribution. Unfortunately, it was clear then and is still clear that Lisa does not know what a distributor is (frex, Amazon and B&N aren't distributors, they're retailers. To my knowledge B&N only orders books available through distributors, though I could be wrong there; I know some authors have managed to be stocked in their local store on consignment). Which means no Snowy Creek books will be on the shelves in brick-and-mortar chain stores, and very likely will not even be available to order there either.


Oh! Oh! I've just found this on their Submissions page as well:

13. We will negotiate most terms on our contract, however we request lifetime copyrights for the electronic editions of the manuscript, and usually 35 years on print or other rights.

14. We offer at least a $1000 dollar advance against royalties to new and established authors.

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Nice. They didn't offer an advance before. Too bad they seem to imply in the first statement that they view every book they publish as work-for-hire and thus take copyright for life; taking copyright for life directly contradicts the idea that they take print rights for a specific period of 35 years. Either you take copyright or you don't. If you're requesting lifetime ebook rights that isn't copyright, that's publishing rights.

15. All our books are printed in paperback and published as electronic editions. Our authors don't have to qualify to have their books printed as trade paper books based on their electronic sales figures.

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Again, this is actually nice; many ehouses do not clarify what the print criteria are. Again, though, given that there's no distribution in place for the books and they don't even seem to take the rudimentary step of signing up with a warehouser, I don't see those print books being available to most audiences.

Here's the fun part (again, bolding mine):

16. We offer some of the highest paid royalties in the business OR we offer a buy out for an agreed flat fee, also known as a work-for-hire agreement. Our WFH agreements are individually negotiated, start in the low thousands for the purchase of and transfer of all rights and interest to the Work(s), forever. Lifetime copyrights, buy-outs are nothing new, many publishers use them. Although they may be snubbed by some double-talking writers on certain writing boards (I know, I've checked and archived their words admitting in one post they are advocates for buy outs and lifetime copyrights and how it was okay for *their name* to sign that kind of an agreement, but slam our publishing house for offering the same agreement.) The same individuals spreading malicious lies that we are closed, not paying our authors, and worse seem to have their own track record of advocating both types of agreements.

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Lisa, I have statements from the authors claiming they weren't paid. I have their statements about broken links on your website and your lack of communication. I have screenshots from the days I visited your site and found only blank pages or pages not updated in several months. I'm not a liar. I didn't make any of that up. I'd be angry at your mischaracterization of me if it wasn't so hilariously unprofessional, and if I thought you actually had any idea what you're talking about and thus respected your opinion.

I have never once advocated an author giving away "lifetime copyright." Again, you're confusing "copyright" with publishing rights. I don't have an issue with publishers who use "life of copyright" as a term for taking certain publishing rights, provided there is a clear and reasonable rights reversion clause. I've never said anything different, anywhere; I haven't said different in this thread or in any other here at AW. If you understood the difference between "copyright" and "publishing rights," you'd know what I'm talking about, but since you do not, you resort to such ridiculous and unprofessional statements as the one above. Nor do I have any issue with legitimate work-for-hire, in which the author is paid for their copyrights. At the time my statements were made you didn't do so.

(I'm glad you're learning so much from everything I say here, though, and modifying your business to suit. Perhaps after this post we'll see you've actually learned what a distributor is, and signed with one?)

More proof that you do not understand the difference between copyright and publishing rights, from that same page:

18. We won't even consider your book(s) if you don't agree to the transfer of LIFETIME COPYRIGHTS for our royalty-paid contract(s), or a WORK-FOR-HIRE agreement or buy out in which we own all rights to the work(s). We are not in business to license books and sell them locally, or even across the country. We are a global publisher who only accepts authors who can meet our needs for books to sell worldwide.

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In other words, you expect authors to sign over their copyrights to you whether or not you pay them up-front, and whether or not it's a work-for-hire contract. The fact that you do not understand the difference means you're doing your authors a grave disservice. Are you actually writing and signing contracts you don't understand?

Again, all you need to do is contract World Publishing rights. I tried to explain this/ask you about this when you were here before, but since you were so angry and since you know so little about publishing that you were unable to actually comprehend my questions, your response was to attack me and ask if I'd signed over World rights to my publisher (and act like that's some sort of secret information), when in fact it's very clear that I didn't, since I have several different publishers in several different countries (US, UK, Germany, Poland, Norway, and France at the moment).

If you want to be a small boutique work-for-hire publisher whose work is promoted and available only inside its own stores and network, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But your authors need to know that's the case so they can make an informed decision about whether or not to submit to you.

This was never personal for me, Lisa. I have nothing against you and never did. I'm sorry that it's so personal for you; sorry because I (and everyone else here) could have helped you, sorry because I like to see publishers succeed, and sorry that you feel the need to attack me in your submission guidelines when doing so makes you look foolish.

Publisher

Anyone heard of Loucks-Christenson Publishing? I saw some books they've put out. Small company, am looking for feedback or insights or personal experiences with them. Thanks.

Moved to Bewares & Background checks.

Link: http://louckschristenson.blogspot.com/

Just a minute...I thought I'd heard the name Lisa Loucks Christenson before: <snipped>

Found the thread in BRB: <snipped>

aliceshortcake said:

Link: http://louckschristenson.blogspot.com/

Just a minute...I thought I'd heard the name Lisa Loucks Christenson before:

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=188592

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Wow...my brain is fried after going through those threads...

A look at the Snowy Creek site shows that they're currently accepting submissions for 2012 and 2013.

Also only accepting books from agents. Are agents really sending there? The submission guidelines don't look as bad as they used to, and I didn't see anything about lifelong copyright clauses. Anyone have a recent contract so we could see if that's improved as well?

I'm not sure if they're a good idea publisher yet, but maybe they've learned something?