Evernight Publishing / Evernight Teen

Congrats, StephLondon! I'm working on the sequel to my first Evernight title; in fact, it's my NaNo project this year. Hopefully they'll accept it when I'm done.

zmethos said:

Evernight had told me my book was a bestseller on All Romance eBooks, which I thought was kind of funny since my book isn't really a romance.

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It was a bestseller in whatever category it's listed in, I presume. One of my Evernight books was an ARe bestseller. I think I sold 24 copies on ARe that quarter.

I've published one ROTG with Evernight, an M/F/M. It has sold, I believe, five copies. My royalties this month were one dollar and forty cents or so. I confess I don't remember. *shrugs* They did no promo and I didn't either, other than announce it on my FB page for that pen name. I wouldn't send them YA, as I haven't seen evidence they do better with this than they've done with my ROTG. Just my two cents.

I've had several ROTG with them all of them M/M with varying degrees of success. My last one published earlier this year. The first quarter I sold 5 from their website, the second quarter I sold 46 from ARe. This third quarter I sold 15 which included ARe, AMZ, Smashwords, and Bookstrand. I think for AMZ it was just the start of the sales there. In any case I have made about $52 on this last story total so far. I still make over $100 per quarter but this includes 8 ROMG published over a few years now. FWIW

I've sold a few books with Evernight and their from-the-main-website sales are always on the low side, but I do particularly well in Amazon. So I wouldn't base all the performance on the first statement you get! I'm sure there'll be more

They're always such a pleasure to work with, and they actually do some promo--then again, I write M/M for them. Reviewers that I hadn't even sent copies to regularly write reviews for my books. Then again, I wouldn't have known that if I didn't go to Goodreads (which was a good idea in that I saw the reviews--but a bad idea because I took a shot to the self-esteem. )

The current manuscript I'm writing is one that I'm planning to send to them, actually!

I rejected their contract on 2-9-2015, but I didn't have any notes for the reason why. I negotiated with them for a three days and they did send a contract before I had to sign with them. They initially wanted me to sign without the contract then changed their mind. Their personal contact was a pleasure, nice correspondence, from what I remember. I also saw that they had some good posts in their favor.

Sign without a contract, tri? Did they give a reason that you can recall? For me, they sent me word that they'd accepted my book and said the contract would come within a week (it came the next day). They've been pretty responsive, and they do at least some marketing, though I feel the burden remains largely on the author. At least they're good about letting you know of marketing opportunities; I've taken advantage of several and seen bumps in my Amazon ranking whenever I do. (Don't know about my third-party sales yet.) I have no problem giving them the remaining books in this series (unlike another pub that I'm sitting out the contract on).

You will always sell WAY less on their site than you will third party. Especially Amazon. Don't be discouraged because of the sales from their site.

So I received my Q4 payment, but no statement thus far as to how many books sold or from which vendors. Does Evernight usually supply this information? Should I wait to see if it comes later or ask for it? Or do I not need it? (I'd kinda like to know in any case.)

zmethos said:

So I received my Q4 payment, but no statement thus far as to how many books sold or from which vendors. Does Evernight usually supply this information? Should I wait to see if it comes later or ask for it? Or do I not need it? (I'd kinda like to know in any case.)

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Yes, they provide this info. I get a statement on the same day they put the money into my PayPal account. I'd wait a couple days then follow up if you haven't heard anything.

That's weird. My payment comes the same time as my statement and it says how many books you sold and from where.

zmethos said:

So I received my Q4 payment, but no statement thus far as to how many books sold or from which vendors. Does Evernight usually supply this information? Should I wait to see if it comes later or ask for it? Or do I not need it? (I'd kinda like to know in any case.)

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Like everyone else said, I got an email with an itemized list at just about the same time I got the PayPal transfer. If you didn't get that, you might want to ask!

That said, apparently 3rd-party website sales are at least a quarter behind, so (since my book was published this quarter, and I think yours was, too), it only included sales through the Evernight website. So it looks like you'll have to wait another quarter for more complete numbers.

You definitely will want to ask. Evernight doesn't provide 1099 forms (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is) to writers living outside Canada, so you'll need copies of the royalty statements when you file your taxes. Better copy the cover letter, too; the royalty statement itself doesn't include any company ID. I didn't realize that until I got my taxes done last year. Luckily my royalties in 2015 were so miniscule (I'd only published one book with them, and hadn't gotten third-party sales yet) it was pretty much a non-issue.

I have a quick question about their "Exclusive Submissions ONLY" instruction on their submission page (I searched this forum, but couldn't find the info - sorry if this has been asked already!)

So does this mean you can only submit to them and that's it? What if you had already submitted to other publishers or agents, but got rejections?

Thanks!

stormowl7 said:

I have a quick question about their "Exclusive Submissions ONLY" instruction on their submission page (I searched this forum, but couldn't find the info - sorry if this has been asked already!)

So does this mean you can only submit to them and that's it? What if you had already submitted to other publishers or agents, but got rejections?

Thanks!

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"Exclusive" means you can't currently have it under consideration with anyone else. It's totally fine if you've previously submitted it somewhere and gotten rejected. It's also fine if you submit to Evernight, get rejected, then submit it elsewhere. They're attempting to avoid a situation where they read a piece, decide they want it, and you go, "Whoops, sorry, someone else said they want it, too, so I'm going with them!"

Now that I have published with another small I can say Evernight is not doing all they could for their authors.

JustWonderin said:

Now that I have published with another small press I can say Evernight is not doing all they could for their authors.

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In what way(s)? If you care to elaborate for those of us still shopping for publishers.

They do very little to promote work. Even their social media is severely lacking. Tweeting out links to Facebook is highly, highly ineffective not to mention annoying. They should be growing their accounts constantly and they just aren't.

They do have pretty nice covers, especially lately, but other than that I'm not sure why they're getting any percent of my earnings when I did all the work to get any of the sales I have. A cover and a couple of lousy rounds of edits doesn't work out to them earning those sales.

My new publisher sent me a revision schedule, asking what dates worked best for me, instead of my edits randomly showing up in my inbox one day and told I have a week to get them back. The whole editing process is just so much...better. I don't even know how to describe it but I feel like I'm working with a real editor. Evernight never lets you communicate with your editor, unless you count comments made on your manuscript. Which I do not. You should be able to communicate with your editor. That is so important. How can you work with someone you never even get to communicate with? It leaves me feeling like they care about quantity over quality, just churning out books to have more and more.

I don't want to completely drag them, because they could be so much worse, but it just seems like they aren't even trying. I will say they always answer my emails and quickly and I don't think I've had any issues with payment but it's hard to tell because I don't get many details.

They published my first book and I wouldn't say it was a bad experience. I had two other publishers offer me a contract and I went with Evernight because I thought they'd be the best. Now? I'm not so sure it was the right decision.

For what it's worth to anyone trying to decide, I won't be sending them anything else, but I don't think authors would be crazy to sign with them. If that makes any sense? Ha!

I got an acceptance letter and they said, "If you accept, we will send the contract." I wanted to see the contract first before I decided on anything and they were giving me a hard time about it. Then I came here and saw the downside to them and passed.

Yeah, some people might decide it's best to walk away. I gave my opinion but ultimately everyone has to make that decision for their book/career.

It's funny because it's all relative. Evernight Teen has been better than another publisher I've worked with. That said, yes, they do what I would consider the bare minimum when it comes to marketing and promotion (but still more than my other publisher, so . . .) I'm supposed to be writing two more books in the series I have with ET, though they haven't asked for anything or set any kind of deadline, which does make me feel as though they're indifferent. ET puts out a book per week, so again, you end up buried pretty quickly by whatever is the latest and greatest thing. Every once in a while, though, I'm surprised to see ET tweet my book again or post it in a marketing image. I don't think it's helping sales any, but I have a moment of, "Oh, they haven't forgotten me after all."

I don't mean to be disrespectful but if your publisher is doing less than Evernight they better be getting low, low royalties off you.

I put a ton of work into each MS I write, as I'm sure all of you do. If a publisher can't offer me something special, or at least hard workers, they aren't worth it. With how accessible self publishing is you'd be better off doing that and keeping all the profit.

The more I think about it the more upset I get because I just remembered Evernight doesn't even supply you with the files before your release date so you can get reviews for your book before it comes out. How messed up is that? Not only do they not secure at least 1 or 2 reviews, they make it impossible for you to do it yourself. I heard that you can request to get your files a week or so early or something but 1.) how can you be sure you can get someone to read, review, and post in that amount of time and 2.) HELLO they should want to make money just as much if not more than you and do this stuff for you!

Like I said it was my first book, I definitely didn't know any better, and I can't speak for other people's experiences. Maybe they are much better to other author's and I just slipped through the cracks somehow? It's totally possible.

What's my point, you might ask? Your work is worth a good publisher. If no good publishers want your MS then you probably need to revise the story and work on your craft. Maybe that sounds mean but I wish I would've taken that advice when I was first trying to get published.

Oh, I agree, JustWonderin, and I won't give that other publisher another book. In fact, I've had so much more success with my self-published work, that I'm not sure I'd continue to seek publishers for any of my stuff. Not small ones like these that put out so many books you get lost in the shuffle, anyway. (If only I'd known then what I know now, as they say.) Depending on the manuscript, I might shop for an agent, but in many cases I'll be self-publishing from now on.

JustWondering, you make some very good points. The one thing that really pissed me off about Evernight is that they do not provide your files automatically. You have to ask for them. But because of this, it's not entirely impossible to get reviews despite missing the release of your book. Early and on-time reviews are great, but continuous reviews are good, too.

The problem with ALMOST EVERY romance publisher today is that they do next-to-nothing for new authors. Why? IMO, they're too busy helping their "heavy hitters" aka the authors that make them money. This is one reason why a lot of authors choose self-publishing over publishers.

Not to make it sound like a bad thing, but in today's romance market, being able to market (effectively) yourself is an extremely crucial skill to have if you want to go anywhere with your career. If you're not willing to try, then you could find yourself struggling no matter what your choice -- to go with a publisher or self-publish.

Anyway, on the topic of Evernight: they, too, have done more for me than most other publishers I've worked with. But they do focus on their "heavy hitters" more.

Evernight has beautiful covers. They are easy to work with. Payments have never been late...those are the pros and very good ones to have.

Cons ... your book gets buried quickly. The marketing (and when you only have one marketing manager for bazillion authors there's really no surprise) is lacking. I have an author friend who writes for the adult line and of course I was watching for her sequel to come out and there literally was nothing leading up to the release. Cover reveal, blurb, the whole enchilada was released the day of. It made me sad for her, and I wish I could say it was the first time I've seen it. There is no build up, no teasers, no reviews beforehand ... I'm not sure why they don't use NetGalley. I dunno.

I guess I'm a bit conflicted about it all. The pros are great but I just think some of the cons could easily be remedied.