Evernight Publishing / Evernight Teen

Jamiekswriter said:

Laurel, I've got two novellas with them, Otaku and Obake. They pay royalties on time and let me have input in my covers.

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How do you feel about their promotions and marketing? I admit that I see more and more Evernight books on review and book sites. It's one of the reasons I subbed to them in the first place. Their covers are pretty and eye catching and the books I've read from them have been well edited.

Lol, I guess now that I have an offer I'm checking underneath the sheets so to speak.

They have a very active yahoo group and Facebook page and their authors are very supportive of each other.

But any promotion and marketing, you're going to do yourself. Every now and then, they'll arrange a blog hop to try and pull in more readers and those are always a fun way to meet new people and get them following your blog.

However, the yahoo group and Facebook group are happy to share information from where the best blogger review sites are, to what swag is most effective at conventions, to helping each other out with voting and stuff like that.

Caveat: They may do something different with the full length books, mine are the short On the Go Romances.

Thanks Jaime! Your input is much appreciated. I self-pubbed my first release so I'm no stranger to promotion I understand that authors should take ownership of that, just wanted to make sure that Evernight at least provides some.

So far between your input, and other authors with them (both in this forum thread and outside) this pub seems to be very author friendly.

Echoing the info. I sent them my first YA/NA and got an acceptance in less than a week. In fact, I think it was just a couple of days. Also, when they sent my cover I made an offhand suggestion and shortly afterward got a new cover with my suggestion taken into account. Their editors were also easy to work with. Definitely an author-friendly pub.

The only drawback, in my opinion, is that they're a Canadian company and can't do direct deposit of royalties to us writers here in the States. I opened a PayPal account and got my royalties in full, right on schedule, so that's not really a problem.

Hi all thanks so much for giving me the needed info. I accepted their off and the contract is officially signed, sealed and delivered

Subbed my 24k word YA contemporary novella to Evernight Teen this morning

Good luck!

Thanks

It seems as if this publisher works seriously fast. I'm going to submit soon!

Got an offer from them in my email inbox last night! I'm not quite sure what to do, though. I was advised to look over the contract before making a decision, but was told that they use an electronic signature provider after acceptance, and invited to ask any questions I had instead.

I did some more digging on them last night and see that all of the ET titles are in the 200k-500k range on the Amazon overall bestseller list. I have no daydreams about being able to quit my job and live on royalties from a 24k word e-book, but is that decent ranking for a small publisher? Would it be rude of me to ask my contact about average sales figures?

The only other things I know to ask about are the rights revision clause and if there's anything about ROFR for future works (I'd like to query the novel I'm working on now to agents). Anything else I should request written info on?

Thanks guys

ROFR should only be on anything in the same world. My next Bite Me book has to go to Loose Id first, but they don't get dibs on anything else. I can't help with the rankings, but that doesn't indicate a high number of sales per day. Though that really depends on how hard you promote it yourself, too. If you're willing to contact blogs and do giveaways and guest posts, you can often get a good bit of coverage and that will boost your sales.

I kind of think it depends on what subgenre you write. I write MM so my shorts there have sold quite well (on third party sites, not on Evernight's own site). I know their menages sell well as well. I am not sure how well their MF erotic romances sell, though.

I've been following this thread for a while and I have a serious question, but I have to say first, I don't mean to offend anyone.

Has Evernight Publishing turned anyone down? The reason I ask is because of several issues I have read in this thread. I hope they are not just an author mill...

So what are the issues?

1...Quick submission acceptance. This does not mean they are shady in any manner, but they either accept almost anyone, or they get very few submissions. Author Mills have a habit of accepting almost anyone, in any genre, because its all about the numbers.

2...Editors are easy to work with. OK, that is an author's dream. But does that mean their editors are just cleaning up a manuscript, or are they pushing the authors to be the best they can be? I am unsure, but I want an editor that is going to push me to be the best I can be... I have no experience with these editors to know if easy to work with is a good or bad thing in this case.

3...Looking at the rankings of some of their books on Amazon, does not leave me comfortable with this publishers ability to push sales. Yes, I know, in this age, authors are expected to do their share of marketing. But I expect a publisher to be gung ho on marketing more so than the author. Now, I have no experience with this publisher so I do not know what they do and don't do, but the sales ranking on Amazon for most of their books is not encouraging. IMHO.

OK, so adding all this up does not mean this publisher is an Author Mill, but with author mills, the more authors a publishers signs and publishes, the more overall sales for the company, even if the numbers are low for the author.

For me, with small independent publishers, especially publishers who are e-publishing only, I look at the rankings on Amazon to see how well the books are selling. I then follow the links backwards to see who is doing the majority of marketing; the publisher or the author? If the later, I pass. Why? If I, the author, am doing the majority of marketing, then I might as well self publish...

So, does anyone have any opinions about my comments? And again, I am not meaning to offend anyone who has published with them, or is considering, I just want to get the facts straight.

smlgr8 said:

I kind of think it depends on what subgenre you write. I write MM so my shorts there have sold quite well (on third party sites, not on Evernight's own site). I know their menages sell well as well. I am not sure how well their MF erotic romances sell, though.

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Oh this is on the Evernight Teen imprint. It's a YA contemporary with a romantic element, though I wouldn't consider it a romance.

justbishop said:

Oh this is on the Evernight Teen imprint. It's a YA contemporary with a romantic element, though I wouldn't consider it a romance.

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I have heard that the YA imprint sells very little. I have no direct experience with that, though.

thothguard51,

!) I have no clue if they accept everyone, honestly. I was an establishe MM author with an established readership before my first story for them was published there in an antho. I have seen authors say their story was not accepted for an antho, but that would be my only knowledge of that.

2) Their editing is not extensive. I am published with Ellora's Cave and Loose Id (as well as Amber Quill and in the past Dreamspinner) and can attest that EC and Loose had much more complex editing.

3) It's been a number of weeks since I had a release with them but all of my stories have been in the top 100 for GBLT on Amazon. The first standalone story being in the top 10 for a brief period. I've sold thousands of copies of that story and most of the others. I do almost no promotion other than having a website and a blog and I did do their blog hop, however, as I said, I am an already established author (since 2008)

Yeah, the Amazon rankings don't look great, but are likely better than I could do self-publishing. The other house that has offered (Crushing Hearts Black Butterfly) isn't regarded nearly as well as Evernight, but their rankings on Amazon are generally MUCH better, so I'm not sure what to do...

ETA: @ thothguard51: The Teen imprint doesn't seem to have many titles. Not sure if that's a sign that they are acceptably selective, or that they just aren't getting a ton of submissions, but none of the imprint's titles have any reviews of less than 3 stars on Amazon, FWIW

Smlgr8,

I am well aware of Ellora's Cave and their reputation. Kudo's on your sales but I have to ask...

Why go with Evernight instead of publishing on your own, considering your background experience? What exactly is EN offering that you could not do on your own?

Again, not trying to start anything, just trying to figure out the advantages of a small press vs self publishing.

I have zero interest in self-publishg. Don't want the headaches. Evernight is a very small percentage of my books honestly (actually short stories) and they provide cover art, some editing and some advertising. All of which I'd have to handle myself if I was interested in self-publishing. Which I am not. I see no advantage to going that route but someone else may feel differently. Different strokes I guess. But anyway that's my 02 cents. I was with an author mill under a different name and my experience there was dreadful. It has not been with Evernight. YMMV

Here's my experience. Keep in mind my first title with them comes out Aug. 30 so no clue on sales.

Do they accept everyone? No. I'd queried 2 or 3 other books and had been turned down, and for good reason.

They are fast. I was accepted in mid-July. But when it came to edits I worked fast. I had three rounds, the first was nothing but red and as it went there wasn't much to edit. My editor liked my pacing, just awkward word choices and some things that didn't add up.

As for the editors, I refuse to go into detail but I'll say this: Not everyone loves all their editors

I'm not sure about the Amazon rankings. Most that I've seen have sold well, the lowest I saw was like 37,000 which isn't bad. Their ROTG sells very well.

Thanks for the info! Is your book on Evernight or Evernight Teen? I checked the overall bestseller rank of ALL of the Evernight Teen titles, and they were all between about 200k and 500k.

If the adult titles sell well, I wonder why there's such a gap between that and the Teen imprint?

ETA: Just to be clear, I actually prefer a good, harsh editing if I'm going to hand something over to a publisher, so that was good to hear

justbishop said:

Thanks for the info! Is your book on Evernight or Evernight Teen? I checked the overall bestseller rank of ALL of the Evernight Teen titles, and they were all between about 200k and 500k.

If the adult titles sell well, I wonder why there's such a gap between that and the Teen imprint?

ETA: Just to be clear, I actually prefer a good, harsh editing if I'm going to hand something over to a publisher, so that was good to hear

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I like a good smacking too Sometimes you wonder why they want your work with all that red lol. Mine is with Evernight. It's a M/M contemporary. It seems their ROTG are their money makers. At least, that's what I've seen based on their blog and FB page. My novella is just short of 21k, so hopefully I'll get some readers that are willing to go just a tad longer than the ROTG.

I just accepted! Waiting for the contract signing part now

Thanks for the info, guys!

justbishop said:

I did some more digging on them last night and see that all of the ET titles are in the 200k-500k range on the Amazon overall bestseller list. I have no daydreams about being able to quit my job and live on royalties from a 24k word e-book, but is that decent ranking for a small publisher? Would it be rude of me to ask my contact about average sales figures?

Thanks guys

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A better place to look to check sales is www.novelrank.com. You can search under author and if someone has already checked that title, you can see the monthly Amazon sales. If they haven't checked the title, you can put in the Amazon URL and it will start tracking that title's Amazon sales starting today. It's not exact, but it's ball park.

If you want to see a sample of what it looks like you can look up Lissa Trevor and it will show you the Amazon sales for my book "Spank Me, Mr. Darcy" published by Riverdale Avenue Books for the month. I'm using that as an example because I know it's an "active" title because I just had a sale two hours ago. I didn't know about Novelrank when Evernight published my two On the Go's Otaku and Obake so their numbers aren't available. But if you don't have a sale in 30 days your title goes "inactive". I'm pretty sure Otaku and Obake haven't sold anything for awhile LOL.

Amazon rank is weird, from what I remember anything 50K to 100K is one book sold a day. Anything in a 200K and 500K range hasn't had any sales in awhile.