[Publishing svcs] Wildheart Books

weer awl jus jelose loosers

Wildheart Books:
Thanks for all the visits.
It's amazing how a little controversy can stir things up.
My Adsense account is looking great today!

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According to the counter, the total number of hits is 995. I'm betting a large number of those are people from here on AW checking out the train wreck.

It always tickles me when people like this claim that all the publicity is helping them. It shows a fantastic failure to engage with reality.

Key points remain that it's a publisher with no experience, no capital behind it, no distribution and apparently no idea on how to deal with legitimate questions and complaints.

MM

Not to mention, it has no idea what it even wants to publish and it expects its authors to front them the capital for so they can pay advances (which really boggles my mind.)

What is Adsense? What does it have to do with publishing?

Adsense does nothing, my guess he's up to 8 cents right now.

Maybe he'll pay the advances out of his adsense money?
I'd have to go with the AW standard of waiting a year to see if 1. they're still in business and 2. They're selling anything.

Most publishers don't host Adsense ads because they want visitors to stay on the site and buy books, not leave it and buy something else.

Momento Mori said:

According to the counter, the total number of hits is 995. I'm betting a large number of those are people from here on AW checking out the train wreck.

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To put that in perspective, my blog got about 500 hits yesterday and about 1200 the day before. And it's not a very well-known blog.

Key points remain that it's a publisher with no experience, no capital behind it, no distribution and apparently no idea on how to deal with legitimate questions and complaints.

MM

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Yep.

Old Hack said:

To put that in perspective, my blog got about 500 hits yesterday and about 1200 the day before. And it's not a very well-known blog.

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Totally OT, but bull pucky, Ms. Jane. Your blog is widely quoted because you offer honest information that educates authors about publishing. <dragging back on topic> Perhaps Wildheart would do well to read it in order to learn how the industry really works.

The new website is up. (http://www.wildheartbooks.com/)

From the submissions page:

2. Publishing offer. This means we like your work and we're willing to assume the risk of publishing your ebook. All production services are included at no charge. You retain the copyright and receive a royalty for every unit sold.

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So now he's not offering an advance. Nor does he specify if royalties are offered on cover price or net. Nor what those royalties are.

3. Purchase offer. This means we would like to purchase the entire rights to the work includng the copyright and all future sales revenues from all media including printed books and audio/visual productions.

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Basically a work-for-hire arrangement. A decent work-for-hire outfit pays a *lot* more than your average advance. But Wildheart has already admitted he doesn't have a huge amount of money on hand, so how much is he planning to pay authors?

The other big red flag is that he's now offering editorial and production services under the same umbrella as his publishing house. Good ethics would require him to place a clear barrier between the two sides of his business--such as, clients who buy editorial services are never considered for publication--but I don't see anything covering that.

They also charge for editing. And proofreading.

Just how many red flags can one "publisher" raise?

Jersey Chick said:

Just how many red flags can one "publisher" raise?

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Isn't that what the bingo cards are for?

Oh, I love the vanity-publisher-Bingo game!

I thought charges were only on the services side of the company, not the publishing side.

I just clicked on the Editing tab - it doesn't specify whether the charges are just for the services, or both. It's a vague website.

ETA - my bad. It does state that the services are at no charge, under the submissions tab.

That it offers those services doesn't sit well with me, though. Conflict of interest and all that.

Yeah, conflict of interest is a huge problem with this outfit. And that work-for-hire option could be a another one. Does he plan to buy the work at a fair price, or is this a sneaky way to cut costs?

I didn't see anything about advances - I'm going to hope he realized how shady it sounded, asking authors to donate to the company so said company could afford to pay an advance.

3. Purchase offer. This means we would like to purchase the entire rights to the work includng the copyright and all future sales revenues from all media including printed books and audio/visual productions.

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I'd expect this from a book packager company which owns the rights to, e.g. My Little Pony and wanting you to work for hire on a sparkle pony story but Wildheart Press doesn't seem to own anything like that so offering this makes no sense unless the intent is to try and trap people into assigning everything to them because they're too naive to know any better and are distracted by the shiny beans that they're being offered. (And incidentally, they'd have to be some pretty bloody magic beans for me to assign all my derivative rights and copyright in a manuscript - that beanstalk better lead me to marriage with George Clooney, a cool 7 figure sum in gold and a magic cow. Because I like magic cows and have always wanted one.).

Really, would anyone with their wits in their head sign anything to this outfit? Clueless doesn't even begin to describe them.

MM

I had the same reaction. Talk about pushing away knowledge with both hands.

About fifteen years ago I wrote a book on a work-for-hire basis. I wrote 45,000 easy non-fiction words (not a lot of specialist research required) and got paid about £9,000 I think.

I'd be interested to know how Wildheart's rates compare with that.

Current rates are around $usd 25000. Until I hear otherwise I can only assume low cash and willingness to screw new writers.

eqb said:

Current rates are around $usd 25000. Until I hear otherwise I can only assume low cash and willingness to screw new writers.

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current pro rates, right? If you got a pro contract you could expect $25,000, not their current rate, but what they'd be expected to compete with.