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First One Publishing / Karen Hunter Publishing

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FirstOne said: The fee: $149, is to eliminate anyone who thinks they want to be published from entering.
I know people have already picked this one apart, but as one who's in the publishing business, I find this statement more than ignorant. Charging money and collecting great submissions have nothing in common. This is simply a profit center for the publisher so she can publish books on someone else's nickle.

As for her comment about publishing 5-10 books/ month equates a "major publisher," this is laughable. Publish America "publishes" way more than that a month, and they're no more "major" than I am Queen of Sheba.

She has yet to mention a distributor, so how are these books hitting the marketplace? It appears as though Karen has left the building and won't be back to answer the pointed questions, so the best anyone can do is get the word out to avoid losing their hard-earned money just so a wanna-be can enhance her bank account.
 

xccorpio

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After reading everyone’s analysis and great insights on this issue. I still find hard to believe a person would try to steal writers’ work and money.

I’m with those who think she made this mistake because of ignorance. She didn’t research, she didn’t do a business plan, she didn’t hire a lawyer with experience in publishing. She launched the project before it was ready. Maybe I’m naive, but this is what I truly believe.

This is also a lesson for aspiring writers. This is what happens when someone bypasses the slush pile boot camp. The author becomes successful, but never learns how the publishing industry really works. All the learning endured between those rejections letters is good in the long run.

Her reaction to the criticism suggests it. She obviously never had a critique partner who told her, “Your masterpiece isn’t perfect, dear.” Neither endured painful revisions with a senior editor.

The slush pile boot camp teaches us to revise, revise and revise. Absolutely everything we do, including the business side of our craft. And when we don’t know something, teaches us to be meek enough to ask advice from those who know better.

In all the years Karen worked in close contact with the industry, she learned how one side of the publishing world functions, sadly she missed the bigger one.

If you have attempted to publish a book via one of the self-publishing arenas, you will pay considerably more than $149.

We plan to publish many runners-up, and with that will come marketing, publicity and all of the things a person attempting to publish themselves simply will not have. As an author myself, I put a lot of thought into the kind of contest I would like to participate in and this is what I came up with.


Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I think what she originally intended was to put ironclad rules that protect First One Publishing from any problem that might raise from the contest. And, the content’s fee would be used to publish and promote ebooks for at least twenty one of the participants. Without First One Publishing investing any money on it.

We all know publishing doesn’t work like that, but apparently she ignores it or she was trying to do something new. Motivated by her previous success, and what she thought she already mastered.
 

Terie

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In all the years Karen worked in close contact with the industry, she learned how one side of the publishing world functions, sadly she missed the bigger one.

Um...she worked for Simon & Schuster and started an imprint there. She can hardly claim not to know that side of the industry. As a matter of fact, she has significantly more experience than the vast majority of startup publishers.
 
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kaitie

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Can someone help me figure this one out because I'm not good with contracts.

She's saying she has the rights to all the books and what not, correct? She's planning to published 20 second place winners without giving them the opportunity to even see the contract being offered (but they're having to agree) and simply entering gives her that right, correct? So even if one of those who entered decided to change his/her mind, they couldn't withdraw the manuscript and the author would have let her publish the book without an advance under whatever contract terms are there, right? I guess I see that as the main reason for the rights grab the way it's currently explained. It gives her the opportunity to publish all twenty of those books without having to pay an advance (but still call herself an advance paying publisher) and under potentially terrible contracts (I'd assume terrible considering the contest one alone), and profit on those to the detriment of the writer while still calling herself a good publisher because the terms of normal publishing aren't necessarily those of the contest.

I might be totally wrong here, but that was my thought. I'm not trying to say that is her plan, but I'm just trying to sort out logical reasons for having the clause, and this is the most logical I can find. Maybe Karen will come back here and can explain it better to me.

I can't imagine her just taking all these works and publishing them even if the author didn't win or didn't want them, but couldn't it possibly come back if the author did get published elsewhere? Say a book got picked up by Random House, couldn't she say "I have the rights to that book" and sue?

Again, I don't claim to know anything. I'm just trying to see potential consequences and what not.
 

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Katie, my reading of it is that if the winner(s) sign the contract that's offered, they get whatever the contest guarantees (an advance for the first place winner; free books for all; publication and marketing etc for all) in return for all rights. If the winner(s) don't sign the contract that's offered, then she doesn't have to give them anything, but she still retains all rights. Non-winners get nothing but she still retains all rights.

I'm not saying she *would* exploit those rights, or that she *would* publish the books if the winners declined to sign the contract, but that she *could*.

It's my guess that they'll get a lot of erotica submissions, because erotica and e-books seem to naturally go together. It's also my guess, based on what FirstOne does publish, that erotica submissions will not win. I took a look at a recent release by FirstOne -- I thought it was a novel, but it turned out to be a nonfiction book about interpreting one's dreams to see what God is trying to tell you -- and it's got no ranking at all on Amazon Kindle. Which suggests to me that either they're not penetrating the ebook-reader market, or that there is little/no market for ebooks outside of erotica and Nora Roberts-type bestsellers. So if FirstOne is planning to be an epublisher of nonerotica and Christian nonfiction, they may have a long hard slog ahead of them -- and contest winners may find their sales to be relatively low.
 

kaitie

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I think I'm not understanding how giving away your rights upon entry versus signing the contract works. Obviously a contract contains a lot of other clauses, but aren't rights the biggest part of that? I think I'm not explaining well, which is hard as I don't have the appropriate terminology down well enough. I wasn't necessarily suggesting that she was planning to publish the books without permission, but that she was using the fact that the rights and the other rules to bind someone to a contract that hasn't been seen without providing an advance and to who knows what conditions.

In other words, you have a contest, charge a huge entry fee, use said entry fee as capital to pay for the expenses you have on the first twenty books while managing to also avoid having to pay advances on those (essentially, getting them for free) in the hopes that you can then use the revenue gained from those books to help pay for others down the line, all while still calling yourself a major, advance paying publisher.

Again, I don't know that this is what's going on, but reading all of it, that's how it strikes me. I would be wary of being published by a new publisher in general for the usual reasons, even someone with the level of experience Karen has. I would definitely not want to be the first little experimental batch having to agree to terms I can't see and not getting anything to show for it. Especially considering we don't know the distribution in place, or what royalties would look like, etc.
 

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I think I'm not understanding how giving away your rights upon entry versus signing the contract works. Obviously a contract contains a lot of other clauses, but aren't rights the biggest part of that?

My understanding of it is that normally, a contract spells out that the author gives the publisher certain publication rights, and in return the publisher gives the author specified things including money. In this case, however, there are essentially two contracts. In the first contract, which you agree to by submitting your manuscript to the contest, the author gives the publisher publication rights and $149 in return for nothing. In the second contract, which you will be offered if you are a winner of the contest, the publisher gives the author money and books and stuff as a prize for winning. While the second contract may list the publication rights the author is giving the publisher, it's just a reiteration of what the publisher has already been given in the first contract.
 

kaitie

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Okay, that makes sense. Thanks.
 

brainstorm77

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When I read 'boo-bird', Kathy Bates in Misery came to mind...
 

kaitie

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Thanks, brainstorm. Way to make an incredibly cute phrase that I was loving disturbing as hell. :tongue
 

xccorpio

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Um...she worked for Simon & Schuster and started an imprint there. She can hardly claim not to know that side of the industry. As a matter of fact, she has significantly more experience than the vast majority of startup publishers.

Thanks, Terie. I didn't know this. I was referring to what is listed on her About Us page. Maybe I missed something. I guess I'm naive after all.
 

cryaegm

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Thanks, Terie. I didn't know this. I was referring to what is listed on her About Us page. Maybe I missed something. I guess I'm naive after all.
Nothing wrong with googling the person. :D If you can't find the answer on the About Us part or whatever they have, take it up to google and see what comes up.

At least, I think that's how they found some of the information. If I'm wrong, I must be a terrible stalker then. :Huh:
 

Susan Lanigan

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The whole $149 thing is a natural bar as far as I'm concerned...I could spend that on booze and men, for chrissakes :)
 

Nya RAyne

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No, it's a contest only someone who doesn't know a lot about publishing would enter; that doesn't make someone an idiot, it just means they don't know a lot about a specialized industry or about rights/copyright etc.

If it was something only idiots would enter we wouldn't be here (well, we would, but you know what I mean). The problem is there are a LOT of newbie writers, people who don't understand how it works, people who honestly believe all the canards out there about having to "know somebody" or having to pay to be published or that Stephen King started out by selling his books door-to-door, or that you can't get published without an agent but an agent won't look at you if you aren't published. They're not idiots, they just don't know.

Unfortunately, not everyone has found AW, or follows the publishing industry online to keep up on this stuff. That's why we try to get the word out, and hopefully they'll find it, and us, and learn.

They're vulnerable, and they're naive, perhaps. But they're not idiots.

I stand corrected.
 

michael_b

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Karen,

Sorry to disabuse you of your beliefs that publishers don't come on AW to answer questions, but, for the record, I'm a publisher as well as an author. I answered questions about my company that were brought up a few months ago. Many publishers do so, some with better results than others.
 

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I'm late to the discussion, but when I saw 'terrestrial' rights, I assumed that they meant 'world rights'. As in, all languages, all countries. So not only would you give up your rights to your book, but you'd give up your rights to publish your book in other countries as well. ;)

I assumed that these days publishers specify terrestrial and extraterrestrial rights in contracts, just in case we ever colonize Mars.
 

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Yeah, but what about the bookstores in Brisbane that are under water from the floods? Do any contracts cover aqueous rights?
 

Cyia

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I assumed that these days publishers specify terrestrial and extraterrestrial rights in contracts, just in case we ever colonize Mars.


S'not Mars they're concerned with. It's all those transmissions into space. If someone's book gets beamed out there in e-format, and it becomes a hit on Tralfamador, then someone's going to want a piece of the action.

Of course, the Tralfamadorians already know who's worthwhile and who's not, so there's no sense marketing to them at all.
 

Joslin Dee

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I assumed that these days publishers specify terrestrial and extraterrestrial rights in contracts, just in case we ever colonize Mars.

:roll:

I think I love you... just a little. ;)