[FONT="]Maybe somewhat misguided, I do see today's epublishers as futuristic cousins of the say 1950's - 60's paperback publishers. Who for some were stepping stones, for others - career dead-ends.
Ace, for example, would lie, and cheat their authors out of even $15 when they could, would produce idiotic covers, and leave the texts in the hands of arrogant and clumsy editors. They even published pirated editions of the Lord of The Rings.
Some, like Philip Dick, got forever lost in the paperback swamp, in spite of being brilliant. Others, like Dean Koontz, went on to more commercially impressive achievements, in spite of not being quite so brilliant.
And Ace themselves evolved too, and today appear to be a legitimate high-end speculative publisher. Half of publisher.
It would seem to me that the stretch of time it took a paperback publisher to either evolve or go under in the decades past, would be greatly accelerated in the case of the 21st century epublisher.
And as the percentage of people reading ebooks grows in leaps and bounds, the epublishers have increasing incentive to actually try and participate in that market instead of merely pretending to do so. 2012 is not 2010 in terms of sales, and 2014 will be quite different from 2012.
Returning to World Castle, and say Solstice, and Damnation Books - whatever their existing weaknesses and strengths, their future is limited to three options: 1) fail; 2) evolve; 3) stagnate.
By submitting to them I've placed a bet on 2)[/FONT]
[FONT="]When someone has just written a hopefully “breakthrough” novel, with thousands of man-hours and sleepless nights invested in it, or at least the start of a what they hope is a instantly financially rewarding serial, then betting on small epublishers evolving shouldn’t be the first choice. Agents, big publishers, or mid-level tried and proven publishers, or even trying for the maverick self-pub serial success would be more logical choices.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Vainglory, your invitation for PM is very kind, I’ll make use of it.[/FONT]
[FONT="]StaciaKane, there's always a smoker in my stories too.[/FONT]