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Riptide Publishing

thethinker42

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I should have a response soon, but...

Based solely on my own experiences with the market and my own non-contemporary books, I'm going to guess it has to do with return on investment. Larger books cost more to produce, and in the queer market, non-contemporary books are a tough sell. My experience has been that my contemporary books can easily outsell my others by a significant margin.

Historicals and SFF have their fans, of course, but it's rare for those books to be competitive against contemporaries when it comes to sales. I mean, I co-wrote a historical romance that won Best Gay Book in the Rainbow Awards, and for a historical, has had pretty solid sales. But in 9 months, it's sold half as many copies as one of my contemporary flops that came out 3 months ago. (Neither book was published by Riptide, just using them as an example of the market)

So with all that in mind, my guess is that Riptide wants to produce non-contemporary queer fiction, but has to take into consideration the cost of production versus the return on investment. The larger books have the dual problem of higher production cost (especially edits) and higher price points, so it's difficult to make back what you've put in.

Again, this is all speculation on my part based on my own experiences.
 

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I'm also wondering if it might be the e-rom market's resistance to big books in general, and specifically spec fiction variants? I know a couple of agents who work in e-rom and mainstream SFF, who say their e-rom SFF clients generally sell under 90K works.
 

thethinker42

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I'm also wondering if it might be the e-rom market's resistance to big books in general, and specifically spec fiction variants? I know a couple of agents who work in e-rom and mainstream SFF, who say their e-rom SFF clients generally sell under 90K works.

I've found that the e-rom and queer markets gobble up long books IF they're contemporary or suspense. (My bestseller this year is a 120,000 contemporary erotic suspense, and I've got a couple of 100K+ contemporaries that routinely sell very well)

Spec fic, though, I have no idea. My short SFF and historicals haven't done any better than the longer ones.
 

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Another factor is probably possibly that Riptide really EDITS its books. Like, intense edits that I hate while they're happening but appreciate in the long run. That has to be a significant expense for them, and obviously it would be a greater expense for longer books. We get so used to e-books being the world where length doesn't matter b/c the printing costs, etc., don't apply, but the editing costs still do, and for a company that actually edits... if they can't sell the book for a significantly higher price, I can see why shorter would be better.
 

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I get why there might be hesitation to take on really long SFF, but—just to be transparent as to why I'm asking—my own soft sci-fi/suspense is over 80k by 1,800 words, and I'm wrestling with whether and how to hack it down, or whether I should just look elsewhere to submit. (Right now it's hard not to feel like my manuscript is too queer for traditional publishing and yet apparently too speculative for publishers like Riptide.)
 

thethinker42

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Another factor is probably possibly that Riptide really EDITS its books. Like, intense edits that I hate while they're happening but appreciate in the long run. That has to be a significant expense for them, and obviously it would be a greater expense for longer books. We get so used to e-books being the world where length doesn't matter b/c the printing costs, etc., don't apply, but the editing costs still do, and for a company that actually edits... if they can't sell the book for a significantly higher price, I can see why shorter would be better.

That's exactly what I meant by the costs. The editing gets very expensive.
 

thethinker42

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I get why there might be hesitation to take on really long SFF, but—just to be transparent as to why I'm asking—my own soft sci-fi/suspense is over 80k by 1,800 words, and I'm wrestling with whether and how to hack it down, or whether I should just look elsewhere to submit. (Right now it's hard not to feel like my manuscript is too queer for traditional publishing and yet apparently too speculative for publishers like Riptide.)

To address both points...

1. You can always email and ask regarding the length. You're close enough to the line, I wouldn't imagine it would be an issue.

2. "Too speculative", how? Like focusing more on the spec elements than the queer elements? Because I've not had any issue there.
 

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That's exactly what I meant by the costs. The editing gets very expensive.

Sorry, yeah, I was more building on your point, not contradicting it.

There are some e-pub houses that only do light edits, and for them, I don't think it would be a big deal to publish longer books - most of the other e-publishing costs are more or less fixed per book rather than per page. Like, one cover design per book, one promo campaign, etc. Because Riptide clearly spends more effort/money on editing, it's a bigger deal for them to have longer books, compared to other e-pubs.
 

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I get why there might be hesitation to take on really long SFF, but—just to be transparent as to why I'm asking—my own soft sci-fi/suspense is over 80k by 1,800 words, and I'm wrestling with whether and how to hack it down, or whether I should just look elsewhere to submit. (Right now it's hard not to feel like my manuscript is too queer for traditional publishing and yet apparently too speculative for publishers like Riptide.)

If I were submitting that I'd call it 80K words anyway - I round to the nearest 5K and have never had a publisher complain that I was misrepresenting things.
 

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If I were submitting that I'd call it 80K words anyway - I round to the nearest 5K and have never had a publisher complain that I was misrepresenting things.

Ah, really? That's helpful to know. I've been reading so many posts about how agents/publishers will reject on sight if you deviate from their guidelines in any way that I've gotten really paranoid on that front.
 
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aetherpen

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To address both points...

1. You can always email and ask regarding the length. You're close enough to the line, I wouldn't imagine it would be an issue.

2. "Too speculative", how? Like focusing more on the spec elements than the queer elements? Because I've not had any issue there.

By "too speculative," I only meant that I didn't think I fell within their exceptions to the 80k word limit on their current submission guidelines, given that the story takes place in a futuristic (though near-future) world. Your first point is noted though, thank you.
 

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Hello all! I just wanted to hop in to address the question about our new word cap for SF/F/H.

Lori's and Kate's speculation are both accurate, though there are other factors at work as well. Basically, what we've discovered is that a surprising number of authors take word count caps as a *broad* suggestion. When our cap was at 115K--which is the actual, firm cap we need to keep our print books reasonably priced and still wholesaleable (which is incredibly important because print is actually a--and sometimes the--primary market for queer SF/F/H, at least in our experience)--we received a large number of submissions north of 150K, so we decided to drop the cap. We can and do still buy SF/F/H books up to 115K, give or take, but as those books represent significantly greater risk for us (as discussed in the posts above), we're much more likely to seek them from authors we already work with, rather than from new-to-us authors.

Also, over the last several years, we've discovered which kinds of books we're best at getting into readers' hands, and which kinds of books pose the biggest challenges for us. Contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and romantic comedy fall most firmly within our wheelhouse, and thus we're able to take big risks with those titles. Books outside of those genres are much higher risk for us, and a key way to mitigate risk is to control production costs, which is best accomplished by limiting word count, since editing is a huge expense at our house.

As markets shift--and they always, inevitably do--the genres and word counts we're open to will also shift. (For instance, we no longer accept submissions of any kind under 25,000 words, whereas we used to evaluate submissions as short as 5,000 words.) If you're working on a project you'd like to send to us, but it's currently outside our listed word counts, keep an eye out; they may change from time to time. We're also willing to evaluate manuscripts that fall just a little outside our listed word counts (so you're fine, aetherpen--please submit!), and if you're an author who's already published with us, we're willing to evaluate virtually anything--even a fantasy ms that's 120K :)
 

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Hello all! I just wanted to hop in to address the question about our new word cap for SF/F/H.

Lori's and Kate's speculation are both accurate, though there are other factors at work as well. Basically, what we've discovered is that a surprising number of authors take word count caps as a *broad* suggestion. When our cap was at 115K--which is the actual, firm cap we need to keep our print books reasonably priced and still wholesaleable (which is incredibly important because print is actually a--and sometimes the--primary market for queer SF/F/H, at least in our experience)--we received a large number of submissions north of 150K, so we decided to drop the cap. We can and do still buy SF/F/H books up to 115K, give or take, but as those books represent significantly greater risk for us (as discussed in the posts above), we're much more likely to seek them from authors we already work with, rather than from new-to-us authors.

Also, over the last several years, we've discovered which kinds of books we're best at getting into readers' hands, and which kinds of books pose the biggest challenges for us. Contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and romantic comedy fall most firmly within our wheelhouse, and thus we're able to take big risks with those titles. Books outside of those genres are much higher risk for us, and a key way to mitigate risk is to control production costs, which is best accomplished by limiting word count, since editing is a huge expense at our house.

As markets shift--and they always, inevitably do--the genres and word counts we're open to will also shift. (For instance, we no longer accept submissions of any kind under 25,000 words, whereas we used to evaluate submissions as short as 5,000 words.) If you're working on a project you'd like to send to us, but it's currently outside our listed word counts, keep an eye out; they may change from time to time. We're also willing to evaluate manuscripts that fall just a little outside our listed word counts (so you're fine, aetherpen--please submit!), and if you're an author who's already published with us, we're willing to evaluate virtually anything--even a fantasy ms that's 120K :)

Thanks for the reply! It's very much appreciated.
 

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After seeing the complaint in detail, not a moment too soon but far too late. Now this publisher has given itself two black eyes in a short timeframe (see also Santino Hassell). I would expect and hope many writers will not sub to them, or will withdraw existing submissions.

Seriously, is it too much to expect people in publishing to behave professionally? And is it too much to expect that employees are closely enough supervised that those in charge of them know this kind of behavior is happening? Other companies dealing with employees who work remotely manage. Why didn't Riptide, and what, exactly, are their plans for doing much, much better?

Maryn, frustrated
 

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Okaaay, then. That answers questions I had about offputting nuances in some of the publishing-related convos I had with Riptide. I'm sorry people had to get dragged down into these two (related) battles. Riptide had a great reputation for certain things, not so for others. Count me as someone who will hang back to see how they do at real diversification.
 

Maryn

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Yeah, whatever. Multiple incidents of racism, apology and promises to do better, followed by more racism. Check.

An apology about Lyons' sexually explicit messages which implies that since romance is an intimate business, and since it's so hard to supervise people who are not physically there, it was just a big old oopsie. Check.

Failure to believe multiple authors about one who's harassing and catfishing. Public statement that boy oh boy, we sure got fooled, sorry we didn't have your backs, my bad. Check.

Frankly, there isn't anything they could announce at this point that would make me consider them for submission or make me buy from them. If I were one of their authors, I'd be seeking my rights back even if the contract were not expired. I think the remaining partners would be wise to close up shop and return rights, then get themselves a competent business advisor before launching a new venture.

Maryn, disgusted
 

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I know some authors who are looking at their rights on a case-by-case basis, depending on how far into the process their book(s) is/are, whether or not they have a collaborator, etc.
 

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Many authors are getting their rights back. Also see this FB post with offers for free covers, formatting, and editing for Riptide authors.