Riptide Publishing

Okay. Their side of the story. Thanks, Amergina. Still reserving judgment, since a big part of Filigree's Rule is *immediately* backing away from any publisher the second they talk about 'libel'. I have Reasons.

Just offering another view. This has been posted by Abigail Roux

Ughh... I've got a lot of respect for Riptide and Aleks... I really hope this settles soon.

*edit* And from Riptide themselves: a Statement

Captcha said:

Riptide has sent an e-mail to authors - the contents don't seem to be public yet, so I won't post details, but this really does seem to be a one-of-a-kind situation, tied in much more closely to Voinov's part-ownership of the company and his exit strategy rather than anything that would affect authors in general. The e-mail was enough to put my mind at ease, given that I wasn't really accepting Voinov's drama from the start.

I've only got one book with Riptide, but I'll likely send them more. Their editing is the best I've found (including the editing I've gotten from the Big 5) and their contract really does seem author-friendly to me. They're definitely the only publisher I've had that pays royalties on the free books they send out for review!

Unless something new comes to light, I think this is just a conflict between business partners, not a publisher vs author issue.

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That's what I'm getting after reading Voinov's blog post and Riptide's response. Sounds like something private had been made horribly public and, like you, Captcha, I'm taking a "wait and see" approach. (Hope to resub a YA to them this week or next.)

Boycotting the publisher is certainly in my opinion not the thing to do. There's more than one author writing for them. Gotta love that mentality that some people have right off. Screw the other authors!

I'm not boycotting them. Riptide has some awesome books on my 'buy' list. I'm just not sending them anything until I see how this gets resolved. Since I already have obligations to one agent and two publishers, I wouldn't be approaching Riptide before the end of 2016, anyway.

I'm referring to the Abigail Roux post where people have responded acting like Riptide is the devil. http://abiroux.tumblr.com/post/132105026473/i-was-on-my-way-to-my-nice-comfy-bed-the-other

I saw those. They are reprehensible posts. If I had 'fans' behaving that way I'd rip them to shreds. It does sound more and more like a rights and contract issue blown up into a flame war.

Which leads me to one odd question. I respect Aleks' wish to write more as a hobbyist, since that will help him reclaim his joy in writing. He doesn't have to earn a living as a writer. So why was the contract issue with Riptide apparently about money? What other controls were he and Riptide trying to gain, beyond what each side has said?

What he and Riptide do is their own business, and probably shouldn't have been aired on social media. But since it was, it's made me more wary of Riptide's contracts.

I'm a bit of an Alexis Hall fangirl, so it's not exactly surprising that I agree completely with what he wrote about this mess:

http://www.quicunquevult.com/behind-the-curtain

Captcha said:

I'm a bit of an Alexis Hall fangirl, so it's not exactly surprising that I agree completely with what he wrote about this mess:

http://www.quicunquevult.com/behind-the-curtain

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Thanks for posting. I'm no industry expert, but these were my feelings as well.

Regarding one of those blogs I suspect people "banded together to earn a living". I doubt they "banned together together to earn a living" Unless maybe they were AW admins.

That is an absolutely brilliant post by Alexis Hall - really puts things forward in a logical and unemotive way. I definitely feel I understand the situation a lot better now.

Hi guys - sorry for jumping into the thread and immediately out - here's a link to my statement. I won't be able to respond as I'm flying out to New Zealand tomorrow (family and health-related matter, kind of urgent and awful).

http://aleksandrvoinov.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/update-nightingale-riptide-et-al.html

I'm glad to see that things seem to be resolving and the bad feelings worked past. Riptide seems like a really good LGBTQ publisher. I really enjoy reading their titles.

What sort of wait times does Riptide have on submissions? Their website says 4 months. Would you say they hold to that usually?

S.C. Wynne said:

What sort of wait times does Riptide have on submissions? Their website says 4 months. Would you say they hold to that usually?

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In my experience only, I received a revise and resubmit for one of their open calls exactly four months from the end of the call. The waits for the subsequent R&Rs were significantly longer. Six months (and only after a nudge from a fellow author) for the second. The third, I never received as I withdrew it from consideration after another six month wait.

The withdrawal wasn't because of negativity toward Riptide, however. I still think they're one of the best publishers in this genre and their editing is outstanding. It was simply that I chose to submit to an advance paying publisher in order to afford food and housing. I would have waited a lot longer if things hadn't been so desperate.

My first submission to Riptide took a LONG time to get a response to. To the point that I e-mailed and said that if I didn't get a response by X date, I'd submit elsewhere, then X date came so I submitted elsewhere and was actually accepted elsewhere (so however long the other house's submission process was, all of that time) and then Riptide got back to me and said they'd like to publish it. They were very polite/apologetic about it when I explained the MS was no longer available (I really should have made it clearer to them that I had withdrawn my submission, rather than the sort of passive withdrawal I used) and the next time I submitted something, as I recall, they were at least a little faster.

But they definitely aren't one of the quick houses, with anything. Editing takes quite a while, they send out ARCs and do quite a bit of pre-pub promo so that takes quite a while, etc. If you're looking for quick money, they probably aren't the house for you!

Thanks for the responses, Anna and Captcha! I'm not necessarily looking for quick money, but it's about a month past the four month mark. I was just curious if they are slower than usual lately. I hate nudging. i always feel like it rushes their decision and since they have five million books being offered I hate the idea they'd just be like "Awww, whatever." And send it back as a rejection. Lol. Might be I'm over thinking things?

Just as a follow up, it took a little over 5 months to hear back. They asked if the manuscript was still available and said if so let them know and I'd hear back in a week. I said it was available. They sent me an R&R in one week. I agreed with almost every suggestion. They were very spot on. I did the R&R and sent it in and received a contract offer two weeks later. I'm so excited to work with Riptide because I've heard they do really great edits.

S.C. Wynne said:

Just as a follow up, it took a little over 5 months to hear back. They asked if the manuscript was still available and said if so let them know and I'd hear back in a week. I said it was available. They sent me an R&R in one week. I agreed with almost every suggestion. They were very spot on. I did the R&R and sent it in and received a contract offer two weeks later. I'm so excited to work with Riptide because I've heard they do really great edits.

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Congratulations! They seem like an amazing publisher to work for.

Congratulations, S.C. Wynne! Please keep us updated so we can check it out once it's published.

I fired off a question to Riptide, but it got caught in the submissions email, so I doubt it will get looked at before March. Their guidelines have in the past said 'all pairings', but in Sarah's latest wishlist she mentions 'Queer protagonists.' So which is it? That call for high fantasy has me intrigued, even with a Tor-level wait time...but some of the stories in the series arc have M/F relationships (albeit in a culture where M/M and F/F pairings are as normal as anything else.) But if Riptide is like Dreamspinner, and slants more toward M/M, I'm obviously going to submit elsewhere first.

Filigree said:

Their guidelines have in the past said 'all pairings', but in Sarah's latest wishlist she mentions 'Queer protagonists.' So which is it?

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I think it's both. I looked at their m/f books. I noticed two things:

• Their m/f books all have multiple pairings. It's never just m/f. It's usually m/f in addition to other pairings.
• The protagonists are still queer, even if they're in an m/f relationship.

Their submissions info says that they accept "completed LGBTQ manuscripts." As long as your protagonists are queer, I think you're okay.

But if Riptide is like Dreamspinner, and slants more toward M/M, I'm obviously going to submit elsewhere first.

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According to their website, they have 19 f/f titles, 23 m/f titles, and 242 m/m titles.

Filigree said:

But if Riptide is like Dreamspinner, and slants more toward M/M, I'm obviously going to submit elsewhere first.

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As Viridian pointed out, they have quite a few non-M/M titles. It only takes a minute of browsing their site to see that they are quite obviously not M/M like Dreamspinner is. Dreamspinner is M/M *only*. Riptide is queer-only. Their backlist is mostly M/M at this point because those are the subs they've received, but I know for a fact they are itching for other queer pairings/groupings.

Do they allow M/F in their books? Yes. My book The Tide of War has a husband and wife who have sex on screen. He also has sex with other men because he's bi and they have an open relationship, but Riptide has never turned up their nose at hetero scenes or at hetero pairings within otherwise queer books. I'm writing a bisexual book for them right now that has more M/F sex in it than M/M or M/M/F.

My understanding is that the only thing they aren't interested in is hetero protagonists/relationships as the central characters/relationships. They've been quite upfront from day one that they're an LGBT+ publisher, and are absolutely not exclusively M/M.

That's good. Thanks, folks. Food for thought, at least.