Musa Publishing

I really hate to see this happening. I think Celina and the other partners started with the most noble of intentions; I can't see they would abandon those out of anything less than desperation.

firedrake said:

I hate to say this, but this just seems like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

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I agree with the rearranging deck chairs, but I'm not sure the ship is going down (although there are plenty of seasick passengers).

Musa is launching new imprints, which doesn't exactly hint at a slowdown of releases. They say they're thrilled with past years' sales numbers and their "amazing success." Even accounting for the incredibly heavy use of "spin" in Musa announcements, I believe they are happy with how it's going, another reason I don't look for changes beyond rearranging deck chairs from time to time.

I decided this "chunk it all out there and see if anything floats" approach was their intended game plan from day one, so I've never really counted on changes. As I've posted before, I think their process turns out a reasonably good product with no charges to the author, and there seem to be some good and talented people there. Musa does some things well and pays authors royalties on sales (what sales there are). Promotion is minimal and ineffective. If the way Musa operates matches what an author wants and expects, I still believe there are folks who could be (and are) happy there. But the steady spin to appear to be more than they are is unfortunate. I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on how fair their business plan is to editors and staff, but they find people to fill the positions. My impression is that operations were carefully laid out and are proceeding as planned.

Ten more months until I can get my rights back, minus the original shine (even if that shine only existed in my eyes).

Old Hack said:

Musa has asked its authors to contribute stories for those two new e-zines, but will not be paying anything for them. They explain this by saying it's because they're trial issues, and it'll be a great way for the authors to attract new readers.

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I do hope none of the authors fall for this bullshit. Anyone who wants to offer a free story to attract new readers would do better to post it on their website than to give it to Musa.

Scribhneoir said:

I do hope none of the authors fall for this bullshit. Anyone who wants to offer a free story to attract new readers would do better to post it on their website than to give it to Musa.

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I am curious if any of the Musa authors who offered their short stories for free Christmas reads actually increased their book sales based on this promo.

All I know for certain? I'm not subbing there any time soon.

Any word if they intend to increase their marketing efforts?

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. I hate to see it go down like this. I know Celina started out with the best intentions, having seen what has happened right here on this board.

Doesn't look like she learned the lessons very well.

Shame, that.

Writing a FREE story for an ezine?? Not on your life. I'm a PROFESSIONAL. If I'm writing a free story, it's going on my website, on Wattpad, or maybe to my publisher as an adjunct to a book I've written (like an extra or a novella based on the characters) for a book they've PAID me for.

Otherwise, no way. Money talks, bullsh*t walks. And that's what this is.

jkenton said:

Any word if they intend to increase their marketing efforts?

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The answer is, I don't believe so, although there has been a Promotions Coordinator named, and two Promotions Specialists hired. However, the edict still stands, that authors are responsible for a significant amount of promotional work, just as they are now--which I translate as keeping the status quo.

KAP said:

As I've posted before, I think their process turns out a reasonably good product with no charges to the author, and there seem to be some good and talented people there. Musa does some things well and pays authors royalties on sales (what sales there are). Promotion is minimal and ineffective. If the way Musa operates matches what an author wants and expects, I still believe there are folks who could be (and are) happy there.

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RE the bolded: This might be so but I would rather my book was rejected outright so I could try it elsewhere rather than be stuck with a couple dozen sales for three years. By now, about two years after I submitted it, I would likely know if someone else would have taken it or if it was a non-starter.

Regarding the rest, I generally agree that you can't tell people they aren't happy, as long as they know from the start what to expect. I told Musa when they offered the contract that I was overseas for 2.5 years and not likely to be able to do much promotion (Uganda's literacy rate is 20 percentage points below the global average, the people who do read read voraciously but it's all newspapers, "manage your business to get rich" books, or the Bible, the laptops people have are only used for work and ereaders are unheard of, and I had no idea if I would have internet in my village). But I was told not to worry: Musa would take care of it all and I just needed to write my next books. Three months (and five sales) after release I asked Musa what I could do, and the really nice and helpful person (for real--she was lovely) they had me contact told me it was MY job to promote my book, even though "authors don't like to hear that." Nor should they have to hear that, in my estimation.

I'm not picking on your post KAP, as I can see you have the same frustration I have. I commend you for your practical attitude toward it all.

For me, I'm seeing (once again--this isn't my first title to get swallowed up) that impatience is my greatest enemy. I was excited about Musa because the head honchos were level-headed and respected regulars here, and so many of our members were (at the time--first half of 2012) having a great experience with them. I submitted just to see, and they offered a contract literally the day I landed in Uganda. I didn't want to try querying the book from here when I didn't know what type of internet connection I would have, so I went with it. Haste makes waste. I talk a good game about starting at the top and working down, but give me a bird in the hand I'm likely to take it. Hopefully this will be the last time. I try not to live with regrets, but my Musa experience is not at all what I expected.

Chris P said:

Regarding the rest, I generally agree that you can't tell people they aren't happy, as long as they know from the start what to expect. I told Musa when they offered the contract that I was overseas for 2.5 years and not likely to be able to do much promotion (Uganda's literacy rate is 20 percentage points below the global average, the people who do read read voraciously but it's all newspapers, "manage your business to get rich" books, or the Bible, the laptops people have are only used for work and ereaders are unheard of, and I had no idea if I would have internet in my village). But I was told not to worry: Musa would take care of it all and I just needed to write my next books. Three months (and five sales) after release I asked Musa what I could do, and the really nice and helpful person (for real--she was lovely) they had me contact told me it was MY job to promote my book, even though "authors don't like to hear that." Nor should they have to hear that, in my estimation.

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It's bad enough when writers have to do all their marketing and promotion unaided. It's misleading when they're told that that's how it's done at all publishers. And it's just plain wrong when they're told one thing before signing and another after the event.

That's awful, Chris.

For me, I'm seeing (once again--this isn't my first title to get swallowed up) that impatience is my greatest enemy. I was excited about Musa because the head honchos were level-headed and respected regulars here, and so many of our members were (at the time--first half of 2012) having a great experience with them.

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I first expressed my concerns about Musa in October 2011, but I think my voice got drowned out by all the encouragement which was being sent Musa's way.

By January 2012 I was advising people not to sign with Musa. I'm not sure if they'd even got anything published at that stage, but it's safe to say that the writers who had signed with them were in the honeymoon stage still.

In October 2012 I pointed out that AW didn't endorse Musa despite its chief being a member of long-standing here.

I don't mean to make you feel singled out, Chris: I wish my warnings had been unnecessary. My point, which I'm making very clumsily, is that it's easy to get carried away by wide-spread enthusiasm; and that AW's usual advice to wait until a publisher is a couple of years old before submitting work to them is good.

I seem to remember Celina mentioning in the early days of this thread that following her experiences at AMP she would never keep writers tied to Musa if they were unhappy there: I might be wrong. If I'm right, though, anyone who is unhappy with Musa now might find that useful.

I try not to live with regrets, but my Musa experience is not at all what I expected.

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There's a difference between making a poor decision all on your own and being misled into making one. It's not your fault that Musa changed its stance on promotion after you'd signed up to them, and I wonder how that change in stance affects the legality of your contract with them, and their obligations to you.

I queried Musa during the first half of 2012, for what became my debut novel. There were aspects to the story that I knew were too dark for Musa, but I couldn't soften them without gutting the mms. That resulted in a brusque rejection letter. Fair call.

Two things happened a week or so after I got that rejection letter: I saw one of the worst genre covers I have ever seen...and it was on a Musa book. Then I started getting partial and full requests from other publishers.

To be fair, Musa has created some lovely covers since then. And it was another two months before I eventually signed with my publisher. Their promotions are far more effective than my solo efforts. I've had considerably more than double digit sales.

So I am really grateful for that rejection letter. If Musa levels out, I'd love to consider them in the future. But not right now.

Old Hack said:

I don't mean to make you feel singled out, Chris: I wish my warnings had been unnecessary.

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No worries; I don't feel singled out. I offer my experiences precisely so those considering a publisher know what they're in for, and also so people who know the ins and outs of the publishing world can shine some light on what's going on. I wouldn't have posted it otherwise

I wish your warnings had been unnecessary, too.

I don't think there's much I can say today after the long email regarding promotions and the two new mags that I haven't said before. And that's a shame. When I started reading the email, I genuinely hoped for changes that would benefit new authors with Musa (whatever they do, I imagine it's way too late for my books or anyone else already published), but I didn't see that. I saw a lot of political spin, the same rah-rah we're doing great stuff I've been seeing pretty much since the start and the same refusal to admit to any significant problems. And the lack of payment for short fiction in the new mags is mind-blowing for a publisher that's no longer a newbie.

All in all, I can't recommend Musa to any potential author. And that really hurts. I liked a lot about the company when they started. Good ideas, good people and lots of potential. All of that has been pissed away by an overly ambitious acceptance level, a lack of any visible marketing and a refusal to admit either to problems or that the author's job is mainly to write their next book not to pimp their current book with next to no help from Musa.

I've been watching this thread for ages out of a sort of morbid fascination and it seems to me that what we've really got here is a sort of assisted-self-publishing service.

You'll probably get accepted (a 1 in 8 acceptance rate is astronomically high), you get free editing and formatting and a free, fairly nice cover, then it's over to you to let the world know it exists and hopefully sell it. Assuming the royalty %age is decent that's probably not a bad deal for people who would have self-pubbed anyway.

To market the place to authors as an actual publisher though... not so much.

Old Hack said:

I seem to remember Celina mentioning in the early days of this thread that following her experiences at AMP she would never keep writers tied to Musa if they were unhappy there: I might be wrong. If I'm right, though, anyone who is unhappy with Musa now might find that useful.

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Oh, that would be something if people could find that post. Maybe Celina would offer some means to get their rights back.

PeteMC said:

I've been watching this thread for ages out of a sort of morbid fascination and it seems to me that what we've really got here is a sort of assisted-self-publishing service.

You'll probably get accepted (a 1 in 8 acceptance rate is astronomically high), you get free editing and formatting and a free, fairly nice cover, then it's over to you to let the world know it exists and hopefully sell it. Assuming the royalty %age is decent that's probably not a bad deal for people who would have self-pubbed anyway.

To market the place to authors as an actual publisher though... not so much.

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One thing keeps puzzling me.

Back in the PublishAmerica thread, the sales figure I kept seeing cited for self-published books was 75 copies--about 60 more than the Musa average I see reported here.

That's...quite considerably falling short. Maybe it's the times, and everyone's figures are dropping, but it's what keeps me from agreeing with you completely, Pete, that this could just be a better sort of publishing service (for which you pay a percentage of royalties, or so it could be considered).

I must confess I haven't read the PA threads - if you're saying their sales figures are actually better than Musa's then I really don't know what to say.

PeteMC said:

I must confess I haven't read the PA threads - if you're saying their sales figures are actually better than Musa's then I really don't know what to say.

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Those are the sales figures for the average self-published book, but PA also encourages bulk purchases from authors in many, many ways. That probably drives their sales figures up to the point where they're comparable to sales of the average self-published book.

From what I've seen, estimations of most self-pub and vanity-pub sales take into account the average size of an author's family & friend network. In multilevel marketing schemes (operating similarly to vanity pub), that number is somewhere between 50 and 200. These are the relatively easy sales to people we know: family, friends, church, and community. But books are not Amway products or herbal supplements, so not all those people will buy.

Single digit to low double-digit sales-over-contract appear to be average for un-promoted vanity authors and small-press authors.

Jamiekswriter said:

I'm not prohibited from expressing discontent, but I don't see the point. It is what it is. Live and learn. No sense complaining about things I can't change. It is discouraging, though.

I've never been slapped down or have been spoken harshly to or experienced what some of the other authors have mentioned experiencing when they complained.

The romantic suspense sold minimally and the holiday novella sold even less -- if at all. I've got several other books in different venues so while I'm disappointed with my low sales, I don't have all my eggs in one basket.

My Musa contract is decent. I was able to enter the RITA contest this year with Undercover Lover so I fulfilled a goal of mine and Musa helped. I had a great cover, well thought out editing and a good book.

I wanted to share my experiences, so other authors can make an informed decision about Musa.

Your publisher that you mention is ACE stellar right? http://aecstellar.com/our-story/

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Yes, they've changed...A LOT...since I was contracted. I basically found them because of Shannon Thompson, author of Minutes Before Sunset. I can't even remember how I found her (Wordpress reader, I guess?), but she'd been reporting some good things before AW got a hold of them (I never read the thread. I saw no point in doing so). All I did was dive back into researching contract clauses that could raise red flags before they subbed their contract to me. Mariah Wilson, who is friends with Writers AMuse Me's publisher, let the publisher read my contract, and she gave me the go ahead.

So right here I can report positive experiences. They're very transparent. They don't sling BS at you, and if you're unhappy, as long as you express your unhappiness in a professional manner, they'll try to come up with a solution. Luckily, a lot of my sales didn't come from my efforts (I had like 4 or 5 people I know who bought it, but everyone else is a mystery to me). Goodreads is by no means an indicator of sales, but adds are an indicator of exposure (I just wish Goodreads had some sort of measure of where those people were coming from who added your book). I'm getting adds just about every day, even if they are small, and I know my publisher packaged the book well because it's doing really, really well in the Goodreads giveaway right now--and I still have seven more print books they gave me--free, obviously--because I'm very choosy about how I use them.

I notice with Musa books, there seems to be a flat line of zero in regards to adds--unless you're out there promoting your butt off it seems, in which case you might have one add and two days of zero. I'm not really promoting myself that much either. Just blogging and using social media as just that--socializing. I'm still receiving interviews with blogs, and I'll seek them out myself because it takes me about thirty minutes to e-mail about 20 of them, and most of them get back, and I've got a Dear Teen Me letter I need to work on.

Otherwise, I only take two days out of my week for social media, and that's really just to catch up on interviews and guest blog posts--while procrastinating on social media. I also have an unpaid PA. I offered to pay her, but she and I are pretty much internet best buds, so she refused. I just haven't figured out yet what I could have her do that AEC isn't already doing, besides putting a book blast together for me using their list of reviewers they send some of our ARCs out to and swipe interviews from. And even then I had to ask for that list to hand it over to my PA.

But this isn't about AEC. I just know there was a thread about it, I never read it, so I'm just reporting my experiences here.

It still sucks about Musa though. I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket, either. Just the stars trilogy and one contemporary fantasy I'm working on. Otherwise, after that, I'll be writing a contemporary novel, and while I wrote a contemporary short for their anthology, that's not what their specialty is, so I'll be seeking an agent for it, or maybe subbing it to Spencer Hill Press's contemporary imprint during their no-agent submissions period. But, really, my contemporary isn't going to be so niche like these other books I'm writing, so I might as well seek an agent for it. With my other books, they pretty much cross the line of what is probably acceptable in mainstream YA, which is why I kept it to small presses.

I'm not going to lie. One thing I keep hearing about in this thread that really stands out to me is 'marketing my ass off' kinds of comments.

This bothers me. If I'm going to put out that kind of effort to get my book in front of readers? If I'm going to have the responsibility shoved right back on me by a company that is supposed to be my publisher and they are then washing their hands of all responsibility for it, giving the indication that their part in the 'contract' is done?

I'll self-publish. Then all that work is mine, and the success and failure is all on me and I won't have to share the royalties when it sells.

bearilou said:

I'm not going to lie. One thing I keep hearing about in this thread that really stands out to me is 'marketing my ass off' kinds of comments.

This bothers me. If I'm going to put out that kind of effort to get my book in front of readers? If I'm going to have the responsibility shoved right back on me by a company that is supposed to be my publisher and they are then washing their hands of all responsibility for it, giving the indication that their part in the 'contract' is done?

I'll self-publish. Then all that work is mine, and the success and failure is all on me and I won't have to share the royalties when it sells.

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That's my thought, too.

I mean, with small presses, I fully accept I'll be doing a lot of marketing, but I expect some serious legwork on their part as well. The idea that "small press = all the marketing is on you" is utter nonsense. I work with some small presses that do substantial amounts of promotion, up to and including ads in RT, Publishers Weekly, Lambda Literary's website, conference programs, etc., not to mention blog tours, ARCs sent to numerous review sites, etc.

Basically, if a company is going to take a percentage of the proceeds from a book, I expect them to EARN IT. With a proper cover, proper editing, and some damn solid marketing. Of course we should keep expectations realistic -- a small press isn't going to take out a full page ad in the NYT -- but simply assuming the bulk of (or all of) the marketing is on the author's shoulders? No. No way. Blaming the author's lack of promotion for poor sales? Absolutely not.

If a publisher is unable or unwilling to market a book, they have no business publishing it. If their response to poor sales can essentially boil down to "YOU need to do everything you would've done if you'd just self-published the damn thing", then...I fail to see what they're doing for an author that the author couldn't do on their own. I fail to see how they're EARNING their cut of the royalties.

thethinker42 said:

Basically, if a company is going to take a percentage of the proceeds from a book, I expect them to EARN IT. With a proper cover, proper editing, and some damn solid marketing. Of course we should keep expectations realistic -- a small press isn't going to take out a full page ad in the NYT -- but simply assuming the bulk of (or all of) the marketing is on the author's shoulders? No. No way. Blaming the author's lack of promotion for poor sales? Absolutely not.

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Exactly. And now I'm seeing and hearing that Musa editors do the editing for a portion of the royalties? And their cover artists too? And yet they do nothing but the bare minimum to the book listed somewhere?

So now the livelihood of not just myself but two others are dependent on sales, sales which the publisher is not doing anything more to help?

That's a lot of pressure on me.

thethinker42 said:

I fail to see how they're EARNING their cut of the royalties.

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That's what I'm taking away with all the commentary, good and bad, so far.

I look at publishers the same way I do my art reps. We may be partners, and they may have invested some time, money, and skill into giving my product the best possible presentation...but it's still my product. They have to justify their commission.

My art reps fully earn their 50% (in some cases) commission. My literary agent has more than earned her 15% commission, and will do so in the future. I have no problem paying their share of royalties to my publisher, because I benefit from being associated with them. They work very hard to attract sales, critical notice, and industry goodwill.

I'm not paying for unearned commissions and missed sales opportunities, and that's what the Musa sales trends - for the large part - appear to show.