Dancing with Bear Publishing

You're 100% wrong, Unimportant. The books published by DWB are NOT all authored by staff writers. I'm NOT on staff and I've had a book published by them.

DWB is a small, but traditional publisher who does pay royalties. They are VERY easy to work with, and authors don't get "lost in the shuffle" as they would with a larger publisher.

I don't know what book you looked at Amazon (surely wasn't mine) but I didn't see a book ranked 3 million plus.

DWB outsources their printing (like many other small pubs) because it's more cost effective.

misspositive said:

I don't know what book you looked at Amazon (surely wasn't mine) but I didn't see a book ranked 3 million plus.

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I see three print books from them on Amazon, one unrated (no sales yet) and 62 pages long, one at about 2 million and one at about 5 million.

Unimportant said:

. . . a ranking of 3 million plus.. . .

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Meaning one copy sold, sometime in past several months or longer.

--Ken

veinglory said:

I see three print books from them on Amazon, one unrated (no sales yet) and 62 pages long, one at about 2 million and one at about 5 million.

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They have their own children's line now: dwbchildrensline.com

It looks as if they use Createspace for their printing, which someone mentioned earlier.

Click on the titles, type the names in the Amazon search box, and you'll find them there.

If it's true there's a total of 5 million books, the children's books seem to be doing very well and rank 1,000,000 or a little over.

Granted, I'm a newbie to the profession, but I can't understand the snobbery towards the smaller presses.

annatangent said:

They have their own children's line now: dwbchildrensline.com

It looks as if they use Createspace for their printing, which someone mentioned earlier.

Click on the titles, type the names in the Amazon search box, and you'll find them there.

If it's true there's a total of 5 million books, the children's books seem to be doing very well and rank 1,000,000 or a little over.

Granted, I'm a newbie to the profession, but I can't understand the snobbery towards the smaller presses.

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Well, you aren't doing the publisher any favors. The ranking you cited is lousy.

Stick around. You'll learn lots here, including the fact that this subforum is here to educate writers on publishers. You'll quickly learn the comments made on this thread have nothing to do with Bear being a small press.

Welcome! (Meant sincerely. No snark)

Thank you for the welcome, and I mean that with warmth as well. )

Just curious, what's the title and ranking of your book on Amazon, so I'll know what to aim for when my book is there (hopefully).

annatangent, we don't have anything against small presses. But we do want authors to have realistic expectations when they sign with one.

From what I can tell, here's what an author gives up and gets in return at Dancing with Bear:

For 50% of the profits on your books, they'll do some editing (I'm unclear on the editing experience of the staff so this may or may not be useful), give you free cover art, and click the buttons on CreateSpace for you.

For some writers, that may be all they want and that's fine. But at least they're going into it knowledgable.

annatangent said:

Just curious, what's the title and ranking of your book on Amazon, so I'll know what to aim for when my book is there (hopefully).

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Why do you need the ranking of Escritora's book? Your assumption seems to be that Escritora would only be informing you that the ranking you mention is a poor one if her book was ranked higher. That's not at all the case, and her publishing status has nothing at all to do with Amazon's ranking system. She didn't say "That ranking isn't great because mine is better." She said "That ranking isn't great," and she said it because it's the truth.

Amazon ranks indicate how many books are selling better or worse than a particular book. Several people have done estimates of rankings and what actual numbers sold they mean (the general consensus is that a ranking of a million means maybe a couple of copies sold in the last three months or so) but since the rankings are based on several factors it's really impossible to say with absolute certainty that a ranking of, say, 15,000 equals 10 books sold that week, or whatever.

A better way to see for yourself just how poor a 1,000,000 ranking is would be to look at the rankings of other children's books (I'd suggest that's a better ranking to "aim for," as well, as opposed to Escritora's). As of this moment, the Children's Bestsellers seem to be ranked overall (as opposed to their rankings in their category) between 100 and 200--even #100 on the Children's Bestseller list is ranked around 200 overall, not just in children's books but all books on Amazon. Yes, those are bestsellers, but it shows you just how far behind the million-ranked books are.

Here are a couple of charts you can look at to see more. Here's a succinct summary, too.

annatangent said:

Just curious, what's the title and ranking of your book on Amazon, so I'll know what to aim for when my book is there (hopefully).

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In my case, it's books. Ditto everything Stacia said.

annatangent said:

Granted, I'm a newbie to the profession, but I can't understand the snobbery towards the smaller presses.

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How is it "snobbery" to elaborate on what volume of sales correspond with what Amazon ranking?

An Amazon ranking of 1,000,000 usually means sales of fewer than 10 copies via Amazon in the last three months. An Amazon ranking of 3,000,000 usually means sales of fewer than 3 copies via Amazon in the last three months. Now, sure, Amazon isn't the only game in town, but if that's the keystone of a publisher's marketing efforts, the results speak for themselves.

annatangent said:

Granted, I'm a newbie to the profession, but I can't understand the snobbery towards the smaller presses.

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Given that you're new to the industry, it's helpful to ask questions rather than make assumptions. There is no snobbery toward small presses. However, there are always a lot more questions regarding new small presses because they don't have a track record, so the natural questions are about their financial solvency, editing, marketing, promotion, and distribution. This is what smart authors do when looking at publishers.

The fact that this publisher uses CreateSpace means they have zero distribution - meaning their books won't be in the stores or libraries.

We don't know about their marketing and promotion, but if they're using CreateSpace for their printing services, I'd wager they don't have a lot of money to put into this end of the business. Without marketing a book, it's very hard for anyone to know a book exists.

Since they're new, we can't verify their editing talents.

In short, there are a lot of unanswered questions regarding this publisher. As such, one has to ask what makes this publisher a wise choice, considering there are many other publishers who do have a track record. It's not snobbery that makes us ask these questions, but rather, we want authors to have all the information in order to make wise decisions that will favorably impact their writing careers.

I generally only perk up with ranks under 50,000 (about a sale per week) if the press is predominantly aiming at the print market.

priceless1 said:

The fact that this publisher uses CreateSpace means they have zero distribution - meaning their books won't be in the stores or libraries.

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I don't know that this is necessarily true now (although it would have been last year). Createspace has added Expanded Distribution, so the books are now easier to get into libraries and other stores. This still isn't distribution in the sense of having a sales force pushing the books, but it does allow bookstores and libraries to order the books through their normal channels.
The plan the publishers have to buy in to to get the Expanded Distribution also gives them better profits and, if memory serves, allows for returns.
On the Amazon side of sales (where most small presses who utilize POD sell their books), there are now policies in place that favor Createspace books over those printed by Lightning Source (the other top POD printer). One important change was to list these titles (most of them) as "ships in 3-4 weeks" as opposed to "in stock" or "ships in 1-2 days." This isn't from personal experience, but those I've talked to who have books through Lightning Source have seen a huge drop-off in sales with the new policy.

JL_Benet said:

. . . On the Amazon side of sales (where most small presses who utilize POD sell their books), there are now policies in place that favor Createspace books over those printed by Lightning Source (the other top POD printer). One important change was to list these titles (most of them) as "ships in 3-4 weeks" as opposed to "in stock" or "ships in 1-2 days." . . . .

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I am a victim of that scam. Not that I'm going to sell more than a handful of books through that channel anyway, but still, their self-serving policy is irksome. I have to keep reminding myself to refer folks to bn.com (or just sell direct), not to Amazon.

--Ken