Hello everyone,
I am the founder of Inkspell Publishing. I saw this discussion today and would like to take this opportunity to answer to the questions that have been raised in this forum.
I understand all the concerns raised and have taken note of them. I am humbled by the attention that is given to all aspects of our offerings. We have not yet launched. As a company, we launch on 1st Jan, 2012 and release our first two book in March 2012. Thereafter, we plan to publish about 1-2 titles per month. We have a full publishing schedule that has allocated slots. Below are my replies to most of the questions I have raised. Please let me know if I missed something and I will answer them too.
Q - It's good that they're focusing on only a couple of genres because it means that they can be more effective with their marketing budget. I'm guessing that by YA they mean romance and fantasy within YA because otherwise YA covers too many genres. - Yes, YA romance and fantasy.
Q - Authors are obviously important but as a publisher, Inkspell should know that they'll need to have final say over key things like marketing, distribution, pricing etc. In addition, I'd be more comfortable if Inkspell were helping authors to release the best story they could as ideally, books should already be polished and completed before submission. - Yes, Inkspell has the final say in these matters. When we say support to the author, we mean polishing their completed manuscript, and extensive help in promotions. We accept only completed and polished manuscripts.
Q - I'll come back to this later but I couldn't see anything on the team page that suggested the editors had commercial editing experience. Instead they all seem to be previously self-published authors. There's nothing wrong with self-publishing, but just editing and releasing your own books doesn't equate to professional experience unless you can demonstrate that your self-published books have been commercially successful (i.e. selling more than 5,000 copies). - We have one editor as of today, Melissa Keir. She is a freelance editor and has also worked at MMP which unfortunately closed. In the meantime, she had already edited two books but they never saw the light of the day. Her book is contracted by Rebel Ink Press. She is a lovely, hardworking woman who gives her best to all books she edits. We are also keen to add more experienced editors in the team.
Q - Unless Inkspell has a deal in place to get books into stores (and it seems that they don't) there's little point in their taking print rights. As an aside, I like printed books too but as a business start-up, it makes more sense to focus on electronic books as a starting point. I'd be more comfortable if they could cite a commercial reason for taking print rights other than their inability to imagine a world without the physically printed word. - Apologies for not being very clear on the printed books part. We intend to sell printed books only through Amazon. We are only a start up and we do not yet have a deal with stores. A print book contract is NOT offered to all authors and in fact, print books only make it more expensive for us as a start up. Yet, we do understand the thrill of having a physical copy in hand. That is the reason why we offer to publish print too. The authors at Inkspell have a say in that space and we are open to any suggestions.
Q - According to the team page, Inkspell has 2 publicists, neither of whom seems to have any experience in professional PR. There's little point in having a dedicated publicist if that person is having to learn as they go. - Both our publicists own blog tour organizing companies. They have already worked with multiple authors in the past year and are wonderful, enthusiastic individuals. They own their blog tour companies and are quite committed to the authors.
Q - Yes, covers are important. This is why it's a little worrying to see that Inkspell has one designer whose qualifications appear to be limited to knowledge of Photoshop. - Our cover pages, website are credentials for our designer. She has done several design projects for authors. Once again, her work can be seen on her website.
Q - It doesn't say if the royalties are paid on net or cover price and it should do. Most ebook publishers pay on net in order to cover listing and third party charges. 40% is not an uncommon royalty rate for ebooks. -It is net sales. We will update the website with this information.
Q - The 8% royalty rate on printed books is piss poor in my opinion given that it seems that Inkspell doesn't pay advances and doesn't seem to have any distribution in place to place books in stores. - Point noted. We hope to cover this aspect this year as the company grows.
Q - It sounds to me as if authors are going to find that they're spending a lot of time doing the kinds of thing that Inkspell should actually be doing and yes, that is actually too much to ask. - The very mission of Inkspell Publishing is to give the authors a fair deal and not make them go through the pain of "doing-it-all". We provide professional editing, high quality cover designs (author inputs for cover page is given major importance) and extensive promotion. We have a two month promotion plan for each book and this includes tying up with other blog tour companies, advertisements, ARCs and other means to spread the word. The author is free to do their own promotions but that is not a requirement to be contracted by us. In this age, it is imperative to have a good online presence for any profession and we expect our authors to participate in our promotions actively as book promotions are more interactive now than before. That is all we ask our authors to do and this, we feel is not too much to ask.
Q - It's good that they plan to go slowly, but I'd like to know what they actually mean by that. Have they limited themselves to a set number of publishing slots in the year and allocated a budget accordingly or does it mean something else?- Yes. We have limited our publishing slots. We would publishing only 20 titles in 2012 and each book is assigned equal budget because all are the same to us. We do not want to be just another e-publisher who has jumped on to the bandwagon because ebooks sell today. Inkspell Publishing has been started with one goal in mind - publish quality fiction titles and make the life of a author easier. All good intentions here.
Q - Shilpa's only experience is in self-publishing. There's nothing wrong with that, but unless she had personal success with it, I don't see how it qualifies her to publish other people's work. In addition, Shilpa also seems to be an author for InkSpell. That raises the potential for there being a conflict of interest, e.g. when it comes to allocating resources and budgets for her titles. At the very least I'd want to know how InkSpell plans to manage that. -No, my books do not get preference over the others. We already have 3 titles contracted (two are in the process of mailing the signed contract) and all receive the same budget, and the same attention as mine. In fact, considering that I am managing a lot more than just my book, it is slipping down the list quite fast. Since Cecilia is our first contracted author and her book release is in march as well, one can reach out to her for her experience. We will soon release information about our newly contracted authors
Q - In addition (and speaking entirely personally), I had a quick look at the extract from her InkSpell book and there were a few grammatical errors and quite a few cliches in there, which makes me question the company's self-proclaimed editorial expertise. - May I ask where did you find the extract? There is only one small excerpt of the book on my personal blog (www.smmirza.blogspot.com) posted pre-editing.
Q - Again, Melissa doesn't appear to have any editing experience from commercial publishing. - I have answered this above.
Q - Again, Majanka doesn't seem to have any previous experience in promotions or PR. I'd want to know what the relationship is (if any) between InkSpell and Enchanted Book Promotions and specifically whether InkSpell authors will be expected to use Enchanted Book's services because that would be a massive conflict of interest. - No. Enchanted book promotions is only one avenue. We would be working with other blog tour companies too for promotions. Authors are free to do their own promotions.
Q - Another publicist with apparently no previous publicity or PR experience. - Again, we have detailed promotion plans for each book and it is not restricted to the publicists own company.
Q - Again, no previous design experience. - Please see my reply above.
Q - I can't find any evidence that Trestle actually published Memories Rustle - presumably this is because Shilpa was 'burnt twice by publishers'. - No they didn't. i was contracted by them and due to unavoidable circumstances have decided to part ways. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to update the post in Coffee Time Romance. I will do it at the earliest.
Q - Unless I'm blind, I can't find a catalog link where their upcoming releases are listed, along with the usual information - ISBN, price, page count, release date. -We have not yet launched and in the process of putting up all the above mentioned information. You would soon find the link to the same on our website.
Q - And where are those e-books going to sell? They don't have an online store, and Amazon doesn't list either title. So the site is sort of useless to a consumer. Few buyers will work that hard to hunt down where to buy a book. - We are not launched yet. Our first books will release in March 2012.
Q - If any of the management lurks about I hope they'll take note that more than one person has commented on the quality of editing in the blurbs (which indicates the same issues in the books themselves).- Noted and thank you for the feedback.
Q - It would be a very wise decision to go over the launch titles one last time and make sure they're the best they can be. - Definitely, will do.
Q - The grammar, syntax, punctuation, and capitalization issues on the website don't augur well for how well the books will be edited. - This is great feedback which we will look in to at the earliest.
This is indeed a great forum for these discussions and I thank you all for taking the time to discuss about Inkspell. We hope to do our best and have a very hardworking, enthusiastic team in place that work together to give the best to our readers and authors. All your positive and constructive feedback here would help us be better in the future. Please feel free to reach out to me for more queries. My personal email id is [email protected] if you want to email me.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Shilpa
I am the founder of Inkspell Publishing. I saw this discussion today and would like to take this opportunity to answer to the questions that have been raised in this forum.
I understand all the concerns raised and have taken note of them. I am humbled by the attention that is given to all aspects of our offerings. We have not yet launched. As a company, we launch on 1st Jan, 2012 and release our first two book in March 2012. Thereafter, we plan to publish about 1-2 titles per month. We have a full publishing schedule that has allocated slots. Below are my replies to most of the questions I have raised. Please let me know if I missed something and I will answer them too.
Q - It's good that they're focusing on only a couple of genres because it means that they can be more effective with their marketing budget. I'm guessing that by YA they mean romance and fantasy within YA because otherwise YA covers too many genres. - Yes, YA romance and fantasy.
Q - Authors are obviously important but as a publisher, Inkspell should know that they'll need to have final say over key things like marketing, distribution, pricing etc. In addition, I'd be more comfortable if Inkspell were helping authors to release the best story they could as ideally, books should already be polished and completed before submission. - Yes, Inkspell has the final say in these matters. When we say support to the author, we mean polishing their completed manuscript, and extensive help in promotions. We accept only completed and polished manuscripts.
Q - I'll come back to this later but I couldn't see anything on the team page that suggested the editors had commercial editing experience. Instead they all seem to be previously self-published authors. There's nothing wrong with self-publishing, but just editing and releasing your own books doesn't equate to professional experience unless you can demonstrate that your self-published books have been commercially successful (i.e. selling more than 5,000 copies). - We have one editor as of today, Melissa Keir. She is a freelance editor and has also worked at MMP which unfortunately closed. In the meantime, she had already edited two books but they never saw the light of the day. Her book is contracted by Rebel Ink Press. She is a lovely, hardworking woman who gives her best to all books she edits. We are also keen to add more experienced editors in the team.
Q - Unless Inkspell has a deal in place to get books into stores (and it seems that they don't) there's little point in their taking print rights. As an aside, I like printed books too but as a business start-up, it makes more sense to focus on electronic books as a starting point. I'd be more comfortable if they could cite a commercial reason for taking print rights other than their inability to imagine a world without the physically printed word. - Apologies for not being very clear on the printed books part. We intend to sell printed books only through Amazon. We are only a start up and we do not yet have a deal with stores. A print book contract is NOT offered to all authors and in fact, print books only make it more expensive for us as a start up. Yet, we do understand the thrill of having a physical copy in hand. That is the reason why we offer to publish print too. The authors at Inkspell have a say in that space and we are open to any suggestions.
Q - According to the team page, Inkspell has 2 publicists, neither of whom seems to have any experience in professional PR. There's little point in having a dedicated publicist if that person is having to learn as they go. - Both our publicists own blog tour organizing companies. They have already worked with multiple authors in the past year and are wonderful, enthusiastic individuals. They own their blog tour companies and are quite committed to the authors.
Q - Yes, covers are important. This is why it's a little worrying to see that Inkspell has one designer whose qualifications appear to be limited to knowledge of Photoshop. - Our cover pages, website are credentials for our designer. She has done several design projects for authors. Once again, her work can be seen on her website.
Q - It doesn't say if the royalties are paid on net or cover price and it should do. Most ebook publishers pay on net in order to cover listing and third party charges. 40% is not an uncommon royalty rate for ebooks. -It is net sales. We will update the website with this information.
Q - The 8% royalty rate on printed books is piss poor in my opinion given that it seems that Inkspell doesn't pay advances and doesn't seem to have any distribution in place to place books in stores. - Point noted. We hope to cover this aspect this year as the company grows.
Q - It sounds to me as if authors are going to find that they're spending a lot of time doing the kinds of thing that Inkspell should actually be doing and yes, that is actually too much to ask. - The very mission of Inkspell Publishing is to give the authors a fair deal and not make them go through the pain of "doing-it-all". We provide professional editing, high quality cover designs (author inputs for cover page is given major importance) and extensive promotion. We have a two month promotion plan for each book and this includes tying up with other blog tour companies, advertisements, ARCs and other means to spread the word. The author is free to do their own promotions but that is not a requirement to be contracted by us. In this age, it is imperative to have a good online presence for any profession and we expect our authors to participate in our promotions actively as book promotions are more interactive now than before. That is all we ask our authors to do and this, we feel is not too much to ask.
Q - It's good that they plan to go slowly, but I'd like to know what they actually mean by that. Have they limited themselves to a set number of publishing slots in the year and allocated a budget accordingly or does it mean something else?- Yes. We have limited our publishing slots. We would publishing only 20 titles in 2012 and each book is assigned equal budget because all are the same to us. We do not want to be just another e-publisher who has jumped on to the bandwagon because ebooks sell today. Inkspell Publishing has been started with one goal in mind - publish quality fiction titles and make the life of a author easier. All good intentions here.
Q - Shilpa's only experience is in self-publishing. There's nothing wrong with that, but unless she had personal success with it, I don't see how it qualifies her to publish other people's work. In addition, Shilpa also seems to be an author for InkSpell. That raises the potential for there being a conflict of interest, e.g. when it comes to allocating resources and budgets for her titles. At the very least I'd want to know how InkSpell plans to manage that. -No, my books do not get preference over the others. We already have 3 titles contracted (two are in the process of mailing the signed contract) and all receive the same budget, and the same attention as mine. In fact, considering that I am managing a lot more than just my book, it is slipping down the list quite fast.
Since Cecilia is our first contracted author and her book release is in march as well, one can reach out to her for her experience. We will soon release information about our newly contracted authorsQ - In addition (and speaking entirely personally), I had a quick look at the extract from her InkSpell book and there were a few grammatical errors and quite a few cliches in there, which makes me question the company's self-proclaimed editorial expertise. - May I ask where did you find the extract? There is only one small excerpt of the book on my personal blog (www.smmirza.blogspot.com) posted pre-editing.
Q - Again, Melissa doesn't appear to have any editing experience from commercial publishing. - I have answered this above.
Q - Again, Majanka doesn't seem to have any previous experience in promotions or PR. I'd want to know what the relationship is (if any) between InkSpell and Enchanted Book Promotions and specifically whether InkSpell authors will be expected to use Enchanted Book's services because that would be a massive conflict of interest. - No. Enchanted book promotions is only one avenue. We would be working with other blog tour companies too for promotions. Authors are free to do their own promotions.
Q - Another publicist with apparently no previous publicity or PR experience. - Again, we have detailed promotion plans for each book and it is not restricted to the publicists own company.
Q - Again, no previous design experience. - Please see my reply above.
Q - I can't find any evidence that Trestle actually published Memories Rustle - presumably this is because Shilpa was 'burnt twice by publishers'. - No they didn't. i was contracted by them and due to unavoidable circumstances have decided to part ways. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to update the post in Coffee Time Romance. I will do it at the earliest.
Q - Unless I'm blind, I can't find a catalog link where their upcoming releases are listed, along with the usual information - ISBN, price, page count, release date. -We have not yet launched and in the process of putting up all the above mentioned information. You would soon find the link to the same on our website.
Q - And where are those e-books going to sell? They don't have an online store, and Amazon doesn't list either title. So the site is sort of useless to a consumer. Few buyers will work that hard to hunt down where to buy a book. - We are not launched yet. Our first books will release in March 2012.
Q - If any of the management lurks about I hope they'll take note that more than one person has commented on the quality of editing in the blurbs (which indicates the same issues in the books themselves).- Noted and thank you for the feedback.
Q - It would be a very wise decision to go over the launch titles one last time and make sure they're the best they can be. - Definitely, will do.
Q - The grammar, syntax, punctuation, and capitalization issues on the website don't augur well for how well the books will be edited. - This is great feedback which we will look in to at the earliest.
This is indeed a great forum for these discussions and I thank you all for taking the time to discuss about Inkspell. We hope to do our best and have a very hardworking, enthusiastic team in place that work together to give the best to our readers and authors. All your positive and constructive feedback here would help us be better in the future. Please feel free to reach out to me for more queries. My personal email id is [email protected] if you want to email me.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Shilpa
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