Montag Press Collective

What books have you published so far? I'm an old guy and not exceptionally computer literate and wasn't able to figure out how to find the answer.

montagpress said:

To be clear, whether an author pays for the project costs themselves as they self publish, or a conventional publisher appears to pay for all of the project costs, or residual payments are held until project costs are covered in a collective model. The truth is that the story project pays for all project costs. Conventional publishers are not in the business of developing and promoting books for charity. To think otherwise is misguided.

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...What?

Conventional publishers don't appear to pay for all the costs. They pay for all the costs. Simple as that. And that's not just limited to the large publishers, even small press publishers cover all the costs themselves. Money should flow to the author. People didn't just make that one up. A lot of people on this forum have experience in publishing, some of them are even established publishers themselves. I'm sorry to say, but it seems like in this case, you're the one who was misinformed.

montagpress said:

However, aside from the fact that there are different financial models to develop story projects, what we are really excited about at Montag Press is that we've created a collective structure that elevates authors, editors, transmedia developers and designers to participate together on amazing projects, and to share both the work and the eventual rewards.

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Well, that's great. You're completely dodging any comment made here before. It's great that you want to work on projects together, and that you feel you've created a collective structure for this, but that's not helping authors one bit. Authors want to see their book out there in stores. Can you accomplish that? Can you get their book in stores? Authors also want to earn money and sell copies of their books. Can you accomplish that? Those are the things that authors need. They don't need collective structures.

montagpress said:

Hopefully, as an author, you'll consider joining us at Montag Press when you look into all the options that are available to you.

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I wouldn't join you at Montag Press. Do you want to know why?

You've failed to answer our most prominent questions. Do any of your staff actually have experience in the publishing field? Do you have distribution? Do you have a printer? Do you have any experience in publishing?

I don't want to sound rude. Not at all. I think you have your heart in the right place, but so far I'm seeing inexperienced people who had this great idea to help out authors but who don't have enough knowledge of the publishing industry to do so.

So it seems Montag is a writers/self-publishing co-op. This could be clearer on the website. Co-ops can be great, but they are different from convention small presses. largely, as dicussed here, because the "press" per se does not invest in the book.

montagpress said:

a conventional publisher appears to pay for all of the project costs,

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There is no "appearance" about it...commercial publishers pay for all production costs that includes marketing, promotion, and distribution.

After reviewing your concerns, I'll try to be more specific in my responses. Aside from one proof of process, we haven't released any books yet and therefore have no track record, but we never intimate that we do. However, we do have a dozen titles scheduled for release this year. For this reason, I can understand why established authors would be wary of an unproven company, and to them I would say, feel free to have your work published somewhere else. We are very up front about the details and structure of our projects, and if an author thinks they can do better elsewhere, they can attempt to do so. Many probably can, based on their own proven track records of selling books; many others who are talented but new and unproven themselves probably cannot.


I also think that the comment about us being a co-op is an excellent comment. At Montag every author has a dedicated editor who personally selects the projects and it not assigned a project, a transmedia developer, a creative lead, and a layout person all dedicated to your book and working under a profit-sharing model. There is no up-front cost to the author, for anything. You do not get any of this when you self publish. What good is keeping 70% of the sales when there are no sales?

Finally as to our experience, it ranges from junior to mid level professional experience in film, theater production and publishing. This is why we consider ourselves a transmedia collective. Here is some of experience:

Allie P., our Stageworks lead, has worked as a professional dramaturge on dozens of theatrical productions, both academic and professional, where she worked closely with directors and playwrights to shepherd plays onto stage.

Jessica T., our YA lead, is a former and reformed literary and publishing lawyer who left law to work as an associate at a literary agency, before herself becoming a represented YA author. Currently unpublished, she has high hopes for her own work. However it was her excellent understanding of the YA story mechanics that led us to recruit her to Montag as the YA Lead.

Mari S., our Horror lead, is a literature instructor and lecturer with extensive academic experience in the Horror genre. Here editing skills are flawless.

Mara H. has ghost edited several fan fiction anthology and moderates several prominent fan fiction sites as an administrator. While less traditional in her publishing experience, her prominence in the fan fiction community, and her commitment to works of SciFi romance make her an excellent choice for a partner on any SciFi romance project.

Sam C. is a professional layout artist, creative lead and designer, having worked professionally on hundreds of textbook projects. His work at Montag is his first work on fiction layout and design, however his skills as a designer are unsurpassed.

Finally, there's myself. I have advanced degrees in both design and screenwriting from UCLA. For several years I worked as a commercial art director and screenwriter in Los Angeles. Having completed 3 screenplays that were optioned by young and talented emerging directors who were crossing over from commercial to feature work (eg. S. Acker), I am intimately aware of the story note process. After working in Los Angeles, I worked for several years in the publishing industry in New York at a variety of low paid, and what appeared to be dead-end jobs as everything from a gofer, a client rep to a PM. It was in New York, that I and several of my friends decided to start Montag Press, as an alternative model to the large lumbering publishing houses that are thrashing around blindly in this new economy. In fact Harper Studio was founded on the same business model as Montag Press, by some of the same people that were working together at the same time. And whereas Harper Studio was certainly out of the gates faster than us, we believe that this is a marathon and not a sprint, and it's only a matter of time before we catch up and pass them.

So, yes, we are young, and we cannot survey the glories of our accomplishments from high atop our gleaming towers built in our names. Instead we are highly talented, dedicated and committed to building the very best stories in the world. We are some of the best young professionals who have emerged from professional and academic worlds of story tellers and story makers.

That being said, we hope that when you get a chance, and you look at all the options that are available to you and your story, that you will consider partnering with us in your pursuit of readers world wide.

Here's a quote from a recent article that describes us well:

Most of these new publishers issue less than 10 titles a year and lack any clout with distributors and wholesalers, which is key to guaranteeing fulfillment in the supply chain. The improvement and popularization of printing technologies, which lowers the cost of entry, have drawn many to the press business. At the same time it’s also true that a considerable number of these nano-publishers are devoted to the highest quality fiction and non-fiction books, abandoned long ago by profit-driven bigger houses. For these reasons, long tail is here to stay, which could be good news for authors, nano-publishers, online aggregators and retailers, with better tools and experience for managing the titles to come.

**

Highest quality Subversive, Speculative and Horror fiction. That's our business in a nutshell.

**

For those of you that are interested in this new publishing economy, here are some great discussions about the changes that are coming.

The end of distribution, and the arrival of access -
http://thecreatorsproject.com/blog/...ublishing-and-the-revival-of-the-printed-word

The end of the bookshelf -
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/02/whats-so-funny-about-a-tablets-love-and-a-bookless-world/

The end of publishing -
http://michaelhyatt.com/the-end-of-book-publishing-as-we-know-it.html

At Montag, we are fans of -
https://www.smalldemons.com/

Our favorite publisher and an inspiration in forming Montag
http://burningbooks.org/

& who we wish to be in 10 years
http://www.nightshadebooks.com

Our favorite book right now is:
Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs
http://www.nightshadebooks.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=200
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1597802859/?tag=absowrit-20

May your stories come freely and your ink never run dry,

Sincerely
Charlie Franco
Night Manager
Montag Press

ps. yes we have distribution, yes we have a printer, yes we have all the basics covered.
pps. having worked in the publishing world, I can tell you unequivocally, that commercial publishers DO NOT pay for all production costs, including marketing and promotions. Authors do, either through lower residuals, or held residuals. Money doesn't 'flow to the author' money flows to all the people that worked on the project. Money flows to the MD, PM, the editors, the designers, the secretaries, the janitors, the landlords, etc. Everyone makes a living off the project work. I've done the numbers, I've done the contracts, I know the details. To think otherwise is completely naive. The big difference is that the publishers have to carry the negatives, whereas the author doesn't have any liabilities to the negative. So the worst that can happen to an author is that they get zero. Whereas the worst negative exposure for a publisher can be unlimited, depending on how much they originally spent.

ps. yes we have distribution, yes we have a printer, yes we have all the basics covered.
pps. having worked in the publishing world, I can tell you unequivocally, that commercial publishers DO NOT pay for all production costs, including marketing and promotions. Authors do, either through lower residuals, or held residuals. Money doesn't 'flow to the author' money flows to all the people that worked on the project. Money flows to the MD, PM, the editors, the designers, the secretaries, the janitors, the landlords, etc. Everyone makes a living off the project work. I've done the numbers, I've done the contracts, I know the details. To think otherwise is completely naive. The big difference is that the publishers have to carry the negatives, whereas the author doesn't have any liabilities to the negative. So the worst that can happen to an author is that they get zero. Whereas the worst negative exposure for a publisher can be unlimited, depending on how much they originally spent.

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You still didn't reply who your distributor is. If you don't want to inform us, well, that's fine, but this is the kind of transparency potential authors will look for. Most companies are perfectly transparent about who their distributor is.

As to your second comment, that's completely untrue. Of course editors, designers, etc. all get paid, but that's completely different. They usually get a set price either per book or monthly. Publishers use the profit they make to pay the people working for them (editors, designers, publicists and more). The author gets royalties. That's something completely different. The author gets a higher pay the more copies are sold, whereas for the other people working in a publishing company, the pay rate is set per project or per month. I don't know author royalties can be compared to payment for employees.

As you stated, it's true that a publisher can have losses when they publish a book. That's the risks of being in the publishing business. You can't divert these risks to the authors - they're already taking risks enough, by trusting their manuscript to a certain publisher.

Whose your wholesaler? Ingram? Baker & Taylor? Whose your printer? Do you use POD technology or off-set printing? I don't understand that, although you say you have these in place, you don't want to be transparent about it. This makes me concerned. I don't know why anyone would want to keep these things a secret.

I know of more than a dozen small presses who have printers, distributors, wholesalers and are completely transparent about it. They don't ask authors to share the costs, they pay for it and make enough profit to make up for the up-front costs they had to pay as a publisher. Why would people choose your project, if you offer no transparency about your company and if you take half of their profit under the label 'external costs'?

Allie P., our Stageworks lead, has worked as a professional dramaturge on dozens of theatrical productions, both academic and professional, where she worked closely with directors and playwrights to shepherd plays onto stage.

Jessica T., our YA lead, is a former and reformed literary and publishing lawyer who left law to work as an associate at a literary agency, before herself becoming a represented YA author. Currently unpublished, she has high hopes for her own work. However it was her excellent understanding of the YA story mechanics that led us to recruit her to Montag as the YA Lead.

Mari S., our Horror lead, is a literature instructor and lecturer with extensive academic experience in the Horror genre. Here editing skills are flawless.

Mara H. has ghost edited several fan fiction anthology and moderates several prominent fan fiction sites as an administrator. While less traditional in her publishing experience, her prominence in the fan fiction community, and her commitment to works of SciFi romance make her an excellent choice for a partner on any SciFi romance project.

Sam C. is a professional layout artist, creative lead and designer, having worked professionally on hundreds of textbook projects. His work at Montag is his first work on fiction layout and design, however his skills as a designer are unsurpassed.

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Why is this information not up on your website? All I can see on your website are these people's degrees, and their fiction interests. Their actual credentials, the ones you mentioned here, aren't up on your website. I'm sure that would interest potential authors more than their fiction interests though.

Why don't you give out the last name of your employees? I've come across a small number of presses that don't mention the full name of their employees, and I'm always wondering: why? If these people have experience in the publishing field, why don't they want to give out their full name or full credentials? Why don't they mention their experience in previous companies, and actually mention those companies? If I had worked for 10 years as an editor in Harlequin, just as an example, I would be more than delighted to put that on my CV. I don't understand all this secrecy.

Examples of publishers being completely transparent about their editors and employees: Samhain, Entangled. I could give you a dozen more, but I'm sure this shows what I mean.

And for Mara H.'s credentials, I don't know how experience in the fanfiction community can actually help you become a good editor. There's usually a big gap between fanfiction and original fiction.

So, from what I'm seeing, none of these people have actually any experience in actual publishing companies, except for you?

eternalised,

We have a different business model. Everyone gets a share. We call it a collective, members herein have called it a co-op. A workers run co-operative is likely the most accurate description. As a co-op everyone shares. And we certainly don't take half of the authors profits. I do wish we could stop characterizing our business model in a way that is patently false.

At other publishing houses, the contracts can be written in such a way that authors get the monies first, or last. And honestly I've worked on more contracts that are the latter than the former. At Montag, authors don't get it first, nor do they get it last. They get it at the same time as everyone else on the project.

As to our business relationships, those are part of our proprietary business advantages, and we are disinclined at this stage to share them. I hope you can understand.

As to whether we use POD or traditional off-set. We use both, maximizing the advantages of both, depending on the success of the individual projects.

Based upon my professional experience, and industry best management practices, it's good practice for editors to have a level of personal protection when they are reviewing author submissions. For this reason, we have decided to provide only a limited amount of personal information for general public.

Finally, I agree that we should provide more information about our professional experience. Currently, all the bios are written by the members themselves, but I think you are right, and I'll encourage them to include more of their professional experience. Thanks for that suggestion.

I did check out both Entangles and Samhain, and whereas Entagles staff has impressive professional experience, Samhain staff descriptions where no different than ours. In the end we are who we are, with the experience that we have, but our future are being written with each new project that we undertake. To put it in context, here's the professional experience description of our favorite publishers Night Shade Books. In that context, we are satisfied with our experience.

Finally about specific editors. In regards to Mara H., yes it's true that there is a gap between fan fiction and the genre fiction. But she's incredibly smart, and impeccable editor and she has a fascinating perspective on SciFi romance, and whereas she's mostly been in the minor leagues, she's certainly our top draft pick to move up and work with authors at the small press level. Perhaps someday she'll even move up to the Big 6 and beyond. I would also warn anyone who decided to put money against one of our more Junior editors - Janet T. Junior she may be, but skill-wise we believe she ranks among the best of the best new dystopian editors.

As you can see, our editors range from senior to junior. We have some editors with a decade of professional work under their belt, and we have some editors who are just starting out. This is true of Montag Press, as it is true of every other publisher.

montagpress said:

pps. having worked in the publishing world, I can tell you unequivocally, that commercial publishers DO NOT pay for all production costs, including marketing and promotions.

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Having worked in the publishing world since probably before you were born, I can tell you unequivocally that commercial publishers DO pay for all the production costs, including marketing and promotions, out of their slice of the pie.

Also have no idea what you mean by "residuals". If you mean "royalties", large trade publishers don't pay marketing, promotions, or production costs out of royalties, nor do they withhold royalties, or whatever the heck you were talking about.

montagpress said:

& who we wish to be in 10 years
http://www.nightshadebooks.com

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montagpress said:

.. To put it in context, here's the professional experience description of our favorite publishers Night Shade Books. In that context, we are satisfied with our experience.

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I love Night Shade Books and wish them success, but I am also aware that they experienced some major problems two years ago, including nonpayment or delayed payments and lack of communications to their authors.

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/genreville/?p=547
http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/genreville/?p=559
http://www.sfwa.org/2010/07/a-note-to-sfwa-members-regarding-night-shade-books/

They are doing better now, but even they admitted that they had problems with their business model that led to the mess.

http://www.sfwa.org/2011/11/night-shade-books-probation-has-been-lifted/

Are you sure this is the best example you want to be comparing yourselves to?

IceCreamEmpress said:

Having worked in the publishing world since probably before you were born, I can tell you unequivocally that commercial publishers DO pay for all the production costs, including marketing and promotions, out of their slice of the pie.

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Of course they do. I am not sure who Montag might have been working with that didn't, but they were not what I would consider a real publisher. Even my smallest press books paid for production and basic promotion. I could do more promotion if I wanted to.

As for aspiring to be Nightshade... well. That means either not knowing or not caring (not sure which would be worse) that Nightshade books have repeated issues with not talking to authors, not paying authors, and exploiting book rights that they don't actually own.

You say royalties, I say residuals.

IceCreamEmpress said:

Also have no idea what you mean by "residuals". If you mean "royalties", large trade publishers don't pay marketing, promotions, or production costs out of royalties, nor do they withhold royalties, or whatever the heck you were talking about.

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The reason we use the term residual is that every collective member gets a percentage. Royalties are author specific. See more information here:

http://johnaugust.com/2007/why-writers-get-residuals

As to our business model, Entanlged uses a similar model:

http://www.heatherhowland.com/2011/03/meet-liz-pelletier-founder-of-entangled-publishing/

"
So how is Entangled different from those models?
We’re focused on selling as many copies of every book we contract as we can. In that sense, we’re like a traditional publisher. We put a lot of time and energy into every cover, content editing, and copy editing. We need every book to be as attractive on the outside and compelling on the inside as we can possibly manage. In addition, we assign a publicist to every book, who works with the Marketing Director to get their project into the right reviewers’ hands prior to release date, procuring advertising spots, ensuring book club inclusion, and handling the administrative duties of an author’s promotional campaign.
How can we afford such a large staff without creating an overhead to rival a traditional publisher? By melding the traditional publishing business plan with the successful percentage-of-sales e-publishing agency model across the entire company. Everyone from the copy editor to the Marketing Director has a financial stake in every book. We only make money if our author makes money.
Since we aren’t strangling ourselves with huge overhead costs, there is no need to force a high cover price until we reach a break-even point. Our pricing can be agile in a quickly changing market, allowing us to position each title for maximum sales. And, unlike a typical e-publisher, while we certainly hope to one day reap the benefits of a backlist, our model doesn’t require an author to wait until she is bleary-eyed from writing all night long, and promoting herself during lunch breaks and every evening while still working her day job until she has enough titles each bringing in a small income. In addition, to remain attractive to those authors still considering self-publishing, we pay the highest royalties in the industry with a nice escalation clause: the more books sold the higher the royalty for the author. It’s a win-win for everyone!"


About the claim that publishers pay for promotion themselves -



http://sactowriters.com/make-money-part-1/



"

Did you know that 95% of all traditionally published books sell less than 500 copies? Remember the premise of this article is to earn a living as an author via traditional publishing. Can you really live off of the royalties on the sale of 500 books? Of course not. Not only that but if you only sell 500 copies of your book you will receive no royalties at all.
That’s because royalties are only paid AFTER the publisher recoups their production costs. Those costs include: the advance, editing, interior and exterior layout, etc."


Finally, for all of those that suggested that you would rather self publish. Remember there are significant up front costs to self publishing, all of which you would have to recoup before making any money on the books that you edited alone, designed alone, lay out by yourself and promoted by yourself.


See the break even points for the popular self publishers here:



http://writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/006686_04272011.html


Finally, about Night Shade Books.


Certainly they incorrectly sold the e-book digital rights to The Mall of Cthulhu. However even the author explained that Night Shade Books had made errors in the authors favor, and this error was quickly corrected



And secondly, they had trouble communicating with the author of Iron Khan about her books availability.


Still their many amazing accomplishment far exceed these procedural mistakes.


So yes, count us as a fan of Night Shade.

I'm still confused why you can't say who distributes your books. That isn't exactly proprietary.

Did you know that 95% of all traditionally published books sell less than 500 copies?

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Good to know my book's in the 5%, then. Actually, I think most if not all "traditionally" published books here are - and probably most of the self-published ones as well.

Given that the author of the quote is the founder of "Prismatic Publishing", which sells packages costing up to $6495, I can see why he would want to scare writers away from one of the alternatives.

Queen of Swords said:

Good to know my book's in the 5%, then. Actually, I think most if not all "traditionally" published books here are - and probably most of the self-published ones as well.

Given that the author of the quote is the founder of "Prismatic Publishing", which sells packages costing up to $6495, I can see why he would want to scare writers away from one of the alternatives.

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Good point. However, we need to be carefully to not let the Argumentum ad Hominem take away from his points, regardless of his implied incentive to bring them up.

Secondly, I've been thinking about the criticism of Night Shade Books, and honestly I am surprise by two things. Primarily that the errors in communication and rights sales were an example of their failed business model. When in fact it was a failure of Night Shade Books to accommodate their growth, as they explain that it was their growth in going from managing 5 books a year to managing over 150 books that caused the problems. So to characterize it as Little Ming did as "even they admitted that they had problems with their business model that led to the mess." is completely disingenuous.

Instead as they state themselves:

"what has caused us the most trouble have been our successes. Night Shade has grown faster and more uncontrollably than we had any idea how to handle. What started as two guys shipping books out of a garage now consists of a full staff working out of an office in San Francisco."

and

"Doing royalty statements by hand was fine when we were doing five books a year, but now, with over 150 books in print, it has become a cumbersome, time-consuming, painful process that too often has been put off until later. And, as evidenced by the two books we sold as ebooks without the proper permissions, clearly we need a better contract/rights management system. "

See more of the precise explanation here:
http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/genreville/?p=559

If we can be so lucky to participate in a debut project like Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, that was rejected by every other publisher and goes on to win the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel category, and in May 2010, wins the Nebula Award for Best Novel.[4] and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, then we would certainly have reasons to toast our successes.

Now if I can be so bold to be honest herein, I am surprised by the level of criticism and discontentment that is apparent among the membership of this forum. Whether misrepresenting Montag's business model and creating a Straw Man fallacy, or by criticizing Montag's role model Night Shade Books by attacking the trees and missing the forest. By appealing to authority "Having worked in the publishing world since probably before you were born" and arguing the semantics of royalties versus residuals, it certainly seems like if it's not one thing, it's another.

And while this is game that I could continue to play forever, I have a humble suggestion instead. I promise to manage the very best transmedia publishing collective that I can, where I will try to recruit the very best editors here in Northern Califronia, and I will try to solicit the very best in new fiction voices. And you can work on your best stories. And if we at Montag are lucky we'll find ourselves working together someday, and if we are not, hopefully you'll find yourselves with story partners, creative leads, transmedia developers and project managers that exceed your wildest expectations.

So while we can't agree on everything. Let's agree on our service to the story, and do everything we can to bring great stories to the world.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes by Faber.

“Those who don’t build must burn. It’s as old as history and juvenile delinquents.”

ps. I'd gladly parry on if absolutewrite.com didn't keep timing me out. But this constant timing out, so that I have to rewrite my comments is driving me absolutely nuts, plus I have over a dozen story projects that require my attention.

Finally, for all of those that suggested that you would rather self publish. Remember there are significant up front costs to self publishing, all of which you would have to recoup before making any money on the books that you edited alone, designed alone, lay out by yourself and promoted by yourself.


See the break even points for the popular self publishers here:



http://writersweekly.com/the_latest_..._04272011.html

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I self-published my first book before I looked for a publisher, so I could show it to my friends and family. Want to know how much it cost me?

$0.

The only thing I paid was a proof copy, but now I at least have a copy of my own book standing at my home. The book itself cost me $3.95, shipping fees excluded. From that point on, everything I made was profit.

There are no "significant up-front fees" for self-publishing. Using CreateSpace is completely free - I have no idea where the author of that article gets their numbers from. All you do is insert your cover, a .pdf of your book and you're done. Print fees are very low, and you can make profit right away. Uploading your book on Amazon, Smashwords, and half a dozen online retailers is free as well.

The only thing you could possibly have to pay for if you self-publish is your editor or a cover designer. But most people, if they spend enough time and effort on it, can create the cover themselves.

So yes, I'd still prefer self-publishing, from which I can start making profit from book one, to your business model in which I'd have to share my profit with half a dozen other people.

http://sactowriters.com/make-money-part-1/



"

Did you know that 95% of all traditionally published books sell less than 500 copies? Remember the premise of this article is to earn a living as an author via traditional publishing. Can you really live off of the royalties on the sale of 500 books? Of course not. Not only that but if you only sell 500 copies of your book you will receive no royalties at all.
That’s because royalties are only paid AFTER the publisher recoups their production costs. Those costs include: the advance, editing, interior and exterior layout, etc."

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Given that the author of the quote is the founder of "Prismatic Publishing", which sells packages costing up to $6495, I can see why he would want to scare writers away from one of the alternatives.

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Good point. However, we need to be carefully to not let the Argumentum ad Hominem take away from his points, regardless of his implied incentive to bring them up.

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First of all, given the source of this article, I would take the information provided there with a grain of salt. Commercial publishers pay royalties from book one. They don't wait until the "break even" point to start paying royalties. As people have said here before, commercial publishers pay for all the costs, and they don't try to divert them to the author. Also, the other comment about 95% of commercially published books only selling 500 copies can't even be true statistically speaking. How could these publisher still be in business? I don't think they can even begin to cover their costs by only selling 500 copies. If this were the true, commercial publishing would've long since seized to exist.

As for your mention of the Argumentum ad Hominem, I don't even think it applies. The information the author states in that article can't possibly be true. I don't even see what the supposed 'points' brought-up in that article are. If the article were telling the truth, commercial publishing would long be out of business. On top of that, the author never states where he got his sources from. He could very well just have made those numbers up. If there were actually statistics proving this, then his argument would be a lot more convincing than it is currently.

I'm still confused why you can't say who distributes your books. That isn't exactly proprietary.

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As to our business relationships, those are part of our proprietary business advantages, and we are disinclined at this stage to share them. I hope you can understand.

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Like Priceless1 said, and like I myself asked you a couple of times: who is your distributor? You said it before that you have a distributor, and that's great for you, but who is it? Why do you dodge this question every time?

I've never heard of any publisher who is so secretive about their so-called "business advantages". When Entangled signed up with Midpoint Trade Books, they even made a press release statement about it - as they should, it's something to be proud of. You can find information about their different distributors on their website. Spencer Hill Press mentions their distributor on their Place an Order page as well. Why would you keep this information a secret, if it's important for retailers and bookstores to know? If bookstores come across your website and want to order one of your titles, they will have to know who your distributor is.

Based upon my professional experience, and industry best management practices, it's good practice for editors to have a level of personal protection when they are reviewing author submissions. For this reason, we have decided to provide only a limited amount of personal information for general public.

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Why? You seem the only one doing this. Why would anyone need personal protection when they're reviewing author submissions? So far, all editors, agents, etc. I've ever talked to, mailed submissions to or worked with have all had their full name in their email, signatures and on their website. Why do you think this wouldn't work for your editors?

I did check out both Entangles and Samhain, and whereas Entagles staff has impressive professional experience, Samhain staff descriptions where no different than ours.

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Oh, really?

Taken from Don D'Auria's profile on Samhain:

Don D’Auria has worked in publishing for twenty-five years, most recently as executive editor at Leisure Books, where for fifteen years he directed their horror line.

Taken from Heather Osborn's profile on Samhain:

Heather made the transition to editing 8 years ago, starting out with digital publishing, then making the move to traditional publishing by running the romance line at Tor Books,...

Now if I can be so bold to be honest herein, I am surprised by the level of criticism and discontentment that is apparent among the membership of this forum. Whether misrepresenting Montag's business model and creating a Straw Man fallacy, or by criticizing Montag's role model Night Shade Books by attacking the trees and missing the forest. By appealing to authority "Having worked in the publishing world since probably before you were born" and arguing the semantics of royalties versus residuals, it certainly seems like if it's not one thing, it's another.

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This is the Bewares Thread. While we don't try to attack anyone here, and I hope you don't feel attacked, we do give out criticism here. This is basically the entire point of the Bewares Thread. The purpose of this board is to help out authors, who are looking to submit their work to a publisher. They can come see this forum, search the thread for said publisher and see if they'd be a good match. This forum is here to give criticism when needed, all in the spirit of protecting and helping out authors.

That said, some of the members here, have in fact been in publishing for over a decade, or even longer. Since you're just starting out, it could be a good idea to take some advice from them, and listen to what they have to say. For instance, ten of us or more have said now that from our experience, commercial publishers pay for everything including editors, cover design, etc. yet you seem determined on proving us wrong, for instance by quoting this article.

Mostly, what we're just trying to do is help you out. You're just starting out - so why wouldn't you take any helpful advice you can get and do something with it?

I understand that you have a different business model, more like a co-op self-publishing model, and if you're glad with that, then that's fine by me. As an author, I still wouldn't choose Montag Press because I still believe highly in Yog's Law that money should flow towards the author. I want royalties from the start, and I don't want to share them with anyone. I still think it's the publisher's responsibility to pay for production costs.

Also, you mentioned on Entangled Publishing's model being similar to yours, but that's not true. Authors don't get paid after the production costs, whether internal or external, are paid. They get paid from the start. It's actually the people working for Entangled, their publicists for instance, who carry more risks here, since they only get paid if the books sell. For instance, they get some sort of "royalties" as well (although technically-speaking I don't think we should call them royalties), like 8% on net price of every copy of the book they manage to sell. I'm just throwing in a percentage here, I don't know the actual percentage, but from what I gathered, that's basically how their model works. The author doesn't have to pay for external costs first, they get royalties from the moment book one is sold, but the publishing risk is 'shared' between the publisher themselves, the managing team, the publicists, maybe even the editors (I'm not an expert on their business model, so I don't know who exactly gets a percentage per book, and who would get an up-front fee, but from what I heard and read this is the basics of the business model).

So far, what worries me the most is the lack of transparency, both in the names of the editors and in not mentioning your distributor. To me, as an author, these are red flags. I can imagine some authors would be willing to work with your business model - although I personally wouldn't - but even to them, the lack of transparency could stop them from submitting their manuscript to you.

montagpress said:

Good point. However, we need to be carefully to not let the Argumentum ad Hominem take away from his points, regardless of his implied incentive to bring them up.

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That's no more an argumentum ad hominem than pointing out that a celebrity endorsing a product is being paid to do so. And what is his evidence for such a claim? Or is the 95% just a figure he's pulling out of his, er, hat to make writers feel that there's no point in going for commercial publishing?

And if we at Montag are lucky we'll find ourselves working together someday

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You at Montag may be lucky, but I can't say the same for any writers in this situation.

montagpress:
However, we need to be carefully to not let the Argumentum ad Hominem take away from his points, regardless of his implied incentive to bring them up.

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You're kidding me, right?

The fact that the guy makes his living from vanity publishing (or if you want to be charitable, self-publishing) doesn't give you pause that what he's saying might not actually be correct?

What about the fact that of those "traditionally published books" that don't earn out into royalties, the author was still paid an advance and so is already in the money?

Given that Montag Press isn't paying an advance, the quote doesn't come close to supporting your arguments.

montagpress:
Now if I can be so bold to be honest herein, I am surprised by the level of criticism and discontentment that is apparent among the membership of this forum.

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You don't use industry terminology, you quote vanity publishers to support a business model that you actually don't seem able to explain in a clear, simple or coherent manner and your role model is a publisher that went through an awful lot of trouble at one point because it expanded too quickly without the relevant internal support and now you're complaining that we're being critical.

Okay then.

montagpress:
I promise to manage the very best transmedia publishing collective that I can, where I will try to recruit the very best editors here in Northern Califronia, and I will try to solicit the very best in new fiction voices. And you can work on your best stories. And if we at Montag are lucky we'll find ourselves working together someday, and if we are not, hopefully you'll find yourselves with story partners, creative leads, transmedia developers and project managers that exceed your wildest expectations.

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As ever, it's always the performance that talks. We'll see whether you're still going in 2 years and if so what kind of sales and royalties your authors are getting.

In the meantime, I'll be getting my agent to go down the malign "traditional publishing" route with those cursed advances.

montagpress:
I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes by Faber.

“Those who don’t build must burn. It’s as old as history and juvenile delinquents.”

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And I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes: "You can't have a discussion with someone unwilling to listen."

MM

montagpress said:

The reason we use the term residual is that every collective member gets a percentage.

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That doesn't explain why you used the word "residual" when talking about what large trade publishers did vis-a-vis promotion and marketing. Also, way to sidestep that what you said about that was totally inaccurate.

As for Night Shade Books, which I think has produced many fine books, not every writer's concerns were resolved positively, although to their credit, they did revert rights promptly to writers (like Liz Williams, and I know there were others) who chose to sever their connection with the press.

As for your "those who don't build must burn" nonsense, the members of this board know the bona fides of the folks who are taking issue with your inaccurate statements here. We are building, and have built, real careers and helping others to do so. What you are building sounds more like castles in the air to me right now. I hope I am mistaken, and that your publishing model will be fruitful for everyone who chooses to be involved with it.

Wait, who are these "collective" members? Are they the staff and owners? Or are authors also members of the collective?

montagpress said:

Did you know that 95% of all traditionally published books sell less than 500 copies?

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Yes, I've seen that quoted.

Unlike you, however, I know how that statistic was derived, and I know that it's misleading-to-meaningless.

montagpress said:

That’s because royalties are only paid AFTER the publisher recoups their production costs. Those costs include: the advance, editing, interior and exterior layout, etc.

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False.

I have three contracts from Big Six publishers. Two from Tor, one from Viking. None of them say they only pay royalties after production costs. (Other than the advance, and as anyone knows, the advance is an *advance on royalties.* If you don't know that, you don't know squat.)

Tell us another fairy tale, auntie montagpress.

montagpress said:

The reason we use the term residual is that every collective member gets a percentage. Royalties are author specific. See more information here:

http://johnaugust.com/2007/why-writers-get-residuals

As to our business model, Entangled uses a similar model:

http://www.heatherhowland.com/2011/03/meet-liz-pelletier-founder-of-entangled-publishing/

"
So how is Entangled different from those models?
We’re focused on selling as many copies of every book we contract as we can. In that sense, we’re like a traditional publisher. We put a lot of time and energy into every cover, content editing, and copy editing. We need every book to be as attractive on the outside and compelling on the inside as we can possibly manage. In addition, we assign a publicist to every book, who works with the Marketing Director to get their project into the right reviewers’ hands prior to release date, procuring advertising spots, ensuring book club inclusion, and handling the administrative duties of an author’s promotional campaign.
How can we afford such a large staff without creating an overhead to rival a traditional publisher? By melding the traditional publishing business plan with the successful percentage-of-sales e-publishing agency model across the entire company. Everyone from the copy editor to the Marketing Director has a financial stake in every book. We only make money if our author makes money.
Since we aren’t strangling ourselves with huge overhead costs, there is no need to force a high cover price until we reach a break-even point. Our pricing can be agile in a quickly changing market, allowing us to position each title for maximum sales. And, unlike a typical e-publisher, while we certainly hope to one day reap the benefits of a backlist, our model doesn’t require an author to wait until she is bleary-eyed from writing all night long, and promoting herself during lunch breaks and every evening while still working her day job until she has enough titles each bringing in a small income. In addition, to remain attractive to those authors still considering self-publishing, we pay the highest royalties in the industry with a nice escalation clause: the more books sold the higher the royalty for the author. It’s a win-win for everyone!"


About the claim that publishers pay for promotion themselves -



http://sactowriters.com/make-money-part-1/



"

Did you know that 95% of all traditionally published books sell less than 500 copies? Remember the premise of this article is to earn a living as an author via traditional publishing. Can you really live off of the royalties on the sale of 500 books? Of course not. Not only that but if you only sell 500 copies of your book you will receive no royalties at all.
That’s because royalties are only paid AFTER the publisher recoups their production costs. Those costs include: the advance, editing, interior and exterior layout, etc."


Finally, for all of those that suggested that you would rather self publish. Remember there are significant up front costs to self publishing, all of which you would have to recoup before making any money on the books that you edited alone, designed alone, lay out by yourself and promoted by yourself.


See the break even points for the popular self publishers here:



http://writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/006686_04272011.html

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Forgive me, I'm having a bit of difficulty parsing what is a quote from you and what is something you've quoted from another source. If in future you could use the QUOTE tags, that would be helpful; simply highlight the text you're quoting and click the little icon that looks like a word bubble at the top of the posting box. (I don't say that to be snarky and I hope you don't take it that way, btw; a lot of people, myself included, have difficult figuring out how to quote in the beginning.)


I'll respond to two things. First, the epublishing "everyone gets paid by royalties" model is still not a residual model, nor is it a "collective" one. What generally happens is that there are still fixed costs which the publisher pays for, things like websites/digital payment systems/data storage/software/hardware/electric bills and internet service, that sort of thing. Those are covered by the book's ultimate cover price.

Then there are the employees like editors. They may be independent contractors and they may be paid royalties rather than being salaried. That doesn't make their payments "residuals," it makes them royalties. Lots of epublishers do indeed use that model.

But the thing is, those royalties are also part of the cover price. Even if a book doesn't sell enough copies to recoup the cost of data upload and storage etc., the editor still gets his or her royalty. Automatically. Right from the very first copy sold. There's no "you get paid once costs are covered;" royalties are part of those costs and they are paid before the house itself sees any profit. Just like the author.

Royalties are not exclusive to authors. Royalties are simply a percentage of the book's cover price paid to an individual involved in the book's production. Hell, the money paid to owners of mineral rights (land) are sometimes referred to as "royalties."


As to this:

"That’s because royalties are only paid AFTER the publisher recoups their production costs. Those costs include: the advance, editing, interior and exterior layout, etc."

It is patently and demonstrably untrue, except in the case of advances, sort of, and I suggest the author of that quote does not understand at all what an advance actually is.

In the case of an advance, those royalties have already been paid to the author before the publisher sees a dime. An advance is an advance against royalties; it is a payment made to the author of the anticipated royalties the author would/will earn from sales of the book. An advance by definition is royalties paid before the publisher recoups any production costs whatsoever; an advance is paid before a book is published (or in some cases, partly before publication and partly when the book is published).

If it's not royalties paid before the publisher recoups costs, it's not an advance.

It is true that further royalties aren't paid until the advance is earned out, but ONLY the advance. Royalties can be paid before the publisher has recouped its other costs. Again, in those royalty-based editor payment models--such as in some epublishers--royalties are paid from the very first copy sold, period. There is no "recouping costs" taken from those royalties. Royalties are part of the book's cover price and are paid to the author immediately.


Not to mention that it's entirely possible--and in fact happens all the time--for a book to already be profitable for the publisher before the advance is earned out; all of those costs have been recouped except for the advance (and in that case the royalty still goes into a separate "account"--not technically, but for lack of a better/more quickly understandable explanation--to be counted against the amount of royalties already given the author up-front). Surely you've seen such a situation at the NY house where you were a gofer or intern or entry-level assistant? If you dealt as intimately with contracts and accounting as you claim, I can't imagine you wouldn't have, because it's quite common.

The ONLY "cost" the author "pays back" out of royalties is the advance, and that's because those royalties have already been given to them.

jennontheisland said:

Wait, who are these "collective" members? Are they the staff and owners? Or are authors also members of the collective?

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They're obviously the Borg. Resistance is futile.

montagpress said:

Did you know that 95% of all traditionally published books sell less than 500 copies?

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This is a fake statistic, which has been widely disseminated across the Web.

It's most often attributed to Publishers Weekly, where it was reported a few years ago. However, there are a couple of things that the people who parrot these numbers don't point out:

- The figures are for one year--2004, to be precise. Most books have a life of more than a year. A book that sold 400 copies in 2004 might have sold 10,000 in 2001, when it was originally published.

- The figures include all titles tracked by Nielsen Bookscan--which includes frontlist and backlist, titles from commercial publishers large and small, titles from non-commercial small presses, and titles from self-publishing services and vanity publishers (in 2004, Nielsen had not yet broken "non-traditional" books into a separate category). This renders the figures essentially meaningless for the purpose of commenting on average book sales, since these different kinds of publishers have vastly different distribution and marketing capacities. If you looked at the figures for just commercially-published frontlist titles, for instance, they would likely tell a very different story.

One reason that faux statistics like this become so popular is that they confirm pre-existing prejudices.

- Victoria

So, just to add a bit of my own experience.


I submitted a project to Montag back in May. Eagerly awaiting a response, I got an email back from them today asking me to "Check Out Their Books" over at GoodReads.com


I submitted to them a manuscript. And they signed me up for a newsletter. In all of my past dealings with publishers, agents, and the like, this is the most unprofessional ridiculousness I have ever dealt with.


I then read a bit through this thread and decided to pull my submission after combing through the site a bit more.