Curiosity Quills Press

BinaryCat, I'm sorry you're going through this. It's so frustrating to watch small presses ignore basic things like providing you books for a bookstore event, or not following up on leads for bookstore placement you generated. What more do they want you to do? How are they earning their cut?

Fortunately, you've established a readership. If you have work that doesn't violate your contract with CQ, think about self-publishing those stories. If you're not ready for that, at least try to publish with a better press. There's still a few out there doing right by their authors AND making money.

For those published with QC, do all books go to a print run? I've read through the thread, but I can't seem to figure out, and some of the comparison presses (Aestrea) don't do print runs without an sales threshold. Is print guaranteed in contract?

BlueLobster said:

For those published with QC, do all books go to a print run?

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I believe they only do POD.

Fantasy_freak said:

I believe they only do POD.

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I'm not sure about that. I could ask one of the authors I know that's publishes with them though.

ETA: Yes. They said it seems to be POD. I had thought they used to do a very small print run but I might have them mixed up with someone else.

I have seen some CQ books and they look pretty slick. Not what I would normally tag as POD - they do a good job with the full cover layout.

( I have other issues that would prevent me from submitting to them at this point, but their covers are not one of them.)

I once had a Top 10 book in the Folk category at Amazon. Total sales that week: 7.

So you decided to be rude in defense of a publisher you know nothing about? So you actually have no idea how well they would help any writer with whatever goal they might have? Okay.

the bunny hugger said:

So you decided to be rude in defense of a publisher you know nothing about? So you actually have no idea how well they would help any writer with whatever goal they might have? Okay.

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Please learn to use the Reply with Quote option; it is otherwise completely impossible to discern which post you are responding to.

Sorry to hear this, but this is a fairly standard trajectory for many new small presses. Maybe they can come out of the spiral, maybe not.

Edit: In light of new information, I am no longer able to offer such glowing praise of CQ.

Thank you for sharing your story, Jessica11. That was heartbreaking to read. I'm so sorry you went through that.

Most authors with small presses have to bear the majority of marketing efforts - not too different from being self published.

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A true small publisher has a small budget and so release a small number of books so they can efficiently market (time and money) them, in order to earn more money, in order to grow their business into a larger publisher. Some may want to stay small, that's a fine thing but they market their books (book sales being their only source of income) Authors help to promote (usually at no cost) their own book, there is a difference in these two things, marketing and promoting.
Being small is not an excuse for anything other then doing everything any other publisher does but on a "smaller" scale. Using your example, being small doesn't excuse a mistake on a book cover, they are just lucky they DON'T have a print run in that case. In fact, it should be harder for a small publisher to make such a mistake, with only a few books to check carefully before release.

Jessica11, so sorry you have gone through all that. Even a small publisher sends books out to stores for an Author signing. Please don't tell me the Publisher wanted you to pay for the books first (you mentioned you "ordered" them and they lost the order)

Jessica11 said:

They tell me to find my readers.

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Out of all the horrible things you dealt with this has to be the worst. So sorry you had to go through that misery.

Kalzandius, you mention how great the people are at CQ, but nothing about the quality of service. In fact, the only mention of their services were complaints. You got inconsistent editing, a proofreader who couldn't stay in her lane and did rewrites, and covers that appeared days before release day. Yet, this publisher is awesome and you feel fortunate to have found them?

If you don't think CQ will turn off the lights and disappear with your royalties and rights, think again. Check out our Index of Publishers. The ones in gray are the ones that didn't make it.

Thank you for confirming Jessica11's experience. Even authors that are happy with CQ get the same crappy service.

kalzandius said:

In answer to BlueLobster - At one point CQ was considered POD, but they've got a distribution deal now (Ingram) and are no longer officially POD, though they don't do print runs like major publishing houses. No small press I am aware of has the budget for that.

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CQ's books are available through Ingram as a wholesaler. This is not the same as what most people mean when they refer to distribution. Distribution implies that the books are actively being presented to stores through salespeople, catalogs, galleys, and other marketing efforts. Ingram has a distribution system too, called IPS (Ingram Publisher Services) which does all those things I mentioned for dozens (maybe hundreds?) of publishers large and small, but CQ is not part of that.

The wholesale part of Ingram just means that the books are available for stores to order if they know about the books, but otherwise they are just listed there with literally millions of others that you'll only see if you search for them. The good news is that CQ's books are available at a standard discount and are returnable, which is more than many small presses do.

The POD label is a separate issue. It refers to how a book is printed - is it Print on Demand, or do they do offset print runs? Plenty of great little micro-presses use POD rather than larger print runs and also have distribution through IPS, Consortium, SPD, or some other distributor. But there are also a lot of very small presses that use offset printing and do larger print runs as well.

ctripp said:

Being small is not an excuse for anything other then doing everything any other publisher does but on a "smaller" scale. Using your example, being small doesn't excuse a mistake on a book cover, they are just lucky they DON'T have a print run in that case. In fact, it should be harder for a small publisher to make such a mistake, with only a few books to check carefully before release.

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Exactly. You should always expect quality service from any publisher, regardless of size. One potential benefit of a smaller pub is that they can really go hard for your book and put a lot of effort into promotion and cover design and getting ARCs out, even if their budget is not the same as a Big 5 house. There is definitely a world of difference between a good and bad small pub.

Edit: In light of new information, I have altered my opinions of CQP.

kalzandius said:

...but it's not easy for a small press to get in the door at brick & mortar locations. They do BookBub promos, NetGalley, Amazon promotions and such.

What sorts of promotional efforts would you consider "expected" of a small press?

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In my experience, there are plenty of small presses that focus mostly on online sales and ebooks, and it may make sense for them. There's nothing wrong with that.

However, being small doesn't mean a press can't get into bricks and mortar stores. But they do have to have produce quality books (yes, POD is okay - I am mostly referring to content) and have proper distribution. For example, I've got galleys on my desk from Microcosm Publishing (~25 titles/yr), Milkweed (~20 titles/yr), Greystone (~30 titles/yr), Two Dollar Radio (~10 titles/yr) and Biblioasis (~30 titles/yr). (As far as I know they are all still independent) These companies all have distribution so sales reps get the galleys and catalogs to bookstore buyers including the big chains and the small independent shops.

It is absolutely possible to do this if it is what a press wants to do and they plan their business with this in mind. I think a lot of publishers just don't worry about it because it isn't what they are aiming for. But there are a lot of newer publishers who seem to learn as they go that bookstore distribution requires commitment and investment but, by then, it is too late. They have to plan for it from the start or it seems prohibitively expensive. I don't know enough about CQ to guess which of these categories they are in, but the bottom line is that even a small press can get into bricks-and-mortar shops if they do it right. I say this as a bookstore person who loves to sell books from funky little presses.

Jumping ship

Jessica11 said:

Something else I want to warn about – many of their seasoned and more experienced authors have or are jumping ship.

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I find this comment very telling. Why are their more experienced/seasoned authors "jumping ship"? A good small press will surely retain authors, not see them scrambling to get out of contracts?

I agree with C Alberts. I've seen many small presses (that sometimes go on to become mid-sized houses) use their money wisely and grow and expand. You don't have to be Penguin Random House or any of the Big 5 to get books in brick n mortar stores.

So many of these small presses focus on getting books out in quantity--one or two a week sometimes. They don't market or promote because they leave that to the authors. They operate instead under the idea that the more books they put out, the more money they'll make. Instead of investing in books and authors they just crank out books and leave the authors to scramble to figure out how to market on their own. (I don't have a book with CQ, but I have one with another small press that seems similar based on what I'm reading here.)

I have to agree with ctripp. A small publisher that invests in their books and authors and does what larger publishers do, even on a smaller scale, is better than one that churns out books and moves on almost before a book has been released.

This is why the last week of July of each year is our “Escape Clause” week. Authors may request an early termination of their contract, with the understanding that they will have to return any outstanding advanced royalties and defray our costs of production (we never request an author pay for marketing expenses).

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This just still really, really, bothers me. (as mentioned by Jessica11 earlier in this thread) The "answer" raises so many more questions for me then it does answer anything. The first one being why would this even BE a FAQ by a writer who's considering submitting to a publisher?
In here they are saying they offer advances, but I was under the impression they didn't?
Other then an Author not turning in their final manuscript, I've never heard of a publisher expecting any advance be paid back (let alone pay for editing, cover or other related business costs incurred)

And at the very least, I will assume the publisher in turn would deliver the complete book file to the Author after they pay for it.

zmethos said:

So many of these small presses focus on getting books out in quantity--one or two a week sometimes. They don't market or promote because they leave that to the authors. They operate instead under the idea that the more books they put out, the more money they'll make. Instead of investing in books and authors they just crank out books and leave the authors to scramble to figure out how to market on their own. (I don't have a book with CQ, but I have one with another small press that seems similar based on what I'm reading here.)

I have to agree with ctripp. A small publisher that invests in their books and authors and does what larger publishers do, even on a smaller scale, is better than one that churns out books and moves on almost before a book has been released.

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This is really what it comes down to. Publishers should release fewer titles so they can give each book the attention it needs for a successful launch. There's no reason why covers should only be available days before a book release. What kind of excuse do they give for this? It's unacceptable. It shows a publisher that just doesn't care to do their job correctly. CQ either doesn't care, or even worse doesn't know better. What does an author get? Some really nice people who take 60% of their royalties for doing 20% of the work.

AnneGlynn said:

I'm bumping this in the hope that someone, somewhere, knows something about Curiosity Quills. Anyone?

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Well they've just ripped off one of our covers (Glass House Press), for a FRIEND of mine. So that's not really that positive.

Which cover would that be? I took a look around your website and theirs, and didn't find a matching cover, but maybe I glanced over it.

I see a book on each site that bears a resemblance to the other, but then I've seen countless books in the genre featuring an ominous sky and crows. Other than those two books, nothing's jumping out. Of course, carriesue11 didn't mention if the friend's book has been published yet.

Just got a like on PitMad by this website. Definitely not looking into Curiosity Quills after reading this thread. A sincere thank you to those who did their homework on this website!