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Limitless Publishing

magicalfantasy5

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That almost doesn't bother me as much as the fact that she starts every single form of communication with "Aloha" when she's a native South Dakotan. It sounds like an unfair criticism, except everything she says is phony, even that. If you're fortunate enough to know someone from Hawaii, ask them if they think it's weird that a non-native Hawaiian starts every line of communication with that and see what they say.

The thing I beat myself up over is this. Responding to criticisms of their paid consulting service, Jennifer writes on page 3 of this thread,

"*We no longer do any consulting. I offered this only because I had a few people who wished to self publish and wanted some consulting sessions on how to do so. I did not seek them out, they contacted me directly. However, I no longer have time for this, as I'm very busy with our books as we have several new releases being published each week, and this number is growing."

So she didn't seek them out, but listed the service on their website? Why did I overlook that? It was such a stupid mistake to ignore her outright lie.
 

triceretops

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My mind jogged when I read the "Aloha" comment just now. That had always stuck in my mind. I checked my spreadsheet.By gawd, they DID offer me a contract four years ago. I let my agent check it out and communicate with them. That was a mistake. Limitless claimed that I'd deliberately brought in an agent on the deal and that they were not interested because they thought I was being deceitful. For one thing, my agent was listed in my query--big and bold. And for another, she'd been my agent for two years prior. I don't know if I'd said that in a previous post, but it bears repeating.
 

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I just received a rejection of my partial with an invitation to submit to them in the future. I think I shall not seeing as I've read through this thread. No feedback or anything, just no thanks. Fine by me!
 

lavender40

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They just finished a pitch contest on Wattpad so theyve got more new blood coming in. I just hope people do their research before making a decision.

I swear, in the last two weeks there have been a ton of new authors added to the FB group. Sigh. I guess they'll just keep "signing" people.
 

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I'm thankful for this thread. I had been thinking of submitting to Limitless because of their new release called "Into the Fire," but it sounds like they are just as non-communicative as my current publisher.
 

magicalfantasy5

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Getting a response from Jennifer is unbelievably difficult, though I hear she used to be better. Same goes for her daughter Jessica, who seems to be the accountant. I haven't dealt much with her personally, but have yet to see anything that would suggest she knows anything about publishing, including a glance at her own books. Unfortunately I had no contact with her prior to signing or else maybe I would have been spared.

Limitless added a "author liaison," Elise, who's essentially the in-between person. In theory, I guess this would improve response time, but she doesn't actually know the answers to anything so it takes even longer while she speaks to the ever so busy powers that be.

One interesting development. It appears as though one of Limitless' few legitimately successful authors (who's been there for a long time) has started self-publishing. It'd be one thing if she moved onto the big five or something upwards, but the fact that the successful Limitless authors choose to self-publish over working with them is very telling. They offer nothing as a company.
 

LadyErBeth

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Aloha everyone!

Good grief. Still no new bestsellers out of Limitless, even after bringing in a webinar person to rip off authors. I heard author complaints from their Facebook group were deleted too.

I also heard that a few authors had their series cancelled midway through. Limitless has no idea what they're doing with their contacts. When you sign a series with them, they say they want a contract for each subsequent book even though you sign the whole series on the first one.
 
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I was reading a horribly edited book on my Kindle. A Google search for Limitless brought this up (after the company's website). I'm extremely thankful to have found this thread. I'm sorry to hear about what some of you authors have been through. I had a friend who was one of the winners of their Wattpad Pitch Contest and I sent her this link. Turns out she passed on them because they wanted her to change her two MC's too much.

Also many thanks to Filigree for your informative Rules post in your sig. I spent the afternoon looking over them. :)
 
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magicalfantasy5

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I wanted to pop back in and share some newfound perspective I have on Jennifer since she addressed the company last week. It shows that while she does have some knowledge of the current state of publishing, she's essentially nothing more that a con artist.

Here is the full note:

"I have to respond to a few things I've been reading, and I think you would benefit from a little insight.
1) You will not make a good or even decent "income" with one book out, or even two or three for that matter. If this is your goal and you get easily discouraged, you might want to brace yourself as I'm afraid you are in for a big reality check. Your readers need somewhere to go. They like series. Some genres do better than others, there are trends that happen in the book world and the trends sell and they sell well. Understand the trends and don't get upset if paranormal romance is not selling well but romance is and you insist on writing paranormal romance. You can't change what's hot in the market because you like writing in a certain genre.

2) It's VERY difficult to gain traction as a writer if you are only producing 1 or 2 books a year...or even 3. Unless you already have several books out and have a following. You should be at least producing 4 a year...at least. Readers have reading ADHD and they will forget you if your not feeding their reading obsession fast enough. Because if your not doing it another writer will.

3) Writing is not a get rich quick type of job. It's not even it get a good extra income quick kind of job. It's hard. It's grueling. And it's a JOB! If you owned a business and just showed up to work once in awhile, and only brought in things to sell in your store once in awhile what would happen? Nothing. What if you spent every waking moment pacing the pavement and bringing people into your store, then what? Nothing. Because even if you got the people in your store and you only have 1 or 2 items on the shelf, they are not going to come back. You are creating a store with products. You need products in your store. Write and write often if you want your store to succeed.

4) There must be a BALANCE of bringing people into your "store" and offering new "products" you must do both...Build your presence, email list, social media following, and advertise (free or paid). This is how people find you. Blog tours, paid advertising sites, social media is to be found, once you are found you need something to keep your readers attention. Products, and new products coming out consistently. Balance is key.

5) Book Signing are fun, and they're a good tax write off, but they will not bring you income in the way you think they will. You might get in touch with a few new readers, but a good income it will not make. What book signings are good for is NETWORKING with other authors/writers and building an email list of everyone who visits your booth. Or give away a book or basket of books in exchange for an email address. When you network with other authors, you can use each others social media presence and email lists to cross promote. That can be powerful.
If you are not making the income you want ask yourself:
*How many books do I have out?
*When was my last release?
*How long is it between releases?
*How much time do I commit to "building" social media, email list, etc. (not posting but increasing the size)?
*How much time do I spend writing?

If you have several books out and a good balance of building your presence and writing and you're still not selling. Then it's time to rebrand yourself or try and different genre. Search the trends and see if you are in "the now" or the "what was hot last year" categories."



I'm interested to see what veteran AW posters think of this. I guess she's right in the sense that a constant output stream is what's needed to make a career out of this, but at what cost? I don't get the idea that Jennifer cares about quality at all.

Also missing is anything on Limitless' part to help their authors. Cross promotion can be powerful? If people aren't buying my book, why would they listen to me telling them to buy someone else's?

After reading this whole thread and looking through the company's catalog, it's clear there are three elements that make, or made, a successful Limitless author. They all write frequently, write series, and have been with the company for a long time. I don't know what they used to do in terms of marketing, but I see that many of the old releases have well over a hundred reviews. If you look at the actual reviews, you see that many have editing complaints.

I didn't expect to be a bestseller on my first book, or ever really, but I sure didn't expect a woman with this shady of a track record to come and tell me it's my fault. Maybe Limitless used to be a legitimate publisher, but now it's nothing but a sham operation taking advantage of people's dreams.
 
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triceretops

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I have/had small press publishers who horsewhip their authors into constant promotion--relentlessly and without letup to the point of abusing FB and Twitter. It's bad enough that I'm expected to grandstand my own wares, but I'm also expected to cross-promote dozens of other authors in the publisher's stable. This makes my FB and Twitter pages look like a spam launch. I cooled this kind of promo behavior some time ago. The minute a publisher asks me for a full marketing plan (again), I'm going to ask them for the same thing.
 
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magicalfantasy5

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Limitless does something similar to that with its whole #TeamLimitless mantra, though to be fair Jennifer doesn't try to force us to plug each other's work. It's something that I've seen her and others at the company mention, but there isn't any obligation.


#TeamLimitless itself is a fraud. A lot of us are friends, almost naturally, but everyone who works for the company besides Lydia (marketing) comes across as phony and every bit of information is geared toward getting us to spend money. As much as I personally like Lydia, there's quite a bit of shadiness in the whole conflict of interest with HEA that none of them ever want to address. I don't want to pay some "expert" like Jonny Andrews thousands of dollars to tell me to take out Facebook ads and build a newsletter. I'm not paying Limitless' own employees to market my book through blog tours from their external company.

The whole culture there just wants to make me quit writing. They don't care about books at all. In Jennifer's own words, they're "products." If I want to sell products over twitter and through newsletter, I know plenty of makeup companies that do that stuff.
 

lavender40

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The #TeamLimitless thing is mostly fine and can be ignored -- except recently when there's been a bunch of high-shool-esque drama and vague Facebook posts about behind-the-scenes author squabbles and drama.... (It's not a club. It's a publisher, a business.)
 

magicalfantasy5

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I agree that it can be ignored, but #TeamLimitless helps perpetuate a fraudulent message. Jennifer and her minions promote that garbage to get us to help each other because that's the "culture." It isn't. When does Limitless ever help us?

It isn't fine. It's weird that Jennifer calls us a family. We are not and while I never cared about that, it saddens me that she abuses that to get authors' trust which she then uses to get them to spend money on scam people and blog tours.
 

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Wow. I'm a bit shocked at the drama from this thread. I'm published with three different epublishers, Limitless being one of them. I've had nothing but wonderful experiences with Limitless. The information someone posted earlier (I'm not scrolling back through this thread) is not accurate. I have two series published with them and have a separate contract for each book. The contract clearly states Limitless has rights of first refusal. Some authors are not getting their subsequent books signed...that is to be expected in the world of publishing.

As for Jennifer and Jessica signing on/off with "Aloha", really? That's an issue? I'm not seeing the big deal there. And, yes, Johnny's webinar was a sales pitch. I learned a few things about Facebook ads and did not sign up with him. I did not feel any pressure from Jennifer to sign with him; I believe she had the best interest at heart. There are a lot of newbies with Limitless and they've been asking about marketing. This is a small press. If you're looking for a great marketing campaign, get published with the big 5. And even then...I have author friends with Harlequin who are going Indie for the same reasons people have listed here. The fact is, publishers--big and small--tend to be focusing on their big money makers. Is that right? Is that fair? Who knows.

I'm not one to get involved with drama, but felt I needed to speak up for my publisher. No, I'm not a part of the admin team. I'm a lowly author who writes in her free time and holds a full time job outside of the publishing/writing world. Those of you shopping around for an agent or publisher, I advise you to connect with current clients who will share their personal stories. Forums such as this one can be very helpful, but take them at face value. I'm with another publisher who is terrible, yet there is little to no negative information here about them. Am I going to start a negative thread? Absolutely not. If someone asks me my honest opinion about said publisher, I will give my honest opinion.

Take it or leave it. But don't judge someone based on someone else's review. Has your book ever received a bad review? Have you ever read a book that you've loved that has been given a bad review? Should people never pick up that book again because one, two, twenty people didn't like it? Think about it. Do your own research and come to your own conclusion. I'm not trying to sway you in one direction or the other, just be cautious of where you get your information.
 

VeryBigBeard

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I'm with another publisher who is terrible, yet there is little to no negative information here about them. Am I going to start a negative thread? Absolutely not. If someone asks me my honest opinion about said publisher, I will give my honest opinion.

Take it or leave it. But don't judge someone based on someone else's review. Has your book ever received a bad review? Have you ever read a book that you've loved that has been given a bad review? Should people never pick up that book again because one, two, twenty people didn't like it? Think about it. Do your own research and come to your own conclusion. I'm not trying to sway you in one direction or the other, just be cautious of where you get your information.

It's your choice, of course, not to post negative reviews.

Consider, though, why people do: to give fair warning to, in a book's case, a customer. In a publisher's case, to give fair warning to a colleague.

Of course each voice in here is only one voice, but you're discounting them in entirety as "drama" and that's a mischaracterization. People share their experiences, each as legitimate as yours. We form our judgments on the totality of those experiences, and on our own research, including research here on this forum. It's a resource for which I am very, very grateful. It's taught me a lot and helped get me out of a not-so-great situation before it got unsalvageable.

Limitless have made posts in this thread for all to see. (Or at least, their posts are quoted. Limitless went on a clean-up spree.) That's all I need to decide what I think of this publisher, and that's before we get to the psychic stuff.
 

pinkbowvintage

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Forums such as this one can be very helpful, but take them at face value. I'm with another publisher who is terrible, yet there is little to no negative information here about them. Am I going to start a negative thread? Absolutely not. If someone asks me my honest opinion about said publisher, I will give my honest opinion.

But...that's the point of this forum, to provide background information on publishers and to help authors make the best choices for themselves. There is nothing wrong or immoral about vetting places, asking the hard questions, and demanding good answers. I have learned so much from the Bewares forum and am still learning all of the time.

Of course we read everything with a grain of salt, because everyone's experiences vary. But if the same people tend to have the same experiences, then that should tell you something.
 

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Here is the full note:

"I have to respond to a few things I've been reading, and I think you would benefit from a little insight.
1) You will not make a good or even decent "income" with one book out, or even two or three for that matter. This can be true, but if you're having to divide your time between mass promo and marketing, your production time will be split. So if a publisher wants more books, then promotion should be as light on the author side as possibleto allow an author time to produce.So why push a list of promotion onto those who initially produce the work that brings money back into their hands?

Some genres do better than others, there are trends that happen in the book world and the trends sell and they sell well. Understand the trends and don't get upset if paranormal romance is not selling well but romance is and you insist on writing paranormal romance. You can't change what's hot in the market because you like writing in a certain genre.
Okay, but how does this balance out in promotions? Do they then only fully promote the selling trends, adding to sustaining that trend? Or do they promote everything equally across the board?

2) It's VERY difficult to gain traction as a writer if you are only producing 1 or 2 books a year...or even 3. Unless you already have several books out and have a following. You should be at least producing 4 a year...at least. But then you need and have a right to ask for quality editing and production turnaround time to support that production, thus work with an author to get the best work out there, even if that means more rounds of edits and delaying a project. If the process is going too quick, are the authors getting quality production?I'm a content editor; I know how long it can take a script to go through content edits, then how long an author can need to work those 1st/2nd/3rd edits.

Readers have reading ADHD and they will forget you if your not feeding their reading obsession fast enough.
That's a little unfair on readers. If you've all done your jobs right (author, editor, publisher) the reader won't forget you: I know I don't forget authors who have a left an impression. It's your job to make your work memorable: quality, not just quantity, sells, and it keeps selling a work.

Because if your not doing it another writer will.
Leads back to question one: writers can only produce if they're allowed enough time produce.

3) Writing is not a get rich quick type of job. It's not even it get a good extra income quick kind of job. It's hard. It's grueling. And it's a JOB! Agreed. If you owned a business and just showed up to work once in awhile, and only brought in things to sell in your store once in awhile what would happen? Nothing. What if you spent every waking moment pacing the pavement and bringing people into your store, then what? Nothing. Because even if you got the people in your store and you only have 1 or 2 items on the shelf, they are not going to come back. You are creating a store with products. You need products in your store.Write and write often if you want your store to succeed. Back to question one: writers can only produce if they're given time to produce.

4) There must be a BALANCE of bringing people into your "store" and offering new "products" you must do both...Build your presence, email list, social media following, and advertise (free or paid). This is how people find you. Blog tours, paid advertising sites, social media is to be found, once you are found you need something to keep your readers attention. Products, and new products coming out consistently. Balance is key. I don't agree with paid anything. Authors can promote their works for free, there doesn't have to be any cost at all, and I'd be skeptical of any publishing company who peddled any aspect of cost off an author, even just as a recommendation. I draw the line at paid ads, which is where a publisher usually steps in.

5) Book Signing are fun, and they're a good tax write off, but they will not bring you income in the way you think they will. You might get in touch with a few new readers, but a good income it will not make. What book signings are good for is NETWORKING with other authors/writers and building an email list of everyone who visits your booth. Or give away a book or basket of books in exchange for an email address. When you network with other authors, you can use each others social media presence and email lists to cross promote. That can be powerful. Authors can also become offended by this if all you're doing is making connections to cross promote. Readers will pick up on it too.
If you are not making the income you want ask yourself:
*How many books do I have out?
*When was my last release?
*How long is it between releases?
*How much time do I commit to "building" social media, email list, etc. (not posting but increasing the size)?
*How much time do I spend writing?

Also: what exactly has the publishing company done to promote this book and help ease time so I can write?

If you have several books out and a good balance of building your presence and writing and you're still not selling. Then it's time to rebrand yourself or try and different genre. Search the trends and see if you are in "the now" or the "what was hot last year" categories." Write to trend"?

I kept expecting the... and in return, we will do X and X... but it never comes up. Kind of feels like advice to a self-published author. Where's the balanced advice on what a publishing company should be doing to help an author, as opposed to an author just helping themselves?
 
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magicalfantasy5

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I kept expecting the... and in return, we will do X and X... but it never comes up. Kind of feels like advice to a self-published author. Where's the balanced advice on what a publishing company should be doing to help an author, as opposed to an author just helping themselves?

Your guess is as good as mine. Marketing is very friendly and all, but they don't actually do anything. The posts are so formulaic that I don't really see why that would make anyone want to buy a product. Limitless always talks about the value of "exposure" as if that's really all you can do to help sell your book.

I'm glad that Busymom is happy, but having read this thread over a few times, one thing sticks out. The people who have issues with Limitless have specific concerns. The one's who like Limitless don't, or say that they're not as bad as other publishers.

I also think it's fairly absurd of Busymom to bring reviews into this equation given Limitless' well known editorial deficiencies. If you got one of the good editors, congratulations. I don't expect anyone who reads the reviews of my book to buy it after seeing the complaints about the editing. Why would they? Why even make that comparison with regards to a company that doesn't care about its own editorial integrity?
 

busymom

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To each his own. As many of you have said, this is a public forum to inform those doing research before committing anywhere (which is wise). I just wanted to offer my two cents. My editor is fan-freaking-tastic. My reviews have been awesome. My ratings on my Limitless books are much higher than my other books. Is it because of Limitless or because I'm growing as a writer? Who knows. I know the more books I write, the more I sell--of my backlist as well. I have had a wonderful experience with Limitless (so not into the psychic thing and see why that would turn people off, but it has never come up nor been any part of my writing/editing/marketing/publishing) and look forward to publishing more with them.

Signing off.
 

triceretops

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The big red flag or me was no agents allowed. This doesn't happen very often, even in the small press. You'll usually see agent "welcome" tags in most publisher mission statements. After they offered the contract I asked if my agent could peruse it. They were pretty abrupt with me and declined the deal. Primarily, this says two things to me: We're not going to give you an advance and we're not going to change our royalty rates.

I don't know about anything else. Their books could very well sell and they might have a lot of satisfied authors. To those authors, congrats and I hope things continue to go great guns for you.

"Aloha" was only an identity marker for me. It just tied the editor to the publisher, making it easier for me to remember. Jennifer was quite pleasant to exchange with in the beginning.
 

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Yeah, I'm not an agent evangelist, and neither is my agent. Matter of fact he has a post on his blog today listing the pros and cons. But a "no agents" qualifier from a publisher makes my ears prickle.
 

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That would be a huge red flag for me. Now, I don't currently have or want an agent. But "no agent involvement" implies, perhaps accidentally, that they know there are egregious author-negative clauses in their contract that a savvy agent might pick up. Conversely, it might be as simple as "we don't want to split the checks." However, it would make me back away and search out someone else. I have little use for publishers who require agents, as well.
 

magicalfantasy5

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Questioning the use of "aloha" is definitely fair game considering Jennifer's shadiness/South Dakotan heritage. She's misrepresenting who she is, like she does with everything.

It doesn't need to bother you necessarily, but I like knowing that the only person who ever says aloha in an e-mail isn't actually Hawaiian.