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Limitless Publishing

JBuck

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I have experienced much the same as busymom and I'm happy to work with Limitless again.
They set a publishing schedule and stick to it. Communication is great.
Their covers are to die for!
I love my editor.
They offer marketing strategies, much like Harlequin does (who I'm also signed with) but have never been pushy with it.
And I'm fine with Aloha - they live in Hawaii.
 

magicalfantasy5

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I actually agree with most of JBuck's assessment. Limitless does stick to their schedule, have excellent covers, some (line, not content) editors are regarded as quality, and someone from LP does respond to all e-mails. That's all true and from what I've seen from many of the dissenters, hasn't ever been called into question.

My only question to JBuck is, how do you feel about Jennifer pushing paid blog tours on us when Lydia & Crystal both run blog tour companies? Are you okay with the fact that your publisher asks you to pay its own employees?

I won't deny that Limitless does some things much better than most small presses. My trainwreck of an experience could've been even worse at some other publisher. But that doesn't make Limitless a good publisher, even beyond the few things they do competently.
 

pinkbowvintage

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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.

I just want to emphasize that I really am happy for you. I'm glad you love your editor and have had a great experience with this publisher. I would be curious to know what your sales numbers are like, but obviously you don't have to share that.
 

JBuck

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Magicalfantasy5, they have never pushed a paid blog tour on me. They sent an email with a list of blog tour companies but it was never suggested to use one in particular or that I need to use one at all. It was merely an email focusing on marketing tips.
They have a Facebook group but I don't have a personal Facebook account, just a business page, so I never joined it and they were fine with that.
 

lavender40

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I think a huge point is that, from my understanding, no content editing is available. I was not aware of this, and I've seen messages in the FB group from Limitless employees basically reprimanding authors for making too many changes during the editing process. While I understand having a book beta'd and ready for line edits isn't uncommon in the indie world, not being made aware of that ahead of time was startling...
 

magicalfantasy5

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JBuck: I remember getting something similar. I don't mean to suggest that Jennifer has sent me an e-mail specifically saying to hire Lydia & Crystal, but it's implied on more than one occasion. Just yesterday, she also mentioned Jonny Andrews again in a rare appearance in the group, reinforcing my belief that there's some sort of kickback in it for her. She posted an interview he'd done, which is certainly more interest that she'd shown any of us.

Lavender40: I've seen that as well. For anyone who wants some insight into Jennifer's opinions on editing, the following is from a comment on that massive "marketing" message I posted that Fallen provided some great analysis on. I've screenshotted the whole thread and can verify to an admin if needed.

<redacted author name>: "Yeah, it's too bad we don't have content editing smile emoticon That would really help us re-work some of our manuscripts into really stellar works that overlap multiple genres. There was so much good advice in here! Can't wait to submit my romance to LP!"

<Jennifer>: "That's what many authors use beta readers for. To find holes in their stories, help with character development and inconsistencies. You should really have a few people in your writing circle who you can bounce ideas off of and who enjoy your work enough to give you feedback. That's really all that content editing is. You need to create this environment on your own. It's important to surround yourself with people you trust to do this. Most of the authors who do well have a "team" around them they've build to help them in this regard. And it does not cost any money. You can't rely on the publisher too much for this. The story is your baby, treat it like one."
 

busymom

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I just want to emphasize that I really am happy for you. I'm glad you love your editor and have had a great experience with this publisher. I would be curious to know what your sales numbers are like, but obviously you don't have to share that.


My books before Limitless were static in the 800K range (Amazon). My Limitless books have been steady at 40K and have brought more readers to my other books (which are now, after a year, in the 100K range). The first month of my Limitless releases I was anywhere from 1K-20K.
 

Aggy B.

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My books before Limitless were static in the 800K range (Amazon). My Limitless books have been steady at 40K and have brought more readers to my other books (which are now, after a year, in the 100K range). The first month of my Limitless releases I was anywhere from 1K-20K.

With all due respect, Amazon's ranking numbers are so screwy that they don't tell us what your sales are like unless we know specifically which list you are referring to. (I had a novella on Amazon that on one list averaged around the 100k-150k range in the rankings, with peaks into the 40k range. With an average of one sale per 2 weeks.) If you are referring to Top 100 or some such, the numbers you are giving us are fairly good. If you're talking about one of the sub-sub-sub lists (FREX: Fiction - Genre - Western - Sci-fi) those rankings don't necessarily equal solid sales.

And I'm not saying you must have terrible sales if you're with a small press, only that the numbers you are giving us to try and demonstrate your sales are good are lacking critical info.
 

Filigree

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Just going by Amazon's broader sales ranks, there are some books doing well at Limitless. I'm not disputing that. But given the editorial stance and the owner's basic inexperience...I think those breakout books might be thriving because of what their authors are doing, not from any help with Limitless. The publisher's publicity appears largely limited to echo-chamber promo among its own authors. It's possible those books would do okay if self-published.

But for anyone chosing Limitless, I wish them well.
 

magicalfantasy5

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I have a friend who's been at LP for roughly the same time as me (last fall) who's been selling fairly well. Certainly better than 95% of Limitless' roster.

I know she's put in hundreds of dollars of her own money into promo and publishes quite frequently. While I'm certainly happy for her success, the question I keep asking myself is, what is Limitless' role in her success?

Is it even fair to credit them for any of their authors' success when they blatantly admit they have such a hands off role in everything. Content, do it yourself. Promo, do it yourself. What do they do?
 

pinkbowvintage

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I have a friend who's been at LP for roughly the same time as me (last fall) who's been selling fairly well. Certainly better than 95% of Limitless' roster.

I know she's put in hundreds of dollars of her own money into promo and publishes quite frequently. While I'm certainly happy for her success, the question I keep asking myself is, what is Limitless' role in her success?

Is it even fair to credit them for any of their authors' success when they blatantly admit they have such a hands off role in everything. Content, do it yourself. Promo, do it yourself. What do they do?

I find it distressing to hear that she's invested so much of her OWN money into promotion when she has a publisher. It makes me also wonder what exactly they can provide and how they are earning their cut of profits.
 

akaria

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I have a friend who's been at LP for roughly the same time as me (last fall) who's been selling fairly well. Certainly better than 95% of Limitless' roster.

I know she's put in hundreds of dollars of her own money into promo and publishes quite frequently. While I'm certainly happy for her success, the question I keep asking myself is, what is Limitless' role in her success?

Is it even fair to credit them for any of their authors' success when they blatantly admit they have such a hands off role in everything. Content, do it yourself. Promo, do it yourself. What do they do?

They want ebook, print AND audio rights for five years, yet in the FAQ they say if you want to get your book into bookstores you need to do it yourself. So why are they taking print rights?

They don't offer any swag or marketing materials, but have a marketing team that will help you do blog tours, giveaways, etc. It doesn't say they'll do it for you or they'll pay for it. So they give you a list of names and email addresses and I guess you have to do that yourself too. Why does an author need them again?

They don't provide review PDF or mobi files until 10 days before your release date. If you want one sooner you have to ask for it. If you want an epub file you have to ask for it. Then they throw in some scary language about beware of giving away copies because that's how books are pirated. Are you kidding me?

So you have to do all this stuff yourself and in return you get a pretty cover (hey, the covers are nice) and some undetermined royalty percentage because:

  • As a new generation publisher we want to see our authors succeed, therefore, our royalty structure is much different than other “traditional publishers. Which includes a higher royalty rate.

Plenty of publishers tell authors upfront what their royalty rate is. Why can't Limitless? I hope that much different royalty structure means the author keeps 85% because if I'm doing all this work, I better be making most of the money.
 
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lavender40

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Something must be happening behind the scenes at Limitless. Folks are riled -- apparently already-set edit and release dates are being pushed back three and four months. This from a company that only a few months ago was telling its authors they needed to be putting out 5+ books a year in order to be successful.
 

magicalfantasy5

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Here is the message made posted by Lori Whitwam on the Facebook page.

"IMPORTANT:

The current situation regarding rescheduled edits is a hot-button topic, and this group is not for raging or accusations.
The decision made by the executive team was NOT made lightly. It's not poor management, it's good business. Too many small presses have failed lately because they let their production out-pace revenue. We won't let that happen. When the new monthly royalty system made it clear it would be easy for that to happen, changes had to be made so we'll be around for you and your books for a long time.
Management doesn't like it any more than you do. It's a HUGE headache. But if you want to have your books cared for without corner-cutting, something has to give. Publishing takes time and money, neither of which can be conjured out of thin air.
Outside submissions are closed so we can focus on all of you and your books and get caught up to have a shorter gap before edits.
If you feel your particular situation is such that it needs to be addressed, contact the executive team directly.. But this topic will no longer be supported in this group."



Two things jump out. One is that the company has a cash problem. They've dropped several series over the past few months, including some from others who promoted new releases more than the "marketing" department ever did.

Second is the absence of Jessica Gunhammer, Jennifer's daughter whose social media accounts have been deleted. Royalty statements also no longer come from her.

As of now from the looks of it, Limitless is being run by Lori Whitwam, who routinely deletes any serious question posed by authors and silences any voices of concern, and Elise Fahey Bait, another relative of Jennifer's who joined the company a few months ago as an "author liaison."

While I agree with Lavender's statement that closing subs was a good decision, I would note that things at Limitless right now appear to be a bigger mess than ever before.
 

Undercover

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It's so unsettling to see these small presses struggle. They look so good in the beginning and then somewhere down the line things don't turn out so good. They were paying advances at one point from what I remember.
 

magicalfantasy5

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Limitless' problems are simple. Jennifer doesn't have any background in publishing. They don't actually promote their own books, but they do tell you to pay lots of money for blog tours and for services provided by Jonny Andrews. Why doesn't Jennifer pay for him if he's so good?

There's a recent thread where one author says she put over a thousand dollars into marketing her book and didn't see any noticeable results. She is a con artist and it looks like her business is failing because the con isn't working out so well anymore.
 

DonnaDuck

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I'm working with some Limitless authors on a project now (I am not a Limitless author) and they all tout the company line so I wanted to find out more about the pub. It's just . . . disappointing that they seem to be like many other small presses I've come across. I had a less than positive experience with another indie press after a referral from a writing companion who'd just signed with this other company and recommended them. I found that company's information here and was immediately turned off and even forwarded her the link to the thread. At the time her experiences were still good and better than her experiences with other small presses so she pushed forward. After not getting answers from this other pub I just bowed out entirely, and unfortunately this person's experience with said pub spiraled down the drain not longer after that. It sucks. Couple that with Month9, a small press what people were like YES THIS IS GOOD, imploding and it's just . . . tell me why I shouldn't self-publish again?

In my experience with all of this probably the best bit of advice I've picked up is asking yourself, "what can this publisher do for me that I can't do for myself?" One constant I've read through this entire thread is that Limitless provides gorgeous covers. And that's awesome. But you can buy one of those from any myriad of cover designers out there. But across the years of this thread other constants are poor editing and lack of marketing/less-than-stellar "marketing plans." Neither of those seemed to have changed. So if you're going to have to do all of this yourself, what's left for Limitless to provide, exactly?

From what I've seen they do seem to target Wattpad writers. Or a lot of Wattpad writers I've interacted with also happen to have contracts and books out with Limitless. Regardless of the chicken or the egg on that one, from what I'm seeing the concentration seems to be high. I can postulate the reasoning behind that, but it would only be guessing.

But I'm leery of any press whose owners have zero publishing experience. Having success (however that's defined) as a self-published author does not equate to being able to take on others in a bid to have your own publishing company. It really makes me sad that these kinds of presses really attempt to hone in on writers who just want to be published, who are totally desperate to have their books in print. Trust me, the want is there so bad. Even though the pub I mentioned turned out to be shady and I wanted nothing to do with them, it still killed me to walk away from the interest.

I just wish I could get in the minds of some of these people. Do they genuinely have good intentions and want to help other authors? Or do they just want to make money right now? But you don't need business acumen to understand that if you put out a crappy product, and enough crappy products, you will not make money because no one will buy them. That's just common sense.
 

magicalfantasy5

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Hi everyone,

Jennifer just posted this message to the Limitless facebook group.

"*INGRAM UPDATE* At this point because of the high rate of return on ingram, we are no longer offering a return option for book stores. (1) Paperback sale = $0.87 (1) Paperback return = -$7.86 this will reflect on your royalty statement if you've have a negative balance due to returns. That means it will cost you $7.00 per book for every return made back to Ingram from the book store."



I'm not familiar with this Ingram policy. Does this make sense? Seems very sketchy.
 

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Hi everyone,

Jennifer just posted this message to the Limitless facebook group.

"*INGRAM UPDATE* At this point because of the high rate of return on ingram, we are no longer offering a return option for book stores. (1) Paperback sale = $0.87 (1) Paperback return = -$7.86 this will reflect on your royalty statement if you've have a negative balance due to returns. That means it will cost you $7.00 per book for every return made back to Ingram from the book store."



I'm not familiar with this Ingram policy. Does this make sense? Seems very sketchy.

What? Like - the author's share of royalties is 87 cents, but if a book is returned the author has to pay $7.86?!? Is that what they're saying? That makes no sense. It should be if an author's share of royalties is 87 cents, the author loses that same 87 cents if a book is returned. But... if books are returned from the bookstore before they're even sold, that shouldn't show up on the author's royalty statement at all, unless... I don't know. Unless there's something very strange in the contract?
 

magicalfantasy5

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There isn't anything about that in the contract.

The thing I'm sketched out by is that Limitless has had a relationship with Ingram that's come across as strange. Endless problems and transfers from Createspace to Ingram. Given their recent money trouble and Jennifer's overall shadiness, I'm concerned that something seriously wrong is happening with our royalties.
 

C Alberts

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Hi everyone,

Jennifer just posted this message to the Limitless facebook group.

"*INGRAM UPDATE* At this point because of the high rate of return on ingram, we are no longer offering a return option for book stores. (1) Paperback sale = $0.87 (1) Paperback return = -$7.86 this will reflect on your royalty statement if you've have a negative balance due to returns. That means it will cost you $7.00 per book for every return made back to Ingram from the book store."



I'm not familiar with this Ingram policy. Does this make sense? Seems very sketchy.

From a bookstore's perspective, regular terms from Ingram include their discount (based on overall store volume, usually 40%-42% off the book's list price) and returnability. So when a store orders a book from Ingram, they have the option of returning it if it doesn't sell. The store gets credit for the return, although not the full amount they paid for the book. Many of these returns, for example, could be hardcovers that are leftover when the paperback comes out. Other times a store might purge some of its stale stock to get the credit and make room on the shelves for new stuff. This is standard. When ordering directly from legitimate publishers, they will also offer returnability and usually they provide full credit too. So the store is only on the hook for shipping the returns to the publisher.

I am not an expert on how publishers handle those returns in terms of royalties to the author, but there is no doubt in my mind that it is extremely sketchy to basically charge an author $7 if a bookstore returns a copy of their book. That's absurd. I would assume that this issue should be spelled out in the contract between the author and the publisher.

Ultimately, returnability is determined by the publisher when they contract with Ingram for distribution. All major publishers do it. Most legitimate small presses and even micro-presses do it. From the perspective of a bookstore, if I were to look at a listing on Ingram for a book I am considering carrying, if I see that it is non-returnable it is a deal-breaker. The only exception would be for a special order for a customer, and if they aren't a customer we know well, we would require pre-payment from them.

It is also a red flag about the publisher - if they can't/won't provide returnability via Ingram, they either don't know what they are doing or simply aren't doing things well. Returnability is the industry standard.

So if this publisher removes the returnability option for their books through Ingram, they will probably not end up in very many bricks-and-mortar shops aside from special orders. Perhaps if the book is the right niche for the store, and by a known author with a good sales record, there would be a higher likelihood of the book reaching the shelves. But that would be the exception.