What the heck. I have a few minutes to spare. We'll see what all I feel like commenting on.
We developed our model after talking with authors who found it nearly impossible to break into the traditional publishing system. There are so many steps, endless rejections, and the ones who were published complained of minimal revenue from each book sale (below 25%). They also found the marketing offered by the publishers ineffective. This method typically produces high quality work but not all rejected work is bad. We know this because there is a huge surge in self-publishing. The industry has grown over 300% in the last 5 years with nearly 250,000 self-published titles in the US in 2011 (that’s only the ones with ISBN’s). Self-Publishing has lower barriers to entry and pays higher book sale revenue. But it usually provides little to no marketing and there are no mechanisms in place to protect early consumers of these books. I often see self published titles posted for $5-15 from an unknown author with no ratings or information to help influence my purchase decision.
Just because a book has been self-published doesn't mean that it's high quality. In fact, have you ever looked at any of those 250,000 books? The vast majority are very low-mediocre quality. The fact that there are no barriers is exactly the reason why so much of it is so poor--all those people who got rejected by publishers because the quality wasn't good enough are able to self-publish the same books without a second thought.
I don't see at all how you can use this as a way of proving publishers are passing over high quality books. I'm not saying it doesn't happen (my book roxors, and it got passed over), but that this is a major logic fail.
It's been my experience talking with authors that most of the ones who talk about how impossible it is to break in to publishing are those who just aren't good enough yet and who don't take responsibility for their rejections. Those who succeed are the ones who work their asses off to improve, those who persevere. Usually the ones complaining about the publishing industry are upset by rejections and not yet willing to say "maybe my work is the problem. What can I do to fix it?"
Of the two, which would you rather base a business model off of?
As for royalties, I can personally say that I'd rather have 10% of 10,000 copies sold than 70% of 100.
We began to research book marketing and quickly learned that word of mouth was the best marketing tool (86% of e-readers get their recommendations from friends, family or coworkers). The only way to get people talking about a book is to get it into their hands. This is why the first few copies of a book on our system will be paid for by a social media mention. We’re getting the conversation started about the book. We learned by talking with readers that some of them love to be the first kid on the block to find something new, and that those readers are willing to wade through the not-so-good stuff to find those gems. Screwpulp provides an outlet for those readers but, more importantly, those readers are providing a valuable service for us and the author. They are our vetting process.
Okay, I'm only half-functional at the moment, but you're using readers as your slush readers? Because honestly, that strikes me as a terrible idea. Here's why:
Say I'm a reader. I got to a publisher's site, buy the book and read it. It's crap. Maybe I decide hm..., I'll try one more. I buy another book. It's also crap. I decide not to buy any more books by that publisher.
This is
especially true if I've paid money for it. I don't see how you'll be able to keep people around. Most people aren't interested in reading dozens of poor books to find one that's good. We want to read for pleasure and entertainment. And to charge someone to do what is the most basic function of a commercial publisher? Kind of sleazy.
Second thought: The only way this would ever work is if you had a
massive following in the first place. Putting messages up on Facebook don't matter if only three people ever read them.
The majority of people won't click on a link to a book in the first place. Of those who do, only a small percentage will buy. That's one of the reasons paid advertising isn't usually worth it--you don't get enough books sold to make up for the amount you spent buying the advertising.
I could see something like this perhaps having a chance if you had several hundred thousand people on a site following you, but somehow I imagine this press has far fewer. There are a gazillion sites competing for attention on the web, using the same social media formula. You really have to do something different to bring anything to the table.
Now that we’ve engaged readers and started the word-of-mouth marketing approach, we now need to ensure that we can get some ratings – good or bad. As mentioned, readers will be able to download a book for a social media mention. Before they can download additional books at this price-point, they will be required to rate and/or review the previous book. We also limit ‘free’ books to once per day for these readers to give them time to read what they’ve downloaded. Once the initial ‘free’ copies have been exhausted, the price of the book will automatically rise to 99 cents, but now it will have a rating for potential buyers to base their decision on. Books with low ratings at this 99 cent mark will be ignored by potential buyers, but highly rated books will be quickly purchased. As the book becomes more popular, it gains value, and the price will continue to rise. This has a twofold effect. It accelerates the growth of a book’s reader base, and also builds confidence in the book’s brand. We will continually monitor a book’s sales over time to find which price best suits a book’s value to readers which should result in the highest profits.
Free sales don't do as much for authors as they once did before Amazon changed their algorithms. Nowadays books that once might have "sold" a thousand free copies might get a hundred. Free doesn't automatically guarantee exposure, and it doesn't guarantee ratings, either. There are plenty of readers who collect more free books than they can ever read.
I've also heard tell that the $.99 price point is weakening as more poor-quality books have come into that price. Your plan might work, or you might find that readers are less willing to take a chance because they've been burned too many times.
We do not see ourselves as competition to traditional publishing. We actually aren’t publishers at all. We are only providing a self-publishing marketplace for those who are already ignored by the traditional method. Our low-overhead approach allows the author to retain 75% of the final book sale (gross not net). We are a ‘no-strings-attached’ company with the best intentions for the author. We do not assume any IP rights of course, but we also have no rules toward exclusivity. We only ask that if you provide your work for sale on our site, that you give us 90 days to prove our method with your book. During that time you are free to sell your work anywhere else you choose. If at anytime, after that 90 days, you feel that your work is better off in a different market you can remove it. If your book is well received through our process and is picked up by a traditional publisher we would be extremely happy.
So what exactly are you doing for authors? Because it sounds like you just said your company doesn't do much more than what an author can do self-publishing himself.
We will provide each author with a dashboard where they can create marketing links, and review analytics on their book sales to help them determine which marketing tools are working best for them. From the dashboard you can track sales/profits and forecast future earnings. Each author will have a forward facing page, a public profile if you will, they can use to showcase their work and even engage their audience if they choose to do so.
Again, I'm not sure I see how this is much different from just doing it on Amazon. Authors can track their sales there, too. I also don't know how you plan to track future sales.
Our team does not have a publishing background. Sometimes it takes new eyes to tackle a problem without considering the status quo. We are all avid readers. As a reader I personally have not found a site where I can discover new authors and books, and that offers a pleasant experience. We know that the most important thing to authors is having an audience for their work. To that end, we are focusing our design and development on making a better book discovery experience for your readers. I have attached a screenshot of our development page to this post. Please let us know what you think of our design approach.
Honestly, this whole thing just strikes me as wrong, unoriginal, and ineffective on so many levels. I'm not trying to be rude in saying that, but I'd never recommend an author go with anything like this.
Saying you don't have any experience but know the problems is just...well, ignorant. Literally. How can you know what the problems are if you don't know the workings of the industry? Plenty of rejected authors think they know the problems (publishers won't publish anyone new, they don't care about original, good work, etc.), but those problems are almost always myths. Yes, there are problems in the publishing industry, but I don't see a single thing you've mentioned as being a problem, and I the problems I can think of aren't things you've mentioned.
We are currently one of 6 teams chosen from hundreds around the country to participate in The Seed Hatchery, a 90 day startup accelerator. Through this program, we have received seed funding and have formed our corporation complete with a board of directors and advisors. Our fault in approaching authors/agents was taking the advice of business gurus instead of leveraging our industry mentors. The business guys say ‘cold call’ (i.e. spam) them. I bet our mentors would’ve warned us against it.
In other words, those with experience in the industry would have let you know that this was a bad idea. And yet you still don't see why not having experience is a bad idea?
We will continue to develop our model and with your help we can fill the holes in our process. Again I want to thank you for your feedback and the opportunity to explain Screwpulp.
Okay, last thought. You aren't calling yourself a publisher, so what are you? You want to publish books, you're a publisher. An author who publishes a book with you is going to face the same problems they'd face if they went with any other publisher. First rights are gone, the books have a sales history, etc.
You don't get to say "we don't consider ourselves a publisher" because you
are. You saying you aren't doesn't change things for the authors who publish with you. Hell, it's in your name.
I hope your authors do well, for their sake, but this isn't as ingenious as you think, and it's not something I'd ever recommend.
/ramble