Good Mourning Publishing

kaitie · Aug 19, 2013

Saw this one pop up in the paying markets forum. Website here.

No information on who is behind it that I can see. It looks like they have published three anthologies. They do paperback as well as ebooks, so I'd be curious to know if they have any distribution to get the books in stores. I checked one book on Amazon and the ranking is around 400,000, so it doesn't seem to be selling particularly well.

They're offering $30 for accepted stories and a free copy of the book. This seems low to me, but I've never looked into anthologies before. Considering they're taking works up to 15,000 words, though, it seems remarkably low--less than a penny a word. There is also no mention of how royalties are split (if at all).

They're looking for superhero stories, of which I have one I could submit, but just from my first glance it seems not to be the best choice out there so I'm holding back. Just thought I'd see what other people thought as well.

ETA: The name seems really odd to me for a romance publisher. Why would you want your romance line to be associated with death?

nkkingston · Aug 19, 2013

::just lost all my post. Pout::

I think the name is meant to suggest we should be cheerfully mourning the death of traditional romance, judging by their About. On the one hand, I applaud anyone trying to encourage diversity. On the other, I don't think announcing the death of romance is going to win you many readers in the romance crowd, who would be the biggest market out there for love stories.

The name makes it very hard to find them or anything about them online; I keep getting grief counseling instead. It is entirely too hard to find out who works for them. Christy Stewart is one of their editors (possibly the only one?), and also has a story in one of their current anthologies. Their tumblr lists 'Megan' as CEO and 'Cosmic' as webmistress.

Megan is Megan Hansen (confirmed by her tumblr, on which she announced "I have decided to be unstoppable and am tackling a big dream! I’m starting my own romance publishing company, Good Mourning Publishing!") who's done covers for Christy before. I don't know how much of their current art is done by her (the cover for the Otherkin anthology is really pretty - take credit, whoever made it!)

I'm not even going to try and track down 'Cosmic'.

The usual flags apply:
- home page is aimed at authors, not readers
- books appear on Amazon as published by Createspace, rather than by the publisher
- staff aren't listed on the website, and from what I can find on them have no significantly relevant experience in publishing
- at least one member of staff is also an author

I was going to include new press, but they're actually about 18 months old now. Still new enough to make me want to hold off another year or so, especially with the slow rate of releases.

Flat fees aren't unusual for anthologies, but $30 is very low, and if that was all I got I'd expect a percentage of royalties too. If it's just a flat rate, $100 or more would be closer to the going rate. It's higher than the $0.002 per word they offered for a previous anthology, so at least payments are going up!

kaitie · Aug 19, 2013

The one I looked at showed as published by the publisher, not Createspace. Granted, that doesn't mean much.

Also, the $.002 is what it comes out to if you have a 15,000 word story. If you get a much shorter story accepted it would obviously be more, but they probably just multiplied it by their max word count to get the $30.

Which isn't to say they are a good idea. I'd still pass on them and recommend others to. It looks to me like another amateur unhappy with what they see and trying to start their own publisher.

Which is a shame, because I do like the idea of having anthologies out there for non-traditional romances. And that one cover really is gorgeous.

KimJo · Aug 19, 2013

By way of comparison on the price, Cleis Press's anthologies seem to frequently pay a flat rate of $50. But that's for stories that are generally about 2000-3000 words.

If the company has been around for 18 months, it's a bit of a concern to me that I haven't heard of them previously; not that I'm aware of every publisher in existence, obviously, but erotic romance is kinda my thang, and I usually hear here, on other forums, or at the very least on social media about new publishers that pop up.

nkkingston · Aug 19, 2013

I don't think it's erotic romance. At least, I hope not - one of their authors is only 14!

KimJo · Aug 19, 2013

Ah, then I hope not as well.

CaoPaux · Apr 10, 2018

No activity after '16.

Good Mourning Publishing

kaitie

With great power comes

nkkingston

Bemused Girl

kaitie

With great power comes

KimJo

Outside the box, with the werewolves

nkkingston

Bemused Girl

KimJo

Outside the box, with the werewolves

CaoPaux

Mostly Harmless