[Publishing svcs] WaveCloud / BookFuel

Is it this: https://www.wavecloud.com/ ??

It looks to me like a money-pit, though a well-designed money-pit.

My main note is that they don't say who they are. If I'm going to pay someone 5 cents a word to edit my work, I want to know who it is I'm paying and what their experience is.

Which services of theirs are you looking at, specifically?

They say they have a partnership with Ingram, which is a reputable mainstream book distributor. I'd be curious to know more about what exactly that partnership entails.

It's not clear to me how they distribute your book. It looks like it may only be available on WaveCloud? I hope I'm wrong about that, but if that's the case I would beware.

LetterBright said:

They say they have a partnership with Ingram, which is a reputable mainstream book distributor. I'd be curious to know more about what exactly that partnership entails.

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Ingram includes just about anything with an ISBN on its lists, so that bookshops can order them in if someone comes along and asks for a copy.

Getting a full distribution contract with Ingram involves a whole lot more, though: publishers usually have to have a history of publishing a reasonable number of books over a year, and of selling a good quantity of them; and they also have to commit to a good marketing spend on their forthcoming titles.

I suspect that their relationship with Ingram does not involve full distribution. Which makes it insignificant.

First up, it's not "How Self Publishing Really Works", it's "How Publishing Really Works".

Second, it's closed right now. Try again in a week.

Third, I'm not quite sure what this has to do with this thread.

Forum Etiquette?

This is Bill Van Orsdel. I'm one of the leaders at WaveCloud, and I thought it would be helpful to provide some information relative to the posts in this thread.

However, I don't want to violate any rules or norms here, so I thought I'd ask if it's okay to post information about our company or services here.

I appreciate any feedback.

Best Regards,

Bill

Bill,

I'm not staff here, but I've seen many threads where the highlighted organization posted responses.

I would strongly caution you: The tone of your responses is at least as important as the content.

And welcome to AW.

Who is WaveCloud?

robjvargas and praktikle1,

Thanks for the feedback. As you recommend, I'll take care with my posts.

I'm from WaveCloud and we are an author services provider. Our goal is to help independent authors bring their books to market.

Our web site clearly needs work. It is transition from its prior state - an ebook store supplied with ebooks from traditional publishers via Ingram Content Services, to its future state - an author services company that advises authors and provides production and marketing help to independent authors. Our goal is to help independent authors self-educate about publishing best practices and execute the many steps required to bring a competitive book to market.

Many of the authors I coach request services from us, but some do not. We are happy to help all authors, whether they engage with us for services or not. We are working to highlight independent authors ebooks in our ebook store, and to give them equal footing with traditionally published books.

Soon, we will be rolling out a new tool that will provide detailed and specific self-help for authors who are making the journey from "manuscript complete" to "book-on-shelf-supported-by-marketing". We plan to make the basic version of this tool free, and will be inviting authors to participate in the beta to help us improve it.

I'm happy to answer publishing questions or provide help either in this forum, or through direct messages. Authors are welcome to reach me at [email protected]


Best Regards,

Bill

Bill.VanOrsdel said:

Our web site clearly needs work. It is transition from its prior state - an ebook store supplied with ebooks from traditional publishers via Ingram Content Services, to its future state - an author services company that advises authors and provides production and marketing help to independent authors. Our goal is to help independent authors self-educate about publishing best practices and execute the many steps required to bring a competitive book to market.

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My bold.

The problem I have with that highlighted section is that you're misleading writers. Take this blog piece, for example: there are all sorts of errors there that I can see, and a good few phrases where your imprecise wording implies things which aren't true. (I would quote from it to show you what I object to, but don't seem able to: this might be a problem with my computer, but it could be something to do with your site).

Many of the authors I coach request services from us, but some do not.

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I can't find your bio on the site. What experience do you have in publishing? Have you worked as a writer? What qualifies you to coach authors?

I've found your LinkedIn profile: it shows that your work experience is in sales and marketing, but shows no publishing experience as a writer or publisher.

You're offering paid-for publication packages, I note, and they're not cheap: I am worried that you're asking writers for money, because when I put your name into Google I found this article, which alleges that

Businessman William Van Orsdel has agreed to pay $9.6 million to partners in West Glen Town Center [...] The four businessmen and their West Glen Town Center LLC sued Van Orsdel in February, claiming that he had reneged on loan obligations and engaged in various forms of fraud while managing West Glen from 2004 to 2009.

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I know the financial crisis hit many of us hard, and the timing given in that article indicates your problems arose during that difficult time: but when I see allegations of fraud being made against people who are taking money from writers, I get very worried indeed.

We are happy to help all authors, whether they engage with us for services or not. We are working to highlight independent authors ebooks in our ebook store, and to give them equal footing with traditionally published books.

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What do you mean by this, exactly?

Soon, we will be rolling out a new tool that will provide detailed and specific self-help for authors who are making the journey from "manuscript complete" to "book-on-shelf-supported-by-marketing". We plan to make the basic version of this tool free, and will be inviting authors to participate in the beta to help us improve it.

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Sites like AbsoluteWrite provide all sorts of information for free, and give writers the opportunity to talk with people with years of appropriate experience. What makes your site better? What do you offer--whether for free or at a price--that isn't already available at sites like AW for free?

praktikle1 said:

Second, I assumed since you posted the link to your blog it might have some importance, so I gave it a click.

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(derail) Old Hack didn't 'post a link' to her blog. It's part of her signature, which you can tell by the way it appears under the short horizontal line that appears above everyone's signature. (/derail)

Old Hack,

I wanted to be wary of advertising here in the forum. I was just trying to provide more information about our position in the market.

The link you found to William Van Orsdel appears to be my father. I haven't had the pleasure of being in business with him. His success and challenges remain his own.

The leaders of WaveCloud are technologists, with publishing industry experience provided by our staff and contractors. As a team, we are on our third company together, having successfully grown and sold two prior businesses.

Our unique offerings for authors will center around concentrated education woven into book production and marketing timelines.

We are working on highlighting our author testimonials on our web site, and I have been pleased with the feedback that our customer authors have provided.

I personally coach authors on the basics of book production and marketing, sharing with them the best practices of the self-publishing industry as we have collected them from conferences, training webinars, forums, blogs and our in-house publishing experts. Most of the authors I speak with are often intimidated and overwhelmed by the task in front of them and need a basic grounding before spending any money. That is that value that we are working to deliver.

Bill.VanOrsdel said:

Old Hack,

I wanted to be wary of advertising here in the forum. I was just trying to provide more information about our position in the market.

The link you found to William Van Orsdel appears to be my father. I haven't had the pleasure of being in business with him. His success and challenges remain his own.

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Thanks for the clarification, Bill.

The leaders of WaveCloud are technologists, with publishing industry experience provided by our staff and contractors. As a team, we are on our third company together, having successfully grown and sold two prior businesses.

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So you have no publishing experience?

Our unique offerings for authors will center around concentrated education woven into book production and marketing timelines.

We are working on highlighting our author testimonials on our web site, and I have been pleased with the feedback that our customer authors have provided.

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That all sounds very sales-speak.

I personally coach authors on the basics of book production and marketing, sharing with them the best practices of the self-publishing industry as we have collected them from conferences, training webinars, forums, blogs and our in-house publishing experts.

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You have no experience of working in publishing, but you're personally coaching authors in book production and marketing.

When I pay for training I expect the person coaching me to have appropriate experience and knowledge.

If you've collected your knowledge and understanding of "the best practices of the self-publishing industry" on stuff you've collected online, then you're almost certainly going to be misinforming the people who are paying you to help them.

Most of the authors I speak with are often intimidated and overwhelmed by the task in front of them and need a basic grounding before spending any money. That is that value that we are working to deliver.

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But you've not worked in publishing and you don't have the experience required to provide the advice they need.

This is proved by your blog post which I linked to above: it's hugely misleading and very ill-informed.

Tell me: where did your "in-house publishing experts" get their publishing experience? I wonder, because having read a few of your blog posts and a bit of your website, I doubt it was with a good trade publisher, and I'm worried that not only are you at risk of misleading authors, you're at risk of being misled by the "experts" you've employed.

From that blog post:

Currently it is harder than ever for a new author to get a book in front of publishers for serious consideration. It has always been difficult to get your manuscript in front of a publisher, and traditional publishing houses are increasingly cautious now; they can’t afford to take as many chances. They need to be fairly sure they can turn books into bestsellers otherwise they risk losing money. Because of this, first time authors aren’t as attractive as they once were.

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Ah, the traditional-publishing-is-a-fruitless-path meme. Very commonly used by companies or services that claim to offer an alternative and want to steer authors in that direction.

It's powerful because there's some truth to it--yes, it is difficult for new authors to break in; yes, traditional publishers are more oriented toward blockbusters than they used to be--but those grains of truth are twisted to present false conclusions. Publishers aren't looking only for bestsellers; obviously they want all their books to succeed, but "success" doesn't automatically equate to "bestseller", nor does "non-bestseller" equate to "risk of losing money." As for avoiding first-timers...sure, a first-timer represents a risk. But first-timers also represent huge potential. There are many reasons why your manuscript might not make it onto an editor's desk, and why, even if it does get an editor's attention, it might not be bought; but being a first-timer is probably one of the least important of those reasons.

There are good reasons to choose to self-publish. "I'm a new author and I could never get a traditional publisher to consider me" isn't one of them.

- Victoria

First-timers are cheap compared to having to poach some other publisher's successful novelist. That's a big plus.

There are some cover samples here:

https://www.bookfuel.com/services/create-cover-design

They're okay. Seems fair for the price.

Maybe this should be merged with the existing WaveCloud thread, since BookFuel refers to WaveCloud as their parent company.

BookFuel showed up as a Suggested Post in my Facebook feed today, so I checked here to see if they had a thread after I checked out their site. Since several here considered their prices "reasonable", I wonder if they've changed their practices. $99.00 per MONTH for a minimum of 24 months isn't reasonable IMO. That price only seems to include the cover, formatting and them forwarding the file to Amazon, CreateSpace, iTunes, etc. but there's a note that royalties are "net of royalties the distribution company charges." Charges from distributors, sure. But "royalties"?? That makes me wonder what they're really doing. BTW, the $99.00/month doesn't include proofreading! Um...wow. Oh, and marketing is a separate price and the package seems to only include setting up a Twitter account, a basic Facebook page and doing a Goodreads giveaway.

For those who posted in past years about this company, did their charges and services change?