Loomis Park Press

From their site:

Loomis Park Press was founded in 2015 for one simple reason: To publish amazing YA and NA fiction.
While self-publishing services and traditional print publishing companies are abundant, we consider ourselves the best of both worlds!


How is Loomis Park Press different from a self-publishing service? We do NOT charge upfront fees to authors who publish with us. All publishing services are provided free of charge to authors who sign with us. We also do not charge reading fees for submissions.


How is Loomis Park Press different from a traditional print publisher? We accept submissions directly from the author. Having an agent may be required at other publishing companies, but at Loomis Park Press, we’ll work directly with you.


If you sign with us, we will edit and format your book, create a cover, assign an ISBN, and make your eBook available at all major online retailers including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.


Loomis Park Press authors also receive free marketing!


So how do we make money, you ask? Like a traditional publishing company, our income is based on royalties. If you don’t make money, we don’t make money!

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They seem to stress that they aren't traditional publishers, but everything they just described sounds like traditional publishing. I'm confused as to what they think distinguishes them from "traditional publishers." I'm also wondering why the page on which I found all this information is titled "Publishing Services."

With new publishers, wait a couple years. The reason you do this is so they can fail with someone else's book. Having a book go down with a publisher is often utter legal hell even if everyone involved is still talking and that's not always the case. There also tends to be a honeymoon period where everything's great until authors start having problems getting royalties, the house starts asking for money, etc.

A lot of new presses also exhibit a certain... naiveté. All the stuff about self-publishing/"traditional" publishing is weird. It sounds like they have their hearts in the right place, but don't realize that what they've just described isn't uncommon, not to mention that trade publishing is the way it is for a reason. Couple of things there:

-Agents are a part of the deal at some stage. If a place takes unagented submissions, that can be fine, but most places that do that also have methods for agents to contact them. Do the people starting this realize how much slush they're going to get and how hard it can be to properly discern it (many new places start much too forgiving and publish a couple really bad books--this doesn't help with the staying in business part)? Then, if you were to get a contract, you'd want an agent at that point. You need someone to look over things like that, at least. And sometimes places that are naive about why that's important get a little hissy about people bringing in the lawyers. Which is a problem.

-They also don't mention real distribution, which is an issue because that's also going to impact the staying in business part. I gather this can sometimes fluctuate with eBooks--others will know better than I--but anything can be ordered at B&N, and Amazon will stock almost anything, too. It's a question of discoverability. Can they get you into bookstores? Not if they're not set up to take returns, do shipping, handle inventory, pay inventory tax, etc.--that's like 2-3 full-time jobs right there. What does that marketing involve? Is it effective? Do you want to be the one to find out? With a more established place you could poke around and find out what kind of marketing has been done on previous titles. Not the case for a new press.

-They do offer paid editing services, which raises a question about whether they're going to be funneling authors to that (problem) or authors from that service to their publishing arm (also problem, because it amounts to vanity publishing).

-Just the whole focus on pricing makes me raise an eyebrow. It's offered like a major selling point: "choose Loomis over a vanity publisher!" Which you should--vanity publishing is a terrible thing to do and this doesn't look, on the surface, like vanity publishing. But whether it's good publishing remains to be seen. There isn't anything here that's an outright red flag that I can see (I defer to others, though, if something pops), just that they're new and a huge risk.

stormowl7, since I posted in your other thread, too: I presume you have a completed MS and are looking for publishers? Have you considered querying agents? Because while it is a bit of an art in itself, it is probably the best place to start unless you have some kind of driving reason to self-publish. There are lots of small presses out there that are very good--I have one in my neighbourhood that exists mostly to do manual printing but they've also published award-winning litfic. The good ones tend to have some sort of niche or thing they do very, very well to differentiate, like the manual printing, or they specialize in a really small sub-genre and know how to reach that sub-genres fans really well. There are others on AW who know the ins and outs of this better than I--I'm not that experienced with this, either. But I did notice both your posts are for small presses, and you should know what that environment is before you go diving into it.

I'm suspecting that their two authors are also the founders of the company. I couldn't find a page where they list their staff, but they do mention on their "About" page that they have offices in Colorado and Georgia. Coincidentally enough, Nicole Sewell lives in Georgia and Heather Hobbs lives in Colorado.

If it's true that the two authors are also the founders, that would be a problem for me, not the least of which would be that they aren't upfront about that fact.