Oftomes Publishing

Good luck with whatever you decide to do, Leewhowrites!

@PandaNinja Thanks so much! I'll post an update here or on the forums somewhere... whenever I have one Hopefully with good news of some sort

leewhowrites said:

Hmm... I'm being very slowly swayed. Thanks so much for everyone's input. I actually follow some of their authors on Instagram/Twitter, and I have seen one or two of them posting pictures of their books in bookstores that they have found. So I think they do get some distribution in bookstores, or at least very slowly trying to tackle this issue.

But yes, it does very much look like it is online orientated.

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Perhaps the publisher is reaching out to some bookstores and making it easy to order directly from them. Given their prohibitive terms through Ingram I would certainly hope so. But as a small/new/obscure publisher they would be wise to add something to their website about it, even just a reference on their 'contact us' page. Given what I can (and can't) find, I strongly doubt these books are available in very many bricks-and-mortar stores, at least in the U.S.

Of course I could be wrong and I don't like to assume things, but I deal with a lot of publishers, distributors and wholesalers. Coming from the perspective of a bookstore person all I see is more red flags to add to those the authors on this thread have mentioned regarding editing etc.

It may behoove you to come right out and ask the publisher about bricks-and-mortar distribution (if it is important to you) and other questions you have - you have every right to know this stuff before you make any decisions, and if these guys are any good they will be forthcoming with honest answers. If you do ask, there are a lot of experienced people here who can help you understand the answers you get. In any case, I wish you the best of luck with whatever decision you make!

Hi, leewhowrites!

Take a look at this thread, the index in the Bewares forum. Notice all the greyed-out names? Those agents or publishers are defunct. Many of them had much more promise than Oftomes. Many of them took rights to authors' books with them when they went. Having a bad publisher is worse, by far, than having no publisher at all.

Hmm you guys are all right... red flags galore! I think it was just the lure of having a good cover and what appears to be a good product. Because, at first glance, I don't think you can deny that the finished product at least looks good.

But thank you so much for all of your help, everyone. I'll let you know what happens when I get a response - hey, they might not even want to publish my book, in which case I won't need to stress about it all.

Definitely think aiming higher is the motto here!

leewhowrites said:

Hmm you guys are all right... red flags galore! I think it was just the lure of having a good cover and what appears to be a good product. Because, at first glance, I don't think you can deny that the finished product at least looks good.

But thank you so much for all of your help, everyone. I'll let you know what happens when I get a response - hey, they might not even want to publish my book, in which case I won't need to stress about it all.

Definitely think aiming higher is the motto here!

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Before submitting to any indy, always take a look at what they’re publishing. As a writer and someone who’s likely worked with an editor, you can probably extrapolate the quality of a book by reading just a few pages, and the first pages are the ones a writer polishes the most.

Here are a couple of Oftomes samples.

https://www.wattpad.com/story/89713872-trapped-in-silver

https://www.wattpad.com/story/74530252-inherited

I immediately spot glaring pacing, clarity, and (severe) point of view issues that any developmental editor would immediately point out, and any agent would rule an instant rejection. Both are crammed with cliche and info dropping, and are tell tell tell with little effort or author ability to show. And remember, these are samples of the FINAL manuscripts! So the question is, do you want to be associated with this quality of writing?

Doctor Write said:

Before submitting to any indy, always take a look at what they’re publishing. As a writer and someone who’s likely worked with an editor, you can probably extrapolate the quality of a book by reading just a few pages, and the first pages are the ones a writer polishes the most.

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This is something (general) you should do with any and every publisher, not just indies. Read the books the house publishes. Do it with agents, too (might be even more important, given how critical fit can be): read the books they represent. Look for genre, common shared tropes within genre, stylistic quirks, POV choices. Not just quality. Find somewhere your book fits.

Quality's going to be subjective, though I agree about the lack of any obvious editing in those samples. I found two blatant typos on the first page of the second sample, for example. Even good writers occasionally leave a typo in there. You'd hope not on the first page, but then that's why editing matters. I'm not going to make any comment on the quality of those examples except to say it's pretty obvious Oftomes isn't pulling their end.

People get sucked in by bad publishers, too. This is why this forum can be so heartbreaking sometimes. Of course authors want their books out there, there's a natural tendency to rush things, and it's hard to say 'no' when an offer is on the table. Or you're into production. Thus the importance of reading and researching beforehand. Don't just check here. We may not have a thread. Learn the signs, find the books, read the books.

Another good habit to get into: never assume your editor will find everything. Not-so-great editors exist and by nature most authors will be blind to their own mistakes. No editor is perfect, either. Editors get rushed to meet deadlines, they take on too much work, they have family crises. Send in the best material you can--the cleaner, the better. Never assume someone else will vet your words before they're in print. You're responsible for everything you write.

It's so true... I think most of us at some point to feel inclined to rush things, perhaps due to impatience or frustration. It is, as you all know, a veeeery slow industry. I don't know, I sent the query on a whim, not really expecting a response from OfTomes. I'd sort of given up on the novel after going through the agent rounds and failing quite miserably. But I got so much positive feedback on Wattpad and with readers that I thought I'd give it a go anyway.

But I think you guys are right. The product is obviously low quality, and I still can't really see past the grammatical errors. I can't only just about bring myself to shrug off the mistakes my relatives make I mean I have faith in my own abilities, but I obviously can't spot every single mistake - and do I really want to be associated with somewhere that clearly doesn't have a stringent editing process?

VeryBigBeard said:

People get sucked in by bad publishers, too. This is why this forum can be so heartbreaking sometimes. Of course authors want their books out there, there's a natural tendency to rush things, and it's hard to say 'no' when an offer is on the table. Or you're into production. Thus the importance of reading and researching beforehand. Don't just check here. We may not have a thread. Learn the signs, find the books, read the books.

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First off, thank you VeryBigBeard for all of your thoughtful insight. I was curious what you and other posters thought of this new development with the guy who runs Oftomes. He's writing a manuscript, his first, and intends on publishing it through his own press. (effectively self publishing) He's a young guy who by his own admission in the interview posted earlier in the thread is fairly new to books in general, let alone writing one. So does this mean Oftomes is/has always been a vanity press?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33978711-untitled



Also:

1) Will the reputation of his authors be harmed if he self publishes a low quality product?

2) How will the company be impacted when the sole marketing guy diverts a good chunk of his time into learning to write and edit instead of advertising his current books, communicating with distributors, reviewers, bookstores, etc?

3) Will this book be written in all caps?

I'm still trying to figure out how a book coming out in January 2018 can already have 9 reviews and 4.67 stars?

Hmmm....

He seems like a lovely bloke, but yeah -- publishing your own work under your publishing imprint is a super messed up thing to do. It reflects very poorly upon Oftomes. I get the impression, as others have said, that he's young and inexperienced and is making these mistakes out of obliviousness rather than malice but it still puts Oftomes authors in a shitty position.

Richard White said:

I'm still trying to figure out how a book coming out in January 2018 can already have 9 reviews and 4.67 stars?

Hmmm....

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Goodreads, unlike Amazon, doesn't prevent pre-release reviews or really put any limits on review contents. So the reviews are legit, but not actually 'reviews' -- just excited friends of the author basically writing status updates about how excited they are. Fairly normal Goodreads behavior.

The star rating thing is a mystery -- lots of folks (including the author) 5-staring and one person 2-starring, no idea what that's about since none of them are writing reviews to go with their ratings. I'm pretty sure rating before release is against Goodreads guidelines (it's gaming the system a bit) but doubt they'll bother to do anything about it.

EDIT: Apparently the author has e-mailed to get the 2-star review removed, and only that review, but "I read up that Goodreads has no policy against this "

Quick update: OfTomes didn't want my book in the end, so the decision has been made for me. Huzzah!

leewhowrites said:

But she saw some little nugget of potential in it, and in the past year and a half we've completely replotted and rewritten it. It's now a completely different book altogether, and I couldn't have done it without the agent. I know I can still go ahead and query, but she is quite a reputable agent here in the UK, and she's helped me so much that I don't really want to? Hmm. She said she would get back to me at the end of this month, so I'm refreshing my email pretty much every five minutes now.

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Also, consider that if this agent takes you on as a client, she might be interested in helping you rework and sell the first book as well...unless it is already sold to a small publisher.

Yes, I thought this too... she actually requested my first MS as well, after she'd read and started working with me on the second. However, she's never really got back to me on that one. She provided an update for me today, actually, apologising that she was taking so long and that she'll get back to me soon. Hoping I will finally get that offer of representation... if not, it's back to the drawing board and submitting a completely reworked MS out to agents once again.

leewhowrites said:

Quick update: OfTomes didn't want my book in the end, so the decision has been made for me. Huzzah!

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Thanks for the update, Lee. Did he give you a reason for the pass?

Nothing beyond 'We enjoyed it, but it's not quite right for our list at the moment'. I know they're publishing a lot of YA fantasy at the moment, and mine is a YA ghost story, but also it's pretty much just a standard rejection. Nothing new there, quite used to those by now! Onto the next venture.

EMaree said:

He seems like a lovely bloke, but yeah -- publishing your own work under your publishing imprint is a super messed up thing to do. It reflects very poorly upon Oftomes. I get the impression, as others have said, that he's young and inexperienced and is making these mistakes out of obliviousness rather than malice but it still puts Oftomes authors in a shitty position.

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I'm curious to how publishing his own books under his own imprint is a bad thing. Don't many indies to this when they create their own imprint? (Granted, they only publish their own, but I've seen a few who have done joint ventures with other indies.)


Anyway, I got a like on pitmad from Oftomes, and wasn't impressed with what I saw. I didn't see anything (outside of Youtube) I couldn't do myself. (And I have no interest in Youtubing.)

I.think.my.laptop.just.broke.

The Book Elf said:

I'm curious to how publishing his own books under his own imprint is a bad thing. Don't many indies to this when they create their own imprint? (Granted, they only publish their own, but I've seen a few who have done joint ventures with other indies.)

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I think any publisher who publishes their own titles, particularly their own new titles, leaves an amateur impression and feels like a vanity press. But OfTomes seems a special case because unlike the other publishers you are referring to, Ben ISN’T a writer previously or an editor, from my research. His background seems to be as a social media guy with Curiosity Quill. He’s a young fellow who, by his own admission, only just started reading and posting videos a few years ago when he saw others doing it. He struggles with basic spelling and grammar on his website and his goodreads reviews.

Obviously everyone learns to write at a different pace, but this seems to be his first project being published, Christopher Paolini style. The vast majority of up and coming writers I’ve met used their first few projects to learn and after publishing their third or fourth attempt tend to consider their first few works as useful exercises but flawed in execution as the fundamentals of pacing, motivation, point of view, clarity, dialog, etc are still being worked out. And unlike Christopher Paolini, OfTomes doesn’t seem to have either a high quality editor or a big money marketing plan in place.

Ultimately, Ben self publishing his first attempt at a novel, presumably only a year or two into his fiction writing career, seems unlikely to result in furthering the reputation of OfTomes or it’s authors.

to be honest, I'm a bit annoyed with this one >.> full manuscript was enthusiastically requested and then I heard nothing for months.
I finally wrote a follow-up asking if he'd had time to get to my manuscript and I didn't even get a reply to that! It's been about a year now... obviously it's a pass, but I have NEVER had a no-response for any requested material, let alone a full.