Favorite and Profitable Small Presses in SF&F

A friend recommended this one.
www.SamhainPublishing.com

It looks like all erotica to me but she claims they take all genres. They are in bookstores, at least their eroticas are. They do ebooks and POD. I've heard that they offer $100 advance. Not much but that's more than most.

Thanks for that listing, Harris. Yes, they've on my thumbs up list from the beginning. Reputable small pub that is growing by leaps and bounds. It's nice to see even a small advance offered.

Tri

A new E-publisher has some good words from Piers Anthony:

http://www.uncialpress.com/submissions.html



Piers Anthony speaks well of them, though they do not officially open for business for a few days.



From Mr. Anthony's web site:

"I understand that this is a startup founded by two competent editors from Awe-Struck. It will release its first titles on October 2006. Present needs are for Georgian, Regency, Victorian, and Western American Historical Romance, Fantasy/Paranormal, mysteries, and nonfiction books and humor. Query if you have something else; they might be interested. They hope to respond to all manuscripts within 60 days; nag them if they don't. Royalties are 42% on books sold from the publisher's site, less otherwise. They have a sample contract, and it has an audit clause. "

Dragon Moon Press seems to be worthwhile. Alas they are closed to subs.
If I'm reading this right, it looks like about 50--60 percent of the small houses are closed to submission. It might be higher. I haven't seen it quite this bad.

Tri

Maybe somebody can chime in on Kedzie Press. I've never heard of them and don't know too much about them. They do have a website.

Tri

Whew, haven't been here in a spell. I contacted two editors, one at Journey Books, and the other at Monkeybrain. They are not open to submissions at this time and neither could tell me when they would be.

I'm waiting patiently on the following small houses for answers on queries and partials.

Millerwrite
Snowbook
Tyrannosaurus (They've just recovered from Katrina and back online)\
Ephemera
Kunati
Revelation
Rainbook
Zumaya (This one looks prettey good)
Kedzie
Kunati
ENC

Gosh it seems like a long time for these. Maybe some don't answer back at all unless they like the project.

Tri

I'll post a few tomorrow.

Hi, Scott, glad you found it again. Can you hear the echoe in here? Nobody visits or cares about this site, so I'm going hog wild.

Juno Books was pretty neat in an email. The editor actually had a sense of humor and told me not to spend too much X-mas time in Wal-Mart. She's English, a delightful sort. I love the Brits! I sent her three chapters, and she said she'd get back about the 2nd week of January.

Sent three to Robert at Adventure Books. I believe he's the chap who insulted my title, but took a synopsis and three for the heck of it. I'm as brash as he is so I wasn't offended.

Breakneck took a synopis and two. A little controversy about this pub.

NF's publisher bowed out due to sickness and transfered everything over to her American partner. I have a full of the old book with them at the new address. Very sweet team here--gawd I hope they make it and learn something from this site.

Velluminous Press sent a very nice talkative note. Called me a great idea man and wanted two out of the three books for a full read.

Here's two I haven't checked out: Dandelion and Strebor. I'll get back on those.

NOTE: These are micros and small press outfits. Some have got their feces together and are gaining some ground. Many are downright clueless. What I'm doing is studying their websites and then writing personal letters to "feel out" the CEOs, before I send anything. It kind of gives me a leg up on where they're coming from. Most are nice and answer honestly about returns, store placement, advance, royalty, rights and other things. But the fact is, we're in Poddy territory here. Just trying to find the best of the shrimpos.

I'm red-shifting

Cheers,

Chris

Well, all I can say about Dandelion Press is that they have one of those complicated online forms that you fill out, which reads like a psych (sp?) exam. Ninety percent of the form deals with what YOU can DO for THEM as far as guaranteed sales and marketing. I stopped right there. I just got the impression it was too close to the PA model for me. On top of that they wanted a chap by chap outline. In your dreams, unless you're talking about non-fic.

Tri

Strebor is currently accepting queries in the following areas:

I sent a query for Jars of Doom as an "Erotic Paranormal Thriller". Charmaine Parker very nicely answered in a couple days saying it seemed that my book had an interesting premise and ethnic characters and to send her four chapters and a synopsis by snail mail She said not be concerned if it took her three or four months to get back to me, that should give me something in late February next year.

I sent several chapters to John Jarrold since I noted he had picked up a rather hot and humid series of paranormal fantasies called "Spellcrackers.com".
He got back to me the next day from an internet cafe. It seems his house hasn't gotten re-wired for high speed nternet as yet and he's having to go to public internet access to do his correspondence.

I also have the book out to Ocean View, Saga Books, Plainsmart and half a dozen agents who have requested material from queries. I am hitting one out of four so far for the query letter. I think that's pretty phenomenal.

At least the query is improving.

Scott

Oh, don't forget Strebor signed a distribution deal with MacMillan last summer, so distribution will be top notch.

Scott

I'll go back and look at Strebor again. Nice to hear about their increased distribution. I like John, and just discoverd the Chronicles site last week and joined up. They're mostly brits and I like their taste and posts. It's a full on SF and F site, heavy on TV and movie related discussions. I never knew that site existed--it's slightly larger than AW, which was a shock to me. But they're light on the craft and publishing in comparison.

I'm thinking that Strebor leans more toward minority works, but I could be wrong. Let me know how it goes.

Chris

It only has a small writing section, but there are some industry experts there and some published fantasy and SF authors - SFFWORLD.com - apologies if you have already visited this place.

I lurk at Chronicles but SFFW is my main home on the net.

Thanks, Justin. I'ma check her out now.

Tri

http://www.bohemian-ink.com/About-Bohemian-Ink.htm (quality hardbacks for unusual SF&F fiction)

http://www.bohemian-ink.com/About-Bohemian-Ink.htm

http://www.ezppublishing.com/
(A new imprint for Champagne Books)

http://www.echelonpress.com/

http://www.javelinahousepublishing.com/ This belongs to Dee Powers and Brian Hill. It will not start taking queries until after the first of the year and plans to publish only a few select books per year for the first few years to establish the company. They have distribution set up for non-fiction books they have published. Don't bug them or flood them until after the first, and keep an eye on their website for additional news.

http://stardustpress.com/products/html_template.php?action=about_us.htm
This appears to be strictly e-Book so far. They do pay 40% on cover price, though.

I can verify that JJ at Bohemian Ink is very professional and a more than competent editor. One of his authors told me that he's had a better experience there than at large houses that have published some of his other stuff.

Does anyone know of any good small presses devoted to provocative/controversial or surreal literary stuff?

Look up Juno Press. They seem to take a wide variety, but there must be a strong romance element.

Tri

Chiming in here rather tardily...

DNA/Nartea is a vanity press, and it seems to manipulate statements and distributor's fees to avoid paying royalties. Puzzlingly, it has a very good distributor, but I can't discover that it has any greater bookstore penetration than a POD.

I echo CauPaux's warning about Dandelion. It's the subject of this alert from the NWU.

NF is the brainchild of a PA author. It strikes me as being very much at the clueless end of the micropress spectrum.

- Victoria

And the popular small presses continue to be swamped with submissions and books to be published.

"Night Shade is not accepting unagented manuscripts as this time. We're simply getting way too many manuscripts for us to keep anything resembling a reasonable turnaround time."

This is a bit disappointing, once again, because all the small presses I'm familiar with are swamped out of having any open submission periods, or are closed indefinitely to submissions. The small presses tend to publish more anthologies and short story collections by some of my favorite short story writers, like Theodora Goss, Tim Pratt, Jeffrey Ford, and others. It's a good thing, because they keep their fans happy and saves them money by putting them all together in one collection.

Though it's not quite so good for new writers. I think it would be easier to get a deal from them once you have a solid number of short stories published in reputable venues.

Sigh... does this mean I need to spice up that sf/f book I just wrote? Looks like erotica is getting to be the thing...

Oh, and don't forget ebook publishers: www.thereadersretreat.com (they're growing by leaps and bounds)!

I have found the same thing that Alan has found--a relatively sewn-up market in the SF field primarily. After reading all the agent blogs, and speaking personally with my agent, it appears that the biggies are on the lookout for dark fantasy/paranormal/romance/erotica/thriller type stuff. In fact my agent asked me to "spice up" my urban fantasy and give it a more serious/dangerous edge.

We actually missed roughly half of the SF markets with my off-planet thriller from the likes of Prometheus, Del Rey, Ben Bella, Kensington, Spectra, Tor, Time Warner, Pocket Books, and a few others. They didn't even request the manuscript from the query or phone pitch. And of course, this was ONLY MY experience. But I found the trend disturbing. The market for SF is so narrow as it is, that once you get in there, you are still competing with the great midlisters and large guns of Benford, Bear, and the others. Tor, for example, are publishing the same people they did last year, with only a few exceptions.

Romance and paranormal thrillers are riding a high horse right now and laughing all the way to the bank. I don't know how long this trend is going to continue. Romance will likely dominate the market, as it always has. Our own Jackie Kessler (DragonJax) has recently sold one of these types to Kensington, and she has woven a great story around a facinating concept, if I may say so.

I'm absolutely brain dead knowing how the traditional/epic or road fantasies are doing out there. I don't write them. Perhaps someone can chime in about any market news concerning this genre.

Nowadays with SF you have to exceed/push the genre to the max to get a raised eyebrow. Concept or orginal premise is beginning to trump all there, in my opinion. Keep in mind, this is still a very subjective industry. Keep your eyes peeled on the Raylan's site for brand new imprints that are busting out of the larger, more established houses. If you find a new startup house for SF, for gawd's sakes, research them thoroughly and look them up in our Bewares thread to find out straight-away what you're dealing with.

I just sold an urban fantasy and a SF novel to a small publisher. We haven't signed the deal yet. We're fighting for rights at the moment. We might come out with our noses bleeding. So be CAREFULL.

Cheers,

Tri

For qualification in the SFWA:

Novels sold to the following publishers are considered qualified:
· Ace
· Archebooks
· Baen
· Bantam Spectra
· Black Library
· DAW
· Del Rey
· Design Image Group
· Eos
· Fitzhenry & Whiteside
· Green Knight
· HarperCollins
· Kensington Publishing
· Meisha Merlin
· Phobos
· Roc
· St. Martin's Press
· Tor
· Warner Aspect

These publishers are likely to pay advances, and many of them require an agent.

tri