Victoria Strauss:
Urban Books is a successful publisher. It has a partnership with, and is distributed by, Kensington. So I think those are solid small-press sales, although you don't need an agent to submit to Urban.
desperateauthor, you should really be doing your research before you query - it would save you the price of the postage if nothing else.
Website is here.
One of the authors listed as having had work successfully sold seems to have actually self-published their work. However, I see that one of the other authors has work coming out with Kensington (which is legit) and another with Xpress Yourself Publishing. However, I don't know anything about African-American independent publishers, so someone else will need to say whether these are good sales (although I do note that Xpress Yourself Publishing doesn't claim to put books on shelves and requires the author to heavily market).
Most of the authors seem to write romance aimed at the African-American market.
MM
I find misleading Ms. Brown's listing of Affiliations on her bio page. A hasty reader might assume she was an AAR agent, and miss the very small print below that says "All affiliations are pending at this present time." In fact, an affiliation with AAR can't be pending, because the agency doesn't seem to meet the minimum sales requirement for membership: at least 10 commercial sales within the past 18 months.
Xpress Yourself Publishing looks like your basic POD-based micropress, which relies mostly on its authors for marketing and promotion. No agent needed to submit here--nor, since I'm guessing it doesn't pay advances, would a successful agent consider it for submission.
- Victoria
Further to my earlier comment, looking at the agency's sales history, the majority of recent sales were made to Urban Books. Taking a look at their website, this seems to be an independent African-American specialist publisher with 3 imprints, but there isn't a huge amount of information on how they operate (and it's not reassuring to see that the contact email address for two of the imprints is for a Yahoo account). In fact the only information I could find about staff etc was via their Q-Boro imprint here, which says that it grew from a self-publishing operation (not that there's anything wrong with that, but I note there's no mention of current distribution into bricks and mortar stores).
The other sale was to Genesis Press, which sparked a memory because there's a Thread on it here, a publisher which was the subject of a number of complaints in 2006 and which has since been picked up by Kensington for distribution. There's no update on how Gensis is currently doing with its authors.
Hope that's of some use.
MM
She asked for the first 50 pages of my manuscript. Has anyone worked with her or heard of her?
Honey my submissions request is a detailed synopsis, the first fifty pages, and a little about the author. I like to get a feel for my authors from jump.
Huh? What does that mean, "from jump" ?
^ From the start.
Though ... I don't think the person was COMPLAINING about being requested material, only wondering in what kind of hands it would befall. But hey, just waltzed in here, waltzing right out. Good luck!
"from the jump" means right from the start or get go. I'm sort of ashamed to know this. Must be doing too much social interacting, of late. Must curtail it. Grrr, grrr.
I usually don't point out grammar and punctuation errors in someone's posts, but let us hope ML Brown's correspondence with publishers shows a better grasp of the English language than she has in this thread.
Last year before I really knew anything about the publishing industry. I sent my first manuscript to her. I was rejected in the long run, but she was very nice. Me being a stupid first time author, emailed her with all sorts of stupid questions and I have to say she responded quickly with each and every one. She was the first to say my work may be too controversial, but that was echoed by other agents who read it, so I figured she was right on. She also told me to send any further work to her and she'd be happy to read it. My experience was good. I truly appreciated getting a response because I really had no idea what I was doing at that point.
Hahaha can't wait to see your next piece Joyce....
Missy
Your style of posting is entirely up to you, of course. It just made me nervous when I had a hard time following your first few comments, and I wondered if that's the way you write all the time....I will try my best to remember a comma, period, or semicolon but it can't always be promised...
Your style of posting is entirely up to you, of course. It just made me nervous when I had a hard time following your first few comments, and I wondered if that's the way you write all the time.
On a forum such as this one, communicating effectively is vital in getting your point across. I can't imagine how becoming "lax" with basic writing mechanics would help to make yourself better understood.
At any rate, to each his own, I suppose.