Hi there, I did send a submission and used the Artists and Writers Handbook to look for potential publishers and agents.
Any advice you have would be great.
But just to clarify, Scriba. Is this where you first came across A&M? I ask because - in general - I've found The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook a more stringent resource to filter publishers who charge authors and the ones who are publishers operating a mainstream model of business. As an example - I've discovered listings in The Writers' Handbook to be less than helpful when it comes to filtering out publishers by classification. In other words, The Writers' Handbook is simply a listing of 'publishers' with little explanation for what that actually means. The W&A Yearbook actually classifies paid services in a separate section.
To be fair to A&M, I've been on their case for several years about how the company presented what they did for authors, and it is only in the past two to three years that the company has demonstrated a greater degree of transparency as to their model of business.
The UK market for authors is easier to research and pin down companies than the greater US market. If we look back - pre 2000 - the UK was rife with appalling vanity operations like Excalibur, Minerva, Athena, and several others, exploiting the naivety of new authors. Sadly, there is an identifiable group of former directors, owners and staffers still involved or operating print/publishing services in the UK by way of re-listing company names, mergers or simply starting a new company from scratch.