Musa Publishing

I have a short story and a novella published through Musa, and I have a novel coming out in October of this year as well. I received my release dates on all three books about two to three months after the contract was signed. My editing experience has been very good, save a very small issue with the head editor on the second book. That issue was taken care of swiftly. They tweeted and FB'd both releases but didn't go all out for either book in terms of promotion. I did most of that myself.

Both books are selling decently; not going to retire from the day job anytime soon but I wouldn't expect that from a short story or a novella, considering they are my first published works.

When I was interning in social media I was never asked to promote a specific novel. I tried to keep up with seasonal sales and genre types myself myself. There was one instance in which it was implied I should continue to promote a specific author because she was highly "valued." I assumed at the time it meant her sales were already good, but I don't actually know what constituted an author's value to the press.

KaitlinBevis said:

I wasn't out and out offered any additional artwork. I just emailed Kelly and said "hey, can you do this," and she did. As for being notified about publication that's never happened either. I just checked the morning of my release date and it was for sale

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*sighs* I was under the impression they'd actually supplied this to you as something they did for their authors. Apparently there were a number of mistaken beliefs regarding the comment about banners, bookmarks, etc. mine among them.

Essentially Musa appears to give their authors NO real help marketing for the most part--with 'special authors' being the exception--and that's another red flag flying as far as I'm concerned. All books should be marketed with equal attention or you are doing a disservice to that author rather than providing the help a publisher is supposed to give an author. (And if a publisher can't be bothered to market why bother with one at all? Honestly, ebooks are easy to do and there are dozens of good freelance editors and artists out there.)

A publisher should at least make a reasonable effort to market the books they are producing. Anything less is the literary equivalent of cutting their own throats. A publisher who does not market all their titles as much as possible is on a slippery slope toward financial problems because each and every book costs money to produce. With the number of books being issued by Musa, readers barely seem to have a chance to discover the book before it's off the 'just released' list.

A book needs at least two to three weeks of being in a prime area of the site to catch all potential readers. Coming soon and just released as well as recently released are all important spotlights. If the book cycles through the spotlight(s) quickly it slips through the cracks and readers don't get a chance to 'discover' that title. The way their site is set up with the 'new books' link way down at the bottom of their menu, as well as a lack of 'coming soon' or 'recently released' means the books vanish from a potential reader's eye rapidly.

Look at some of the top ebook publishers, see how their sites are built and compare them to the Musa site. Publishers like Loose id (this is my example but many others do this too) gear their site to make it easy for a reader to find both new, upcoming and recently released books. This is a proven winning formula for sales.

Musa's site doesn't use that formula.

michael_b said:

All books should be marketed with equal attention or you are doing a disservice to that author rather than providing the help a publisher is supposed to give an author.

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While I agree that this publisher doesn't seem to be doing much of a service to many of their authors, I do feel the need to get a little nitpicky here. If I, as a first time author, got picked up by a huge publisher, I wouldn't expect my book to get the same kind of attention, marketing wise, as a big name author (Rowling, King, Grisham, etc). Then again, this isn't one of the big five. As a small publisher, there's really no logical reason why they would treat one project differently from another.

Okay, carry on.

I know that Delphi attempts to allow a certain amount of transparency to the authors at the press since they have a "no sacred cows" mantra. Does Musa have a system in place for showing marketing investment and ROI for its authors that they are able to compare to their bestsellers list?

I just reviewed the cover art for my novel, Beyond the Third Garden. Kelly Shorten, Musa's art director, did a fabulous job!

I recently received an offer from Musa Publishing and found this thread. I'm combing through it, but there are 75 pages worth, from 2011 (the company's inception) until now, and everyone's experiences are quite different. Not to mention one will hear more from the people with complaints than those who had a positive experience. So it's been difficult finding objective, quantifiable data.

I understand they've had blips in the past, and they're a new, small e-publisher. But they do appear to have accountability and plans for their authors.

What can anyone tell me about your experiences with Musa publishing? Either as authors or as readers?

I suggest looking at the dates on posts, many are from the last three months.

It's not precisely quantifiable, but you can also look at Amazon rankings for their books to get at least an idea of how well they're selling.

It sounds like most posters have agreed that there aren't a lot of sales through the Musa website, so the Amazon numbers aren't augmented by many other sales.

Lovely covers, mediocre editing at best...NO promotion after publication...average sales seem to be around 14 copies. Cannot imagine why they are still there.

Folks who are interested in semi-objective numbers are invited to look at http://www.salesrankexpress.com/ and type in "Musa Publishing" in the Publisher box. After that, you can sort in various ways, by country, then by sales rank, by date, etc.

Remember that "Amazon Sales Rank" isn't the same thing as "Sales," and "Amazon Customer Reviews" aren't the same thing as "Reviews."

You will get a fair idea of what the covers look like in thumbnail size, and some ideas of about some other aspects of the Musa sales experience.

For some reason some of the books are listed by imprint instead. Persephone is listed as Euterpe.

side topic, so feel free not to engage. Am I the only person that gets way wrong numbers from novel rank? The ranks are right, but where it tells you how many books have sold mine have been significantly wrong every month.

James D. Macdonald said:

Folks who are interested in semi-objective numbers are invited to look at http://www.salesrankexpress.com/ and type in "Musa Publishing" in the Publisher box. After that, you can sort in various ways, by country, then by sales rank, by date, etc.

Remember that "Amazon Sales Rank" isn't the same thing as "Sales," and "Amazon Customer Reviews" aren't the same thing as "Reviews."

You will get a fair idea of what the covers look like in thumbnail size, and some ideas of about some other aspects of the Musa sales experience.

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If I recall, Musa regularly releases select titles as temporarily free downloads. Do you know if Sales Rank Express tracks this, too? Would be interested to see which books had okay sales in a given month but were actually free downloads, not paid purchases.

KaitlinBevis said:

For some reason some of the books are listed by imprint instead. Persephone is listed as Euterpe.

side topic, so feel free not to engage. Am I the only person that gets way wrong numbers from novel rank? The ranks are right, but where it tells you how many books have sold mine have been significantly wrong every month.

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Generally, the more books you sell, the less accurate Novel Rank is. The less books you sell, the more accurate it is. It's because it uses the fluctuation of the Amazon's sales rank to guestimate the amount of books sold. And the sales rank moves in mysterious ways.

Oh, weird. Thanks. I guess it's a good sign that it's always wrong for my books then, lol.

Editing good. Communication good. Cover great. Finding my way through the Delphi site a little daunting at first, but good because I could see at a glance what stage my novel was in. T-minus 2 days till release. I have had epublishers who didn't promote my books, and others who did.

I am not going to bust my balls doing a big splash for The Toast Bitches. They've been out there, they've been stung. I know I should utilize Musa's blog and send the book out to a gazillion reviewers, but I think these gals can do it on their own. The Bitches, I mean... I trust Musa will send it out to at least a few reviewers. If they don't, I'll investigate and git 'er done.

As far as accurate sales records go, I'm still a trusting fool who will take my incoming statements at face value. But I will watch carefully.

KaitlinBevis said:

The ranks are right, but where it tells you how many books have sold mine have been significantly wrong every month.

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Their numbers are so significantly wrong that Novelrank itself says that their numbers are unreliable.

A big part of this is because Amazon's sales rank formula is meant to confound, rather than illuminate, the sales numbers.

UTA: Sales Rank Express (and Novelrank) doesn't track free downloads at all.

As it's been 6-7 weeks since everything kicked off, has anyone noticed any improvements in their sales or publicity?

No!

I only launched last Friday, so I don't have any results yet. Promotion was my cover featured on the front page of the website, a blog post on their blog, and tweets/RTs of my title.

I'd be happier if they had more Twitter followers, but I only have my own experience as an example, engaging with other people until they follow me on their own. Perhaps publishers and business have a tougher climb, having to concentrate on promotion, which doesn't necessarily attract followers.

victoriastrauss said:

I've seen the contract (which is a work in progress at the moment), and overall I thought it was fair and author-friendly.
- Victoria

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One thing about this publisher I gather they have high royalty rates? I can't be bothered going back, and checking right now, but I remember seeing their rates once and being impressed.

gingerwoman said:

One thing about this publisher I gather they have high royalty rates? I can't be bothered going back and checking but I remember seeing their rates once and being impressed.

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My contract is 50% net, with net specifically defined as the amount they get from the retailer. Therefore, it's 50% of the cover price on sales made through Musa's site, and 50% of what they get from, say, Amazon; for example, if the discount to Amazon is 50%, I'd get 25% of the cover price on sales made through Amazon.

I believe this is fairly standard among e-only publishers.

My contract is the same as Terie's. All I need now are some sales.

Seun,

Did you do any blog tours? I was wondering if that might help get the word out about your book. What worked for me (with another publisher my Musa book isn't out until next month) is a facebook ad, a goodreads giveaway(but I had a print copy), a goodreads ad, and a blog tour of about 10 blogs. None of them knocked sales out of the park, but I got a few here and there and some word of month got me a few articles and reviews and that helped some.

Also something to consider, from what I understand if you can get 30 reviews (doesn't matter the rankings) you get put in Amazon's algorythm (at least until they change it again) that says if you liked "XXX book" then you'll like "Seun's book".

Good luck!

Thanks for the tips, but sadly, little appears to be working other than the occasional guest blog post. To be honest, I quite enjoy doing those so I'd probably keep them up even if they didn't equal any promo for me.