Musa Publishing

Anyone who signs with any publisher must go in with their eyes open so they can adequately weigh the risks to their hard work. Those of you who have said you're happy to take that risk may feel differently a year from now, and that's why I felt compelled to raise the flag.

It's one thing to be on a publishing high when the ink is still relatively wet, where it's impossible to believe there could be any other outcome than success. But it's quite another thing when the publisher couldn't deliver as promised. I've seen this happen over and over again - and authors are anything but charitable. I'm not saying this will be the case here, God forbid - but it needs to be discussed.

Musa, thus far, hasn't been as thoroughly discussed as other new publishers. If the Bewares Board is going to retain its integrity, then no one should be immune from scrutiny. And I'm sorry, but the answers Celina gave are concerning about where this company is headed. Four hundred titles are scheduled through 2012. That's an impossible number of releases, and I don't see how it's humanly possible for each author to receive quality editing, marketing, and promotion.

Celina mentioned that cash flow was a concern, so how is she going to print up ARCs for four hundred titles to send out to reviewers? Perhaps these reviewers will take e-files, which is great, but I still don't see how you can do TIP sheets and promo plans for that many books.

When something simply doesn't add up, and it's a new company, I have no choice but to suggest waiting a couple years. And really, do you respect your hard work that little to take that big a risk?

Poll: who, of those who have signed with Musa, wants to cancel their contract?

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I'm not even sure what this has to do with anything.

Unimportant said:

Based on what I've read over the last few months, Musa has seemed to fall into the category of most-likely-to-succeed, though obviously there are no guarantees in the publishing industry.

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Musa was so deemed because no one was asking the tough questions. It wasn't until we got to asking those questions today that some radars were pinged.

Given the time scale it would suggest a release rate of one per day or higher. I think Ravenous had that goal, but that included short stories and in the end they didn't sustain it.

What percentage of that 400 are former Aspen Mountain authors whose books were in limbo?

I've read these boards religiously for a couple of years, but only ever posted once, in a thread about Lethe Press. I've got a book under contract with them to be published in late 2012. I now also have a book under contract with Musa in March 2012.

Unlike Musa, Lethe has been around for about 10 years. In the year since I signed with them, I've really had very little in the way of communication unless I initiate it. That's frustrating because, being quite the newbie, I find myself wondering if I'm screwing up in some way or if their silence means they wish they hadn't offered me a contract in the first place and just want me to go away (in short, feelings of paranoia and insecurity). Musa on the other hand sends out regular communications, has a very neat manuscript management system apparently designed in-house that lets you see development stages, and I've never felt adrift with them. These don't address the great questions being raised in this thread, and seeing the responses here has once again given me a great education. Basically, my only contribution is to say that as a writer trying to educate himself about how the publishing process works, Musa feels professional and on-the-ball to me. (And that's not to disparage Lethe Press, as I truly love their product).

Old Hack said:

Forty seems far too few to me, Celina, but my background is mostly in print publishing, so perhaps I'm out of line here. I'm used to upwards of 150 ARCs being sent out, plus enough to cover the list the author provides which will usually be in the low tens, but with some authors can run to hundreds.

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Our books are all epublished at the moment. The options for those books are limited compared to print presses. The previous publishers I've worked for had a core list of twenty or fewer reviewers and/or sites--mostly because sites like Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times have just opened the doors to digital ARCs. Sadly, the hardest books to get reviewed are in speculative fiction, which has proved to be resistant to e-books.

This one point is enough to make me hesitate to recommend Musa to anyone, I'm afraid. As I hope you'll realise, this isn't personal: but we don't know how well you're going to do just yet, nor do we know how well you're going to react to any problems you might encounter (and you're bound to encounter a few).

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Actually, I'm going to disagree with you here. I have years of editorial experience at the managerial level. I'm fairly comfortable with the idea that we aren't going to run into troubles like the ones we've had to correct in the past.

Judging from what you say there you're giving your authors more information about their sales, but not giving them more power in the publishing process. Which is good, because authors don't always make the best choices when it comes to cover design and so on (and speaking of cover design: I find the titles on many of your covers impossible to read, even when they're not at thumbnail size--you might want to take a look).

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Again, I'll have to disagree with you on this point as well. Our authors have a great deal of input in the publishing process. While we maintain final approval rights over cover art, the process is designed for our authors to be as involved as possible in the process.

Putting how you treat your authors so high on your list of priorities is not good from a business point of view. Yes, it's nice of you: but authors don't fund your business, readers do. It's readers you should be focusing on. I've seen so many publishers fail because they placed more emphasis on looking after their authors than on attracting readers. Please don't fall into the same trap.

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The authors are placed high on our list of priorities, but they don't run the business. Make no mistake about it: I run the business on the editorial end, and I have learned the hard way what happens when a publisher ignores the readers. I fully remember opening up the customer service email account and finding hundreds of unanswered emails from a year and a half worth of neglect.

If "no other publisher in the world believes [Musa] can work" then you're pretty much bound to fail. Most publishers I know are astute business people. If this wasn't just a throwaway comment you should have thought about more carefully, and is really how you're operating, then I have to advise everyone who has submitted to you to withdraw their submissions immediately; and if it was a throwaway comment you're now regretting, it doesn't speak well about your professionalism.

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Okay. That's your opinion, and eminently valid. The best I can say to this is we'll have to wait and see. But, I think you've taken on some context here that wasn't implicit in my comment.

We came from a place where the authors were so disconnected from the process that a publisher was able to not pay their royalties--in some cases for years--and to wreak such havoc with the books that most of those folks will never recoup those losses. When we started Musa, we were told by numerous publishers that by keeping our books open to our authors, we were doomed to fail. I'm sorry, but I don't think so. I think that empowers our authors, and gives them a gauge to see how marketing and promotions are working, as well as what types of events bring them a spike in sales. And I have no intention of backing off that promise to our authors and staff. Royalties shouldn't be a mystery. Every author should know to the penny how much they're getting. Ours do--in advance--and get paid monthly. And early. So, I'm afraid I have to disagree with the idea that Musa is doomed to fail because of this one point.

I hope you've made this clear to the authors you've signed up. It's not a good base for you to be operating from; and if it really is where you're at, then in your position I'd start reverting rights to all the authors I'd signed. Sorry, Celina, but if you're so certain that the odds are against you but you just don't care then you should not be contracting writers to publish with you unless you're absolutely clear about this with them before they sign. And even then I'd question whether it's reasonable for you to do so: we both know how desperate writers can be when there's the chance of publication before them.

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I think I touched on this already.

FOUR HUNDRED?

FOUR HUNDRED?

I'm sorry, I'm gobsmacked. Unless you have a ridiculously long publishing schedule and/or almost as many editors working for you as you have books signed up, you're in trouble. Sorry: sorry. You know I consider you both a friend and jolly good sort but I don't see how you can cope with that many books when you're so new, and so small. And if you're not small, and have all sorts of staff engaged to cope with this huge schedule, then that implies a whole new raft of other problems because I don't see how a publisher which is as new as Musa can succeed if it's expanded as quickly as it seems Musa has. Cashflow scuppers publishers which expand too quickly, every time.

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A lot of those are reissues--as we've discussed before. We had right at 100 books out by Christmas of 2011, of which almost half were reissues that required little more than formatting and proofreading before release. And, as I mentioned somewhere up there ^^ we have an immense editorial staff, who are already working several months in advance on these books.

How many editors do you have working for you? How quickly do you intend to get these 400 books edited, designed, marketed and published? How much attention do your writers and their books get prior to publication? I've seen you talk about editing with great passion: you must be intending to edit your books properly and market them effectively; but if you have 400 books signed up already I simply don't see how you can do this.

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Several of our signed books are series/serials, some of which are planned all the way into 2013. Our writers get in depth attention and work, from editorial issues (minimum two sets of copy edits, historical edits, line edits and galleys), as well as cover copy editing (tagline, blurb) and working with our cover artists to create their covers. They also work with our marketing and promotions department pre-release, during launch week and post-release to maintain a strong marketing presence.

Based on the single post from mscelina which I'm responding to here, I cannot recommend that any writer submits to Musa Publishing at this time. I strongly advise anyone who is considering sending their work in to wait at least a year, to give Musa time to prove that it can sell books in good quantities.

I give my sincere apologies to all involved, and hope that I'm wrong to be so worried and so cautious. Only time will tell.

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Fair enough.

priceless1 said:

I'm not certain how letting authors track their sales is bringing them further into the publishing process. Can you clarify this?

I really worry when publishers talk like this because there isn't a model that hasn't been tried (and many failed). Furthermore, I'm not sure what this means. If that many people believe you'll not succeed, then how is this supposed to reassure your authors?

I can't tell you how much this alarms me. How on earth can you edit, market, and promote that many authors in that short of a time span? I know you'd never become an author mill, but I'm sorry...this frankly scares the tar out of me.

I know you're honest and have your heart in the right place, but I think you've taken a huge bite without assurances that you can pull it off. Is this fair to your authors? When you said upstream somewhere that you were taking things slowly and that you didn't have a lot of money, I thought it meant you were signing a manageable number of authors in order to properly promote your authors. It seems you're spreading yourself awfully thin with four hundred authors. My head is still spinning.

I have to agree with Jane here and recommend that authors give Musa a couple years to solidify their reputation and create a firmer foundation.

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Thanks for your input.

honeysock said:

With all due respect to Priceless and Old Hack who offer tons of great advice backed by years of experience, I think this is a bit alarmist: "I cannot recommend that any writer submits to Musa Publishing at this time."

I cannot speak for all the writers who have signed with Musa, but I knew when I signed that I was taking a risk by going with a fledgling e-publisher. I'm TOTALLY okay with that. It's not like there's no information about that here on these forums.

Over a two-year period I exhausted my list of potential agents after doing revise and re-submits for the likes of such established agents as Marc y Posne r, Bo b Meco y, and Ann e Bohne r (who actually submitted my book to a major pub. without signing me!) and running into dead-ends with Thoma s & Merce r and a few other new or small print publishers. My book and I were both tired to death of trying to find it a home. When I submitted to Musa and they said "Hell yeah!" (in a manner of speaking), I laughed and danced. If they were willing to take a risk on my between-genres "crookbook," then I was willing to take a risk with them.

My eyes are wide open. There are no guarantees in this business anywhere.

Will I sell ten books? A hundred? Doesn't matter. It's more than I would have sold with the book still sitting in its hundred revised forms in my laptop.

Poll: who, of those who have signed with Musa, wants to cancel their contract?

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Thanks, but this isn't necessary. Any discussion at AW isn't something I take personally.

frolzagain said:

I just wanted to jump into the discussion as a Musa author and share my two cents about my experience with them. I knew when I signed with them that I was taking a risk because they were so new. I am totally ok with taking a risk. If something goes wrong, I can always write another book. I signed because I had a good gut feeling about them and I've learned to follow those feelings. I've been nothing but happy with them. They answer my (sometimes silly) e-mail question usually within minutes and jump through hoops to help their authors. The promotions director is really hands on and gives us all kinds of markerting oppertunities. Blog tours, radio interviews, and social media are just a tiny bit of the marketing going on. I also have been working on my own marketing plan because I think every author should take some responsibility in marketing their work. No matter what happens in the future, Musa has been a great experience in my life. It may not be the right place for every author, but I know in my heart it is the right place for me (and my book.)

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Again--no worries. It's all good. You have no reason to defend your decision--or Musa.

Giant Baby said:

I think it's quite reasoned. I don't read it as and indictment on Musa, honeysock, or as ringing the death knell on any of their authors' books, but concerns have been raised (some by Ms. Celina herself), which warrant caution. The same caution that's recommended throughout the BR&BC, and we'd be hypocritical not to recommend it here, simply because we know the publisher.

For what it's worth, I've had several of these concerns for quite a long time, but as others seemed okay with how things were proceeding, I didn't trust my vastly limited understanding of the industry enough to raise my hand and say "hey, that's a LOT of new books being picked up."

I look forward to my concerns being put to rest. I could not mean that more sincerely.

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I look forward to your concerns being put to rest as well. We're releasing what? 300 new/signed books within the next year. We've already released 100--without any seeming problems. Of those 400, close to 100 are reissues at least.

I don't know how to lay these fears at rest for everyone, so I guess you'll all just have to wait it out and see how things go.

Midnightoil said:

Extremely good advice. New publishers are always risky. I'd be interested in knowing the terms of Musa's contract. How long is an author required to sign up for, and is there a termination fee? Also, in the event of the publisher going out of business, do all rights then revert back to the author?

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Our contract is listed on our website, for anyone to examine before they even submit to Musa. Before we contracted anyone, we had the contract vetted by authors, publishers, agents, IP attorneys and AW members from this very forum.

Stacia Kane said:

Right, you're fine with that risk. But Priceless and Old Hack--among others (including myself) never recommend that authors take risks on publishers. That's why OH said she cannot recommend Musa. Because you yourself acknowledge it's a risk.

"I can't recommend them at this time," especially in context, does not equal "Anyone who signs with this house is a fool." It means "I don't recommend authors take risks with their work."

This is an example of the logical fallacy known as "appeal to inappropriate authority." There are only a few Musa authors here; none to my knowledge have had their books released yet or have completed the editing process--they're in the "Honeymoon period." The likelihood of Honeymooning authors wanting to cancel is slim. Furthermore (again, to my knowledge) none of those signed authors are experts on publishing or even have extensive experience in it, so their opinions, while important, are not necessarily indicative of the odds of success for this publisher or of the odds of success for each author at this publisher, nor are they proof of quality.

Not that I'm comparing Musa in any way to Publishamerica, but an awful lot of their Honeymooners are awfully happy, too.

Personally, I'd love to see Musa succeed and am hoping they do, and think the odds for them are better than many startups. But they *are* a start-up, and Celina acknowledges the risk in that herself (which she would, being a smart, fair-minded, and knowledgeable individual). So I wouldn't necessarily recommend them either; you might be happy with only a handful of sales (I'm not saying that's all you'll get, I'm just using your words), but that's definitely not the case for most of us, and I'm just not comfortable recommending a publisher with no track record of sales.

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And that's fine too, although there are many Musa authors at AW who have been released and who are not only making strong sales but critical praise as well. And, like with any publisher, there are some books that do not sell as well or as strongly.

Queen of Swords said:

Agreed. I have a lot of respect for how Celina handled the Aspen Mountain debacle, but imagine what the reaction would be if a new publisher no one had ever heard of started a thread here and said, "The odds are against us and no other publisher believes our business can work".

People would be wondering (rightly so) if those other publishers had a good reason for their consensus of opinion.

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Good Lord--you guys sure took the bit in your mouths with that comment. Good thing I ran my reply to Old Hack's original post by the rest of the senior staff or they'd probably kill me.

Every author needs to make the right decision for themselves in regards to where they sign their books. At the moment, Musa's operations have come off with very few hitches and only very minor ones at that. I have no issues with answering any question about Musa's general operations anywhere--here, or via email--at any time.

I'm appalled at the suggestion that "everyone should wait a year/two years until Musa is off the ground."

THEN HOW WILL THEY GET INTO BUSINESS? No contracted authors = no books to sell = no sales = no business. Yeah, they will certainly fail there.

I'll take suggestions from the "mainstream" publishing industry with a grain of salt. They sneer at e-publishers anyway, and believe that any e-pubbed writer was e-pubbed because they "weren't good enough" for Random House, Avon, etc. Ditto for some of the writer's professional associations, such as RWA.

I for one am a better fit for e-publishing. I believe I'll have more control over my work PLUS the ability to write in genres that the "mainstream" romance publishers are less likely to consider. (Civil War, Colonial, same-sex, for example).

I was a reader for The Wild Rose Press during their first three years. Some people thought they'd fail, too. They're still in business, and winning more respect each year.

I'll support Musa regardless of manuscript acceptance. We need more good publishers, and I wish them every success. Their honesty and standards for,and with, their submitters and authors speaks well of their business practices.

Okay, now that I've answered all your questions to the best of my ability, I have to say a few things.

First off--Musa is a (currently) e-press only. Our operations, functions and processes are entirely different from print or trade presses. So before you jump on board with the 'I strongly advise authors not to submit to Musa' train, make sure that you understand the differences here.

Second--out of those 400 books on Musa's release schedule:

Let's be honest--you guys are thinking NOVELS.

About 25% of our publication schedule is original, first time published works over 65000 words. Musa publishes short fiction between 5 and 10k as standalone royalty-paying e-books as part of our ongoing efforts to create a different market for short stories besides magazine.

Our Polyhymnia imprint, for example, is divided into the following categories: Musa Gold, which is the Homer Eon Flint collection; Musa Silver, which is nothing but reissues--either AMP refugees, trade published authors' back lists, or other rights reverted stories, and short fiction, anthologies and collections. Easily 40% of our schedule falls into these categories.

As for the rest of our schedules, we're looking at novellas and novelettes for the most part, several serial stories (usually between 10-20 k installments).

Therefore, I respectfully submit that this constant HORROR at the size of our release schedule is stemming from (pardon me for saying this) complete ignorance about what we're doing at Musa. I know exactly where each book is in the editorial process at all times. I have a staff of forty who work balls to the wall to get us a bigger cushion of time on our deadlines. (We're four weeks ahead now, with plans to be six weeks ahead by the end of the month and three months ahead by April. We need the three months for our ARCs to major review sites like Publisher's Weekly.)

While I appreciate the compliment of being compared to a print publisher, Musa is not. We are an e-publisher with plans to go to small print runs when the company can afford it and not before.

We work twenty hour days at Musa. Our staff is committed to what we're doing because we all have the same goals. Our initial sales forecast for the three months we were open in 2011 we exceeded by well over fifty percent.

I'm not a hypocrite--or, at least, I don't think I am. I expect the same questions that I have asked of fledgling presses in the past to be asked of me. That doesn't bother me. What does bother me, I have to admit, is the wholesale dismissal of what Musa is doing without an accurate picture of what it is we're doing there.

Before Musa even opened to submissions, I was doing a lot of background work for the company here--among the AW community I've been a part of and respected for years. I asked for the opinions of the sages, whose opinions I respected, and really listened to what everyone here (and in other places too) had to say about what we intended to do. So I thank you all for the input you've given to me. I really appreciate it.

The 'wait two years' advice is stock advice for increasing the chance of things going well for the author based on statistical averages--it must have been given thousands of times on this forum in relation to hundreds of publishers. It is given with the writer's interests in mind, not the publisher's and is boringly dispassionate in nature. Writers (like me) ignore it all the time, sometimes to their benefit (Samhain), quite often not (Chippewa, Aspen Mountain).

Penhead said:

I'm appalled at the suggestion that "everyone should wait a year/two years until Musa is off the ground."

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That advice applies to every startup publisher, not just Musa. Time has a way of winnowing out a lot of startups which may have had nothing but the best of intentions... but which had nothing besides the best of intentions.

Giant Baby said:

For what it's worth, I've had several of these concerns for quite a long time, but as others seemed okay with how things were proceeding, I didn't trust my vastly limited understanding of the industry enough to raise my hand and say "hey, that's a LOT of new books being picked up."

I look forward to my concerns being put to rest. I could not mean that more sincerely.

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Ditto that. I have been following this thread for a while and had many of these concerns too. For my part, I'd like to stand back and watch how Musa does before jumping in, but I do wish the company the best of luck. Like many others have said, I find myself rooting for them.

"This is an example of the logical fallacy known as 'appeal to inappropriate authority.'"

I agree. This is a logical fallacy. But sometimes signing with an agent or a publisher involves more than logic; it involves emotions and ethics. My point with this particular appeal is that sometimes writers go with a gut instinct. Or maybe they're simply tired of the traditional publishing ethics. (Seriously, how does someone with no money/income break into the traditional publishing world? You don't. You have to have money in order to support yourself while you work your way up. For a very long time it was a rich white man's world. This was/is ethically wrong. The current traditional publishing model, much like our current traditional educational model, is broken.)

Honeysock, seriously, you're doing Musa more damage than you realize.

I'd withdraw from this conversation. You're letting your emotional attachment to your publisher cloud your comments and you're actually not showing your publisher in a good light.

Celina is more than capable to carry on this conversation.

Let's be honest--you guys are thinking NOVELS.

About 25% of our publication schedule is original, first time published works over 65000 words. Musa publishes short fiction between 5 and 10k as standalone royalty-paying e-books as part of our ongoing efforts to create a different market for short stories besides magazine.

Our Polyhymnia imprint, for example, is divided into the following categories: Musa Gold, which is the Homer Eon Flint collection; Musa Silver, which is nothing but reissues--either AMP refugees, trade published authors' back lists, or other rights reverted stories, and short fiction, anthologies and collections. Easily 40% of our schedule falls into these categories.

As for the rest of our schedules, we're looking at novellas and novelettes for the most part, several serial stories (usually between 10-20 k installments).

I stepped out for an hour, came back, and it looked like the Love Boat had a sudden shift of ballast stones and was going down by the head. I wanted to comment about the 400 book topic, but it seems like Mscelina had to explain this when, in fact, anybody really following this thread would/might have understood that there were shorts, novellas and novelettes mixed up in the batch. I didn't know about the reissues/reprints and anthologies. Just saying, we should be sure about some facts before we start kicking the keel out of this little ship.

However, valid points and concerns coming from Lynn, OH and a few others. That's still a lot of editorial work. Can the staff handle it? Why so many? What's the rush? What's the time from contract signing to publication?

One of my little peeves/fears is when I see a start-up e-pub, or even a combo e-pub/print outfit really put the hammer down and ramp up production out of the starting gate, and I'm talking about dozens of titles per week or more, month after month after...well, you get it. I've always thought M*u*n*d*a*n*i*a* was a real good example of this, and later I got a foul smell with *C*a*r*i*n*a* (unsubstantiated now for C).

I call it the funnel concept: picture the large end of a funnel pointed toward the author with the small end pointed toward the media. The lone author flogs the crap out of his/her book: conventions, signings, blogs, virtual tours, ad space, YADS, writing site brags, book reviews, guest blogs, radio, TV interviews...you name it, and when the dust settles, author gets all the little pieces that came through the small end.

Now take a couple hundred authors doing the same thing and point all those funnels backwards from the publisher's end. The publisher gets all that promo/word-of-mouth/marketing exposure and brand name hoopla, without actually lifting a finger. They just publish and let the author fly with it, and even declare in their mission statement that if author doesn't care to market or promote, well that's just tough titty sales. That's an Author Mill. I've been on their receiving end before. It's not an author mill when the publisher pitches full into the mix and kicks in their own campaign. The writer is going to go out there and bang his own drum regardless.

Be that as it may, I do not think I would put the term "author mill" anywhere near Musa, in case someone was thinking this type of claim, or ready to lay this down. Clearly, they have too much on the ball as far as staff experience, but yes, the proof will be in the future production, editorial quality and sales--real bottom line stuff. I also think they're an enthusiastic bunch, with a fire under their asses to get something really big out there. Grandiose ideas--huge dreams and an "our way" mentality. Yet they do seem grounded. With industry experience. If I had my druthers, I could do worse with some other startup, if I didn't let this apha group run with the flag and drag my fat ass behind them. I'm prone to that posture at my age.

BTW, when you have an anthology or collection, you have 10-15-20 authors stacked in the pages. So isn't the publisher really doing the promo for one book and not for that many authors? That's the beauty of those books--everybody goes along for the ride wherever that book appears. When those books make a splash all the authors get wet.

I'll answer one of my own questions. From contract signing to publication is about a year. I know that personally. That's why I think Musa's big breakout in the beginning was a "push." I think once they have the momentum they'll settle in and down. They also have to get a feel for their scheduling, which according to Mscelina, is ahead at the moment. So more power to 'em...they must be poppin' NoDoz, or something. I swear, their editors sound even winded through the emails.

Now, Chris, you never come to the defense of a publisher unless you're with them, so did you receive a contract offer? Yep. Did you sign it? Nope. Are you going to? None of your business. It has no bearing on what I've read in this thread for the past four months. And I'm not that sucky-sucky to think that good people deserve to be, or will be great publishers. I just think they have a leg up on the (startup) competition. I felt that way about Entangled too.

I will say this, I think it's an incredibly smart, ethical and pro-active to publish some, if not numerous AWers here (top quality only), because we are the biggest and best gawd-damned writer's group/site on the internet. Bar none. We read and spend more on each other's books than anybody out there--we support and rally our own--we blog, we brag, we boost. And if you don't think so, or that we shouldn't do so, my next post will be a list of all the publishers who are members here who continally advertise and flog their own authors, awards and titles. It's genius--it's pure business and there's nothing wrong with it.

Now, I wish Musa well whether I let them pipe me aboard or not. I just wish they would slow down a little and catch their breath.

Turn me over, I'm done.

The last couple of posts have taken away from the conversation. Richard is correct: Celina can carry this conversation. There's no reason to bring up irrelevant topics or to defend Musa against claims no one made. It's a bad distraction.

"There are only a few Musa authors here; none to my knowledge have had their books released yet or have completed the editing process."

Really, Stacia? Have you read this entire thread? At some point someone even commented, "At this rate Musa will become the unofficial AW publisher. ."

These AWers--including some mods--have signed with Musa:

Soccer Mom
Gravity
KAP
seun
Saanen
NYa RAyne
auntybug
Dave Hardy
anne.arthur
regdog
Quantim1019
scarletpeaches
KTC
Jersey Chick: "Two of my Musa books were rescued from AMP and had been beyond-well-edited when they were released."
Al Stevens
RobeH
Sage
BenPanced
frolzagain
bubastes: "Now that I've been through the full editing process with Musa, I can say that everyone's been professional, open, and incredibly responsive."
ajkjd01
Terie
Anna L.
sheadakota
sissybaby
mbroadway

My apologies if I have left anyone out or misrepresented anything.

honeysock said:

"There are only a few Musa authors here; none to my knowledge have had their books released yet or have completed the editing process."

Really, Stacia? Have you read this entire thread? At some point someone even commented, "At this rate Musa will become the unofficial AW publisher. ."

These AWers--including some mods--have signed with Musa:

Soccer Mom
Gravity
KAP
seun
Saanen
NYa RAyne
auntybug
Dave Hardy
anne.arthur
regdog
Quantim1019
scarletpeaches
KTC
Jersey Chick: "Two of my Musa books were rescued from AMP and had been beyond-well-edited when they were released."
Al Stevens
RobeH
Sage
BenPanced
frolzagain
bubastes: "Now that I've been through the full editing process with Musa, I can say that everyone's been professional, open, and incredibly responsive."
ajkjd01
Terie
Anna L.
sheadakota
sissybaby
mbroadway

My apologies if I have left anyone out or misrepresented anything.

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That's really not that much if you think about the fact that this community has almost 39,000 members (no clue how many of them are active though).

In any case, don't you think you're letting your emotions do the talking?

honeysock said:

"There are only a few Musa authors here; none to my knowledge have had their books released yet or have completed the editing process."

Really, Stacia? Have you read this entire thread? At some point someone even commented, "At this rate Musa will become the unofficial AW publisher. ."

These AWers--including some mods--have signed with Musa:

<<SNIP>>
Dave Hardy
<<SNIP>>

My apologies if I have left anyone out or misrepresented anything.

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To be fair, I only started posting on AW BECAUSE I'd signed with Musa. It seemed like a way to plug in with the milieu that Musa came from.

Regarding the book schedule, I can affirm it includes novellas & shorts (eg, the stories I have contracted with Musa).

Also from personal experience, I can affirm I am in the midst of the most detail-oriented editing process I have ever had (and I have had some detail-oriented editors). It is aimed at making a good book better.

I looked on Musa as a good option because it was open to shorter works, something that is rather thin on the ground in publishing. People here spoke highly of Celina's experience, professionalism, and Musa's contract.

I suppose time will tell if Musa bit off more than it can chew or not. My plan is to work to contribute to the success of my books and Musa. So far I am not deterred from submitting more to Musa. A bit of underdog rhetoric certainly isn't going to scare me off.

Of course the proof is in results, but I am content to get & lay the groundwork for those.

Sorry to have been away for so long, but even I have to sleep.

Several people have asked me questions which have already been answered very well by others, so I'll not go over those points again.

priceless1 said:

Celina mentioned that cash flow was a concern, so how is she going to print up ARCs for four hundred titles to send out to reviewers? Perhaps these reviewers will take e-files, which is great, but I still don't see how you can do TIP sheets and promo plans for that many books.

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I didn't see Celina discussing cashflow anywhere but I'd be very concerned about that too. There's so much more to do in publishing than edit a book and get it out there: the time it's going to take to get each book (or short, or whatever) out there and to ensure it gets enough attention is huge.

Unimportant said:

Based on what I've read over the last few months, Musa has seemed to fall into the category of most-likely-to-succeed, though obviously there are no guarantees in the publishing industry.

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What makes you say this, Unimportant? Is it because of specific points in Musa's business plan, or because of the positive atmosphere in this thread?

smeads00 said:

Musa on the other hand sends out regular communications, has a very neat manuscript management system apparently designed in-house that lets you see development stages, and I've never felt adrift with them. These don't address the great questions being raised in this thread, and seeing the responses here has once again given me a great education. Basically, my only contribution is to say that as a writer trying to educate himself about how the publishing process works, Musa feels professional and on-the-ball to me. (And that's not to disparage Lethe Press, as I truly love their product).

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Keeping in touch with one's writers during the production process is a separate issue to how well a publisher will promote and sell its books, or manage its cashflow, or even publish those books. Yes, it's nice, but it's not an indication that the publisher will succeed.

Penhead said:

I'm appalled at the suggestion that "everyone should wait a year/two years until Musa is off the ground."

THEN HOW WILL THEY GET INTO BUSINESS? No contracted authors = no books to sell = no sales = no business. Yeah, they will certainly fail there.

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This is pretty standard advice and in my view, it's good advice. There will always be writers willing to take a risk on new publishers but the odds are against them succeeding; and most writers I know prefer not to let publishers work out the faults in their business plan by experimenting with their hard-written work.

I'll take suggestions from the "mainstream" publishing industry with a grain of salt. They sneer at e-publishers anyway, and believe that any e-pubbed writer was e-pubbed because they "weren't good enough" for Random House, Avon, etc. Ditto for some of the writer's professional associations, such as RWA.

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I'm one of those people from the "mainstream" publishing industry (although I prefer to call it trade publishing, and it's a business, not an industry). I don't sneer at e-publishers: I think they're great. It's exciting to watch and participate in the changes which are happening around us. I also don't think that e-published writers are somehow not good enough for the big publishers--and AW's own Stacia Kane, who commented upthread, is an exellent example of that. I think you've believed in one too many rhetorical sweeps there.

honeysock said:

(Seriously, how does someone with no money/income break into the traditional publishing world? You don't. You have to have money in order to support yourself while you work your way up. For a very long time it was a rich white man's world. This was/is ethically wrong. The current traditional publishing model, much like our current traditional educational model, is broken.)

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Easy. You write a good book and send it out to agents. I've got plenty of friends who have managed it and some of them are neither white nor male. And saying that publishing is broken is so last year.

mscelina said:

Queen of Swords said:

Agreed. I have a lot of respect for how Celina handled the Aspen Mountain debacle, but imagine what the reaction would be if a new publisher no one had ever heard of started a thread here and said, "The odds are against us and no other publisher believes our business can work".

People would be wondering (rightly so) if those other publishers had a good reason for their consensus of opinion.

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Good Lord--you guys sure took the bit in your mouths with that comment. Good thing I ran my reply to Old Hack's original post by the rest of the senior staff or they'd probably kill me.

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To say that "no other publisher in the world believes [Musa] can work" is a huge claim and I understand that you might have made it in the spirit of bravado, or that you might have intended it more casually than I've taken it. But if you discussed your response with your senior staff before posting it here, I'm very surprised that none of them suggested you rephrase that bit of it.

mscelina said:

First off--Musa is a (currently) e-press only. Our operations, functions and processes are entirely different from print or trade presses.

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Celina, I get that an e-publisher is a lot different from a print publisher. But I don't understand how you can say that you're entirely different from a trade publisher. If you're not publishing trade books, that means you must be publishing some other sort: academic books? brochures? What, exactly? Or have you misunderstood what "trade publishing" means?

So before you jump on board with the 'I strongly advise authors not to submit to Musa' train, make sure that you understand the differences here.

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I understand the differences fully.

Second--out of those 400 books on Musa's release schedule:

Let's be honest--you guys are thinking NOVELS.

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I'm not. I looked at your website before I joined in with this discussion. As I understand it, you're publishing a mix of novels and shorter works.

About 25% of our publication schedule is original, first time published works over 65000 words.

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Which means that you've got about 100 full-length novels signed, which is still a huge amount for you to process.

Musa publishes short fiction between 5 and 10k ... Easily 40% of our schedule falls into these categories.

As for the rest of our schedules, we're looking at novellas and novelettes for the most part, several serial stories (usually between 10-20 k installments).

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So of the 400 titles you've signed up, 25% or about 100 are novels over 65k; 40% (160) are shorts of under 10k; and the rest--35% (140)--are novellas or serial fiction. Is that right?

As I wrote before, 100 novels is a huge number for a new publisher to sign up so quickly, and you've got a further 300 shorter works to publish too. I don't think you answered my question about what sort of publication schedule you're working to but I suspect I'm going to be very concerned about that too.

I realise shorter works take less time to edit than novels; and that you've signed up novels released from AMP which had already been edited by you and your team. But editing isn't the only part of the publishing process: you'll still have to proof them, and get covers for them, and so on, which takes just as much time for a short work as for a long one. And the marketing for each work takes the same sort of time if you do it properly, regardless of its length. This is a huge burden of work for you and your staff, and I'm very concerned that you will not be able to look after each work as effectively as you might be able to. I'm also worried that Musa might suffer cashflow problems as a result of having taken on so much work, so early in the company's history.

Therefore, I respectfully submit that this constant HORROR at the size of our release schedule is stemming from (pardon me for saying this) complete ignorance about what we're doing at Musa.

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Those of us who are asking questions have a fair amount of publishing experience and knowledge, as you very well know. We might not know the precise ins and outs of how you're running things at Musa: but we know a lot about the red flags to watch out for, and some of them are waving wildly in this thread.

If you feel we're displaying "complete ignorance" then you might like to try to educate us instead of dismiss us. It would reflect better on you.

I'm not a hypocrite--or, at least, I don't think I am. I expect the same questions that I have asked of fledgling presses in the past to be asked of me. That doesn't bother me. What does bother me, I have to admit, is the wholesale dismissal of what Musa is doing without an accurate picture of what it is we're doing there.

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I don't see a "wholesale dismissal" of Musa: just some reasonable questions which have been asked of every other new publisher which has been discussed on these pages. And if we don't have an accurate picture of what Musa is doing then why don't you provide one?

honeysock said:

"There are only a few Musa authors here; none to my knowledge have had their books released yet or have completed the editing process."

Really, Stacia? Have you read this entire thread? At some point someone even commented, "At this rate Musa will become the unofficial AW publisher. ."

These AWers--including some mods--have signed with Musa:

<snip>

My apologies if I have left anyone out or misrepresented anything.

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Right, and that's 39 out of 400 accepted mss. That's about 10%; not a large percentage.

Penhead said:

I'll take suggestions from the "mainstream" publishing industry with a grain of salt. They sneer at e-publishers anyway, and believe that any e-pubbed writer was e-pubbed because they "weren't good enough" for Random House, Avon, etc. Ditto for some of the writer's professional associations, such as RWA.

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Excuse me, I started my career in epublishing and still speak about and get involved in the industry and issues which affect it, and champion it as a valid choice for many authors. I recently wrote a Foreword for an epublished breast cancer benefit anthology and sold a short to be epublished on the Heroes & Heartbreakers website run by Tor.

I also left RWA in part because of its attitude toward epublishing. Don't tell me I "sneer" at epublishing, please.


I'd also like to remind you both what I actually said in my post (bolding mine):

Stacia Kane said:

Personally, I'd love to see Musa succeed and am hoping they do, and think the odds for them are better than many startups.

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That's solely down to my confidence in Celina and my knowledge of her publishing experience, and my faith in the AWers who've sold stories to her.

It still doesn't mean I'd wholeheartedly recommend them, because I don't recommend any startup publisher, e- or otherwise. But I fail to see how saying "I hope they succeed and I have confidence that they have a better chance than most of the others" is such a terrible thing to say.

honeysock said:

(Seriously, how does someone with no money/income break into the traditional publishing world? You don't. You have to have money in order to support yourself while you work your way up. For a very long time it was a rich white man's world. This was/is ethically wrong. The current traditional publishing model, much like our current traditional educational model, is broken.)

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This thread just happened to be at the top of the forum when I came in; it's not one I've read extensively, and I don't want to get into the details surrounding the press in question. But I do want to say something in regards to this.

I call B.S.

Speaking as someone who was unemployed, and had been for quite some time, at the point I queried and signed with my agent, then my publisher. You DO NOT need any sort of background or side support to "break into" publishing. All you have to do is sell a book.

- Cyia, who is a girl.