SL Publishing Group (SLPG)

I'm not going to click on the link you've given if their website is infected with a virus, and I'd advise no one else to, either.

I've removed the link; the site is indeed infected.

I hope this is allowed. I work with SLPG and we take the threat of a virus extremely seriously. Our site was taken down back in June and every page and database was removed and/or destroyed and we were forced to start from scratch. To our knowledge there should be no virus threat from our site. If you are receiving a virus notification from an anti-virus software, can you please post or email me with name so I can check it. My email address is [email protected]. Again, we take this very seriously so please let me know if you are receiving a warning.

The site should be up and running. Like I said, we removed every page and database and started from scratch. We're still in the midst of fixing everything but the site is up and running.

~Heather

I'm going to bump this thread up.

SL Publishing Group has published a few books, and from what all I read on their tumblr , it's a publishing company of two people. They've recently adapted one of their books to a manga as well, so SLPG is still active.

I sent them an email about their guidelines since there's a lot of stuff missing like the rights, distribution (they publish paperback and kindle files and that they go to Yaoicon, but other than that, nothing has been mentioned that I know of), and things like that. I did get a one line response telling me that they'd get back to me as soon as possible (I'm not sure if that's an automated response of not...).

I'll update this post once I do get another email from them.

Another thing that stood out to me was that their authors link to one another's websites, and they seem to be publishing the main bulk of the works available on SLPG website. I haven't come across any books that were published this year, but that could be due to two-person staff. This leads me into something else that confused me.

They go by a different word count than other presses I've seen, and if you click their books you can see how many pages and words each work has, but I can't figure out how they determine how x-number of words= x-number of pages. (I tried calculating with the pagesx250 method on this and I got different numbers than what was listed. Maybe they're using a different font for each book they publish?)

I did find out that they also get merchandise made for their books, but only the most popular titles.

The thing about the submission page that confuses me is this:

Please note: Two things: First, if you do not catch our interest within the first few pages, we reserve the right to send you feedback on that section alone although we will try to read the entire document. Second, it may take us a very long time to get to your manuscript. Your patience is appreciated and we apologize for the possible delay.

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To me it sounds like they turn works down/stop reading if the first few pages don't sound good, which can suck because some books have a slow start. The second part of that worries me because there's no set response time, nor any way of knowing if your work is in a long line of submissions. You could be waiting months for a response, but hopefully SLPG responds to each submission.

I'm glad you brought up the art thing, c.m.n, because that does tell a lot about the target audience. I think having manga-styled artwork is a good idea, but on the other hand, it could put a lot of buyers off if they aren't into anime and manga.

Also, all three of the books in the Blood Nation series published by SLPG have different artists, and the characters look slightly different on each cover. I think it's safe to assume that just because an artist works on one book cover/illustration, it doesn't guarantee that they'll be contracted to keep providing the pictures for the same series.

Sorry for the double post.

I got a response to my email today and I have a bit more info. SLPG only focuses on online sales, especially their ebooks, and they don't have books in actual bookstores.

They do work with authors to help get their names and their work out there through the internet and at conventions. They also help their writers build websites as part of this, and provide items for sale if the author has a local convention.

The response I got to my questions about the rights that SLPG takes was this:

We do not really take rights from our authors. We consider our association to be more of a partnership. We sign single book contracts that do not extend our rights to any other works excepting works associated with the book in the contract. We would want the first option on books that are part of a series. Other than that, we have spaces in our contract that allow you to give or hold on to your rights to merchandising, tv/movie, ect. We are just interested in your books. That being said we are beginning to move into some merchandising with items such as button sets, bookmarks, posters, ect. and we do offer our authors a 5% royalty on those.

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The rights thing is iffy to me. Either a publisher accepts rights such as first serial rights, electronic rights, subsidiary, etc. in the contract or it doesn't. I've never heard of giving the author the right to decide which of these things he/she would hand over. I automatically assumed that the contracts would state which rights the publisher wanted.

As for the merchandising part: I don't know if this is good or not considering I've seen Cethe merchandise on cafepress.com that cost anywhere from $9 on up to $49.

They don't seem to understand what rights are, and how they work. Which is somewhat disconcerting considering they're a publisher, and if they don't acquire the rights to publish their authors' books they're in breach of copyright.

Jinsune said:

To me it sounds like they turn works down/stop reading if the first few pages don't sound good, which can suck because some books have a slow start.

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A slow start /= an uninteresting start. Editors are readers, too; they know that most readers won't plough through a dull opening in the hope 'it might get better'.