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Sinful Press

mrsmig

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Quoting from the website:

We are offering an advance of $300 USD on novels; 40% net royalties on digital and print, and 20% on audio.


Sounds good at first read, but then there's that pesky "net royalties" term which so often pops up in smaller publishers' contracts. If you end up being offered a contract, be sure you get a solid definition of what constitutes "net" - in other words, what deductions they are taking from profit before you get your cut.
 

PostScript

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Rights look good at first glance, though it's the pitch not contract. Digital and print in English only, with Audio on a 1-year option for the publisher (Revert if unused).
That net will grab you up though, like the above said get the exact description of what counts as Net before signing.

They don't offer an advance of <60K works.
And this is a red flag, not sure if it's dealbreaking or not without further info on how...
...marketing your novel, although we do expect our authors to help with this and to help promote other authors published by us.

They also ask for Times Roman instead of Courier, though that is probably due to being an Epub?
 

Zombie Fraggle

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They also ask for Times Roman instead of Courier, though that is probably due to being an Epub?

That's not an issue. Courier is a mono-spaced, slab-style, serif typeface that was designed for the purpose of mimicking the output of a strike-on typewriter. Honestly, if a publisher soliciting online submissions explicitly requested Courier at this point, I would find a way to politely tell them the 1980s wants its call-for-submissions verbiage back. Times New Roman is pretty much the standard font requested by publishers now, for those publishers who specify a font at all. Editors typically aren't reading submissions on paper documents sent to them anymore, so they can change the font, font size, and spacing of a emailed document with a few keystrokes to whatever is comfortable for that given editor's eyes before it's printed (if that editor still uses a red pen rather than the track changes function in a Word doc).

First, a positive comment on Sinful Press. They only have 9 books published to date, but holy smokes . . . their covers are quite lovely.


Concerns:

  • There is only one principal mentioned, the owner, who lists some of the usual vague qualifications for being a publisher: e.g., a literature degree, claims of being "an experienced editor and author" with no specifics offered.
  • As much as I admire their covers individually, they have a two-part series where the cover art couldn't be more diametrically opposed (one is a cartoon, the other not). Covers for a series should scream "series" at a glance.
  • They have another two-part series where, although the books are done in photorealistic imagery, they have zero cohesion. Series branding is important. Another issue in this case is that the first book is designated as Book 0, while the second book only has the parenthetical series name.
  • Amazon ranks are not remotely good. Highest is in six-digits (987,000 range). The lowest is in the 7.5 million range.
  • On Amazon, those nine books have a total of (coincidentally for the genre) 69 reviews as of this writing.
  • Except for one book (the one with the most reviews by far, and the only one of two with reviews in the double-digits), almost all the reviews are from unverified purchases.
  • Pricing is all over the place. Some titles in Kindle Select/Kindle Unlimited, some not.
  • One of their titles on Amazon isn't on their website, even though it's part of a series.
  • Googling the Sinful Press owner's name, I was able to find this blog interview post from July 2015. Parse from it what you will. https://waggingthefox.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-book-with-no-place-guest-post-by-lisa.html
  • Sinful Press also offers ebook and print book formatting services. Their submissions page explicitly mentions that work submitted to them for publication isn't levied with charges for editing, proofreading, and cover art, but I always have a knee-jerky thing happen whenever I see a small publisher offering self-publishing services.
 
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