[ePub] RosettaBooks

[kelliewallace]

These guys followed me on Twitter. Kinda strike me as a vanity but have 11 years experience in the industry.


Rosettabooks

[aliceshortcake]

Many - if not all - of Rosetta's books are reprints:

RosettaBooks launched in 2001 with a list of 100 preeminent backlist titles.

Today, RosettaBooks sells over 1,000,000 ebooks worldwide as the leading independent ebook publisher.

RosettaBooks pioneered in protecting authors’ rights by successfully defending a litigation filed by Random House.

RosettaBooks was invited to become a Kindle alliance partner with extensive site promotion for titles with short-term Kindle exclusivity. This alliance made worldwide news in December 2009 with the publication of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, a book which has sold 15,000,000 copies since publication nearly 25 years ago and sells more than 150,000 copies annually in the United States alone. Since publication, the title has been the number one exclusive title available in the Kindle Store.

RosettaBooks expanded its original 100 title list to more than 500 titles and its revenues more than forty times. RosettaBooks is pioneering in “line” publications of short ebooks.
http://rosettabooks.com/at-a-glance/

There are no submissions guidelines as such, merely:

If you have a project to offer RosettaBooks, please contact us.
http://rosettabooks.com/at-a-glance/

I don't get the impression that they're looking for new work at all, but there's quite a bit of info which might be useful for anyone with a suitable "project":

The Big Six publishers are trying as hard as they can to maintain a uniform royalty of 25% of net receipts for both frontlist and backlist titles. Deal structures in publishing sooner or later have always reflected the sales power of the author. The current “one size fits all” model at a low rate of royalty is not sustainable.

RosettaBooks offers the highest royalty rates of any ebook publisher.
http://rosettabooks.com/faq/

Rosetta offers 70% on frontlist and up to 60% on backlist. Again, it's interesting to know but not applicable to new work. And 25% seems awfully low for e-books - can this be correct?

Finally:

Standard practice is to take a year or longer to publish a book. RosettaBooks can come to market in several months and tie in its efforts to key events.
http://rosettabooks.com/faq/

The speed of production suggests that there's no editing, not that a previously published work would need any!

[AnneMarble]

I remember Rosetta from back when I used to read ebooks on my Palm Pilot and buy them from PeanutPress. They were one of the first ebook publishers to publish reprint editions of ebooks from major writers, without the print publisher being involved. They have some major authors, such as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, and even ... Winston Churchill! They had William Styron, but now he is with Open Road.

As far as industry ebook royalty rates go, they seem to vary wildly. Harlequin is at 25% now, but they used to be at 8%! The "average" seems to be around 25-50%, which is a huge range. And of course, many of those are on the net.

Oh, and I remember reading about the Random House lawsuit. That was ... Very interesting.