Untreed Reads Publishing

we prefer our fiction focus to be on lesser realized genres such as sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, and general fiction

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Uh, what? I don't know about sci-fi or mystery, but fantasy is not exactly lesser realized. I'd like to know where they get that idea.

I don't know about this one, but I'm not thrilled about that royalty rate. 50% of what? Net? Cover? All for ebooks that will sell for a dollar and gradually increase? Useless if no one knows about the publisher. I don't know if you could do worse, but you could probably do much better.

And the price is already pitiful enough; unless you'd be getting a very high number of purchases even cover wouldn't yield much of a royalty. Net is even worse. It's up to you though, a short story you don't have much attachment to would be a good way to gauge their potential or lackthereof.

"Net" can mean a number of different things: net of returns, net income, or net profit. It always needs to be defined as precisely as possible in a publishing contract.

Thank You!

I just wanted to say thank you for posting about some confusion you've had with our listing. As we are new, we like to get this kind of information so that we can go back and make clearer statements for our potential authors.

When we said "lesser-realized" genres, we were referring to the fact that these genres were probably not as dominant as the romance and erotica genres currently are. Thanks to your feedback, we've gone back and adjusted the description to eliminate any confusion.

In our case, "net" is the amount after fees have been paid to the appropriate vendors. We've cleaned up the language in both the Sample Author Contract and the Submission Guidelines to help clarify that.

Our short story payscale is similar to that of AmieStreet.com. On theirs, the more popular a song is, the higher the price. We do the same thing with short stories, but it's based on sales over all of the sites, not just ours. We currently distribute through nearly ten different vendors, and one of our authors just had his title move up to the next sales tier. Three other titles are on the edge of that right now.

We've only been publishing for a couple of months, but the royalties we paid out for Q1 seemed to make our authors happy (according to them). We hope you'll consider working with us also.

Thanks again for all of your feedback. If you have any other issues or questions, please don't hesitate to email me directly at [email protected]. Our success is based on exceptional authors and their feedback!

Best,
Jay Hartman
Editor-In-Chief
Untreed Reads Publishing
http://www.untreedreads.com

Welcome to AW, Jay.

Thanks for your professional response to our concerns. I hope you'll pop back from time to time and answer questions as they arise.

Ebook release with Untreed Reads does not preclude author from going with a mainstream publisher in the future; there will be a flat fee for release of electronic rights to a mainstream publisher.

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What if the book in question stops selling? Is there a time limit, or does the flat fee continue in perpetuity?

I have some concerns about the table at the bottom of the submissions page too, such as the information on copyright and ISBN. You don't sign your copyright over to a traditional publisher, as far as I'm aware, just certain publishing rights, and you do need an ISBN for eBooks in most circumstances (there's some debate over whether you need an ISBN for each eBook format, but the law hasn't specifically said so yet). Things like websites and formats and conversion to mainstream publishing don't ring quite right either, but that might just be marketing spin.

Just FYI to Untreed, your search function might need some work. I searched for Ruth Sims and it didn't bring up her book.

This quote from their website about agent compensation makes me nervous. What are they saying?

Compensation

We currently offer three primary categories of referrals and compensation for manuscripts/authors you would refer to us and for whom we produce works:

1. For manuscripts that are already in print, but without negotiated electronic rights; or for authors interested in Untreed Reads publishing the ebook now while the agent continues to seek mainstream publishing:

Compensation to agent: 15% of royalties (7½ % paid by Untreed Reads and 7½% by author)

2. For manuscripts that agent has reviewed, but has decided for one reason or another that the manuscript/author isn’t a fit for agent and agent refers them to us:

Compensation to agent: 7% of royalties (3½% paid by Untreed Reads and 3½% by author)

3. Authors agent refers to us for whom agent has not even reviewed the manuscript, but has simply decided to refer author to Untreed Reads:

Compensation to agent: 3% (paid by Untreed Reads)

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Why on earth would any legit agent send their client to a publisher while they're still shopping the manuscript around? Isn't that seriously frakking with rights? Why would a big publisher take something that already has a publisher? I art confused.

2 and 3 look a lot like a referral fee there. More a failing on an agent if they take it than the publisher, but still not pleasant to see.

1 only makes sense if the agent has already shopped the book to a print publlisher who doesn't want to do e - if you've got a decent agent they're not going to give away first publishing rights while in the process of shopping the manuscript around, especially when most contracts have a clause on eBooks now anyway.

I kinda like the look of this market for short stuff, though Iit really depends on how my concerns above (#9) are addressed, but I would think very hard before offering a novel.

Untreed Reads Website:
1. For manuscripts that are already in print, but without negotiated electronic rights; or for authors interested in Untreed Reads publishing the ebook now while the agent continues to seek mainstream publishing:

Compensation to agent: 15% of royalties (7½ % paid by Untreed Reads and 7½% by author)

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This just isn't how royalties are paid anyway.

Royalties payable to an agent will be determined by their contract with an author, e.g. my agent haas 15% on sales made in the UK, 20% on foreign rights sales. That means that they get 15/20% of whatever advance I get for a book and then when I earn out and royalties become payable, they take 15/20% of the royalties that they receive on my behalf.

This seems to be saying that Untreed will be paying agents out of their cut and the author's cut, which is nonsense.

Untreed Reads Website:
2. For manuscripts that agent has reviewed, but has decided for one reason or another that the manuscript/author isn’t a fit for agent and agent refers them to us:

Compensation to agent: 7% of royalties (3½% paid by Untreed Reads and 3½% by author)

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Not only is this a referral fee, but I don't see how it could be legally enforceable for Untreed to pay it from the amount due to the author, when the author (presumably) has no contract in place with the agent.

If Untreed wants to pay agents a referral fee then that agent is probably skeevy (and certainly won't be a member of the AAR). However any such fee should come out of Untreed's cut only.

Untreed Reads Website:
3. Authors agent refers to us for whom agent has not even reviewed the manuscript, but has simply decided to refer author to Untreed Reads:

Compensation to agent: 3% (paid by Untreed Reads)

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This is definitely a referral fee and no agent who accepts it will be a member of AAR.

As regards the sample contract that they have up here:

- there's an inconsistancy in the delivery dates for the manuscript - it says 120 days to deliver a completed manuscript in the paragraph above clause 1, but 60 days in Clause 4a

- Clause 4b seems to give Untreed the right to the next book in a series, although I can't see an option clause in the Contract that gives them that right - in fact Clause 12 states that the author is free to publish or self-publish elsewhere;

- Clause 6.b gives Untreed a derivative right in Braille, which is odd given that they're only taking electronic rights. I'd question the derivative rights assignment anyway - but given that I'm not experienced in ebooks one of the other posters would be better placed to comment;

- Clause 11a is an out of print clause taken from a print contract - again, not relevant given that Untreed is only taking electronic rights under this contract

- Clause 14a sets out the contract term, which isn't deemed to run until 31 December after the date of publication - i.e. if you've been published on 1st January, the contract term isn't deemed to begin until 31 December that year, effectively giving Untreed a 3 year contract term. I'm not a US attorney, but I don't quite see how that works legally and in any event, given that the effect is to create a 3 year term I wouldn't agree to it;

- Clause 14c gives Untreed the right to charge a break fee for early termination. Price is for "cover art" and "print expenses" but there's no requirement on Untreed to provide receipts or other evidence about the same and it could be open to abuse;

- Clause 14f - if you, by your own efforts, get a commercial publisher (Untreed uses the term "traditional publisher" which is an alarm in itself) for your work, then Untreed will take 10% of whatever advance you've negotiated for yourself. I would definitely not agree to that - not least given that it should be subject to the termination/expiry of the contract after the 2 year term is done.

In the About Us Information, neither the CEO nor the Editor in Chief have any experience working in the publishing industry (in the sense of having worked for an actual publisher). That in itself would make me avoid this company.

MM

kaitie said:

Why on earth would any legit agent send their client to a publisher while they're still shopping the manuscript around? Isn't that seriously frakking with rights? Why would a big publisher take something that already has a publisher? I art confused.

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Not all publishers also publish in electronic format. In fact, we've signed an author who has a print contract with a major publisher for print, but his house doesn't currently support ebooks. He wanted his titles electronically, so his agent came to us.

Keep in mind that in most cases, what we've been working with with agents are titles that either a) they've chosen not to represent b) did not find a print home but the author is willing to consider ebook publishing or c) their publisher doesn't publish electronically. It has been very common for "big" publishers to pick up electronic titles and put them in print.

Best,
Jay Hartman
Editor-In-Chief
Untreed Reads Publishing

veinglory said:

Just FYI to Untreed, your search function might need some work. I searched for Ruth Sims and it didn't bring up her book.

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Much appreciated. We're working on some back-end stuff to get it all up to speed and will be relaunching some aspects shortly.

Best,
Jay Hartman
Editor-In-Chief
Untreed Reads Publishing

Whew! Lots To Answer!

Whew! A lot here to cover, so let's see what I can do to sort it all out. Incidentally, our original contract was a combination of a print contract and an ebook contract. I'm happy to say that our meeting with our new legal staff this morning is going to help clarify things a great deal.

Momento Mori said:

This just isn't how royalties are paid anyway.

Royalties payable to an agent will be determined by their contract with an author, e.g. my agent haas 15% on sales made in the UK, 20% on foreign rights sales. That means that they get 15/20% of whatever advance I get for a book and then when I earn out and royalties become payable, they take 15/20% of the royalties that they receive on my behalf.

This seems to be saying that Untreed will be paying agents out of their cut and the author's cut, which is nonsense.

Keep in mind, in these cases the author does NOT currently have a contract with their agent for the ELECTRONIC rights. That's what's being negotiated here. We also don't pay advances, so your example above is not necessarily apples/apples.

Not only is this a referral fee, but I don't see how it could be legally enforceable for Untreed to pay it from the amount due to the author, when the author (presumably) has no contract in place with the agent.

There is a separate contract that we have for the Agent/Author/Publisher relationship that is not the same as the one you see on the site. As the terms change from agent to agent, that contract tends to be malleable and negotiable. We recently completed a negotiation for an author who is taking advantage of this opportunity to get his works into electronic format where his publisher doesn't offer them. Rest assured, legal folks looked at all of the contracts including all parties involved. No contract was signed until everyone agreed to the terms.

If Untreed wants to pay agents a referral fee then that agent is probably skeevy (and certainly won't be a member of the AAR). However any such fee should come out of Untreed's cut only.

This is definitely a referral fee and no agent who accepts it will be a member of AAR.

As this is a personal opinion without anything for me to comment on, I'll pass on this one. Rest assured, the agents we are currently working with are all professionals, and the authors involved have had no issues whatsoever.

As regards the sample contract that they have up here:

- there's an inconsistancy in the delivery dates for the manuscript - it says 120 days to deliver a completed manuscript in the paragraph above clause 1, but 60 days in Clause 4a

120 days is for submitted proposals. If, based on the proposal, we choose to accept the work than the author needs to deliver a final work to us within 120 days. For accepted manuscripts that require editing that has been discussed, then the final work should be delivered within 60 days, with up to 120 days available for unusual circumstances.

- Clause 4b seems to give Untreed the right to the next book in a series, although I can't see an option clause in the Contract that gives them that right - in fact Clause 12 states that the author is free to publish or self-publish elsewhere;

Clause 4b is the assumption that we have signed them to a series. In fact, we specifically state in #12 that we'd like to have a first look at it, but it's not required. 4b is about the delivery of the titles in the series that we've signed them to.

- Clause 6.b gives Untreed a derivative right in Braille, which is odd given that they're only taking electronic rights. I'd question the derivative rights assignment anyway - but given that I'm not experienced in ebooks one of the other posters would be better placed to comment;

This was taken directly from a previous print contract, which we have scheduled to be removed in the revision.

- Clause 11a is an out of print clause taken from a print contract - again, not relevant given that Untreed is only taking electronic rights under this contract

Edition refers to format. If the title is no longer being offered in any ebook format, then the title is rendered "out-of-print."

- Clause 14a sets out the contract term, which isn't deemed to run until 31 December after the date of publication - i.e. if you've been published on 1st January, the contract term isn't deemed to begin until 31 December that year, effectively giving Untreed a 3 year contract term. I'm not a US attorney, but I don't quite see how that works legally and in any event, given that the effect is to create a 3 year term I wouldn't agree to it;

The effect wasn't to create a 3 year term. It's one of the errors that we recently spotted and currently have our lawyers rewriting for us. It's actually two years from the date the contract is executed by both parties. Keep in mind that the one on the site says "Sample Contract," not "This Is The Contract You'll Receive."

- Clause 14c gives Untreed the right to charge a break fee for early termination. Price is for "cover art" and "print expenses" but there's no requirement on Untreed to provide receipts or other evidence about the same and it could be open to abuse;

We'll go ahead and add some clarifying language. I guess it never occurred to me to be unethical about it, which is why it's not spelled out. Not to mention that if there's something missing in a contract that an author wants to see, then we negotiate putting it in the contract before it's signed. Part of the point of working with people to reach a common goal.

- Clause 14f - if you, by your own efforts, get a commercial publisher (Untreed uses the term "traditional publisher" which is an alarm in itself) for your work, then Untreed will take 10% of whatever advance you've negotiated for yourself. I would definitely not agree to that - not least given that it should be subject to the termination/expiry of the contract after the 2 year term is done.

As of right now in the industry, print publishing is still being considered as a "traditional publisher," with electronic publishing in a different category. I wish it was all considered equal, but it's not. The 10% advance is ONLY should the author do away with their electronic version. If they get a print contract, terrific! We're not asking for anything for that. We've done quite a bit of research into this, and the 10% is actually significantly lower than what many other electronic publishers were asking.

In the About Us Information, neither the CEO nor the Editor in Chief have any experience working in the publishing industry (in the sense of having worked for an actual publisher). That in itself would make me avoid this company.

Actually, you are very incorrect in this. K.D. Sullivan has multiple contracts through McGraw-Hill as an author, and has also co-authored another title in the Pocket Idiot's Guide series. In fact, much of the first two incarnations of our contract were taken word-for-word from K.D.'s contract with McGraw-Hill. The agent contract template we use (not available on the site) was worked on with three literary agents, including K.D.'s who has been in the business for almost 30 years. We are certainly situated better than many companies that are setup by people simply looking to setup a shingle.

MM

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Hope that helps with this round of questions. I'll keep checking in!

Best,
Jay Hartman
Editor-In-Chief
Untreed Reads Publishing

Actually, you are very incorrect in this. K.D. Sullivan has multiple contracts through McGraw-Hill as an author, and has also co-authored another title in the Pocket Idiot's Guide series. In fact, much of the first two incarnations of our contract were taken word-for-word from K.D.'s contract with McGraw-Hill. The agent contract template we use (not available on the site) was worked on with three literary agents, including K.D.'s who has been in the business for almost 30 years. We are certainly situated better than many companies that are setup by people simply looking to setup a shingle.

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Being an author isn't the same as being a publisher. Ideally at least one member of your staff should have experience working within a publishing house. It's the only way to know what kind of curve balls will get thrown at you not just by authors, but by distributors, retailers, customers, freelance editors, artists, and everyone else that the author doesn't usually come into contact with.

What if Amazon wants to renegotiate its contracts with you and pulls all your books until you do what they want? What if an artist provides substandard work that technically fits the brief? What if one of the big publishers retroactively decides that it's contracts did include eBooks despite being signed before eBooks ever existed, and sue you because some of their authors have published through you? What if a customer openly puts uploads one of your books for people to pirate?

Publishers protect authors from all this, so you can see why we look for experience within a publishing house, not just with a publishing house. (though you'd either be very unlucky, or very successful, to find yourself forced to respond to all those hypotheticals!)

Many thanks for your response, UntreedReads. I just wanted to come back on some of the points.

UntreedReads:
Keep in mind, in these cases the author does NOT currently have a contract with their agent for the ELECTRONIC rights. That's what's being negotiated here. We also don't pay advances, so your example above is not necessarily apples/apples.

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I find it very surprising that an agent would not be taking representation rights for electronic copies of a book. Most agent agreements that I've seen (including my own) make it clear that the agent is taking on the work in all formats.

However if an agent (for whatever reason) has decided that s/he doesn't want to negotiate electronic rights along with print rights, then they shouldn't be getting any percentage from an author's sale of the electronic rights that the author has made for themselves.

If an agent is negotiating with you for electronic rights, then the agent's cut comes out of whatever gets paid out to the author and that is dealy with in the agent's contract with the author.

There therefore should not be any need for you to set out how the agent's percentage is determined.

UntreedReads:
There is a separate contract that we have for the Agent/Author/Publisher relationship that is not the same as the one you see on the site. As the terms change from agent to agent, that contract tends to be malleable and negotiable. We recently completed a negotiation for an author who is taking advantage of this opportunity to get his works into electronic format where his publisher doesn't offer them. Rest assured, legal folks looked at all of the contracts including all parties involved. No contract was signed until everyone agreed to the terms.

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I'm sorry but I am utterly confused by this.

An agent who does not have any contract in place with an author to represent their work should not be getting any form of remuneration from that author.

If Untreed Press is paying a referral fee to agents who pass authors on to it, then that remuneration agreement should be between Untreed Press and the agent. The author simply does not need to be party to it.

In any event, any agent who is accepting a referral fee for manuscripts that they are passing on is in breach of AAR rules and I for one would be very wary of approaching any agent who had such a relationship with you - especially if that relationship has not been previously disclosed - because it represents a conflict of interest.

UntreedReads:
Rest assured, the agents we are currently working with are all professionals, and the authors involved have had no issues whatsoever.

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Are you prepared to state which agencies you are working with on this basis?

I'm very surprised to hear that authors have no issues with this arrangement because they're basically giving an agent money when they've done nothing except pass their manuscript to you. The agent isn't doing anything for that money and the author could keep more by approaching you direct.

At best, in my opinion, it is unethical on the part of the agent. At worst, it is open to abuse of the worst order as they could be tempted to pass on any manuscripts to you in exchange for the cash, regardless of whether it's good for the author concerned.

UntreedReads:
120 days is for submitted proposals. If, based on the proposal, we choose to accept the work than the author needs to deliver a final work to us within 120 days. For accepted manuscripts that require editing that has been discussed, then the final work should be delivered within 60 days, with up to 120 days available for unusual circumstances.

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Fair enough. Given that your contract is being reviewed anyway, it might be worth while clarifying this because I'm a UK commercial contracts lawyer and I was a bit confused about it.

UntreedReads:
Clause 4b is the assumption that we have signed them to a series. In fact, we specifically state in #12 that we'd like to have a first look at it, but it's not required. 4b is about the delivery of the titles in the series that we've signed them to.

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Fair enough. Again, it's probably something to be clarified in the redraft.

UntreedReads:
This was taken directly from a previous print contract, which we have scheduled to be removed in the revision.

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Fair enough.

UntreedReads:
Edition refers to format. If the title is no longer being offered in any ebook format, then the title is rendered "out-of-print."

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I'll have to defer to one of the other posters with more experience of electronic publishing. However my concern here is that, at least, it needs to be made subject to the set term period of the contract anyway, and an author would presumably want a tight definition as to what is meant by offering in ebook format because theoretically, it could result in a perpetual contract even though this is not what's intended.

UntreedReads:
The effect wasn't to create a 3 year term. It's one of the errors that we recently spotted and currently have our lawyers rewriting for us. It's actually two years from the date the contract is executed by both parties. Keep in mind that the one on the site says "Sample Contract," not "This Is The Contract You'll Receive."

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Fair enough. I'd expect it to be from the date of execution anyway.

UntreedReads:
We'll go ahead and add some clarifying language. I guess it never occurred to me to be unethical about it, which is why it's not spelled out. Not to mention that if there's something missing in a contract that an author wants to see, then we negotiate putting it in the contract before it's signed. Part of the point of working with people to reach a common goal.

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Fair enough and I'm sure that Untreed isn't planning to be unethical about it. The reason for mentioning it though is that there have been reports on other threads here recently where authors who are seeking to get out of contracts with electronic publishers who are not doing much for their books (which I'd stress is not what I'm suggesting would happen with Untreed) have been effectively held to ransom via clauses like this.

I can see the point in having a clause like this from a publisher's point of view because it gives certainty on costs recovery. From an author's point of view though I wouldn't be too thrilled about it and would at least want to know how much it's likely to cost me in advance if I decide I want out for whatever reason.

UntreedReads:
The 10% advance is ONLY should the author do away with their electronic version. If they get a print contract, terrific! We're not asking for anything for that. We've done quite a bit of research into this, and the 10% is actually significantly lower than what many other electronic publishers were asking.

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Again, I'm going to have to defer to some of the other posters who have experience in electronic publishing.

However my take on this (and for what it's worth) is that were I faced with a clause like that I would want it struck out - regardless of whether it's what other electronic publishers are doing. The reason is this: Untreed Publishing is not taking print rights over the book. It therefore has no say or right over what I would do with the print rights of the book. Nor is Untreed Publishing approaching, negotiating or representing me in any negotiation with a print publisher for my book. For Untreed Publishing to therefore claim a percentage of any advance that I have negotiated by myself and through my own efforts simply isn't going to fly.

UntreedReads:
K.D. Sullivan has multiple contracts through McGraw-Hill as an author, and has also co-authored another title in the Pocket Idiot's Guide series. In fact, much of the first two incarnations of our contract were taken word-for-word from K.D.'s contract with McGraw-Hill.

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Yes, but the point is that K. D. Sullivan's only experience is as an author. There is no apparent experience there as a publisher, i.e. in the sense of managing or working for a publishing company.

I do not doubt K. D. Sullivan's writing experience in the slightest. My issue is whether that experience qualifies her to operate as a publisher, which is a completely different kettle of fish.

UntreedReads:
The agent contract template we use (not available on the site) was worked on with three literary agents, including K.D.'s who has been in the business for almost 30 years.

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Apologies but I'm a bit confused about this. What does your agent contract do and how is it different to the sample contract on the site? Surely you only need a standard form contract which sets out your relationship with the author?

Again - thank you for responding to the questions here.

MM

Manuel Royal, did you ever submit?

Has anyone here actually worked with this publisher?

I submitted a short story to Untreed Reads when I got totally confuse in trying to format of "research" story for Smashwords.

It'll be some three months before my rejection arrives. (I disinclined to be optimistic ... about anything.)

Anybody heard anything about this publisher lately?

I'm thinking of sending a novel to these guys. It seems like most of the threads occured last spring.

Has anyone any newer contact?

I did last night.

Query stats for short story: sent 10/1
email I was offered pub elsewhere 10/26
" " 10/31
" " 11/24
" " 12/15
rejection 1/10

Lower than they promise. One thing that bothered me was the short I sent them was offered a better contract months ago. I've sent four emails to Untreed informing them I found a home, and thanking them for taking the time on me. I never heard a peep from them. It was a rejection, which was fine to me since I found a better home anyways The rejection some could say would be helpful, but I had to disagree. I know it's all a matter of tastes, but everything he told me was wrong with my MS is what the other pub said was its strong suits. So go figure lol

For personal reasons I am glad I didn't go with Untreed, simply because I got tons more reading with the other house. My story will be read on a monthly average 30k times. Better than what Untreed offered in my opinion.

I will say months back I subbed my novel. Jay was very fast in reading (like 10days?) and gave me the best feedback in history. This was back before I knew I had a problem with tenses. He said he like the story but my tenses were all over the place. He sent me a list of editors he knew that could help me. Personally I kind of found this weird and a conflict of interest, but that's just me. But all of his feedback was 100% truth. A day later I found AW and now I have 4 fulls out... so thanks to Jay on that.

I read somewhere in a thread that an Untreed author was extremely happy. So try subbing to them, but wait for a longer than expected response. Good Luck!

He sent me a list of editors he knew that could help me. Personally I kind of found this weird and a conflict of interest, but that's just me.

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It's only really a conflict if he's connected to any of the editors. If he's not getting anything out of it he's just offering advice, probably based on personal experience or recommendations from other authors.