Starting a company first to self-publish, then publish others
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Yes. Publishing is a very complicated animal. If you just want your friends to read your books, then you're well on your way. However, if you want your books to reach eyes of people who've never met you, you're about to climb a really REALLY high hill.
If I understood your post correctly, then I'd say you should probably slow down.
Just listing a publisher name rather than your pen name or real name as your book publisher on CreateSpace or wherever is not the same thing as starting a company. For all intents and purposes it's nothing, really.
First, actually write a book. Then self-publish it, if that even seems like the best direction for it once it's finished.
Only after seeing how that goes should you think about branching out and including other authors' books, additional genres, etc.
Also, getting a distributor that's worthy of the name is not easy to do at all. If it were then every self-published book would be on the bookstore shelves and etc. Also, if you are going to pay freelance editors, that money needs to come from somewhere.
The most likely scenario for something like this would be to make little, if any, profit. So my advice would be, as mentioned, just try one first, then see where you're at.
Also, be sure that any other authors you take on understand that they're basically getting the services of another amateur. Many newbies are overly impressed with anyone who says they're a publisher and accepts their manuscript for publication. It's not fair to allow them to believe it's something it's not or that they'd be getting much more than they could do on their own when they wouldn't be. It can also get you sued and your reputation ruined. Now if the real deal is explained to them and they'd still rather have help than go it alone, that's fair enough imo. Good luck.
ETA: Be very careful about mixing YA and erotica in any way!
Just listing a publisher name rather than your pen name or real name as your book publisher on CreateSpace or wherever is not the same thing as starting a company. For all intents and purposes it's nothing, really.
First, actually write a book. Then self-publish it, if that even seems like the best direction for it once it's finished.
Only after seeing how that goes should you think about branching out and including other authors' books, additional genres, etc.
Also, getting a distributor that's worthy of the name is not easy to do at all. If it were then every self-published book would be on the bookstore shelves and etc. Also, if you are going to pay freelance editors, that money needs to come from somewhere.
The most likely scenario for something like this would be to make little, if any, profit. So my advice would be, as mentioned, just try one first, then see where you're at.
Also, be sure that any other authors you take on understand that they're basically getting the services of another amateur. Many newbies are overly impressed with anyone who says they're a publisher and accepts their manuscript for publication. It's not fair to allow them to believe it's something it's not or that they'd be getting much more than they could do on their own when they wouldn't be. It can also get you sued and your reputation ruined. Now if the real deal is explained to them and they'd still rather have help than go it alone, that's fair enough imo. Good luck.
ETA: Be very careful about mixing YA and erotica in any way!
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You really, REALLY need professionals at every level of your publishing venture.
Acquisition editors, proofreaders, copy editors, content editors, marketing professionals, distribution professionals with experience and contacts, the list goes on and on.
If you have the kind of startup money to fund hiring that kind of established talent, you're lucky indeed.
If you don't, don't try it. Cutting corners will only get you to the places everyone is warning you about.
The problem isn't the self-publishing part. You don't need to wait to publish your stuff if you're ready.
It's publishing others where you need to go slow. If you get established as a successful self-publisher who puts out quality products, you might be in a position to start a micropress. But we're talking years, not a few months. When it's just you, it can be for fun, the love of writing, and all the rest. When it's other people, you can seriously hurt them if you mess up. We have the whole background/beware forum full of examples when micropresses/small presses have done just that.
It's publishing others where you need to go slow. If you get established as a successful self-publisher who puts out quality products, you might be in a position to start a micropress. But we're talking years, not a few months. When it's just you, it can be for fun, the love of writing, and all the rest. When it's other people, you can seriously hurt them if you mess up. We have the whole background/beware forum full of examples when micropresses/small presses have done just that.
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As Polenth have said, the whole self-publisher to amateur "publisher" stuff is a dime a dozen. I can already tell you: The whole idea is bad.
Now, understand that publishers and people who work at a true publishing company have experience in the publishing industry. I'm talking degrees, certs, official training, then years under apprenticeship and years being successful at their goal jobs. Then they move on up higher. Why is this important? Because it shows that this person has experience and knowledge to help others out with publishing. Publishing is much harder than people think it is, especially dealing with editing and legal issues.
Just because you're an avid reader and are writing a book (your first?) doesn't mean you have the experience and know-how to publish others. And, no, it is not something you can learn while doing it. And no, it's not a charitable thing: You can lock someone into a shitty contract where they can't take their book elsewhere; bad editing, cover design, and bad publicity can ruin the success of a hopeful author--especially a career minded writer seeking to rise higher, one failure can ruin them--; and you can get yourself and others into deep legal shit. Then there's the problem of starting a business like that with a pen-name. That's not good at all.
Now, I'm fine with you wrapping yourself under your own publishing house. I've seen people do it. I don't fully agree with it, but hey, if that's what you want: Go right ahead. But please don't wrap other people up without proper experience backing you up. This include friends. Yes, that's common. Yes, we've seen the burns before from exactly that.
To add: If you'd self-publish for a couple months to test the waters, prepare to be disappointed. Success in self-publishing doesn't happen overnight unless you already have a massive following rearing to go. You're looking at years, not months.
Now, understand that publishers and people who work at a true publishing company have experience in the publishing industry. I'm talking degrees, certs, official training, then years under apprenticeship and years being successful at their goal jobs. Then they move on up higher. Why is this important? Because it shows that this person has experience and knowledge to help others out with publishing. Publishing is much harder than people think it is, especially dealing with editing and legal issues.
Just because you're an avid reader and are writing a book (your first?) doesn't mean you have the experience and know-how to publish others. And, no, it is not something you can learn while doing it. And no, it's not a charitable thing: You can lock someone into a shitty contract where they can't take their book elsewhere; bad editing, cover design, and bad publicity can ruin the success of a hopeful author--especially a career minded writer seeking to rise higher, one failure can ruin them--; and you can get yourself and others into deep legal shit. Then there's the problem of starting a business like that with a pen-name. That's not good at all.
Now, I'm fine with you wrapping yourself under your own publishing house. I've seen people do it. I don't fully agree with it, but hey, if that's what you want: Go right ahead. But please don't wrap other people up without proper experience backing you up. This include friends. Yes, that's common. Yes, we've seen the burns before from exactly that.
To add: If you'd self-publish for a couple months to test the waters, prepare to be disappointed. Success in self-publishing doesn't happen overnight unless you already have a massive following rearing to go. You're looking at years, not months.
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There's so much here that's inaccurate and unknowledgeable I don't even know where to start.
There's a ton of good information on this forum about self-publishing. But you just have to realize that it's a whole 'nother story if you're talking about taking other people's hard work and dreams and thinking you can publish them without any real expertise. A few months of self-publishing does not, in any way, shape, or form, qualify you to take on other authors as a trade publisher. It just doesn't.
With YA (and any form of children's books), it may be best to have imprints within the company. This is ESPECIALLY true with erotica as your other genre. Your company's brand needs to not be YA and erotica. You could have a YA brand presence/name/logo and an erotica one under the same umbrella business, but think about the reasons so many publishers have separate children's imprints. You don't want a 14-year-old to become familiar with your brand, only to stumble on the erotica.
And for your own writing, you should definitely have a different name for YA and erotica. If you were writing adult or New Adult, it really wouldn't matter that you also write erotica. You may want a pen name to identify what part of your brand it is, but there are no major concerns. YA is children's literature, though. You don't want it linked with erotica. Romance - even steamy romance - may be fine, although again usually a publisher/agent would make that decision. However, YA indicates under 18. (I'm not saying anything bad about erotica or suggesting censorship. I am just suggesting that you remember that, while adults read YA, the target is for teens and teens are minors.)
And for your own writing, you should definitely have a different name for YA and erotica. If you were writing adult or New Adult, it really wouldn't matter that you also write erotica. You may want a pen name to identify what part of your brand it is, but there are no major concerns. YA is children's literature, though. You don't want it linked with erotica. Romance - even steamy romance - may be fine, although again usually a publisher/agent would make that decision. However, YA indicates under 18. (I'm not saying anything bad about erotica or suggesting censorship. I am just suggesting that you remember that, while adults read YA, the target is for teens and teens are minors.)
There's nothing wrong with setting up a company in order to self publish your own works. Lots of people do it. But expecting to run a publishing company when you have no experience and no training, and just a handful of freelancers to rely on, is not just naive, it's foolish. And it's disrespectful and possibly exploitative to the writers you might publish, whose work you will be using as training-material.
As for distributors, well. I don't think you know what that means. You need a good distributor to sell a reasonable number of copies: but good distributors won't work with start-ups or with presses which work in an amateurish way. It's clear from your posts here that you won't find any to work with you, I'm afraid. And bang goes your chance at selling to anyone other than your authors' friends and family.
Hang on. You haven't even finished the first book yet?
You're getting ahead of yourself. Write the books. Revise them several times. See what your beta readers think then revise them again. Self publish them if you still think they're good enough. See how the first few sell, while writing a few more.
This will keep you fully occupied, and if you're lucky, it will earn you enough for a few coffees here and there.
Once you've done that, then you consider publishing anyone else.
I also love erotic romance and erotica, particularly if they have a paranormal/ supernatural element.I recently started a paranormal erotic romance/ erotica series and I'm pretty excited about it. Definitely what you would call an equal opportunity genre jumper (yeah, I just made that up), I have partially written books in many other genres but have never published.
The company's main focus is YA novels with a paranormal, fantasy element; thrillers, romance, horror, etc. But I also wanted to publish the erotic romance and erotica I write without sacrificing my company vision; if that makes sense. As a side note, the erotica would be strictly ebooks.
Soon/ eventually, I would like to invite authors to publish novels/novellas in my erotic romance and erotica genres.
Q2: Would it do to just have an erotica ebook section on the company's website or would it be suicide to put them together like that? Would I need to build a completely separate platform/ website for the erotica??
You cannot publish both YA and erotica on the same imprint. There are far too many issues to consider. And the only publishers I know which run both YA lists and erotica lists are huge, with many imprints. A new micropress with just a YA and an erotica imprint? Nope.
I write under a slight variation of my legal name; just liked the idea of using my legal name for my other business ventures (clothing line and restaurant) and using the variation for my books, writing, social media sites, etc.
Q3: Would it be a good idea to use my regular pen name, or to create another pen name for the erotica if I did feature that genre on the company's website?; or do I even need to worry about creating a pen name for the erotica, in general?
Any and all constructive criticism welcome!!
Completely separate pen-names for the YA and the erotica, with no crossover between the two ANYWHERE.
Publish your own books by all means. Publishing other writers' works is not so good when you haven't got a clue about what's involved, and if you knew what you were doing you'd understand why.
New presses are extremely likely to close, or to collapse without a formal closure, and when they go they often take their books with them. So the authors concerned lose the books they've worked on for years, and have nothing to show for their efforts. And even when those publishers don't close, the books they publish rarely do well. They are poorly edited and designed, poorly marketed, and usually sell in tiny numbers as a result.
A few months isn't long enough for you to establish what's working and what isn't. Give it a year, at least. A couple would be better.
You need to do everything properly, not just marketing.
And yes, I know authors sign up with start-ups all the time. But some are run by people who, like me, have a lot of publishing experience and who know what they're doing, and are worth risking your work to.
Amazon is not a "distributor". It's a retail outlet.
Unless you have a few hundred thousand dollars to invest in this venture you cannot do well.
You need more than one proofreader. You need editors, experienced editors. Designers. Typesetters, formatters. So many more.
My advice? Finish your books. Self publish them if you want to. Spend two years working on selling them as well as you can. Then put together a proper business plan to see if you can afford to publish anyone else.
Just to pull this part out - presumably they want an expert publisher to provide quality marketing and promotion from established professionals. Getting bad marketing and promotion from a cheap freelancer hired by a micropress with no industry experience is not likely to satisfy them. I'm not sure if someone whose only industry experience is a half-finished first draft of a first novel could even evaluate whether marketing and promotion is good enough or whether to hire a specific freelancer. What do you judge that by with so little knowledge?
I'm a freelance editor with clients on the NYT and USA Today list. If I started a micropress, I might possibly be qualified to (a) sort through applications from freelance editors and (b) evaluate their work samples. That's it. My professional experience of marketing and promotion is zero. Distributors, zero. Contracts, zero. Rights, zero. Cover art, zero. I'd need to hire very experienced professionals to make up for my inexperience and they're expensive.
I admit, I don't understand the belief that starting a publisher is so simple that absolutely anyone can do it. There is a huge difference between experimenting with your own early work and putting yourself out as a real publisher.
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Thanks everyone...lol except for the person who commented how they didn't know where to start but still decided to participate by copying and pasting what I wrote instead of just moving out of the way for others to comment. 
Thanks everyone...lol except for the person who commented how they didn't know where to start but still decided to participate by copying and pasting what I wrote instead of just moving out of the way for others to comment.
You don't tell me when to "just move out of the way for others to comment." If you don't want your post quoted or honestly responded to, don't post it. My first post to you contained more but you apparently continued on with the same clueless arrogance seen above rather than bother reading it.
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Quoting OP is standard procedure around here. One, it's to make sure that everyone knows who you're responding to. When you're post #18 and you're responding to post #1 or #2, it can get confusing if you don't specify. Also, it's very common for new posters (or sometimes established posters) to delete or alter their original posts after the fact. Quoting them preserves their original words in case people coming into the thread late want to know what's going on.
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Also, reposting the comment keeps people from wasting time deleting and then denying what they posted. I don't usually do it, but I don't blame others for doing it. If I had a buck for every time I come in late to a convo only to find the OP has deleted the post or changed it...well, I can't count that high.
Thanks everyone...
Rome wasn't built in a day, nor was it destroyed in that amount of time either. But arguing with people who are actually giving you the advice you are seeking isn't going to help you in either case, especially if you want to make a name as a publisher/writer.
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Oh, you mean what's already happened in this thread, the editing of post #1 and deleting something that was between #4 and #5?
Sigh. Bookaholic, nothing is stopping you from self-publishing your own work. Lots of us do, or plan to. Please, please reconsider publishing other authors. Unless or until you know what you are doing, you are risking their property as well as yours. You are risking soured friendships, a bad reputation, and possible legal action. From what I've seen, you may have the pieces lined up to do a successful launch. 'A few months' in is not going to be enough time to see if you are an effective publisher. Many of us on AW normally give new publishers two years or more to pass or fail.
I signed with a new publisher last year...after I saw the CVs of the principals, who can back up their years of experience. Even so, it's a calculated risk. A friend of mine just signed with a small press that began as someone's self-publishing company. The publisher has proven his skill, tenacity, and earning power. One new release of his racked up 1000+ sales in its first month. I think my friend is in good hands...but still, a risk.
What can you bring to the bargaining table right now, with your existing skill set and capital?
I signed with a new publisher last year...after I saw the CVs of the principals, who can back up their years of experience. Even so, it's a calculated risk. A friend of mine just signed with a small press that began as someone's self-publishing company. The publisher has proven his skill, tenacity, and earning power. One new release of his racked up 1000+ sales in its first month. I think my friend is in good hands...but still, a risk.
What can you bring to the bargaining table right now, with your existing skill set and capital?
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This.
Anyone can print a book and post an e-book to Amazon.
But there is a vast gulf between printing a book and publishing one.
It requires a tremendous amount of expertise and experience - and that stuff costs a LOT of money.
Thanks everyone...lol except for the person who commented how they didn't know where to start but still decided to participate by copying and pasting what I wrote instead of just moving out of the way for others to comment.
Bookaholic, in future, if you have a problem with any of the posts here, click the "report post" button (a triangle with an exclamation mark inside) to alert the mods to the problematical post. Don't complain in-thread because it only derails the thread, and doesn't help.
And don't delete your comments after people have replied to them. It's rude. It's dismissive.
If anyone is interested I think I quoted all of Mr Aholic's posts in my comment at #11.
As the OP has deleted his remarks I shall now close this thread. If anyone has a compelling reason for me to reopen it, send me a PM.
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