Hello everyone, newbie here with a kind of multi-layered question. I just started a publishing company and would love a bit of advice. The motive was to publish for myself and have complete freedom on what types of books I write. Why not self publish and call it a day? I wanted my company's name to be displayed as the publisher. Not that it's a bad thing, but I didn't want anyone else to take credit for publishing. Maybe I'm weird like that but what's done is done lol. With a distributor and some freelancer/s to put on the finishing touches, I think I might be able to pull it off.
Q1: Is that a bit naive?
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.
A little background: I love YA novels, particularly paranormal/ supernatural thrillers with just a touch of romance. I am currently working on the end of the first draft for book one of a YA paranormal series. The first drafts of another two books in the series are partially completed.
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.
If I went any slower, I'd be all set waiting another 20 years before publishing at all, so that's a no go lol. The goal is to publish my books for the sheer love of writing. I decided to use my own company just because I wanted to, and that's everything. I haven't tricked myself into thinking it's going to be easy.
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.
I also wanted to have some fun and hopefully someone reads them, with proper marketing of course. If things look good for awhile...a while as in months of seeing what's working, what's not with my own books, then I will go about adding other authors. Authors sign up with start up publishing companies and go through the same risks and you're right- the only way I'd lie about anything is if I wanted to get sued. Or beat up, but probably both.
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.
I don't plan on using create space; amazon, kdp, they would be my "distributors." I have the start up money and so far have a proofreader on board when I complete book one in my YA series. Still looking for the other pros. A few friends wanted to write erotica novels with me so I was wondering if that genre should be included with the other YA novels from my own collections that I'd put under the business' titles. They like the idea of having a publisher do the marketing and promotion for them and provide the professionals.
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.