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Saguaro Books
- Thread starter Stan
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Here ya go: Saguaro Books
They're MG & YA only, POD, and are specifically interested in authors who have never published before (which immediately makes me anxious for rookie writers, especially since they won't consider those represented by agents).
In addition, a fair amount of the marketing burden is to be shouldered by those same rookie authors:
They're MG & YA only, POD, and are specifically interested in authors who have never published before (which immediately makes me anxious for rookie writers, especially since they won't consider those represented by agents).
In addition, a fair amount of the marketing burden is to be shouldered by those same rookie authors:
Oh, boy. Those are some mighty pretty red flags waving around. ETA: For various reasons, I'm just leaving that pub alone to do its thing.
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I checked three of the covers and two of them are basic stock photos from free stock sites. Yuck. I don't have time to check them all now but from a glance I'm betting more than a few of the others are as well.
The blurbs on the site read like they haven't been edited and they're plot summaries, not jacket copy.
Amazon numbers are suggesting a handful of sales at best. Haven't found a sales rank under a million yet.
As has been pointed out, this is all kinds of problematic. It's an easy myth to fall into for publishers with no publishing experience. It feels like first-time authors could be an unexplored market. But that's the wrong way of thinking about it, because your market is readers, not authors. This suggests all kinds of problems with the business model at Saguaro and the rest of the FAQ back that up.
Their staff are volunteer. They have no meaningful distribution to stores. The section on copyright makes me wonder if they understand which rights they're taking.
And, as I dig deeper, I notice they publish the first chapter of each book on their website, which seems odd but alright. They're all in a long, single text page, which means finding the book I might be interested in sampling is tough. There is an editing mistake in the first sentence of the first example. There are many more things an editor should have fixed, as well. I'm also left with some questions about how Saguaro evaluates submissions.
The blurbs on the site read like they haven't been edited and they're plot summaries, not jacket copy.
Amazon numbers are suggesting a handful of sales at best. Haven't found a sales rank under a million yet.
FAQ@ said:
As has been pointed out, this is all kinds of problematic. It's an easy myth to fall into for publishers with no publishing experience. It feels like first-time authors could be an unexplored market. But that's the wrong way of thinking about it, because your market is readers, not authors. This suggests all kinds of problems with the business model at Saguaro and the rest of the FAQ back that up.
Their staff are volunteer. They have no meaningful distribution to stores. The section on copyright makes me wonder if they understand which rights they're taking.
And, as I dig deeper, I notice they publish the first chapter of each book on their website, which seems odd but alright. They're all in a long, single text page, which means finding the book I might be interested in sampling is tough. There is an editing mistake in the first sentence of the first example. There are many more things an editor should have fixed, as well. I'm also left with some questions about how Saguaro evaluates submissions.
