Right, it's concerning if you can't find out about the qualifications of your publisher and their editing, marketing or cover art people, and it's especially concerning if they aren't willing to talk openly about those things. It makes it feel like what are they hiding by refusing to give qualifications. That's how I would feel as an author who might want to pitch to them. And I wouldn't personally ever sign a contract that doesn't list clear terms as to when my rights revert back to me.
Hi. Sorry to be late to the party here, but I first had an encounter with Dragon Soul Press a few weeks ago, did a Google search, and this thread came up. Luckily, I am already a member, but had no posts, so this is my first post! I guess I've been a lurker before now!
Anyway, so basically my story is that I was contacted by Jade Feldman, initially as a harmless Facebook friend request, then she added me to a group called Dragon Soul Press anthologies, which I assume is because I am in an anthology group and I said I was looking for some more anthologies to join. After I said I might consider one anthology but I wasn't sure, Jade then offered to go straight ahead and publish my book. I assume she got that from somewhere else. I've lost track of who I've told what to, but I do have a book which has been finished, but I am not yet happy with it, still revising it, editing it, and so forth. I have had publishers who have shown interest in it, but I haven't signed any contracts. I'm not actively pursuing publishers so much as I am kind of feeling them out. Jade didn't offer to publish my book exactly so much as she wanted me to submit my entire manuscript without a contract. I was like no, no, no, and this was a major red flag for me. The website doesn't have any information of any note, no authors, nothing to even indicate that they actually publish novels at all. All Jade would say was "we are a traditional publisher". So what do you offer? So she asked me to email her, so I did, and I asked her to give me some details. What book stores are you affiliated with? What is your distribution network like? How many copies would be pre-printed? What are your sales projections? I sent her a plot outline, and asked if she could sell that, and how much she thought she could sell it for.
No answer at all, which I thought was rude since she asked me to email her. I thought maybe she hadn't got it, so I emailed it a second time a day later. Nothing. I wondered if perhaps it went to spam or junk or something, as I use hotmail, so I told her what my email address was and sent it to her a third time. Nothing. So I sent a message on the forum to say "I emailed you" and sent it a fourth time. Still nothing. So at this point I am getting a bit annoyed, and then she writes on the forum a whinge about people who send her emails that don't follow the submissions process. Well, I wasn't submitting anything. This was asking her to give me details as to why I'd want to consider her publishing house. She didn't respond in the forum either. It was like it was a black hole.
She responded to other things, maybe 50 comments about random stupid things, but still nothing to do with this. I thought okay maybe she wants to wait to make a proper response. Maybe she's busier than she looks. Maybe she wants to get it right.
Then, two weeks after I sent the first email, I check and she has unfriended me. My thought is "how immature". So I decided that it is not a real publisher, because a real publisher wouldn't do that, so I wrote to her, in the group (in a sub-thread that we were the only ones participating in) to say that I was no longer interested in the anthology or in publishing my book.
Curiously, in spite of not seeing me say "I emailed you", she did see me say that I was no longer interested. It was in the same thread.
She wrote back saying that it had only been a day, and that I should give her a break. I'm sorry but 2nd of October was 2 weeks ago, wasn't it? She claimed that we had never been friends. Well, not in real life, but certainly on Facebook! Then she claimed that I had submitted to her.
In email she said that she was rejecting me. LOLOL. Rejecting what? I hadn't submitted anything! She said that I had a bad attitude. She said that my work was good and maybe with some improvement it could be published, but I needed to fix my attitude. So she hasn't seen my work, so that's just a guess, and what attitude? Asking a publisher for more details about themselves? I think that's pretty normal! Other publishers answer. Why doesn't she? Bigger publishers usually have it clearly visible on their website!
I didn't know if they were a vanity press, but I know that they aren't legitimate, and they lie like crazy. I mean, major red flags when they refuse to answer for two weeks a question as to who they are, and when they do answer, they don't answer! She still hasn't told me! She sent me an email saying I had been rejected for a submission I didn't make!
Can we like put up a warning for people not to get sucked into this? According to their Facebook page, they've sucked in a few people already.
I wasn't particularly close to getting sucked in, but if situations were different I might have.
I think we need to warn people.