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Dreaming Big Publications

mrsmig

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Some seriously bad covers, including the one for the most recent Piers Anthony book. (I also noted that although that book was released about a month ago, it doesn't have a single review on Amazon. Not one. If the publisher can't turn up a single review for a well-known SF author, what can they do for unknowns?)

There's a serious lack of real publishing experience in the long staff list (many are student interns, and even some of the regular staff are still in school). The owner/editor in chief is forthright about her health issues, and I applaud her courage, but from a hard-eyed business aspect, I would be hesitant to sign with a company whose staff is so inexperienced and whose owner has a life-threatening condition.
 
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Stytch

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including the one for the most recent Piers Anthony book.

So, I'm far from any sort of insider, but even so I managed to be aware or hear there was something sketchy about him that maybe he's fallen out of favor these days for ... reasons. I don't mean to be vague, I just genuinely can't remember what the issue was and I'm not willing to look. I enjoyed the Xanth books when I was a kid, so I sort of don't want to know. But I also feel like I outgrew him and am not interested in any of his other stuff.
 

frimble3

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Gah! A gaggle of young people, with no publishing experience, but, apparently, a lot of education in things-not-related-to-publishing, and many, many 'hobbies'. In a few years some of them will doubtless have many, many children, who, in the context of business, will be one more distraction.
And while I also applaud the owner's courage and ambition, why does she describe her health in such great detail? Sadly, all I'm getting from it is the warm-up to "Sooo sorry about the delays in publishing your work, let alone paying you."

There are a bunch of them, why don't they just practice on each other's stuff before dragging in innocent strangers ? Oh, right, most of them only dabble in writing, in among a host of other activities.

Remember those old Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney movies - a bunch of kids find an old barn and decide to put on a show? This is the 'let's put on a show' version of publishing.
 

frimble3

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I apologize for this post jumping to conclusions about someone:
"The take-away in this context is that a best-selling author has fallen so far that this outfit is the only publisher he could find."
I have preserved the post only so that no-one coming upon the following post wonders what that was about.
Apparently Piers Anthony has a history of supporting small presses, and this was not an act of desperation.
Thank you, Veinglory, for correcting my lack of knowledge and setting me straight.
 
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veinglory

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I don't that's at all fair to Anthony. He continues to be published by Tor and others, and he has a long history of taking a gamble on very small presses. He maintained a website devoted to small presses and has always taken an interest in them. Why he likes certain weird presses I do not know. But you don't have to agree with his choices or like the man, but suggesting he is somehow hard up for a good publisher is just wrong.
 
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Scythian

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Sometimes the gatekeepers of modern Anglosphere publishing are biased for one reason or another, and you can circumvent them through self-publishing, and find your real audience.
But sometimes there is no real audience and the gatekeepers were right all along.
And this could be because you really have way less talent than you think, but it also could be because you’re producing world-class stuff, which the contemporary Anglosphere reader simply isn’t wired to appreciate.
Maybe you’re simply producing great stories whose natural home is either the year 1956, or contemporary Thailand.
But if you’re not, in fact, in contemporary Thailand, nor in 1956, but writing this stuff in English in the current year, and trying to get it published in an English-speaking market in the current year—well, then you’re plain out of luck (unless you can, and are willing, to warp your natural style and start writing "fashionably"), so what's left is you can hopefully find a tiny indie pub to take a chance on you, and then you can maybe use this as a springboard to find your true market in contemporary Nicaragua, and somehow make it into an "everybody wins" situation. Or an "at least we tried" situation.
 
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Marian Perera

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This is from their FAQs :

What we can't do, because budget doesn't allow, is pay for promotion for you. This is up to you, and I highly recommend that you invest in promoting your book. We've already invested a lot of our own money and time to produce it in the first place, so we count on you to put some money into various marketing opportunities. This includes you buying copies of the book to give out to the reviewers who want a physical copy because we can only afford to send out ebook copies. [...]

ADDITIONAL PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS: It's no secret that we have an intern program. Sometimes we have interns who are able to do things like make promotional videos, banners for your website, and bookmarks. Although we cannot promise that we will have someone on staff to do this at all times, whenever possible we will provide these things for you to use in your own marketing and promotional attempts at no charge to you. If you were to hire someone to do a promotional packet like this for you, it would cost hundreds of dollars.We do it for free. Keep in mind though that it is interns doing the work, so you don't get to be picky about what they do because their skill levels may not be up to the task of doing professional quality work. It's up to you if you'd rather hire someone to do these things yourself, or let our interns take a crack at it.

Later in the FAQs, they add :

And, unfortunately, authors who don't purchase books for their own use, in our opinion, are not really doing a whole lot on their end to try to market or promote, and we don't see many sales.
 

Scythian

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Good catch with the self-purchase thing.
 

Clairels

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“Our work may be crummy and amateurish, but hey, it’s better than nothing!” “Buy lots of your own books, because with our marketing, lord knows nobody else will!” I can’t decide if they’re amateurs, a would-be vanity press, or both. Either way, RUN.
 

triceretops

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“Our work may be crummy and amateurish, but hey, it’s better than nothing!” “Buy lots of your own books, because with our marketing, lord knows nobody else will!” I can’t decide if they’re amateurs, a would-be vanity press, or both. Either way, RUN.

Ha! Shoestring budget, or no budget at all. We do it all for the love. Sadly, we are seeing more and more outright declarations of "You'll have to brand your name and carry the responsibility of promoting and marketing your material."

Here's a real zinger I've found dozens of times. "No one knows your book like you." Which means? No one is going to promote and market your book but you.
 

Scythian

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/.../
Here's a real zinger I've found dozens of times. "No one knows your book like you." Which means? No one is going to promote and market your book but you.
I believe this lately applies to editing as well. The "No one knows your book like you" thing.
Back in the day the tiny startups could lure enthusiastic young editors and designers with Arabian Nights tales of percentages from sales, and you'd get flashes of dedication and professionalism from the most unexpected sources, but now the market has matured and people know the "you'll get a juicy cut and a nice addition to your CV" pitch is B.S. and the gullible pros are mostly gone.
And while today, due to the adaptability of the market, you can get a generic pro cover for $10 from the web, what you can't get is a pro book edit for $10.
Hence "no one knows your book like you".
Unless the publishers have gone for the whole "my bright nephew makes the best covers and my retired cousin is an amazing editor" thing.
 
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