Re: Just curious -
I can write about angels when I haven't done business with them because it is called FICTION! Maybe if you'd visit
www.AngelOnBoard.com you'd have figured that out! You might also figure out the gender of the author and the businessperson.
Don't count on them doing so. Your book is neither good enough nor bad enough to attract that much interest.
I hope you guys notice the changes to the website lately -
For a while there I was following it by reading Making Light. Have you done anything new since ML stopped doing updates on the story? And instead of churning the site, why not do something truly useful and run a basic spellcheck on it? Maybe that way you wouldn't have things like a link labeled "Spiritual Peorty."
I've put notes on the top such that the visitors remember to scroll to the bottom to see the books that have always been advertised on that page. Thank you for pointing out that people bring up that webpage and if they aren't directed where to go, they might miss important points.
I'm sorry, but did you imagine that the unusually large number of visitors to your site have come there to admire it, or to shop for your books? (I know about your site stats because you opted for the economy version of your visitor tracking system. It makes them universally viewable.)
I've also switched up the
www.BooksToBelieveIn.com website such that you see a couple of the most beautiful covers that I have.
They may be some of the most beautiful covers you have, but that doesn't mean they're up to snuff.
These were designed by professional graphic artists -
That's the sense of "professional" that just means "they get paid for doing it."
if you don't like them, take it up with the author and the artist. I happen to think that they are awesome.
That's because you're an amateur.
It's possible to be a real publisher while making do with inexpensive art. Just look at O'Reilly, which does a brilliant job with public-domain 19th C. black-and-white illustrations. However, that only works if good design work is being substituted for original commissioned art, and if the resulting covers are judged with a clear and unsentimental eye.
A few of your covers might pass muster at a small academic press. That's as good as they get. The rest look like real book covers about as much as a bunch of wildflowers in a coffee can looks like a professional floral arrangement.
The other reason that answer marks you as an amateur is that publishers
always care how the public reacts to their covers. "Take it up with the artist and the author" is the voice of self-publishing speaking.
I will not probably return to this forum, it has fizzled.
PA's been saying the same thing for more than a year now.
But I will be putting up several new web pages in the next few days to directly refute some of the ridiculous assumptions that have been proliferated on this and other like websites.
Do you care about your authors' books, or is this whole publishing thing just a matter of opportunism on your part? People have been trying to tell you essential facts about publishing and how it works, and certain well-known problems of the publishing model you've adopted. All you've been able to hear is that you personally weren't being praised. I'm really starting to wonder whether you feel any responsibility for the success and well-being of your authors and their books,
If you're going to publish other people's work, you have to pay attention to objective external reality. Your response to most of what's been said here has amounted to "You've made your choices and I've made mine," as though that meant anything. It doesn't. It's just a new age-y way of saying
"Oh yeah? Well, that's just your opinion." It's a formulation that will serve just as well for disastrous decisions as for good ones.
Please try to understand that
this isn't about you. It's about your authors, their books, their readers, the continental printed-matter distribution systems, and other realities of the great wide world.
It must be reckoned one of the infelicities of your position, that even if you mean well and do the very best you can, your authors can't succeed. You've inveigled them into a publishing model that doesn't work. They may think you're being kind to them, as they rejoice in the simple idea of getting into print, but that's because they don't know any better--yet. I say it's unkind to sell them on the idea that they can make significant sales by getting out there and promoting their own books. A very few can, generally because they're selling nonfiction to a well-defined niche audience. No amount of auctorial self-promotion is going to make a success of a badly written and edited first novel, or poetry or short story collection, or personal memoir, or nondescript inspirational work--not when they have no proper sales or distribution, and their cover images and cover copy are awkward or inept.
Don't forget, I'm an author first,
As though I could ever mistake you for anything else.
if I wasn't selling books, then my books would also fail. What I want my books to be are flagships for those that come after mine.
Your own books have already failed. They aren't going to be flagships for anything. Taken purely as a writer, you're neither skillful nor charming. All you have to sell is your content. Unfortunately, you're ten or twelve years too late to catch the wave on the whole angels thing, and there's no shortage of ill-informed books about publishing and promoting one's own book.
When we tell you we've seen setups like yours before, one of the things we're talking about is your personal history of submission, followed by involuntary non-publication, followed by the launching of a hapless publishing company. There's about a zillion involuntarily unpublished authors out there who've done exactly the same thing you have. Usual outcome: Their companies never become both profitable
and legitimate, and no one ever wants to buy the founder's book.
Stay tuned to
www.ProfitablePublishing.net for the latest and greatest. Then bring it back it here to discuss unless perhaps, you've found something more useful to do.
Speaking of useful, please do consider spellchecking your site.
(snip...)I probably won't be back, unless you guys really miss the points and I feel the need to set the record straight.
Bit, you might want to swear off the schoolyard condescension routine until such time as you're no longer surviving on mercy alone.
