Dorrance / Whitmore / RoseDog Books / Red Lead Press / I-Proclaim

[James D. Macdonald]

Check out one of this Whitmore's early ads:

Whitmore Publishing
Book publisher seeking new authors No publishing fee. We pay you.
whtimorepublishing.com
​

(Yes, they really did misspell their own URL -- but not to worry, the link works fine.)

See who else advertises in the same space? Trafford. Booksurge. AuthorHouse.

Birds of a feather....

 

[CaoPaux]

Hence the Rule of Thumb: Avoid publishers (and agents) who run Google ads. Or advertise at all, really. Those ads in the back of Writer’s Digest, etc? All vanity and/or disreputable operations.

 

[victoriastrauss]

Does anyone know of any publisher that meets most or all of the following qualifications?...

A) Is not Publish America.
B) Does not charge a reader's fee
C) Does not require an agent.
D) Actually gets your book in stores like the kind people shop in

The very best way to find which publishers get books into stores is to go to the store and look at the books that are on the shelves.

I don't recommend you go agentless if you're approaching an imprint of one of the large publishing houses. Even the imprints that accept unagented work (and there are fewer and fewer of them) may make you wait a really, really long time (how long? Some people have been waiting two years or more to hear back from Baen) and give unagented submissions low priority.

Whitmore apparently does publish at least some books fee-free (though it's an open question as to whether they do anything to distribute and market). But as Uncle Jim said, this company is owned by Dorrance, and if you use the online form to submit, the fine print at the very bottom of the page says you're agreeing to be contacted by "affiliate" publishers--which means you'll probably get a solicitation from Dorrance.

- Victoria

 

[arainsb123]

That's EXACTLY what happened to me! I submitted to Whitmore and never got a reply. However, I did get a solicitation via email a few days later -- I always wondered how Dorrance got my contact information and MS title, and now I know!

 

[Uncarved]

I've been a believer that real publishing houses don't advertise because they have plenty of authors already to PROMOTE. Fake houses advertise because they always have room for another BUYER.

 

[Vipersniper]

I have wondered this same thing

I asked the same question and then wondered why Dorrance Publishing sent me one of those letters asking for my manuscript. So I would have to say that what the others say about Whitmore Publishing is correct and I will delete them from my favorites and my email address. But I have heard that there is supposed to be 56,000 publishers out there that do not charge a fee or something like that. So far I have gone through page after page of engine search and came across Whitmore House, PA, Dorrance, Author House, Iverse etc but no real valid information until I came here. So I will be haunting this site and taking the advice of James, Victoria, Ed Williams which is what I should have done in the first place. I will say that I have heard some good news from some valid references found here.

 

[James D. Macdonald]

There aren't 56,000 publishers. There are 56,000 publishing-related businesses. There are around 20,000 publishers, and that's right the way down to museums that publish calendars, dog-fancier societies that publish newsletters, and printshops that publish an annual cookbook for Old Home Days.

You might consider getting a copy of Writer's Market.

Remember: writers do not pay to get published. If you haven't seen books by a certain publisher in your local bookstore with your own eyes, you should cross that publisher off your list.

Before you submit to a publisher, get a couple of their books and read 'em. Are they well produced? Well edited? Attractive?

 

[hapsburg]

Jim you oughta get a job with intellectual rights law and fraud or something, you're like the FBI with your info... They look less like a vanity than the average, PA I knew from first sight but this one looked polished enough to at least trick me into asking for more info.What a waste of time these damn scammers are, I should bill them for $10.50 an hour for the time I waste reading their crap. I get emails from vanities occassionally, but never phone calls. If they call me I'm going to bill them for a consultation fee.

 

[hapsburg]

Hold on a sec, some guy is praising them in the ask the agent forum under "will a big endorsement..." thread. What's up with that?

 

[mdin]

I'm curious why you don't want an agent. Is it because you've tried and couldn't find one, or is there some other reason?

Getting a reputable agent doesn't guarantee the sale of your book to a good publisher, but your odds increase tenfold (hundredfold? thousandfold?).

Some of those larger publishers who take unsolicited manuscripts hold on to them for a very long time. It took Baen a year and a half to reject me. (And I had mailed them requesting it be withdrawn 14 months earlier because I had sold it to someone else.) The upside was they had read the entire thing and gave me a detailed rejection.

 

[mdin]

. I get emails from vanities occassionally, but never phone calls. If they call me I'm going to bill them for a consultation fee.

I was getting phone calls, letters in the mail, email, smoke signals, etc., from vanity presses/writers retreats/online writing courses for awhile, and I couldn't figure out how they knew me. I hadn't registered any copyrights, I haven't self-published anything, and my website certainly doesn't have my phone number on it. A couple months ago, I got four flyers in the mail for different writers conferences on the same day, and I called one of them up and asked how I got on their mailing list. The woman was very helpful.

Damn you, Poets and Writers magazine! it's bad enough you have more ads now than Redbook. Now you have to sell my name to everybody, too?

 

[James D. Macdonald]

That's Richard Lee Fulgham. His track record is Lulu.com, PublishAmerica, American Book Publishing, and Overmountain Press. He has a short story in an anthology edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson.

We'll see what becomes of his book. It has a striking cover but isn't yet listed at Amazon or BN.com.

 

[Vipersniper]

I always get a good answer

I always find a reasonable answer here and yes I think that James would make a great FBI agent in fact my character was a guy like him oh well maybe that will work in the next book. I did get a copy of Writer's Digest and lo and behold if the Writer's Market is not mentioned there. I took that big old royalty check and bought the magazine. So I like the ones where you find good information. I get hit by spammers too but not I just spam them back. Looking at the Writer's Digest book club it looks like this might be a route that I would go. Mae West used to say money is no good unless you spread it around. I once had a $26,000.00 library in my home that burned down. That shows how much I like to read. So I am taking you up on that suggestion. Want to hear a new myth about PA they say if you want to see the sheets on the how the royalties are calculated come to Maryland. Like do they really want me to do that? I may take along a skunk to put in the boiler room like we did in highschool. But I truly am not that far from them. Like they can't be found? But at least I got my three letters to send to Va. BBB.

 

[gregorydefeo]

Question

Does anyone know about the program that Barnes&Noble
has established to work with authors to help publish their
book?

 

[James D. Macdonald]

You don't mean "iUniverse," do you?

 

[gregorydefeo]

Is iUniverse What It's Called?

I remember a year ago seeing a brochure, but did not
take it too seriously. I thought their website would
have some info. about it, but it does not.
Do you know anything about it as far as details go?

 

[James D. Macdonald]

If you're talking about iUniverse, it's a vanity PoD.

B&N owns 22% of the company. (They used to own 49%, but they've been selling off their share.)

 

[gregorydefeo]

Thank you!

 

[arainsb123]

Of the "Big 3" PODs, iUniverse is the best based on both personal experience and research ... though that's not saying much of anything. Xlibris has been calling me, and AuthorHouse was emailing me before I blocked them.

However, I wouldn't recommend PODing to any fiction writer.

 

[astonwest]

Of the "Big 3" PODs, iUniverse is the best based on both personal experience and research ... though that's not saying much of anything. Xlibris has been calling me, and AuthorHouse was emailing me before I blocked them.

Isn't AuthorHouse just the new name for iUniverse?

 

[James D. Macdonald]

No, AuthorHouse is the new name for 1st Books Library.

 

[BlueTexas]

Of the "Big 3" PODs, iUniverse is the best based on both personal experience and research ... though that's not saying much of anything. Xlibris has been calling me, and AuthorHouse was emailing me before I blocked them.

However, I wouldn't recommend PODing to any fiction writer.

My uncle published a book with IUniverse last year. He's having fits at the moment because the book isn't even for sale on the website anymore, nor is it on amazon.

His book was decent--not great, but it's a war story and I'm not the biggest fan. Somehow the poor man didn't know writers should be paid, and not the other way round. How does someone NOT know that? I mean, this is a 60 year old man!

 

[James D. Macdonald]

How does someone NOT know that? I mean, this is a 60 year old man!

You'd be surprised. I'm not surprised any more: Every writer has stories;
folks just seem to assume that paying to get published is the norm.

 

[astonwest]

No, AuthorHouse is the new name for 1st Books Library.

I figured I was mistaken...but couldn't think of the other major POD I was missing...

 

[astonwest]

folks just seem to assume that paying to get published is the norm.

Perhaps I was lucky that my first experience with a vanity was when Vantage Press sent me a contract where they asked me to shell out $10K. There was no way I was paying that kind of money, and so I realized that paying money up front wasn't where I needed to be.

Unfortunately, I still got suckered in by PA. So, for whatever that's worth...