Hi from Kunati's Publisher... and Submissions
Hi, Haven't popped in for awhile, been too, too busy. I saw the posts about submissions. I apologize for our tardiness. We're victims of our own success? We're plowing through the submissions, still staying true to our mandate to read and comment personally on EVERY submission (some we lose in junk mail filters if sent by email). We've now received over 3500 submissions! My goodness, we're only able to publish 8 titles this spring, another 16-20 in fall of 07, but we're still committed to reading and responding to each one! If we haven't responded, we're probably not there yet, but please do remind me personally (if you give me your real name (and the email you submitted with so I can search) -- I can't tell from the posts here -- I'll look up the status on your sub). Email me at
[email protected].
Please remember, we're really focused on provocative, edgy, controversial (we took to heart the early criticisms from this group and refined our mission, focusing exclusively in this direction, which is -- thank you very much -- marvelous for us) This group is wonderful.
Yes, several of our books have good reviews (per earlier post about "no reviews", but it's early yet.) We're revising our website into an interactive forum/news style where we'll be able to update and communicate daily with our growing base (we've had over 2 million hits to our website! but it's now very out of date). OUR BOOK TRAILERS are the biggest draw (we created the first ever book trailer back in 1999, as featured recently on Book Standard).
We've had reviews on our forthcoming spring titles in Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, ForeWord, Filmsandbooks.com, a forthcoming starred review in Booklist, some NY Times exposure pending as well. It's all very exciting. I hope you'll drop in to our revised NEWSY website (which should be up within a week -- the old site is still up right now, with that clumsy old language). We're delighted with the response to Kunati and to our revised mission of edgy, quirky, controversial.
With this mission in mind, please remember if we "turn you down" -- and sadly, this will happen in most cases just on sheer numbers (24 planned books this year from thousands of subs) -- it is more likely due to our mission than your writing or story. We've had some very agonizing editorial meetings where we evaluated a manuscript as very nearly perfect in every way, but too mainstream for our list, or not edgy or controversial (most of our projects now deal with hot topics: assisted suicide, gun rights, reality television (and how silly it all is), the war between religion and science, societal taboos).
Having said that, we are planning big, with very large marketing budgets and big print runs. You won't see much on B&N and Amazon until 120 days before our Spring line launches (we launch now March 30). You'll see a lot of advertising and PR exposures in April 07 -- watch Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Pages, NY Times.
Our authors are quite a community, now. We've set up an online Author Marketing Group ( I wrote a feature how-to on it for Publisher Marketing Associations monthly newsletter) where our authors/publisher/editors chat daily about marketing, launches, opportunities and most of our best ideas are coming from our beloved authors. We now have authors on board from four countries (mostly US).
Some of our recent reviews:
"Impressive Medical Thriller" (Rabid by TK Kenyon) Publishers Weekly
"Absoultely charming and sure to enrage the NRA" (bang BANG by Lynn Hoffman, Ph.D.) Kirkus
"Romance...adventure...secrets...YA for the older set" (The Secret Ever Keeps, Art Tirrell) Kirkus
"Five Stars. In the thriller tradition of Weisman and Connolly" (The Game) ForeWord Magaazine
Many more are coming.
I hope you'll continue to follow our news. We're growing, learning and working round-the-clock with our authors. We're in fall acquisition mode, but we are "buried" in submissions -- but still reading them all and trying to personally reply as soon as we can.
And I hope you'll drop by our newsy new website (around November 3) where you'll see how we've evolved. Because of the new format, we'll be updating news almost daily, and you can also comment, chat and communicate directly with our authors (our MEET THE AUTHORS feature is magnificent, with a Chat, direct email, gallery, news and events, and forthcoming virtual video tour). The new site should be at the old location by Friday November 3rd
http://www.kunati.com. In the meanwhile, I do try to keep our Publishers Marketplace page up to date on news (
http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/DArmstrong). Keep me on my toes, keep critiquing us, we'll keep learning and growing.
Best regards,
Derek Armstrong
Publisher
Kunati Inc.
SAN: 851-478X
http://www.kunati.com
Publishers Marketplace:
http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/DArmstrong
Email:
[email protected]