Macfarlane Lantern Publishing

[writerskunk]

Anyone hear anything about these people? The books they're peddling seem to be the founder's, so that's given me a bit of pause!

Macfarlane Lantern Publishing

www.maclanternpublishing.com

 

[ChaseJxyz]

The covers sure are gorgeous!

But the contact email is a gmail? Lol okay. Been on Twitter over a year and only 150 followers. Instagram is pretty small, too. So whatever marketing they're doing isn't....a lot.

 

[Silenia]

Between the fact that all books they have are indeed by their founder, the fact that two out of four staff members have their bio "coming soon", the fact that the founder/publisher/sole author additionally uses the same website to do freelance book cover design, that I don't see any publishing-specific experience (other than making book covers and essentially self-publishing the founder's books, at least) and that their submissions page includes

Additionally, if you have a manuscript that isn’t quite finished but you have a good sample and strong synopsis, we’d love to hear from you!

Yeah...not a great look. For what it's worth, I do believe intentions are good and see no reason to assume this is a scam--but scams are far from the only danger out in publishing land, and small publishing ventures started up by authors very frequently end in tears--and with no track record, essentially no social media following and little to no relevant experience, there both is pretty little to prove they can do anything for you at this point that you can't do yourself and very little to prove they won't meet the same fate a lot of rather similar ventures have met through the years.

And sure, maybe they'll prove to be the exception and do make it. Until they've been around a while and proven they are, I'd strongly recommend holding off on submitting to them (though, I note, submissions are currently closed anyway).

 

[mrsmig]

I don't think the covers are all that. A couple are nice; the others are unremarkable.

Of the two staff members who have bios on the "About" page, neither has any background or experience in trade publishing.

We see this all the time: a well-meaning but inexperienced self-pubber starts an under-capitalized and under-staffed press. They sign authors who know even less about how real publishing works. There's no budget for marketing, so their books will only be available through the usual online outlets. There's no budget for promo, so the authors will be responsible for flogging their own books. The staffers almost always have full-time jobs elsewhere, so the press is definitely a part-time project.

All too often, after a year or three, the staff runs out of steam or the press runs out of money, leaving their authors cast adrift and their books in limbo.

Ask yourself: "what can this press do for me that I couldn't do on my own via self-publishing - and pocket all the profits myself?"

 

[writerskunk]

It doesn't help that a few of the staff members appear to be related, either!