Multifarious Press

[Filigree]

http://multifariouspress.com/?ref=staff

New one for me, spotted on #SFFpit yesterday. Started late 2016. Has some promise, but I have to be firm about my 'wait and see' rule. I'll check back in 2018.

The heartbreaking thing: I love what the founder has to say about authors giving up, and her honesty about making money with Multifarious. But I'm in the same boat that many fantasy authors are in now. If we can't grab an agent's or big publisher's attention, self-pub may be a better option for us than small press.

 

[Harlequin]

Could I ask you to expand on that, Filigree?

Another question - what counts as big, these days? Big Five?

The website for MP is a bit all over the place. It feels a bit author centric to me as well. I'm not a professional though, that's just my impression from looking it over.

 

[folclor]

Yeah... I hate to say it, but the website hurt my eyes. And, yes, it did feel author centric to me, too, what I could read.

 

[Filigree]

First, a caveat: everyone's publishing experiences and needs are different. What works for me may not work for others.

I have several mms ready to query, but for various reasons only one is suitable to query agents. I have specific reasons to look for a strong agent who 'gets' my work. I can't get a foot in the door of the best SFF publishers without an agent. Even Tor and DAW, who take unagented submissions, give preference to agented work.

In general, in SFF, agented authors with 'Big Five' (or the better midsized publishers) make better money, have better contract terms, and better subsidiary rights deals than unagented authors...and far better than small press. I love good small presses. But most of them fall into a gap where they can't compete with Big Five sales, and don't offer enough in royalties to make up for their lack of market share. That's fine if an author just wants to 'be published', or views their work as a boutique hobby.

I make money at my art and nonfiction writing. I don't expect less from my fiction. With this mms, if the agent querying pans out, I'll sub to Tor and DAW on my own (and then maybe contract an agency to oversee any resulting deal.) If that doesn't work out, I'm probably going right to self-pub. This mms would probably not be served well by the small presses I already know and trust.

 

[Gillhoughly]

EEK! They need a better website designer, that scared me off from the get-go.

Don't want to judge a place by its cover, but it does not scream "professionals with experience" to me, so I'm not going to waste more time on it.

One major thing that needs editing is the Kaelan person. It is just not professional to declare such personal details about oneself. I certainly have nothing against people being autistic, having multiple names, etc. but it is personal info that is no one's business within a business.

Years ago at a convention some girl came up to me, introduced herself and declared, "I have ovarian cysts."

Not knowing what to do with that information, I excused myself and avoided her for the rest of the event. I was sorry she had them, but dropping that on me first thing was just weird.

Kaelan, it's like that. TMI is going to scare off potential clients. I know all the info you have there is important to you, it makes you a unique person, and I am sure I would find you to be an interesting person -- but it is still TMI!

Less is more.

 

[BenPanced]

And the "work for us" page. If you can't pay anybody for the hours of work you're expecting out of them, you seriously need to rethink your business plan.

ETA: Especially if you're still raising funds through Patreon and Kickstarter (the link goes to a draft page that isn't live), and asking for general donations through Paypal. So they're actively raising funds for a venture they hope to open this October while simultaneously soliciting submissions for said venture to release the same day the business goes live.

Patreon timeline shows this:

• Patreon went live in October 2016 (only one pledge since).
• Calls for submissions went out in March 2017.
• This (supposedly) will give them time to get five anthologies ready for opening day in October 2017.

Seriously. There is so much wrong with that line of thinking (and I should know: I've gone into business for myself underfunded and it's not fun).

The way we will run the business will be by slowly (probably no more than twelve to twenty-four full-length books per year for the first two years, including the anthologies) accruing and curating diverse titles for our lines.

That word does not mean what you think it means. And twelve to twenty-four books a year with no guarantee of funding in place for even the first year of operation is a disaster waiting to happen for all parties involved.

We don't want to overextend ourselves because we really want this business to last. So that it can do what it's been designed to do and make diverse stories available.

Of course, if we get to the point through the generosity of our patrons to earn a subsistence living at doing this, we'll be able to put more books out, much faster.

It doesn't work that way. In this day and age of crowdfunding, you cannot rely on the proverbial kindness of strangers. Like anything else online, you're drowning in a sea of noise and if there's no way to boost your signal to be heard over everybody else, it's hopeless.

As mentioned above, they seem to have admirable goals but they're going about everything all wrong. To successfully operate a business, they need the capital in place first to cover initial expenses before they can move on to their objective: to get the product out there. Again, this just has "disaster" written all over it and I honestly, truly hope I'm proven wrong.

 

[mrsmig]

Eleven imprints. Eleven.

That's all I have to say.

 

[RWrites]

This thread is a few days old, yikes they need a good website designers. Everything is scrunched, blac kand white, and just not pleasing. I wish new publsihers would look at Big Five and such websites to get a feel of what works. I don't know about you, but Multifarious sounds like Nefarious or is just me?

 

[folclor]

This thread is a few days old, yikes they need a good website designers. Everything is scrunched, blac kand white, and just not pleasing. I wish new publsihers would look at Big Five and such websites to get a feel of what works. I don't know about you, but Multifarious sounds like Nefarious or is just me?

That's what I thought, too!