Didn't find a thread on these guys so I thought we should have one. Has anyone dealt with them
https://www.panterapress.com.au/
https://www.panterapress.com.au/
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Pantera Press
- Thread starter waylander
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They're a big publisher here in Aus. They accept unagented submissions. It takes roughly one month for them to get back to you. I've submitted all my books to them and received standard rejections.
You can find their books in book stores in the big retailers but I can't make an opinion on their sales.
You can find their books in book stores in the big retailers but I can't make an opinion on their sales.
Bumping thread. Has anyone published with them recently? I'm interested in them for my current project
Looked up their featured book, released 8/2022. Zero reviews on Amazon. Another one released in September of this year had 180, another had zero Amazon results, and a February 2022 release had 29. Went to the store page and found another book with no Amazon presence.
All of this tells me that, at the very least, marketing is inconsistent and might rely a lot on the author, so it might be worth looking into.
Their about page seems very fluffy without a ton of solid info, but ymmv: https://www.panterapress.com.au/about/
Edited: strike out because I misunderstood the site
All of this tells me that, at the very least, marketing is inconsistent and might rely a lot on the author, so it might be worth looking into.
Their about page seems very fluffy without a ton of solid info, but ymmv: https://www.panterapress.com.au/about/
Edited: strike out because I misunderstood the site
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Make sure you're looking on Amazon Australia. Amazon often filters its reviews by location, which is very annoying--why wouldn't an Australian review be relevant to an American reader?--but given Pantera is an Aussie publisher, it would make sense for most of their marketing to be Australian, and most of their readers logging onto amazon.com.au to leave a review.
It's also true that some books just don't get a lot of reviews and it doesn't necessarily tell you that much about the marketing or sales numbers. There's no way to force a reader to review a book. A lot of publisher marketing will be to book-stores as well as distributors, libraries, and other parts of the trade that allow a book to "scale"--it's why big books tend to pop up everywhere. When I ran a campus newspaper, we used to get flooded with ARCs by local publishers, almost none of which we actually reviewed, as we didn't have a regular books writer. Things are a bit more online-centric now, but book-specific blogs or publications still matter and tend to be one of those things it's hard for an author to get on his or her own. A lot of publishers post links to those reviews on social media or their news page, which can be a good way to see how regularly they get reviewed.
The Amazon sales rank is a slightly better gauge of a book's success, but even that has a massive recency bias and can be skewed geographically as well, so take it with a lot of salt. Most books sell almost all their copies in the first couple months, if not weeks. Bestsellers do still tend to stick around the six-figure ranks thanks to the long-tail effect, but even solidly performing titles will age out pretty quick into the (many) millions, another reason the best promotion is often writing another book. It really is a brutally competitive industry.
The best way to check a publisher remains checking to see if their recent (within ~6 weeks) releases are stocked in local stores. That really does move copies, especially this time of year.
Pantera's absolutely legit. They don't put out a lot of titles each year, but have published Courtney Act's autobiography and have very recently acquired Nadine Cohen's new book:
The About page lists all the staff with bios.
The About page lists all the staff with bios.
I opened up Amazon.au and one of the titles I couldn't find had six reviews, the other one still didn't show up, and the first book I found on Amazon.com that had 29 reviews didn't exist. The one that had triple figure reviews on .com had a similar (but not identical) amount of reviews on .au - this is the Courtney Act memoir, since someone else name dropped it.
For clarity, not questioning whether or not it's legit, it's a question of marketing to ask if someone subs and gets to that point.
A friend of mine published with a small press (not this one) that does absolutely lousy marketing but is good at everything else. Her sales are garbage (her words) and she has only 20 reviews after over a year. And she's not an unknown, she's a top 100 author on Amazon and a USA Today bestseller.
I know Maine is not reflective of the rest of the country (and certainly not the world) but we don't have a brick and mortar book store within 30+ miles.
For my own education, if most publishers sell the majority of their books at the beginning to book stores, I don't understand why seeing a book in a book store within six weeks of release is indicative of good marketing?
Edited: strike out because I misunderstood the site
For clarity, not questioning whether or not it's legit, it's a question of marketing to ask if someone subs and gets to that point.
A friend of mine published with a small press (not this one) that does absolutely lousy marketing but is good at everything else. Her sales are garbage (her words) and she has only 20 reviews after over a year. And she's not an unknown, she's a top 100 author on Amazon and a USA Today bestseller.
I know Maine is not reflective of the rest of the country (and certainly not the world) but we don't have a brick and mortar book store within 30+ miles.
For my own education, if most publishers sell the majority of their books at the beginning to book stores, I don't understand why seeing a book in a book store within six weeks of release is indicative of good marketing?
Edited: strike out because I misunderstood the site
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Hello, 'someone' here.
Bookstores have to make a decision which books to place on their shelves. If a publisher can get their books into a bookstore and so in front of buyers' eyes, that's all part of the marketing process. And since competition for commercial shelf space is high, then publishers who can do this are pretty good at marketing.
Bookstores have to make a decision which books to place on their shelves. If a publisher can get their books into a bookstore and so in front of buyers' eyes, that's all part of the marketing process. And since competition for commercial shelf space is high, then publishers who can do this are pretty good at marketing.
This - and you can also check the placement of books - how much real-estate they're given, how many copies, front-facing or spine - all that kind of thing.
That is just as much the "trade" part of trade publishing, and a huge bonus for the writer when it works well.
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