Partridge Publishing

[Cyath]

So I signed up with Partridge Publishing to publish one of my books and it wasn't a great experience. I won't go into it in detail other than to say that their service left much to be desired. Wasn't a total waste though, since I got valuable insight into the process and I published a book.

But that's not the purpose of the thread. The purpose is to ask if anyone here has experience with Partridge's marketing services? One of their staff contacted me to ask if I would like to engage their services for marketing. They promise to do TV spots, write a review on Goodreads and other kinds of advertising for me.

I don't currently have any advertising for my book, so it's no wonder my sales are low. But I'm wary of throwing good money after bad, especially since they do not guarantee sales.

Does anyone have experience with this company and their marketing? They are an imprint of Author Solutions. Didn't turn up in the Index when I checked.

 

[Helix]

This article from Writer Beware is from 2013, but it and the comments might be helpful.

 

[eqb]

I looked over their website, and it's even worse than I feared. Yes, they will register your copyright, but they will charge you three times the cost of doing it yourself. The other prices are even more outrageous. And now they're trying to milk you for even more money.

Not surprising, given they're an imprint of Author Solutions, which is a notorious vanity press. (Thread on Author Solutions)

 

[Polenth]

So I signed up with Partridge Publishing to publish one of my books and it wasn't a great experience. I won't go into it in detail other than to say that their service left much to be desired. Wasn't a total waste though, since I got valuable insight into the process and I published a book.

But that's not the purpose of the thread. The purpose is to ask if anyone here has experience with Partridge's marketing services? One of their staff contacted me to ask if I would like to engage their services for marketing. They promise to do TV spots, write a review on Goodreads and other kinds of advertising for me.

As a good rule of thumb, if you're not happy with one service from a company, you won't be happy with their other services. If they do a poor job publishing your book, they aren't going to suddenly get better when it comes to marketing.

 

[frimble3]

In fact, part of publishing is marketing, otherwise they're just printing and storing the book, so if they couldn't do much then, why would they suddenly get better at it?

 

[VeryBigBeard]

In general, it's not a good idea to pay money to be published. Publishing isn't a service.

If you have a manuscript you think is really good, it's never a bad idea to query agents, see what happens. There are sub-forums here for writing query letters, polishing first chapters, and the like.

If you just want the book out and available, there are people here who can help you self-publish through CreateSpace or the like. With a little bit of learning, you can get your book out without having to pay anyone.

 

[Cassie Knight]

I'm trying to understand why you would want to entrust them with marketing your book when you had a bad experience with them publishing your book. It's like they did a bad job publishing to get your marketing business. If you want a marketing firm, there's far more better ones then someone who didn't give you a good experience when you published with them.

 

[Clairels]

TV spots are expensive. If they're charging you anything less than hundreds of thousands of dollars, I would wonder how useful they'd be and where they'll appear.

 

[Filigree]

Public access TV can be cheap, but hardly any real buyers ever see it. You'd do better buying ad time on your local indie radio stations or NPR stations.

 

[RightHoJeeves]

TV spots are expensive. If they're charging you anything less than hundreds of thousands of dollars, I would wonder how useful they'd be and where they'll appear.

Not only are TV spots hideously expensive, they're massively inefficient. A $100,000 TV spot is broadcast into the ether with no real way to know who its reaching (ie whether the viewers even like reading). Even a tiny fraction of that budget can be far, far more effective in a digital space because you can finely target specific audience, and get real time data that tells you whether your ad is working.

Paying for a TV spot to market a book is like hiring a Zeppelin to fly between cities when there is a cheap train that runs between the cities every 30 minutes.