Follow one simple rule, if nothing else: if they ask you to pay, run away. There's a lot to learn. You're in the right place.
I have to say, I read this thread when I was looking to see if getting my fiction published without involving my nonfiction agent was an option. I've already been traditionally published twice, so I'm familiar with how that works. I had already submitted to Promontory, so I just figured, "Mark this one off my list."
Well, not so fast.
A few months later, I got an email from Amy O'Hara, the staff editor at Promontory, saying they liked my query and wanted to look at three chapters. So I sent them three chapters. About a month later, she emailed again asking for the entire manuscript.
Two months after that (today), I got an email saying they'd like to offer me a publishing contract. Since I had read this thread, I had questions, so I called Amy at the phone number she provided in the email. The first thing I said to her was "I'm flattered, but I've read online that Promontory is a vanity publisher, and I have no interest in that kind of thing."
She sighed. It sounded like she'd heard that a few times.
"We offer two types of publishing here," she said. "One is where we pay two-thirds of the cost and share the revenue 50/50 with the author and the other is where we pay the entire publishing cost and the author gets 10 percent of revenue."
"Well, I'm not interested in the two-thirds/one-third deal," I said. "So if that's what you were planning to offer me, I'm sorry and I don't mean to be rude, but it's just not going to happen."
We continued talking and I mentioned that I'd like to receive a list of books they've published along with the names of the authors so I could do research myself and see how their authors wrote and how they felt like they were treated.
"That's probably something the publisher should talk to you about," she said. "I'll give him your number."
I expected that would be the end of it, but not an hour later, my phone rang with a Canadian number.
On the phone was Bennett R. Coles, the publisher of Promontory.
He explained further:
"We're a small publisher, and frankly, it's tough to survive as a small publisher - especially when you cater to new or almost-new authors," he said. "So to help offset the risk we take when we fully take on the financial burden, for less certain authors and books, we offer them a hybrid contract, where they foot about a third of the bill. But for authors and books where we feel like we're pretty certain to make money, we foot the entire bill."
So I reiterated to him that I didn't want to talk anymore if the one-third thing was what they were talking to me about. He kept talking, so I asked him about marketing and distribution, both of which I was disappointed with in the publisher of my second book.
He said they distribute to all the major bookstores, and unlike print-on-demand publishers, they have copies available whenever a bookstore orders them. In addition, he said, they market to those bookstores' buyers directly, both in Canada and in the US, where they employ a full-time person to make those deals.
Not only that, he told me, but Promontory only publishes 8 books per season - once in fall, once in spring, which amounts to 16 books a year, so they have to be careful about the risks/rewards. It seems a vanity publisher would publish a LOT more books than that. Then he said something that rang true. I mentioned to him the sales figures from my first book, which were in five figures, and he said, "That's amazing. To tell the truth, we consider it a home run if one of our authors sells 5,000 books. A lot sell only in the hundreds."
That unsolicited comment felt like someone who wasn't trying to pie-in-the-sky a glassy-eyed author hoping for riches and fame by vanity publishing their book.
I said all that to say this: Did I sign with them? No. I have another publisher reading my manuscript, so I'm going to wait a bit before I decide, but after my conversation with Bennett Coles, I have to say Promontory isn't automatically off the list as a "vanity publisher". I think, from my research online, the company did start off by offering services and other questionable packages, but it seems like it may have graduated beyond that now.
My guard isn't down now, but I'm certainly not rejecting them out of hand, either. I think asking authors to pony up ANY money is questionable, but then again, I'm not a small publisher trying to hedge my bets on untested authors and books. And that said, they didn't ask me to pony up a penny.
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EDIT: Also, I went to their web site tonight and it says they are currently closed for submissions. I'm not entirely certain a vanity publisher would do that.
