[Publisher] Blind Eye Books

[The Otter]

Hi. I wondered if anyone has experience with Blind Eye Books or has heard anything about them. They're an independent publisher who specializes in LGBT science fiction and fantasy.

http://www.blindeyebooks.com/

I'm especially interested in what (if any) kind of royalties they pay, but there's no information about that on the site, it seems.

 

[Unimportant]

I don't know what their royalty rates are, but their books have lovely covers and have done very well at winning literary awards. I've never heard anything negative about them or their business practices, so their royalty rates are probably pretty standard.

 

[az shea]

One Block Empire - imprint of Blind Eye Books

Blind Eye Books posted this about their new imprint, probably in 2014, since it's before Lane Robins' Renovation was published.

Our new imprint, One Block Empire will be dedicated to bringing you mysteries and contemporary LGBT stories of the same outstanding caliber as our science-fiction and fantasy titles.

Full disclosure: I copyedited three of their novels last year, including Renovation.

Speaking as a freelance editor, Blind Eye is very prompt about paying me and extremely nice to work with.

 

[waylander]

https://www.blindeyebooks.com/

Anyone know anything about this small publisher, editor-in-chief Nicole Kimberling. They say they are award winning but I've never heard of any of the awards.

 

[mrsmig]

I don't have any first-hand experience, but it seems to be a niche small press, and the awards received by its publications appear to be niche awards (I'd never heard of them either).

I'm bothered by the fact that no staff/staff credentials are listed, so there's no way of knowing the experience level of the people handling your book. Looks like their distribution is that of a typical small publisher, i.e. they're POD and therefore can get your books into online stores like Amazon, but not stocked in brick-and-mortar stores. (A good clue as to whether print copies are produced via offset or print-on-demand these days is to look at a book's Amazon listing. Their pages for POD books almost always state something like "only two left in stock. More on the way.")

Their covers range from eccentric but interesting to just plain dire. They've got a podcast page but it looks like it hasn't been active for a year. Their "news" page hasn't been updated since October.

Make of all that what you will.

 

[cool pop]

Where in the world do these small presses get these names???

Anyway, checked the site. First impression, thought I'd been thrown back in time to a geocities webpage. Those covers look cheap. The fonts they're using are not professional looking at all. Some covers are worse than others. I think I figured out why they call themselves Blind Eye. Because after seeing some of these covers I wish I were blind. Sorry, couldn't resist.

To be fair I can't comment on the awards because these books aren't my genre so I can't say if the awards are legit or not but I hope a publisher wouldn't be sprouting off about illegitimate awards but you never know.

Them having a podcast...meh. From the look of that page they don't care about it so why should anyone else?

Overall I'd give it a C and I am being generous. I'd check their sales on retailers and see how their books do. See if you can learn anything about the authors or editors just to see if they are legit or at least not crappy. If you got time, order a book and check out the writing.

But, if it were me I think there are better pubs you can commit your time to.

They might be legit but still not that impressive. I'm not seeing anything they can do you can't do for yourself judging by these covers and that 1997 website.