[Publisher] Posh Books

[alvin123]

http://poshbooks.com/writers.php?from=fb1



Edit: as promised, I edited the post. See the creator's post below for information.

 

[twm]

Vanity.

 

[HoneyBadger]

What's that? The distant hoofbeats of the Atlanta Knights?

brb copy/pasting "this is my novel" 5k times.

 

[Undercover]

Wow, so all I have to do is give them my novel and I'll get paid? What like one cent a year?

 

[JulieB]

I'm going to be the contrarian (sort of) and not call scam until I've seen more. It could be someone clueless but with good intentions.

They're promising $150-200 for a book that's just languishing on your hard drive, though. That does sound...odd.

 

[triceretops]

I'm going to be the contrarian (sort of) and not call scam until I've seen more. It could be someone clueless but with good intentions.

They're promising $150-200 for a book that's just languishing on your hard drive, though. That does sound...odd.

Not if you consider maybe one of the next e-book publishing trends that might crop up in the next couple of years. I tried to forecast it in one of my blogs. See if my guess is close:

http://guerrillawarfareforwriters.blogspot.com/2012/04/whats-new-self-publishing-trend.html

 

[victoriastrauss]

I think these must be the same people who are advertising on Craigslist. I've gotten a couple of questions about them, and am trying to find out more.

- Victoria

 

[michael_b]

I wonder if these are the same folks that contacted a friend of mine about making a website for them. He declined because they sounded totally clueless about the publishing business.

Does anyone have information on where they're physically located? The people who contacted my friend were in Denver, Colorado.

Edited to add: Never mind. I did a whois look up and discovered the owners of Posh Books are in Romania.

 

[Unimportant]

They don't seem to guarantee acceptance, so my guess was that they will only buy the books they think they can sell (or edit and sell). It's not clear what rights they expect the author to sign over. My bet would be that they'd ask for copyright.

They may be gambling on the fact that e-book readers will take a chance on a $2 or $3 novel on places like Smashwords; if they can sell 50 copies they'll have recouped their investment.

 

[PoshBooks.com]

Hello everyone

My name is Mihai and I am the creator of PoshBooks.com. I am not here to advertise anything, just wanted to clear some things up, since quite a few of you are concerned that this is a scam.

First of all, let me say that we're not looking to become anyone's publisher, we aim at creating our own portfolio of books/novels by purchasing full rights for creations that have been sitting idle for years maybe, from people that might've even given up writing and could use a bit of cash instead of just contemplating their forgotten (and possibly rejected) inspiration.

As they say - "someone's junk can be another person's gold" - and although we're very new to this, we're also quite enthusiastic about the whole thing.

We're also not the only ones doing it (in fact, there are probably thousands of other ventures like ours) and the trend seems to be going up, that's why you'll probably stumble upon offers like this quite often.

And just to wrap things up regarding your concerns, if someone would only want to steal/copy a novel, they could find thousands and thousands of novels published by aspiring writers on websites such as fictionpress or booksie. And that can be done easily without wasting extra time or money.

Thank you for reading. If any of you has questions, feel free to ask.

Mihai

 

[IceCreamEmpress]

Yes, "publisher" seems like the wrong word entirely. "Rights purchaser" is perhaps the politest term I can think of to describe this business model.

 

[eqb]

So the author hands over full rights for a small sum of money. It's not clear if their name appears on the cover or not. (Probably not, and this might be a good thing, given that Posh is probably going to slap the book together without any editing.)

But...what if the author later comes up with a better book--a sequel or another novel connected to the one they sold to Posh? Have they given up all rights to that world and those characters?

 

[PoshBooks.com]

Since the original author hands over all rights, we would have the right to do whatever we want with the book, including changing the story and/or the characters, adding a different name on the cover and what not.
I agree that the amount of money we're willing to pay is not that big, however our target is not someone who's still pursuing a writing career, but people who do something rather different now and are keen on letting someone else take over what that they've given up on a [long] while back.

 

[Fallen]

Since the original author hands over all rights, we would have the right to do whatever we want with the book, including changing the story and/or the characters, adding a different name on the cover and what not.
I agree that the amount of money we're willing to pay is not that big, however our target is not someone who's still pursuing a writing career, but people who do something rather different now and are keen on letting someone else take over what that they've given up on a [long] while back.

Welcome to AW.

Do you take permanent rights? Are you aware that most puplishers only take rights for a certain amount of time (average 3-4 years?)

And do you buy the books purely for the stated amount, and the author gets no further royalties?

None of this is really explained on your site to make people aware of your different approach.

 

[PoshBooks.com]

The way we're seeing it, by taking over all rights, we actually have full and permanent ownership of that story. In some exceptional cases we might agree to pay further royalties, however that complicates things a lot in terms of payments, reports and taxes so we're not very attracted to go that way.

As I specified earlier, we're very new to this branch and anything new we learn will help us improve, and that includes adding new/more clear information on our website.

Thank you

 

[alvin123]

I understand. Thanks for posting and clearing up the misunderstanding.

 

[eqb]

Posh: Do you plan to actually edit the books you acquire? If not, I can safely promise you that I'd never buy one of your books. I'd also warn other readers against wasting their money on something that was little more than a data dump of trunked novels.

 

[PoshBooks.com]

Beth: I think you're being a bit harsh. Not on us, but on the people who actually wrote those novels. We're not looking to buy just about anything that crosses our path, we're after good stories that never got the appreciation they deserved. If they need editing or some corrections, we won't be afraid of making them, but that is not a "must".
As I said before, I am here just to clarify some things, not to advertise our business, nor any of the books we're going to publish. It is entirely up to you if you want to buy them or not, or your feedback in relation to them/us.

Personally, looking a bit in the future, I would rather like people to review them impartially, for what they are, but that's not something everyone does. This is the Internet and no one can please everybody.

 

[veinglory]

Realistically this scheme is guaranteed to not be popular on a writing site either way--1) you put out stuff that is not great, or 2) the writing is great and you paid a pittance for it.

 

[PoshBooks.com]

veinglory > I totally agree with you regarding the unpopularity over here, that's why we're not taking this website as an opportunity to advertise in any way. But at the end of the day, our intentions are not illegal nor immoral, although some may think otherwise.

 

[Jamiekswriter]

So it sounds like you're buying a book from an author, taking all rights so that the book no longer belongs to the author and the author has no further claim or say on the world, characters and story or any derivitives of it -- for tops $200.00.

So conceivably you could take the book, put your name on it and sell it on Amazon.

It's too low of a price to pay for a ghost writer. And there really isn't any benefit for giving up all rights to your book for $200 -- not in this day of epublishing, audio rights and foreign rights.

I'd recommend that the author sell their book someplace other than Posh Books.

 

[veinglory]

I would guess their target would be people who have lost interest in their book entirely, so any money made is a bonus.

 

[Williebee]

"For every market a sub-market grows."

Distasteful or not, isn't this something that already happens in other forms of entertainment where intellectual content is involved, like music and movies?

(In no way condoning the concept. I'd spend the relatively few hours and self-publish it myself first. Let it sit out there and collect it's own nickels for me, as it were.)

 

[eqb]

Beth: I think you're being a bit harsh. Not on us, but on the people who actually wrote those novels. We're not looking to buy just about anything that crosses our path, we're after good stories that never got the appreciation they deserved. If they need editing or some corrections, we won't be afraid of making them, but that is not a "must".

Well, I did say *if* you didn't edit them.

The thing is, someone's trunked novel might have great potential, but even so, it probably needs a thorough content edit, above and beyond copyediting and proofreading. If that sounds harsh... Well, my reading time is valuable to me.

I do appreciate your taking the time to clarify your company here.

 

[Old Hack]

Posh: Do you plan to actually edit the books you acquire? If not, I can safely promise you that I'd never buy one of your books. I'd also warn other readers against wasting their money on something that was little more than a data dump of trunked novels.

Beth: I think you're being a bit harsh. Not on us, but on the people who actually wrote those novels.

I don't think eqb is being harsh at all. Almost all books which are brought to the market by trade publishers get edited, copy edited and proof-read, usually very rigorously indeed. Editing isn't an option where professional publishing is concerned, it's a necessity.

To add my voice to the others', I don't like your business model one little bit. I don't think it's inherently scammy, so long as you make clear that you take all rights and that this isn't how things are usually done in publishing: but it's not in your writers' best interests, and I wouldn't sign up to it or advise anyone else to, either.