[Publisher] The Thriller Factory (formerly Gerricon Books Ltd.)

[Warren123]

Hi there

I am new to the forum but I have found the website very very helpful as an 'outsider'.

I finally have a publisher who is willing to see a whole manuscript of my novel and so I want to check whether this publisher (Gerricon Book) is legit.

Their response has been set out below...what do you think?

"We are happy to read your manuscript, but before you send it I would like to explain our current position. We have 8 books currently in the top 40 kindle lists. One is number 1 in war books and another is number 6 in overall e-books. We have sold over 40,000 copies in the last three months.
Because of our sales we are no longer going to publish paper books as the e-book trade is massive. If you would like to consider this format of releasing your book then let us know."

 

[Momento Mori]

I can't find a website for the company at all, which makes it difficult to comment other than generically. However, Gerricon is open about having started as a self-publishing venture for Conrad Jones, who then branched out to publish other people's work:

http://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/news/8467040.Author_helps_aspiring_writers/

Some of Conrad's Kindle books are also currently in the top 200 overall Kindle sales on Amazon UK (which is impressive). However, checking through some of the reviews for his books, there have been comments about the lack of editing (which he is open about in his responses to them) but he seems to be using his reviewers as people to identify things like spelling and grammatical mistakes - which I wouldn't personally be comfortable with because he should be checking and confirming quality before releasing each book.

Conrad also says in one response to a bad review that he's improving as a writer as his books go on but he seems to be hoping that his self-publishing success will attract the attention of an agent/commercial publisher, which would make me question whether he is in this for the long term and if so, what that means for authors who go with his company.

The publishing entity was Gerricon Books Limited (a duely registered company in England and Wales) but the company was dissolved on 15th June 2010 without accounts/documents being filed. I'd therefore want to know who you're contracting with to publish the book. If it's with Conrad personally then that would make me wary because of the complexities it would throw up on an insolvency (note - I'm not saying he is insolvent, just that it's a situation that authors need to be aware of).

As a general comment, Conrad does seem to respond to almost every negative review he gets on Amazon UK and while he is very polite in each comment, for me it's not particularly professional.

MM

 

[Warren123]

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply, MM. You have really helped. Thank you.

 

[CaoPaux]

Continued to (mostly self-) publish as both GerriCon and GeriCon well into '14. Was briefly Conrad Jones Book Publishing & Marketing at publishers4u.co.uk. Is currently The Thriller Factory: http://www.conradjonesauthor.com/