[Publishing svcs] Pronoun (formerly Vook)

[Nekko]

I'm taking part in July's Camp NaNoWriMo and one of the sponsors is Pronoun Publishing. It sounds like they've worked with big publishing houses in the past and are now offering - soon will be - (free) digital publishing and support. I like the support angle.

I was wondering if anyone has heard anything about them? I'd like to think that the folks at NaNo did some due deligence, but Pronoun is a 'sponsor,' and assumptions are not always wise...

They are affiliated with Medium if that tells you anything.

 

[Ravioli]

Their manifesto:
https://medium.com/@pronoun/how-to-fix-book-publishing-e40a04ffd804

I just wonder how it can all be free, what's the catch, you know..

 

[VeryBigBeard]

The word "reader" appears 10 times in that manifesto.

The word "author" appears 38 times.

I'm not experienced enough to really comment on the issues at play here. I'm curious, though, because from what I can gather publishing serves readers pretty well right now and I'm not really sure who else it's supposed to serve.

 

[Filigree]

Who pays, and when? Who buys the books, and how?
I'm skeptical, but I'll see where they are sales wise.

 

[Nekko]

Who pays, and when? Who buys the books, and how?
I'm skeptical, but I'll see where they are sales wise.

Thanks Filigree. I always appreciate advice from those who've more experience than I do.

I just wonder how it can all be free, what's the catch, you know..

My questions too Ravioli.

I'm curious, though, because from what I can gather publishing serves readers pretty well right now and I'm not really sure who else it's supposed to serve.

Well it depends on what type of publishing you are talking about.

However, I know I can publish digitally just as easily through SmashWords, but they take a 'cut.' Which makes sense, they need to make a living too.
However, Pronoun claims they will give advice/guidance on promoting, and pricing, and a few other things.
Which leads back to, how does Pronoun do it for 'free,' and is there a catch down the road?

 

[Polenth]

Their manifesto:
https://medium.com/@pronoun/how-to-fix-book-publishing-e40a04ffd804

I just wonder how it can all be free, what's the catch, you know..

They don't say that everything's free. Note the question at the end: "If publishing a book was completely free, what additional support and tools would you pay for?"

That's the catch. Their business model is selling services to authors, not selling books to readers. The issue here is that they're not our friend anymore than Amazon. But Amazon at least has the same end goal: they want to sell lots of books to readers and we want to sell lots of books to readers. So we're mostly heading in the same direction. A company that wants to sell services to us doesn't have to care if the book sells to readers. That's not where they get their money, so there's little incentive to do a good job at getting the book out there.

The misinformation about publishing on the page is more than I want to dissect in detail. Uploading your work for free to self-publishing sites isn't revolutionary. It's standard. It'd be more surprising if a site did charge an upload fee. The whole feel of the page is it's aimed at people who don't know anything about how the industry works.

 

[Nekko]

Thanks Polenth. That makes a lot of sense.

 

[frimble3]

And why can't I find anything about anybody involved, anywhere on the page? Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the closest thing I can find to any mention of a person is

In the past five years, we’ve seen first-hand the challenges and intricacies of publishing books in a digital world. We’ve partnered with Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, and Macmillan. We’ve published books for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. We’ve worked with many of New York’s leading literary agencies.

Who are 'We'? Where are names and positions? And, they've done all this, at all those places, in the past five years? That's not a lot of time. Especially if 'We' are only a couple of people. Even if 'We' are a dozen people, that's only five years to get a job, learn about an industry, decide how an industry could/should change, formulate a plan to make those changes, and implement it. Busy, busy, busy.

If 'We' is 'Medium', the blogging platform, then they're not a bunch of newbies and should know better.

 

[CaoPaux]

Pronoun is the relaunch of Vook after its acquisition of Byliner and Booklr (PW press release). http://pronoun.com/

 

[Nekko]

Pronoun is the relaunch of Vook after its acquisition of Byliner and Booklr (PW press release). http://pronoun.com/

Wow, thank you Cao for tracking down this PR! (and making the thread title more informative)

Asked how Pronoun will make money while giving authors a 100% royalty on all their e-book sales, Brody said the company will continue to generate revenue from its current legacy businesses in data conversion and sales tracking, but intends to take the classic tech startup posture and focus on creating a platform that attracts authors.

So it would appear that Polenth was corretct in teasing out that Pronoun will make its money through selling their support services.

 

[cmhbob]

One of the things Vook did was allow any author to tie in all of their publishing information (at no cost) so you could see totals fairly clearly across all outlets, on one screen/graph/chart. You had to explicitly give permission for each publishing outlet you used (like SW, CS, Amazon, D2D, etc), and they'd color-code it. Very snazzy looking. I used it for a while, then Amazon killed their access for one reason or another.

 

[tiakall]

Pronoun is a sponsor for main event Nano this year, so I thought I'd add some additional information based on their thread:

--they opened (to a limited number of people; there's a waiting list) in September
--They are funded in part by additional paid services (editing, cover art) and by corporations who use their tools (free for personal use, not for corporate)

One of their Program Directors (also a Wrimo) has been answering a lot of questions in this thread, which may be useful for those considering them. They also linked their Author Agreement, and I don't see anything hinky at first glance.

 

[Rossandra]

Pronoun Publishing

Has anyone published with Pronoun?

 

[Lauram6123]

There's a thread about it here: <snipped>

 

[Captcha]

Anyone got an update on this or any personal experience?

I read a Q&A at https://janefriedman.com/pronoun-distribution/ and it sounds pretty excellent, providing they don't sell the extra services too hard...

 

[Filigree]

I saw that one, too. Color me interested, if skittish.

 

[Captcha]

I looked into it a bit more and have sent a message to Pronoun for clarification, but it looks as if this service will get you a better deal (dramatically better if your price is less than $2.99 per book) on sales in Canada and the US, but possibly a worse deal for other countries - I can get 70% in most regions through Amazon, but down around 50% through Pronoun. I'll have to look pretty closely at how much I sell in the other regions, I guess.

I have a few books with reclaimed rights I can re-issue, so I'll probably experiment with one of those. But with three new releases in the next three months already, I want t be sure my re-releases aren't competing with those sales, so I need to either wait or find something in my other genres to play with...

I'll update if I get around to doing this!

 

[Zombie Fraggle]

According to a tweet from Pronoun's official Twitter account on 12 December 2016: "...planning to offer additional optional paid services later. Our core publishing services will always be free for authors."

Also of interest: Macmillan purchased Pronoun in May 2016. A Publishers Weekly article on the sale can be found here.

 

[M. H. Lee]

I published some pen name short stories with them this week that had been listed on Amazon. Process was fairly straight-forward and I liked their formatting options. Some minor issues (e.g., you can't copy and paste the blurb; you have to retype it and getting paragraphs in there is a bit tricky) but overall not hard to use. They've still got some learning to do so I won't be listing any of my novels with them just yet but they're responsive and if they fix a few things (international pricing) I could see myself moving more of the books I have listed direct with Amazon to them. I don't think I'd ever move all of them and I don't know that I'd abandon using D2D for the other platforms. There are also some issues with going with them instead of Amazon that I don't know how they get around (availability of AMS ads being the biggest, but ability to move into/out of KU being the other since they assign a new ASIN to books listed through them).

 

[Filigree]

Good to hear.

 

[Polenth]

Pronoun is closing down. New books can't be submitted. The final end date appears to be 15th January, 2018. All books will be removed from sale at that point.

http://support.pronoun.com/knowledge_base/topics/pronoun-shutdown-faq

 

[cmhbob]

Ah, crap. My former manager at Gravity JUST switched over to Pronoun a couple of months ago.

 

[Polenth]

Ah, crap. My former manager at Gravity JUST switched over to Pronoun a couple of months ago.

The announcement was very sudden. I know a few authors who'd switched over just before it happened.

 

[cmhbob]

Yeah, she'd just rereleased three books in July, after having gravity fold, and another publisher not work out.