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I am Renee LaChance, CEO at Puddletown Publishing. I hope the several hundred people who have looked at this thread will take the time to read this. Puddletown Publishing is a new publisher based in Portland, Oregon. We incorporated in January 2011. In less than seven months we have published six novels: six ebook editions and four print on demand editions with two more print on demand coming out next week. We have committed to publish seven more books by summer’s end. Several of our authors have series that we are committed to publishing by the end of the year. We have signed eleven authors with nearly 40 books in the works.
We just mailed royalty checks for our first quarter to our authors. That was exciting. How many authors in traditional publishing get a royalty check three months after their book is published?
We contract for digital rights which allow for ebooks, audio books, books on cds, and print on demand. Print on demand is considered a digital right because the book is a digital file that becomes a print book when someone orders it. We currently use Lightning Source for our print on demand editions, which is a division of Ingram. This allows any bookseller, anywhere in the world, to access our book for resale. The author retains copyright. Our contract is based on the EPIC (Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) template. We also abide by its code of ethics as well as our own, which is outlined on our website as “All Our Relations.”
http://epicorg.com
Jarrah Dale started this thread on behalf of a friend. I assume the friend is Haley Whitehall who is reviewing one of Puddletown’s books, “Volunteer For Glory.” Ms Whitehall liked what she saw and thought about submitting to us. She commented in an email to our author Alice Lynn that she was “impressed with the professional look of the book, especially the cover.”
I emailed Ms. Whitehall the process information on our website that states the process begins with an invitation to submit. We are not open for submissions at this time but we can be swayed to consider a book if someone refers an author to us or an author sends a compelling email. Then we would invite them to submit and our process would begin.
Puddletown Publishing Group consists of two people, in our 50s, who have been in the publishing business all of our working careers: books, newspapers, editing, design, calendars, chapbooks. The resumes on our website are up to date and pretty concise. We work other jobs as well, since the business is too new to draw an income from at this time.
Given our age and our past experiences in publishing, we have a pretty strong ethic to always speak well of others and not put out negative vibes. In this electronic age things can be said in haste that can cause irreversible damage and we just want to be conscious of that and for everyone we work with to be conscious of that as well. It is not unheard of, even this forum requires it. We all sign an agreement saying we won’t post messages that are obscene, vulgar, hateful, threatening, or violate laws. “Respect your fellow writers.” That is all we ask as well. And if an author cannot abide by civil discourse we would rather not work with them. We are too old to involve ourselves in backbiting and snide comments. Frankly, we only have so many good years left and we don’t want to waste them on pettiness or negativity.
Since it is just the two of us, we do have to remind ourselves that it is a great day at Puddletown Publishing, and really, we believe when you say it, it becomes it, even if it is really a crappy day.
Our website was set up to attract authors, because we are new. The input on this thread reminds me we need to update the website and prioritize that rather than editing, formatting and marketing books long enough to do it.
We link to sites that sell our books because we don’t want to be booksellers, we want to be book publishers and the businesses that distribute our books are much better at it than we are. Also, since we focus on ebooks, each ereader has a preference for where they like to buy their books, and our links allow them to hook up with the site they are most familiar with.
And just to clarify a couple other points. A market read is defined by us as a third party reader who has industry knowledge who assesses the book based on how well it is written and how well it might sell. My partner, Susan Landis-Steward submitted two novels for consideration, without the market reader knowing she was a partner, and one of her novels was rejected.
Did 2010 change the landscape of traditional book publishing? Ask Borders Books, Powell’s City of Books, and J.K. Rowling who blew off her traditional publisher to self-publish the Harry Potter series as ebooks. Amazon announced that sales of ebooks exceeded hardcover book sales in 2010. Barnes and Noble announced ebooks exceeded paperback sales in 2010. This question was asked of many industry insiders for a New York Times article published late last year. The overwhelming response was yes.
Is Puddletown influencing the industry. I say yes, by being one more publisher focusing on a sustainable model of publishing in the 21st century.
