Shadowfall Publications

[scottishpunk]

Does anybody know anything about this publisher? They just posted a blurb on the "Dark Markets" web site, and I'm intrigued.

shadowfallpublications.com

 

[Undercover]

Well they look pretty good. They pay advances...not sure how much or what the royalty rates are so I emailed questioning it. I will let you know after they respond. The covers look okay, some are a bit cheesy though. They don't really have more info on the publishing house, unless I'm missing it.

I'd be interested to here more info on it. It certainly looks interesting.

 

[dondomat]

theories and insinuations

Did, did they ever reply?
Without any real data, based purely on intuition and late evening coffee, I'd probably place them with the pretty modest advance-paying crowd like Zharmae, Medallion Media and Edge. Who knows, maybe lower still? They don't mention figures on their website, but unlike Baen, who say they offer 'competitive advances', they say that they offer 'advances and competitive royalties', which in forked tongue speak could mean - ''here's your $300, now start social network marketing"...

 

[Undercover]

They never responded to my emails. I think I sent two. I also had trouble with submitting and it never went through, so I emailed them on that (along with my first email asking questions) and nothing.

 

[justbishop]

Just submitted by YA contemp novella through their online system. Weird. I got a popup that just said "k". Also emailed at the address provided to ask if it went through.

Will keep y'all posted

 

[dale hollin]

i see a couple of their authors have stoker awards and at least they pay advances.

 

[triceretops]

I gave 'em a shot. I can always do the lateral hand-off to my agent to find out about the advance. I went with the form sub and received a "k" as a response. I suppose that means it went through. I'll report particulars.

tri

 

[dale hollin]

i went ahead and sent a submission. got the little "K" window response. anyone ever get a response to their emails questioning whether the sub was received?

 

[justbishop]

No email yet.

 

[triceretops]

Nothing yet.

I've been seeing a lot of small publishers say they pay advances, and when I research this out, it shows those advance are typically around $200. I don't know about this outfit yet.

Now, a token advance can be $1 or up to $50 or so; at least that's what I'm seeing on that end.

Competitive advances are usually in the 1000s. These are doled out by the very large independents and the NYC pubs.

 

[jennyone1]

Please don’t send anything to that publisher. I did and today got an email from another author who also sent in a submission, saying that my book in its entirety was available to view and download online. It’s the same story with around 40 manuscripts that have been submitted also appearing.
The publisher is no longer contactable so I have got in touch with the company their domain name is registered with, their domain host and Google (they remove copyright infringing material from their search results) and asked them to remove the offending page for my book.
If you submitted to them, you can find out if your work is online by – 1 going to http://www.shadowfallpublications.com/uploads/submission/ and checking through the manuscripts or 2 Putting your name and Shadowfall into the Google search engine.
Hope nobody else has been affected. I’m so angry and upset at what’s happened. If publisher’s start putting submissions online without permission, whether by accident or intentionally, what chance do we writers have?

 

[justbishop]

Wow. Mine is there. Can you please post the contact info for their hosting company so that I can contact them as well?

 

[justbishop]

Knowing a good bit about web design, this looks like it could be an honest mistake of them accidentally deleting or just neglecting to put an index.htm (or index.php, or index.html) file into the uploads/submission/ directory of their site, which would prevent the general public from accessing the individual files contained therein.

That being said, if you're going to run a website that requests and stores people's copyrighted material (all including personal details like home addresses and phone numbers), you'd better know how to protect your shit. This is pretty inexcusable, IMO.

 

[justbishop]

FYI for anyone else whose MS is up there, their host is Hostgator. Here's the link that explains how to file a complaint with them. Faxed mine today and got an email back that said they allowed 48 hours for communication, and if the material isn't removed by the webmaster before then, Hostgator will remove it from their servers themselves:

http://www.hostgator.com/copyright

 

[jennyone1]

Thanks justbishop

Thanks for the info, justbishop. I was directed at the wrong host for Shadowfall - I was told it was softlayer. They were unhelpful and told me that I needed the contact details for Shadowfall, including their street address before they'd do anything despite the fact as the hosting company they should have them.
Going to try hostgator. Will have to use snailmail as I don't have access to a fax machine and I live in Scotland.

 

[justbishop]

Writing to Hostgator worked. The link to my MS .doc file still appears in a Google search, but throws a 403 Forbidden error when clicked.

 

[nkkingston]

I feel kinda bad for them since like you say it's probably just an accidentally deleted index file, but it really highlights the problems with an online submission form over email.

 

[ofotherworlds]

So you're still coming up in a Google search?

Do you think there is a way to keep your information from popping up on a Google search? Because if you click the Cache link or the HTML link you can still probably see all your information. (Click the >> arrows beside the Google search result or the HTML link under/around the main link result). I mean, if it's still coming up in the search result then your info is still able to be found. This could make you look bad to other agents/publishers, right?

Writing to Hostgator worked. The link to my MS .doc file still appears in a Google search, but throws a 403 Forbidden error when clicked.

 

[ofotherworlds]

Re: My last post

I guess what I mean is it is still in Google's Cache.

Writing to Hostgator worked. The link to my MS .doc file still appears in a Google search, but throws a 403 Forbidden error when clicked.

 

[justbishop]

Can't remember exactly how I ended up there, but try this URL:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-dashboard

I created a notice there at the same time I took care of the Hostgator stuff, and my URL is still listed as "pending" :/

 

[Scathe]

This Is Horrible

I submitted a ms. to Shadowfall late in 2012, and now the entire book is on a Russian porn site.

lib.znate.ru/docs/index-294113.html

 

[CaoPaux]

Welcome, Scathe. I've broken your link to avoid giving the site any Google juice.

 

[eternalised]

I'm sorry to hear about that, Scathe. Was your MS one of those listed on the broken index page?

 

[Scathe]

Egads

Thank you, CaoPaux. I thought about that after I included it. Perhaps best we forget it's happened and move on.

Eternalised, I have not seen the index page. I just discovered this yesterday, the horror compounded by the fact that my recently-accepted book carries over half of the stolen stories, and this caused my publisher some grief. In any case, May 1st of this year will see the publication of CHILDREN & OTHER WICKED THINGS, James Ward Kirk Publishing.

I am relying on the hope that few people hit the Russian site. Oh well, what can one do?

We all make mistakes, whether we realize it or not. I just hope the folks at Shadowfall actually made a mistake instead of the other possibility...

 

[triceretops]

I subbed to the online form on 9-9-2012. No reply. Very strange goings on there, eh?

tri