Small Dogma Publishing Website:
• Who do you see as your target audience? How do you plan to reach them?
• What is your sales/promotion strategy?
Both of these are questions that authors should be asking of Small Dogma.
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
Small Dogma Publishing is a company dedicated to authors who desire to “come to voice.”
What the hell does "come to voice" mean?
If it's charging editorial fees and requiring authors to purchase copies of their own books then actually, it is a vanity press.
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
Q: How long do I have to wait until I hear back after submitting my manuscript?
A: Approximately 2-3 weeks
That's a ridiculously short turn around time and not a great sign.
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
We are a company created for the “open-minded,” but do hold close to our “closed-handed” values of helping others, granting dreams, providing quality products and inspiration.
What does being a publisher have to do with helping others and granting dreams? Are they a charity or a commercial business?
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
We are always looking for authors who are excited about promoting their book, especially when they come with a vision of success.
Authors should be excited about writing their book. Publishers should be excited about promoting books because they think that they'll make money from them.
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
We are a traditional Publisher and who has had the pleasure of facilitating the growth and sales of many great authors over the past two years.
By "traditional Publisher", do they mean commercial publisher? What kind of sales figures have their authors enjoyed on average per title and what has Small Dogma done to generate those sales (as compared with what the author has done)?
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
We have also accepted several authors on a subsidy basis if we feel the author has merit but does not qualify for our traditional model.
Any press charging authors to publish is a vanity press. Publishers should be paying authors an advance - money flows to the author not the other way around.
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
We give back to the community, country, and world through dedication of time and resources to make a real difference. $.50 of every book sold is given to the Feed The Children organization in order to support those with the inability to support themselves.
Does that 50 cents come out of the author's cut or the publisher's?
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
Nationwide Distribution
Means nothing unless they've got books in store for placement.
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
International Book Publishing Association affiliation
Do they mean the International Publisher's Association or the Independent Book Publisher's Association? Because a Google search doesn't reveal any professional association by the name of International Book Publishing Association.
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
Barnes and Noble vendor of record
Means nothing unless they've got books in store for placement.
Small Dogma Publishing Website:
The fairest contract in the industry.
- Author keeps movie rights.
- Author keeps copyright.
- Contract is renegotiated after 5 years (not for life) to ensure both you and our company are meeting each other’s expectations.
- Fair Royalties
- Author gets final review of manuscript
- And more…
Author keeps movie rights anyway. This is not only fair - it's an industry standard.
Author keeps copyright anyway. No publisher should ever be taking copyright from an author - publishers only take publishing rights.
Contract renegotiation - I hope that means an author can walk away rather than Small Dogma having the right to impose terms.
"Fair royalties" - well, one person's view of "fair" may not be the same as anothers. I'd like to know exactly what their royalty terms are and how royalties are calculated.
An author should always get final review of the manuscript - this is not an earth shaker and certainly no different to what other publishers do.
The site is assembling a Testimonials page (
http://www.smalldogma.com/?page_id=114). Tellingly, the Testimonials are from authors, just as with Publish America. It suggests that the company is aimed at selling itself to authors and not to book readers.
Small Dogma also runs a blog here (
http://smalldogma.wordpress.com/). One entry from an author setting out what they had done to increase sales:
Small Dogma Blog:
As a first time author with a smaller publisher, I have put together a plan to increase the sales of my novel. This plan starts with the obvious of family and friends; grows to include cold calling books stores, newspapers, blogs, etc; then to the more sophisticate process of setting up google keywords; and the time consuming commitment of writing my own blog. Below is my high-level marketing plan:
• Contact Family and Friends
o Book Clubs
• Purchase Google Key Words
• Write Blog and promote book
o Mine is a weekly business blog
o
www.closerq.com
• Put together Business Cards
• Write Press Release
• Contact Traditional Media (both phone and email)
o Newspapers, TV, Radio to review and interview me on my novel
• Contact Bloggers to write reviews of my book
o I contacted a wide range of topical bloggers who could fit by book
Regional: Massachusetts; Nevada, Georgia
Business and Sales Blogs
Gambling Blogs
Book Review Blogs
• Set-up Social Media
o Twitter:
http://twitter.com/closerq
o Linkedin:
[URL="http://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunpriest"]http://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunpriest[/URL]
All of this should be done by the publisher, not by the author.
One thing to note is that the website doesn't seem to have been updated since August 2009, which of itself is not a good sign.
MM
