SmashBear Publishing

[cwbuecheler]

Hi Folks,

I've recently had likes on Twitter during #SFFPit from two new, small publishers - Art Over Chaos and SmashBear. I was wondering if anyone's had any experiences with them that they might like to report, good or bad. I have a contemporary fantasy that I was considering self-publishing (several agents have looked at it and replied with "I like this but this genre's impossible to sell right now") that they're interested in, and I thought it might be useful to go with a publisher instead of going it alone.

Anyway, if anyone has any info I'd love to hear it.

Thanks!

-Chris

 

[mrsmig]

SmashBear Publishing is a UK-based press, founded in 2020, but with only six novels and three anthologies in their catalogue thus far. (They really need to update their website, which claims only three books and shows their most recent release, which came out in the beginning of August 2022, as only available for pre-order.)

Their four-person staff is light on trade publishing experience and very young (two are recent college graduates). Founder and owner Loredana Carini's LinkedIn resume reflects no trade publishing experience prior to starting SmashBear. Acquisitions Manager and Commissioning Editor Megan Amato's LinkedIn resume states she's part-time and has only been on the job for a bit more than a year. They have several positions open but these appear to be part-time and possibly unpaid.

Their covers are fair to middling. I had a look at a couple of their titles and found run-on sentences and misplaced modifiers within the first few pages, which doesn't speak well for the publisher's editing. Their books appear to be available only through Amazon, in both print and ebook formats.

They will accept both agented and unagented submissions. They do not offer advances. They don't say what their royalty split is, or if those royalties are calculated on net or gross.

With such limited availability, so-so covers and less-than-stellar editing, I question why anyone would go with this press when you could probably get the same number of sales by self-publishing, and keep your royalties for yourself.

 

[cwbuecheler]

Thank you so much mrsmig for the detailed research and write-ups! Apologies also for not being more familiar with forum standards and breaking this into two threads.

I'm inclined to agree with your assessment that in both cases there's not much here that provides value - especially for someone who's already self-published five books and knows the ins and outs of doing so pretty well!

Thanks again. This is really incredibly helpful and much more of a response than I was expecting.

-Chris

 

[mrsmig]

Happy to help. Welcome to AW.