SparkPoint Studio / SparkPress / She Writes Press

[C Alberts]

She Writes is a hybrid press - I believe they publish some titles like a regular trade publisher, but mostly they require investment from the authors. The finished books I've seen look good, like any trade pubbed book. I haven't read one cover-to-cover, but they are definitely edited/proofed better than any other vanity/hybrid books I've seen. The covers I've seen look pretty good. I am under the impression that they vet their submissions carefully and don't publish just anything.

They actually have full distribution through Ingram Publisher Services (IPS) in addition to availability through Ingram's regular wholesale system. This means that when the IPS rep comes to my store, he shows us their catalog, theoretically anyway. On top of that, She Writes also provides (at a price) publicity/marketing to the general reading public - not just nominally like most vanity pubs (press releases, spammy email blasts) but legit advertising, reviews, etc etc...

All that may sound like a defense of this model of publishing. It is not. I am not a fan of hybrid publishing - I think it is mostly a wishy-washy way of not quite calling something a vanity press. And despite the real availability of the books, many stores may still refrain from carrying them on principle. However, if there is a future to hybrid publishing in which books are actually carried in bookstores and sold to real readers, She Writes seems to be the one showing the way.

As for whether or not many of the authors make their investment back, I have no clue, and I realize that is probably the most important question. But this is not your usual vanity press that publishes anyone with a credit card, makes all their money off the authors, can't get into bookstores, etc.

Their founder, Brooke Warner, seems to show up in HuffPo and PW and other places with essays and articles about the publishing world from her perspective. May be worth a google to see her philosophy.

 

[Barbara R.]

I believe She Writes bills themselves as a hybrid publisher, as defined by the IBPA criteria: https://publishingperspectives.com/2018/02/nine-criteria-reputable-hybrid-publishing-ibpa/ At least, that's what they touted at a writing conference I attended. I think the thing that sets these apart from vanity presses is the vetting process. Ostensibly, they don't accept just any manuscript.

But as far as I can tell, their profit comes primarily from services sold to authors, not from sale of books. That, to me, is a more telling distinction than turning down some submissions. It means they don't have to believe the book will make money to publish it; they're just making sure it doesn't embarrass their brand.

If I'm being unfair to the publisher, I'm open to being convinced. But right now the only difference I see between a company like SheWrites and a vanity press is better marketing...of their services, not the books.

 

[Fuchsia Groan]

I've read a couple of their books (ARCs sent to me), and the quality is better than that of a random vanity press book, for sure. Also, both books fit in a distinct marketing category: women's fiction.

At the same time, both books did have structural issues, and I could see why the authors might have trouble finding an agent or trade publisher. I don't want to be too absolute on this because women's fiction isn't my genre, but they seemed like almost-there-not-quite books without the original hook that takes a book over the top.

So the jury's still out on She Writes for me, but I don't think I'd ever take this option myself, because it seems like way too much money for uncertain return.

 

[ehorwitt]

Hi, all, I've been shopping Expecting to Fly, a much-rewritten LGBTQ+ romance set in the seventies, for over a year now without luck. I haven't given up , but am starting to consider hybrids. She Writes Press has had some positive reviews elsewhere recently but the last posts to this forum are four years old. I could use some ideas for agents and small presses as well. Thanks!

 

[Brigid Barry]

Hey @ehorwitt rather than start a new thread there's an index in the stickies: https://absolutewrite.com/forums/in...nt-studio-sparkpress-she-writes-press.278755/

ETA: Maybe ask a mod to move your thread to the other?

 

[Mevrouw Bee]

A friend of mine in my critique group is working on her third book for She Writes Press. Definitely hybrid. It tends to attract older women's fiction writers with money to spend.

 

[Bubastes]

A friend of mine in my critique group is working on her third book for She Writes Press. Definitely hybrid. It tends to attract older women's fiction writers with money to spend.

A lot of money to spend, apparently.

They charge a $35 submission fee: https://shewritespress.com/submit/
If you're chosen, you have the "opportunity" to pay $8500 (!!!) to publish: https://shewritespress.com/our-package/
After you pay that fee, they still keep 30-40% of net profits: https://shewritespress.com/our-process/
And if you're not chosen, they offer book coaching (for another hefty fee, I'm sure): https://shewritespress.com/our-process/

I didn't see anything on how copyright is handled (who owns what rights and for how long), which is important.

 

[Mevrouw Bee]

A lot of money to spend, apparently.

They charge a $35 submission fee: https://shewritespress.com/submit/
If you're chosen, you have the "opportunity" to pay $8500 (!!!) to publish: https://shewritespress.com/our-package/
After you pay that fee, they still keep 30-40% of net profits: https://shewritespress.com/our-process/
And if you're not chosen, they offer book coaching (for another hefty fee, I'm sure): https://shewritespress.com/our-process/

I didn't see anything on how copyright is handled (who owns what rights and for how long), which is important.

Yeah, no clue. She's happy with them though even after two books (and one on the way) and not a dumb bunny so meh. The middle-class retiree turned author thing is a world I'll never be part of and will therefore never completely get...

 

[ElaineB]

If you're chosen, you have the "opportunity" to pay $8500 (!!!) to publish: https://shewritespress.com/our-package/

I can't imagine you can make that money back.

Have you tried the small presses--Bold Strokes Books, Bella, Bedazzled (no, they don't all start with B), Ylva, etc. There are a bazillion presses (see here: https://www.bellabooks.com/browse-by-publisher/), some of which are self-publishing authors (and depends on which letter(s) of the quiltbag this is). I'd self-publish before I'd spend that chunk of change on She Writes (I might spend as much, but I'd get to hire my own editor and graphic designer).

 

[frimble3]

Yeah, no clue. She's happy with them though even after two books (and one on the way) and not a dumb bunny so meh. The middle-class retiree turned author thing is a world I'll never be part of and will therefore never completely get...

If you've got money, there are always ways to spend it. New cars, cruises, shopping trips to foreign shores, renovating your house. If you've got the money, scratching an itch to be a writer is probably not a huge deal.

 

[Mevrouw Bee]

If you've got money, there are always ways to spend it. New cars, cruises, shopping trips to foreign shores, renovating your house. If you've got the money, scratching an itch to be a writer is probably not a huge deal.

$22,000 for a course on how to pitch your novel...

There's a certain freedom in being broke...you can't afford to be ripped off.

 

[Mevrouw Bee]

I can't imagine you can make that money back.

Have you tried the small presses--Bold Strokes Books, Bella, Bedazzled (no, they don't all start with B), Ylva, etc. There are a bazillion presses (see here: https://www.bellabooks.com/browse-by-publisher/), some of which are self-publishing authors (and depends on which letter(s) of the quiltbag this is). I'd self-publish before I'd spend that chunk of change on She Writes (I might spend as much, but I'd get to hire my own editor and graphic designer).

Another woman in my CP group publishes through Black Rose Writing...she's happy with them.

 

[frimble3]

$22,000 for a course on how to pitch your novel...

There's a certain freedom in being broke...you can't afford to be ripped off.

This is why so many folktales are about poor people, described as 'clever' or 'cunning' who get rich/powerful by outsmarting the opposition.

 

[Maryn]

Maybe I'm being too bold (me, bold? hahahaha!), but if two of the "published" members of your critique group are happy with publishers like Black Rose and She Writes, it could be smart to find a critique group that shares your goal of trade publication. (And ideally, also shares your genre.)

Not to put down the individuals in your present group, whose books I have not read, but trade publishing sets the bar higher in terms of quality than the standards these writers have to meet. Can this critique group truly help you reach your goal?

No need to answer here, just something to think about.

Maryn, lucky to have a good group a mere thousand miles away

 

[Mevrouw Bee]

Maybe I'm being too bold (me, bold? hahahaha!), but if two of the "published" members of your critique group are happy with publishers like Black Rose and She Writes, it could be smart to find a critique group that shares your goal of trade publication. (And ideally, also shares your genre.)

Not to put down the individuals in your present group, whose books I have not read, but trade publishing sets the bar higher in terms of quality than the standards these writers have to meet. Can this critique group truly help you reach your goal?

No need to answer here, just something to think about.

Maryn, lucky to have a good group a mere thousand miles away

We were set up together through the WFWA a year and a half ago so all women's fiction. Personally, I can't distinguish between the quality of a indie published book and a trad one anymore and I do like the books they've written...the Black Rose one in particular (there's so many dodgy publishers with a similar name btw and I keep getting them mixed up! This one seems legit).

I might add...women my age (from what I can tell from the WFWA membership anyway) don't query as a rule. They perceive that they have little time but money to spend. So they self/hybrid publish. If I were looking for querying gen X/boomer women's fiction authors to form a critique group, I'd be waiting a hella long time...

Anyway, I also have two fulls out and had a call with an agent who loved my book (if not me...long story) So I'm not particularly worried about meeting my goals.

 

[lizmonster]

If you're paying for publication, it's vanity publishing. Yog's Law and all that.

If people are happy with the fees, I'm not gonna rain on their parade, but we should be precise with our terms.

 

[Mevrouw Bee]

If you're paying for publication, it's vanity publishing. Yog's Law and all that.

If people are happy with the fees, I'm not gonna rain on their parade, but we should be precise with our terms.

And Victoria Strauss dealt with those terms.

https://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/vanity/#Difference

As did Jane Friedman:

https://www.janefriedman.com/what-is-a-hybrid-publisher/

In short, it seems to me that hybrid publishers are umbrella organizations that are one-stop shopping if you want to indie publish without running around looking for separate editors and cover designers and marketers and whatnot.

 

[lizmonster]

...Yeah, hybrid publishers as defined in that blog are vanity publishers. If you're paying the publisher - if they're taking anything other than a percentage of your sales - it's vanity.

I went Cadillac-everything with my last self-published book. Didn't cost me close to $8500.

 

[Mevrouw Bee]

...Yeah, hybrid publishers as defined in that blog are vanity publishers. If you're paying the publisher - if they're taking anything other than a percentage of your sales - it's vanity.

I went Cadillac-everything with my last self-published book. Didn't cost me close to $8500

I wouldn't publish with them myself, but I think Victoria and Jane know how to distinguish one from the other.

 

[lizmonster]

I wouldn't publish with them myself, but I think Victoria and Jane know how to distinguish one from the other. If the authors don't feel they've been ripped off...

Victoria's and Jane's definitions do not agree.

 

[Mevrouw Bee]

Victoria's and Jane's definitions do not agree.

Victoria quotes Jane in her blog post (which is where I got her link) and doesn't disagree. She just warns that some vanity presses call themselves hybrids and one should do their homework.

 

[lizmonster]

From Victoria's post:

As with vanity publishers, hybrid publishers can be extremely costly, and author fees are a source of profit. But unlike a vanity, a good hybrid will also be committed to getting books into the hands of readers.

IOW, a hybrid publisher is a vanity publisher that gives a shit about quality. They're both skimming your money.

Also, "indie" publishing is going with a publisher who's not a Big 5 (or 4, or whatever it is now) - in other words, a publisher independent of a larger corporation. If you're your own publisher, it's self-publishing.

 

[Maryn]

lizmonster's point noting the necessary agreement on terms is important. The AbsoluteWrite Dictionary:

Trade publishing - Publishers who sell to the book trades, that is, to book stores. Most books that are published for general consumers, including genre fiction, are published by trade publishers. The Big Six Five are mostly trade publishers (some of them also produce text books).​

People not in the business (yet) often call this traditional publishing, which does not have an agreed-upon definition, since publishing has always included the large trade presses as well as the small independent trade presses, called indies.

The term indie has been co-opted by people seeking to avoid the perceived stigma of the term self-publishing, but to people in the business of publishing, indie continues to mean small presses.

People wanting to be in the writing business need to know this lest they appear not to have done their homework when dealing with agents and publishers.

Maryn

 

[Mevrouw Bee]

lizmonster's point noting the necessary agreement on terms is important. The AbsoluteWrite Dictionary:

Trade publishing - Publishers who sell to the book trades, that is, to book stores. Most books that are published for general consumers, including genre fiction, are published by trade publishers. The Big Six Five are mostly trade publishers (some of them also produce text books).​

People not in the business (yet) often call this traditional publishing, which does not have an agreed-upon definition, since publishing has always included the large trade presses as well as the small independent trade presses, called indies.

The term indie has been co-opted by people seeking to avoid the perceived stigma of the term self-publishing, but to people in the business of publishing, indie continues to mean small presses.

People wanting to be in the writing business need to know this lest they appear not to have done their homework when dealing with agents and publishers.

Maryn

Fair enough. I meant "self" publish, not indie. And an indie publisher has a full of mine that I submitted directly to them.

I still think some hybrids legitimately serve a market that wants to indie publish and don't mind paying a premium for one-stop shopping rather than source freelancers for individual services. Not me, but...

 

[writera]

A few updates on She Writes Press since the last posts here.

They are now distributed by Simon & Schuster (but then again, S& S is also affiliated with a vanity press called Archway Publishing). They still charge a $35 submission/reading fee. Information taken from here: https://shewritespress.com/submit/

Also, they now seem to be charging $10,000 (!) for a publishing package, per this page: https://shewritespress.com/our-package/ (which they call the "Our Process" page in at least one link - but, as posted in an older post on this thread, there is a more detailed page also called that: https://shewritespress.com/our-process/). This fee is a huge increase of $1,500 in the less than two years since the last post here mentioning their package fees (from September 2022). (And it seems when they first started it was $3,900 or so.)

They are "now acquiring for 2025" and will not be able to accommodate anyone who wishes to publish before August 2025. Is this to make them seem more legitimate-looking or do they really take such time with their projects? And I wonder would they really turn down $10,000 if someone wasn't willing to wait until 2025? (Older posts on this thread also mention a lead time of a couple of years so seems they've been doing this a while, apparently because they were/always are "backlogged" - or is it a marketing gimmick?) It's odd to see a vanity press with such a distant publishing date and for a moment, when they first appeared in my search (and until I found this thread), I thought perhaps they offered a trade path and a self-publishing path, but no, it's all the one $10,000 package.