"Traditional publisher" is a
meaningless term. Pretty much all it guarantees is that the publisher won't charge you an upfront fee.
Here's the
Umbraprojects website. They also have
a page on what looks like a networking site.
Nothing about these sites strikes me as especially professional. They've published almost nothing as of yet (which makes their claim, on their Answers page, that "we totally got way more popular then we ever expected" seem a bit suspicious) but the covers I found on
Lulu are pretty ugly. Maybe they did start out by serving a niche market, but now they seem to be looking for pretty much any kind of fiction, so they're obviously looking to branch out.
There appear to be some serious knowledge gaps. Here's what they have to say about printing and ordering on their
"Answers" page:
Six by nine isn't "trade paperback" by the way. TPB is 4.25"x6 (approximately). So your pricing is about right for the specs you're talking about. Basically what happens is we send the bookstores a copy of the finished/bound book. If they take it they pay for however many copies they want. We pay the printer and get a bulk discount for about $6 a copy. The bookstore will have paid $7 a copy and they'll turn around and sell it for the price on the cover (like $7.89 US). Thus UP makes fifty cents and the author makes fifty cents.
There's a lot wrong with this. First, they're mixed up about sizes--what they describe as a trade paperback (a term that actually refers to returnability, not to size) is closer to mass market paperback size. They appear to be claiming not to be POD, but their printer's cost ($6 per book) says POD to me. They want bookstores to pay $7 per book--a discount of just over 10%. Bookstores expect a 40% discount at minimum. Finally, their profit is only fifty cents. You're not going to run a profitable business making just fifty cents a book.
I think they're well-intentioned, but they seem pretty clueless.
- Victoria
