Wild Lark Books

[Maggie Maxwell]

Hot on the heels of the Inscriptions twitter meltdown, now we have bad behavior from bookshop AND publisher Wild Lark Books, out of Texas.

Website: https://wildlarkbooks.com/book-publishing-to-empower-authors/

The publishing side is blatantly vanity publishing, charging up to $2000 to publish.

Meanwhile, the bookshop side, run by the same people, agreed to host a middle grade book launch for author Laekan Zea Kemp (published with Little Brown Young Readers, NOT Wild Lark) and, ultimately, had a grand total of 0 books available for sale for the launch party, didn't assist in ordering copies for interested parties without external pressure, and lied to many people, including the author and her publisher and their own employees over the course of the whole mess.

Thread 1:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1576348339137785856

Thread 2:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1577001637280772097

 

[Unimportant]

Jeezopete!

 

[Helix]

I didn't realise they did vanity publishing as well. So I clicked on a page for one of their books, and discovered it was

the prefect mashup

 

[Unimportant]

Plus, they encourage everyone to donate money to their 'fund' so that they can further support the press's "mission of making publishing accessible by providing funds to historically excluded – and thus under-heard – writers." Yanno, like queers and PoC. Then you look at their current authors. 8/9 are white. All their bios/books suggest that they're straight, that they didn't grow up impoverished or otherwise underprivileged, and they don't have any disabilities.

Where's that 'hypocrisy' thread again?

 

[Brigid Barry]

YIKES.

 

[ChaseJxyz]

This them? https://bookshop.org/shop/wildlarkbooks

If you do click that link DONT BUY ANY BOOKS otherwise they are getting 10-30% commission, on ANY book you buy on that site. Even if it's ultimately not "from" Wild Lark Books. Purge your cookies before you leave.

Also: love how it's got the new Sunyi Dean book on one of their lists. Sure does imply they published The Book Eaters!

[For those of you who don't know, Bookshop.org is an """"""online bookstore""""""", to help authors/indie bookstores sell more books online. But it isn't, actually, it's an affiliate marketing platform, and you can only "sell" books that are available thru (and then fulfilled by) Ingram. Authors like this because they get 10% commission on top of whatever royalties from their publisher, while "brick and mortar stores" (need to be verified as such thru the ABA) can make 30%.

How it "works" is you make a link (which is formatted as bookshop.org/a/[your affiliate ID]/[ISBN 13 of book]) and you put it on your website, then someone clicks it, ends up on your "shop page" and can then look at all the lists you made (of books that can only be bought thru Ingram). If you're a bookstore, this is very handy, and if you're an author you can use this to showcase your favorite books or stuff your friends wrote or otherwise want to amplify.

But it doesn't look like Wild Lark Books is doing that. The list of books THEY themselves publish is way down at the bottom, and it's only 8 books.]

{the reason I go into the nitty-gritty details of how bookshop.org actually works is because they really go out of their way to obfuscate it from end users. It gives the impression that you're buying books in actual stores and the website is an actual bookstore, or at least a marketplace of bookstores. But the actual technology they use to track sales (see the link above) has no way to prevent fraud. And there's only a 2 day return window for you to go back to the site to buy something for the affiliate to get credit. Actual, LEGITIMATE affiliate networks recommend a 7 day minimum. This is just a closed system where you drive traffic to the site that is ALSO tracking all the referrals and sales and their is a monopoly on who can sell stuff. Also they don't require stuff like banking info/tax IDs when you make an account, which is incredibly sus. Honestly it's only a matter of time before they find a way to screw over authors/bookstores or someone does massive fraud against them, since there's so little transparency or things real affiliate networks have to stop this sorta stuff}

Sure is interesting they claim that don't have any copies of the book in question (Omega Morales) but it's listed there on their Bookshop page! I guess the hurricane kept Ingram from getting ANY copies!

 

[Unimportant]

Plus, ya gotta love their model.

First, you pay -- for, basically, nothing tangible other than cover art:

Wild Lark Books Publishing Partnership For New Authors
$2000 Retainer Fee

Then, you pay again:

Wild Lark Books requires all manuscripts to be professionally edited before going to print. We do not currently offer in-house editing services due to the extensive nuances of expertise an editor will have – from genre to preference in length of manuscript. However, we do have a network of editors with whom we are happy to connect you.

But!

Are you a vanity publisher?
No. While Wild Lark Books believes in breaking down the barriers of publishing, vanity publishers accept an author’s payment, will take a book to print, and then leave an author to self-promote with little-to-no support.

So they support you by....taking more of your money.

Expanded Marketing Full Content Creation
$ 2500
Dedicated Author Website, Five Landing Pages, Extended Author Branding Consultation, Graphic Design, 250 Business Cards, 5 Years of Web Hosting

 

[Unimportant]

Weirdly, the first book showing on their page has an Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,363,561 in Kindle Store, yet the about-the-author bit says that he "is represented by Tina P. Schwartz of the Purcell Agency." We have a thread on her in Bewares but she seems legit, and he is on her client list, in which case.....?????

 

[ChaseJxyz]

Hosting for 5 years on Dreamhost is ~$420 (eyyyy). The domain registration is gonna be $5-10 for the 5 years (assuming you're not aiming for a super valuable URL). 250 bznz card would be ~$90 through Moo (very good quality and prices btw! If you ever need business cards. I even got my employer to use them lol).

So the last 2 parts of that marketing plan is about $500, or 1/5th of the value there.