Hi,
Jacqueline, and welcome to AW.
Young:
Although we are open for submissions, we do not launch with titles till 25th October. We anticipated some author trepidation over signing with a start-up company, and felt that putting out the live site rather than a holding page would allow authors to better view and understand what we were all about.
The issue for authors with a start-up is not whether it's going with a live site, but the exposure that the live site is getting. I understand that at the moment, you're not launching titles until 25th October but can you confirm whether you have already signed up any manuscripts ready for that launch and if so, how many? Is so, are you using the interim time to promote those titles that you have already signed up? What kind of promotion are you doing? Is the plan to sell ebooks from your site direct or will they also be available from other sites (e.g. Amazon UK and Waterstones)?
I'm asking this because I see that your company was only incorporated in July, so the period of time between launch of the company and launch of titles is actually quite short and my concern is that it isn't enough time to do adequate pre-launch marketing.
The difficulties that ebook publishers face is getting word about their books out there. There's a lot of competition in the market place and unless you really know the market and the avenues to pursue most effectively to drum up buyers, start-ups usually find themselves struggling to make enough sales to keep themselves afloat.
Young:
Electronic exchange of contracts is also a standard practice in e-publishing.
My concern isn't whether it's standard, it's about questions as to the effectiveness of it for enforcement purposes. A physical, signed contract is one that anyone is going to find it difficult to argue about.
Young:
With manuscripts over the preferred 70,000 word limit (set in the submission guidelines), we ask for a one month exclusivity. We feel this is not an unreasonable request considering the time and effort involved in reading and evaluating longer manuscripts. Authors are of course free to request exception and we are happy to provide it.
It's not uncommon for publishers to request exclusivity or at least, that they not receive simultaneous submissions but I'd have more sympathy if you were offering an advance because at least then the author might be in line for receiving an up-front payment.
However, the risk of losing a manuscript is one that commercial publishers just have to accept and given that you're only paying royalties and only taking epublishing rights, I'd personally say that it isn't up to authors to have to ask to relax this requirement.
Young:
Paul Young does indeed work in IT and Computer aided design. As YoungRebel is an e-publishing company this experience is entirely appropriate for the role of art director (producing book covers and banners) and technical director (formatting scripts and managing the website). I am an Oxford graduate and teacher in the UK state education system, with 17 years of experience nurturing and developing the creative talent of my students.
As others have said, this doesn't equate to publishing experience. I'd also ask a more fundamental question as to whether either of you have experience of running a business full stop.
Publishing has a high failure rate and the problem for authors is that when a start-up goes bust, they take that author's first publishing rights with it. Now in this case, they're "only" losing epublishing rights, but that can still cause them issues further down the road if they want to sell the manuscript on and don't have the appropriate release.
Young:
We originally included details of my teaching experience on the website, and then removed it after polling a sample of teenage readers. On balance, they felt emphasising the word ‘teacher’ would put them off buying. What can I say? Who can blame them?
May I ask how you're planning to attract teenage buyers to your site?
Young:
Oh, and we go through three rounds of edits.
Is that a fixed round of edits or a maximum figure or a rough guideline? I ask because most publishers do as many editing rounds as it takes to get a book together that they think they can sell.
Young:#
We would like to encourage any writers who are thinking of submitting to submit a short to our anthology and try us out.
With all due respect, I'd advise any writer with a short story for teenagers to check out
www.duotrope.com for potential YA markets first because there are a number of magazines and ezines out there that will give you an up front payment for a story, rather than a share of royalties on a sale.
MM
