I just came on to let them know our site is being upgraded and I saw that some people thought I wasn't legit. I just wanted to let everyone know I was legit and not trying to take advantage of anyone.
No one here suggested in any way that you were trying to take advantage of anyone. What we did say was that you were a POD start-up, and most of those fail, and that you seem to have no publishing background and that makes you a poor risk for any writer looking to build a career.
As has been said around here many, many times before, "publisher" is not an entry-level job.
I even said up there a ways that I was not advertising. I have a full plate right now and am in no position to come and advertise.
But you're not really answering our questions, either, which I have to tell you looks kind of bad. Having joined the site and the thread--and welcome, we're glad to have you!--it's probably best if you stick around and talk, because this way it looks a little like you're running off rather than giving us information that commercial publishers are happy to discuss.
Had you not wanted to appear here at all, you could have registered with the site and then sent 5bcarnies a Private Message, or an email is she has that feature enabled.
I want to give the books I have now all the attention they deserve.
And you feel you can do that in
weeks? Really? There's a reason why commercial publishers have such a long time between acceptance/contract and publication; it's because the book goes through several rounds of edits, then line edits, then copyedits, then galleys. And in there you have cover design--often involving photo shoots--and typesetting, and getting the book into catalogs in time for bookstores to order, and getting the sales team out there to sell it in person to those buyers for the bookstores, and printing advance copies to go to the major review publications in plenty of time for the reviews to be concurrent with the book's release, and lining up whatever promotion will be done...all in the name of producing a high-quality book which will be easily available and attractive to readers.
How are you managing to do all of that in
weeks?
I disagree about the unpublished work though. I am putting the book I am working on now through thorough reviews to make sure it is of good quality. And it is really good.
Says who? I don't mean that in an offensive or challenging way, I'm genuinely curious. How many of these "reviews"--and what type of reviews do you mean?--can you do in weeks? Who is doing the reviewing? Do you have editorial experience, or any experience in any aspect of publishing?
Besides, isn't life an adventure? I have so many people that bought my book and loved it. So I made them happy. What else is there?
Life is indeed an adventure, and I would never tell you you're wrong for choosing to self-publish your book and being perfectly happy with that. If that's the way you want to go, more power to you, and best of luck!
But I kind of frown upon calling yourself a publisher and getting other people to give you their work without being honest with them; your comments above about publishers betray a serious lack of knowledge about the industry, and that can be dangerous.
Who knows? Perhaps one of the books you'll receive will be awesome. Is it really fair to publish that book, when the author could have gotten an agent, and a commercial publisher, and ended up with many, many more than 450 or so people reading and enjoying their work?
I really urge you to rethink accepting submissions and publishing other peoples' work. As for your own, again, I genuinely wish you the best of luck.
Oh, and by the way. This:
I hope you all get as many positivie vibes as you continue in your writing careers as I got here on this forum tonight as a new author and aspiring publisher.
And I really mean that ...
We're not stupid; you haven't gotten some sly dig in under our noses. All you've done is insulted people who've given countless hours of their time to help both aspiring and professional writers--writers like you, in fact--avoid getting cheated, avoid ending up with worthless books they can't sell, learn their craft, learn the industry, avoid the incompetent, become better writers, and build real careers. People who actually make our livings in this business and have for years; in some cases many years. People who've seen countless new POD publishers come and go, all of whom started out with the same optimism and "Publishing isn't that hard!" and "I want to give these books attention" and "Commercial publishing takes too long/costs money" which you have displayed in your posts here.
This isn't personal. It's business. No one is trying to insult you; we're treating you like a professional and asking questions about your business, questions any professional would be happy to answer.
Our purpose here is not to coddle aspiring publishers who don't know what they're doing. It's to help writers protect themselves and their work. And frankly, if being asked a few polite questions about your new business--the business you yourself admit you know little about and have little experience in (you called yourself an "aspiring" publisher)--seems this harsh to you, perhaps you should rethink this whole writing/publishing thing altogether.
Again, although your sign-off was snide and meant to insult us, mine is not. I genuinely wish you luck, and would like it if you would come back, answer our questions, and keep us posted, and in the meantime both learn from us and teach us something; who knows? I think if you spend more time here you'll see what kind of place this really is; one where we genuinely care about writers, writing, and publishing, as well as many other things.
