What marketing do they do and what kind of sales figures does that marketing generate? I ask because having taken a look at their packages, the marketing activities seem to be vague, passive and things that you could just as easily do without having to pay $1,999 up front.
I'm not there enough to know the ins and outs of what they do, but it's a lot. There's newspaper ads, events, book fairs, press releases, book reviews, radio, television (whenever possible), and a bunch more. No, they won't get you on the Tonight Show or anything mainstream like that, but for a small press they do pretty darned good.
Giving books to libraries is great, but (as I understand it), libraries in the US don't pay an equivalent of the public lending right, so you're not earning any money from it.
Right, you may not be, but consider this. The potential audience of a local library is easily in the thousands in my area, and 10's of thousands or more in the bigger cities. The point of putting it in a library is exposure. Yes, you don't sell any books directly that way, but the word of mouth advertising you get (which believe it or not is usually 90% of all sales) is huge. I personally gave at least one copy of every single one of my books to the local libraries in my area, and because of that a LOT more people have heard about me than had I done the more traditional outlets. Giving to libraries is a form of marketing. Most authors don't see it as that though. Hence the confusion.
Even the placement into bookstores obligation is, IMO, weasel worded given that the wording at the bottom blames distributors in the event that your books aren't placed in store (which they won't be unless 2 Moons has negotiated appropriate discount and return terms).
Weasel worded? How is it that? Think about it. As the author you are the seller, and the bookstore is the buyer. Just like I mentioned to the OP about their contract work, the buyer is not obligated to buy. If they don't like your book, they don't have to buy, and that includes even books distributed through Ingram, the single largest bookseller in the world. Just because they're in the Ingram catalog doesn't mean anyone will buy them. Then again, you're also not necessarily guaranteed to get into Ingram either. Plenty of authors who have been accepted by publishing houses have ultimately been rejected by Ingram.
Some books are just plain unprintable - e.g. they might consist of racist libel, they might be random letters typed on a page or they might just be "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" typed over and over again. In that situation, a vanity/subsidy/pay-to-play/whatever term you want to use publisher will probably reject it because the value of having the money up front is offset by the hassle of accepting it.
I think just about any publisher worth their salt would reject a really, really, really bad book. Not all do, as is evidenced by the project created by a handful of authors a few years back. They endeavored to create, intentionally, the world's worst book ever. They then submitted it to presses all over the US. In the end, Random House accepted and published it. No joke. So not everyone rejects truly bad books just as not everyone accepts truly good ones. It's more up to the publisher on what to deal with, and what will sell. 2 Moon prides itself on ensuring that only quality books get through. Now obviously quality is in the eye of the beholder, but I think they do a pretty good job. Quite a few of their books have received high reviews and even received awards. I know mine did.
It might well be that 2 Moon have stringent acceptance criteria. However, the fact that they want money up front means that they are not taking any real risk with your book.
False. If a book doesn't sell, they don't make any money. The fees you pay are only there to cover the initial publishing costs. Things such as copyright submission, ISBN, editing, cover, layout, etc. That however doesn't cover things like rent, power, water, employee labor, etc. Those are covered by the book sales. I know this because being a tech contractor for them, I get to see the guts of the operation first hand. You really can't *not* see it when you're knuckles deep in their tracking system upgrading modules and fixing bugs. I can't give actual numbers due to NDA, but I can say that they're absolutely not the big evil "take your money and leave you bleeding in a ditch" PTP publishing company you think they are. As I said before, I wouldn't have published 8 books with them if I thought I was being taken. And given that I'm also a tech contractor with them, I'd know pretty quickly if they were dirty or not.
Does this mean that you've made back what you paid to publish those books?
To directly publish the books? Absolutely. Since I already had a large reader base from my tech writing days (I've been writing hardware/software reviews and tech pieces for quite a few years) I didn't go with one of the big packages. I think mine was the then basic $800 package (it was one of their original publishing packages which has since been deprecated) if I remember right, but that was plenty. Of course, for a book that sells for $12, you only need to sell 67 copies (more if you're occasionally offering them at a discount rate) to break even on your publishing costs. The rest is pure profit. Well, minus any costs for buying books for yourself to be sold at events, but that's really no different than the publishing cost on the book. You make an up front investment, work hard, then earn it back and a little extra.
Can you let us know whether you did any additional marketing/promotion beyond what 2 Moons did?
Absolutely! A company can certainly help get your foot in the door (that's where their marketing is so useful, as it opens doors you otherwise can't), but at the end of the day it's up to you to do the heavy lifting of marketing. I for one, despite being in a digital age of books, still sell print copies of my novels. Why? Well, for one, book signings, festivals, events, etc don't work well with digital media. Two, it's something people can have as a reminder of their meeting with you. Getting to meet the author and buy their book is a big thrill for a lot of people, even if dead tree books are on their way out.
Personally, I don't see my having to do any of my secondary marketing as a bad thing. 2 Moon gets the foot in the door, then I take that opening and run with it. Even the big houses expect you as the author to do that to some degree.
Also, I'm a bit confused about your comment on sales figures. Do you not receive regular sales figures on your books with breakdowns of returns etc?
I do, but not all outlets report sales figures to you. They just send you a check about once a month. Now to clarify that a bit, not all my books are sold directly through 2 Moon. Being that I'm the author and I retain all the book rights (one of the things I like about them) I'm free to go to other vendors outside of their sphere of influence, and sell my books there. Most of them are ebook vendors, but a few are regular mom and pop stores.
I don't think that anyone is arguing with the statement that high sales do not equate to good writing.
What we are concerned about is ability to make sales. If you've paid to be published then, depending on your royalty terms, you are dependent on selling books in high numbers to make back the amount you've paid out. If a publisher cannot help you to make those sales then you as the author are the one who ends up out of pocket.
Eh, true. But again, the question comes down to this. What are you selling, and how much are you selling it for? As I said before, my books sell for $12 each (well, the Earthfleet books do, the others are cheaper). 800/12=66.6 books. Now, figure that you have $7 of that goes to the printing cost of the books, and you get $5 a book profit. Take out $2.50 for their cut and you get $2.50 per book. (You get the full 5 if you sell them yourself) So let's see here. If we average the cost between books you sell, and books they sell, you get about $4.25. So $800/4.25 = 188.24 books.
If you can't clear that many books in your first six months, you're doing something seriously wrong. And this is just print books. It doesn't count ebooks or other formats (ie, audiobooks, hard cover, etc) that you may have of the book. Even if you chunked down $2k on a book publishing contract, that's only 445 print books. If you don't think you can sell that many, stick with epublishing. If you do, go with 2 Moon. Because if you're sellable, people will buy. If you're not, then even the big houses won't be able to help you.