Anaphora Literary Press

LibraryThing is a social network. "Librarians" in this context are the users of the platform. Users make lists of books they like on their profiles. Thus, "librarians". It's a bit of tech-jargon, not an accurate descriptor. If you asked them, I'm sure they'd tell you they're trying to "disrupt the library space." Anyone can sign up. I'm sure some agents and librarians use the platform, but they're not using it professionally--they're creating a social profile, not unlike listing books one likes on Facebook. It is not a library; it does not loan books. It is a tech venture.

There used to be a "Big Six". Two merged into one company. 2 - 1 = 5. The phrase "Big Six", now "Big Five", refers to publishing companies that are corporate-owned, mostly by multinationals. So you get Penguin-RandomHouse (those were the two that merged, eh?) with divisions in the US, UK, Canada, etc. They operate unlike other publishers, which are independently funded by their own sales or private capital and not by being part of a large, multi-industry corporation.

Example: Macmillan's main business is learning and education. If you go to Macmillan's homepage, you will see--it makes whole curricula for use in schools and an increasing variety of e-learning apps. Macmillan is actually owned by Springer-Nature, which is an academic textbook publisher that also owns the magazine "Scientific American" as well as what would appear to be a German manufacturing company. Macmillan also publishes a lot of fiction, many of those books sell very well, but the commercial publishing is only part of a much, much larger business.

If you'd like more clarity on this, you'll have to dive further into the corporate holdings than I am willing to venture. All of this is stuff I found with about 20 seconds of Googling "Macmillan Publishing", in the top five results.

faktorovich said:

LibraryThing in its very name markets itself as primarily made for librarians. Most of the people who review the titles I give away on this platform are librarians, agents and the like. Maybe agents/ librarians just really like my titles on this platform, but not yours, so that's why you see fewer of them. Your hardcover 15% royalty rate is fictional - show me a royalty statement with that rate, and I'll use it in potential future negotiations with these publishers that will offer me 5% or less for the same hardcovers. Perhaps men automatically get higher royalties than women, or maybe you have some other special privilege. How do you know your stats reflect the industry - you have to give your source to be believable. The scholarly books I've published had an 8% royalty, so I'm assuming pop fiction with a mainstream publisher has to pay less than this amount per book. You are right I was too easy on the giant publishers - they definitely do not make book trailers for all of their front list titles - but only for a fraction of them. As you can see I'm right on all counts - and you have a lot of errors to correct.

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1. LibraryThing is absolutely not primarily for libraries; it's for readers, people who love books, and individual users. They absolutely do not market themselves as primarily made for libraries; just the opposite. The fairly recent alternative they offer "TinyCat" is itself for small private libraries. Library Management applications require dedicated servers. They also serve entirely different purposes and consequently use different metadata sets. I'd expect a publisher to know that, since they submit cataloging data to libraries.
2. I can find eqb's books in my local bookstores and libraries. Oddly, I can't find anything by you, or anything from Anaphora. This suggests that Anaphora is somewhat lacking in distribution. On the other hand, I don't see grammar errors or comma splices in eqb's posts.
3. It's big 5 publishers There's even an FAQ about it.
4. You can stop being snotty and rude. Now. If that's too difficult, you can sit in the corner until you master basic courtesy.

I've acknowledged all statements that your team of agents, publishers etc. has been making about the publishing business that were true as such. If you're wrong, I have to explain how so, and have done so in the interest of writers/ publishers visiting who might be new to this business.

You prove my point for me on LibraryThing - it has "library" in the name and it's an attempt to make librarians or catalogers of us all (I didn't say it was a library) - it's still also true that many agents/ librarians and other professionals choose to review the titles I give away on this platform because they're interested in the highbrow/ complex/ unique books that I publish.

I've hardly ever heard the term the Big Six (though some like you have used it)... I read hundreds of books on this subject - the term used to be the Big Five and recently many scholars started using the term the Big Four. "Big Four" is mostly used in scholarly essays rather than in pop language, but I found at least one reference to this number: https://literative.com/writers-resources/popular-books-published-big-four/. Using the smaller number expresses the criticism of the corporatocratic control these publishers have over the entertainment industry. Since their number is shrinking this suggests they're likely to keep eating each other until only One or perhaps none are left. By defending their title (whatever it might be - Four, Five, Seven, etc.) you're arguing for their rights to bankrupt and devour smaller publishers - is this really your aim? These companies aren't just publishers, as you started to say, they own film/ TV stations, newspapers, and some unrelated holdings (factories/ oil - the list is long). Thus, they can review themselves in the newspapers and magazines, do talk shows with the authors, and otherwise (for free) put forward a massive media push that no independent publisher can dream of matching. They view publishing as another factory and treat the authors they publish as factory workers deserving of a microscopic profit that depends on salability to the mass marketplace. The public on average has a 5-8 grade reading level, so most romances are written closer to a 2nd grade level, and mysteries peak at 8th grade. Literary or highbrow fiction isn't "pop" and has no place in this model. I'm mystified as to why anybody would defend their abusive practices over the practices of struggling publishers welcoming everybody and doing their best to sell the resulting books.

Three comments by like three of you saying the same pointless thing - that LibraryThing isn't "primarily" for librarians - and yet you insert a note that it has just created a branch, TinyCat, which is just for librarians. What's the point you're trying to prove here? How will proving if LibraryThing has or doesn't have librarians using it going to help writers, publishers or others reading these posts?

It's absolutely untrue that you can't find Anaphora's books. I distribute them through Ingram, EBSCO, ProQuest and some other platforms. All of them combined means that anybody living in even the most distant part of the globe should be able to access one of these books. All of them are available as ebooks on EBSCO and ProQuest. In Texas, TexShare provides free access to all library patrons across the state to ProQuest's ebook collection. Similar access is offered to ProQuest or EBSCO in most electronic database sections of libraries across the world. When I run a search for Anaphora's printed books, they're also widely available at libraries, so if you go on WorldCat and enter some titles, you should find at least a few of them within less than 100 miles of your home (wherever it might be). You're making an error in capitalization in your repeated use of "eqb" - such abbreviations have to use capital letters unless the name of this company you're referring to is in small letters, as in: "eat quash before..."

I'm being "snotty and rude"? If you walk by a woman who's being attacked on the street by a mob of 30 angry men (and potentially some women), do you think to yourself - hey that woman lying on the ground bleeding is being very "snotty and rude"? If so... you're not my target audience.

faktorovich said:

I'm being "snotty and rude"? If you walk by a woman who's being attacked on the street by a mob of 30 angry men (and potentially some women), do you think to yourself - hey that woman lying on the ground bleeding is being very "snotty and rude"? If so... you're not my target audience.

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You seem to have some basic comprehension issues.