Hi guys, has anyone ever heard of Anaphora Literary Press? I noticed they accept pretty much any genre of fiction books but I don't know anything about the company. Any information would be greatly appreciated as I research a bit myself.
Publishing Contract: At this time Anaphora asks for you to give up non-exclusive, but continuous, rights to your project. This means that you have to go online to http://www.copyright.gov/eco/notice.html, U. S. Copyrights office, and submit your Word document electronically to them, and pay them $35. This is a good deal because it allows you to publish your book with other publishers in the future without needing to ask for Anaphora’s permission and without needing to pay us money for publishing elsewhere.
Direct author sales and marketing are essential to the success of a project.
I don't understand this part from their submissions page (bolding at the bottom mine) http://anaphoraliterary.com/about/
The Anaphora submissions page states that authors transfer copyrights to Anaphora on a non-exclusive basis and can publish their work elsewhere at no cost as long as they don't use Anaphora's designs and editing. Some othr presses offer exclusive contracts, which prohibit authors from publishing elsewhere unless they pay the publisher a fee or a part of the profits. Copyright is the right to make copies of a book - on several occasions after submitting my PLJ journal to the Library of Congress for copyrights, I've heard back from them and they asked me if I received copyrights releases from all of the contributors - only then do I have copyrights to the entire issue. Since you guys were confused by the wording, I've edited it to a text that should be clearer. Let me know if there are other misunderstandings.
Anaphora is listed in NewPages.com, if you want an outside profile. Anaphora is fully independent, and doesn't accept any funding from any private or public sources, including universities. I'm the owner and Director of the press, not its sponsor - Dr. Anna Faktorovich - yes I have been teaching college English full-time for over 3 years. Over my breaks I work on Anaphora full-time. Anaphora has released over 60 titles, sales per title depend on the quality of the work. Most of our projects so far haven't been intended to sell-out.
It seems odd to me too.Here's their website: http://anaphoraliterary.com/
Some odd stuff included in the submissions info. Well, it seems odd to me...
This is not the appropriate place to discuss Anaphora, there is no need for a “Background Check” where Anaphora is concerned. Why don’t you put Harlequin, Tom Doherty and Disney up here instead?
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I currently live in an apartment. I don’t have any space to store thousands of the books that I print yearly.
My policies regarding buying copies change regularly...
Poetry, autobiography and several other genres just don’t sell well enough to make it likely that they’ll make a significant enough return to warrant publication, unless the writer is going to actively help promote their books and can guarantee a certain level of sales through their marketing plan...
If I published the 60 titles I’ve published so far and didn’t require some copies purchases for the titles that weren’t likely to sell, the business wouldn’t be profitable and I would’ve folded.
I’m not a millionaire that is “investing” in a business. I just want to help writers publish their books and to find interested readers.
This is not the appropriate place to discuss Anaphora, there is no need for a “Background Check” where Anaphora is concerned.
Why don’t you put Harlequin, Tom Doherty and Disney up here instead?
Yes, when you register your copyrights with the US Copyrights Office, you are registering as the author of the work and the one with the exclusive rights to sell the right to print the book etc. to publishers. The publisher only owns exclusive copyrights to a work if the contract is for work-for-hire and the rights are fully transferred to the publisher in their agreement. In my case, I ask writers to register their exclusive copyrights with the US Copyrights office, so that they will have a defense in case somebody accuses them of plagiarism later on. When they sign an agreement with Anaphora they non-exclusively transfer their rights for Anaphora to print their book. Non-exclusive contracts are more common today, especially with online services like EBSCO and ProQuest (in which I participate with my journal). For my journal, PLJ, I only reproduce new works for which authors have transferred their rights to me, or classical works that are out of copyrights. Yes, one of the authors with whom I’m currently in negotiations with has mentioned that in case I take his book out of print he wants his rights to return back to him. As I explained to him, non-exclusive rights means that he has the right to sell the book to other publishers even before I take it out of print with Anaphora. But, yes, I definitely think it’s fair that if I take a book out of print, the rights should revert back fully to the writer, leaving the publisher without a right to begin printing the book in the future, if this is an author’s preference.
Anaphora prints books POD; therefore, there are no books to buy “back.” I currently live in an apartment. I don’t have any space to store thousands of the books that I print yearly. Anaphora isn’t a distributor; it is a publisher. The books go from the printer to the consumers or to the authors that want to buy them at a discount. All publishers that I’ve worked with, including major national academic publishers, who have published my own books, allow authors to buy their books at a discount rate that’s lower than the retail price of the book. This is a benefit offered to authors who want to make a profit from selling some copies of their books directly. My policies regarding buying copies change regularly and depend on the quality of the book and the chances that it will sell well in the market. Poetry, autobiography and several other genres just don’t sell well enough to make it likely that they’ll make a significant enough return to warrant publication, unless the writer is going to actively help promote their books and can guarantee a certain level of sales through their marketing plan, or is able to buy 40 copies at 25% off (shipping included – so really 40% discount). I have an ad currently up in NewPages, and I’m a member of 5+ associations, organizations and other costly groups that I use to forward my business. I also travel to conferences, and promote books through various types of marketing efforts (including direct marketing to libraries). I work on Anaphora for more than 40 hours on an average week. If I published the 60 titles I’ve published so far and didn’t require some copies purchases for the titles that weren’t likely to sell, the business wouldn’t be profitable and I would’ve folded. The market is such that only the top publishers can afford printing 100,000+ copies of a new title and selling them to retail stores at extremely high discounts, and can then handle potential 40%+ returns. I’m not a millionaire that is “investing” in a business. I just want to help writers publish their books and to find interested readers. My policies are clearly stated on the website, in this reply, in my contracts, and elsewhere. There is an extremely small percentage of female publishing business owners out there, and this is a very tough business. This is not the appropriate place to discuss Anaphora, there is no need for a “Background Check” where Anaphora is concerned. Why don’t you put Harlequin, Tom Doherty and Disney up here instead?
I'd call that real low confidence in the author and/or the manuscript itself, as well as a signal that maybe your company has a less-than-perfect track record of getting books into stores. Here's the other big red flag for me:In fact, you should call your local book stores before signing the contract, to check if you will be able to generate some sales
I'm a self-publisher with a one-book-a-month schedule. These are e-books. They take less effort than print books. Putting out a book a month is grueling, and the production values suck. You're doing print books. It's taken me three months to put one print book together, and I'm using materials I already made for my e-book.We have a very quick production schedule; occasionally a book is on sale a month after a contract is signed.
That last part made my jaw drop a little. The others can correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't eight months to a year not overly long for a new professional book to come out?If you want to wait for pre-production reviews, these take an additional 4 months, heavy editing takes a couple of months, and you can also request a delay if you want your project to come out at a specific time, though typically books can’t be scheduled for publication more than 1 year after a contract is signed.
In addition, the Library of Congress’s rules prevent me from being able to register the work for the writers I publish for various technical reasons. They have to copyright it themselves.
Search results are determined by a variety of factors, including who links to the site, how many visits a site gets, and how many mentions of the site can be found on the web. Large publishing companies with a huge track record of accomplishments, reviews, media appearances, etc. will have completely different results in a search engine.This conversation is in the top page of searches when users search for "Anaphora Literary Press" - your website doesn't come up at the top when you search for "Harlequin" or any other major publisher you might have covered.
It's very true that I'm not Disney (yet), but it's likely that if you put erroneous complaints regarding small independent presses on your site, writers who can't get published with the big presses, will keep their books in their closets because they'll trust something that you are saying without closely studying the evidence.
I've been in business now for over 5 years, while also working two other jobs, so I'm here to stay, and my press won't be folding in the upcoming few decades.
Why do you think you know more about how publishing works than somebody who runs a press that has released over 60 titles? Go on Amazon and do a search for "Anaphora Literary Press"...
...or under my name (I'm credited as the designer), Anna Faktorovich, and you'll find the cover designs I've come up with on very tight 1-4 months schedules. Anybody who is a professional designer, editor and publisher can set up and process a book quickly. Editing takes the most time, but some writers prefer not to be edited and just want their books out quicker than the 1-3 years the big publishers might need. The bigger publishers need more time because they produce hundreds of books each year and the designer/ producer has a long stack of books before getting to a new title. I don't have a backlog. The other parts of production, besides editing, can be done quickly if somebody has a firm grasp of InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and knows all of the steps involved in bringing a book out.
I’m giving you advice from the perspective that has both practical and theoretical knowledge in the field. I’m currently under contract to finish an academic book for McFarland on the current popular publishing industry, called, “Formulaic Writing within Genres.” I can include a section here if you want to understand the current publishing market better.
...To do otherwise would be unethical and illogical in business terms. It is not lawful to buy assets that do not belong to an author – so it is the author’s responsibility to avoid plagiarism, and other forms of unlawful activity. Would you want to “protect” potentially stolen assets? If they are not stolen, and if the author is the rightful owner of the copyrights, the transfer of copyrights to the publisher or licensing the work is just as legally binding if the author registers copyrights as if the publisher does so.
Yes, writers that I publish can provide their titles via CreateSpace or Harlequin in addition to publishing with Anaphora, while they are under contract. I’ve only had one occurrence out of 60 of this so far, with an author that wanted to do an e-version, and I’m against e-books as they don’t sell well. I don’t think he sold many copies of it and he’s now giving it away for free. If one of Anaphora’s authors signs a contract with a major publisher while they are non-exclusive with me – that only adds to Anaphora’s reputation as a place where they can launch a great new book. Either way, my method is one that I researched and tested, and is the best route for my project.
My POD books sell well with both authors and buyers. I said that some of my titles don’t sell as well as others, and for those authors buying some copies for direct sales helps them as they make some profits from the publication, as well as me. They make 25% profits when they sell the 40 copies that they buy. Almost all of my authors later buy additional copies beyond the 40 and sell all of them. A few to the students in their creative writing classes, some at readings, others to associations, and elsewhere. If an author doesn’t think 40 people will buy their book, why are they sending it for publication?
Yes, I provide all of the services any major publisher would provide, “Editing, typesetting, cover design, marketing, distribution.” How on earth would I be able to publish books without doing all of these steps?
The big publishers produce hundreds of books, which means that they typically have one designer that handles around one book design, typesetting, and formatting per day. I’m proficient enough with design that I can also keep up with a schedule like this.
As I mentioned before, I don’t “print” books. I “publish” books. I also “sell” books. I want to “sell” more books, and I hope that sales will increase, but it’s my job as the director of Anaphora to make sure that the press stays in business even if sales aren’t that high – as you point out a press going out of business and taking its books out of print isn’t a good option for any of the writers that have signed contracts with me. Most of my writers receive royalty checks and all of them are happy with the publication. So, I must be doing a great job for them.
If one of my authors plagiarizes their book, I do not want to nor can I afford to defend them in court. The contract states that the publisher will not be responsible for any plagiarism, obscenity, or other inappropriate information in the book. Anaphora is solely owned by me; it is not a corporation. Therefore, all litigation against Anaphora, is litigation against me personally. Would you want to be sued for publishing a book one of your writers plagiarized? In addition, the Library of Congress’s rules prevent me from being able to register the work for the writers I publish for various technical reasons. They have to copyright it themselves. If I receive a complaint against copyright ownership from somebody with proof, I immediately withdraw the book from print. To do otherwise would be unethical and illogical in business terms. It is not lawful to buy assets that do not belong to an author – so it is the author’s responsibility to avoid plagiarism, and other forms of unlawful activity. Would you want to “protect” potentially stolen assets? If they are not stolen, and if the author is the rightful owner of the copyrights, the transfer of copyrights to the publisher or licensing the work is just as legally binding if the author registers copyrights as if the publisher does so.
I did the search you suggested. Can you tell me which books in your catalog have the best sales rank? I also noticed there were allegations of plagiarism Ek-sen-trik-kuh Discordia: The Tales of Shamlicht, were you aware of them?
If I published the 60 titles I’ve published so far and didn’t require some copies purchases
Waidaminnit. Did I read that correctly (and, in all honestly, I truly hope I didn't)? Are you telling me you are taking on titles you don't expect to sell? If you are, that is some of the worst publishing business acumen I have ever read on these boards. If you are publishing books you don't expect to sell well and are requiring those authors to make some sort of purchase just to keep your business open, that's no better than any of the vanity presses out there.for the titles that weren’t likely to sell