An Update from an encounter with Dragon Soul Press
Hi. Sorry to be late to the party here, but I first had an encounter with Dragon Soul Press a few weeks ago, did a Google search, and this thread came up. Luckily, I am already a member, but had no posts, so this is my first post! I guess I've been a lurker before now!
Anyway, so basically my story is that I was contacted by Jade Feldman, initially as a harmless Facebook friend request, then she added me to a group called Dragon Soul Press anthologies, which I assume is because I am in an anthology group and I said I was looking for some more anthologies to join. After I said I might consider one anthology but I wasn't sure, Jade then offered to go straight ahead and publish my book. I assume she got that from somewhere else. I've lost track of who I've told what to, but I do have a book which has been finished, but I am not yet happy with it, still revising it, editing it, and so forth. I have had publishers who have shown interest in it, but I haven't signed any contracts. I'm not actively pursuing publishers so much as I am kind of feeling them out. Jade didn't offer to publish my book exactly so much as she wanted me to submit my entire manuscript without a contract. I was like no, no, no, and this was a major red flag for me. The website doesn't have any information of any note, no authors, nothing to even indicate that they actually publish novels at all. All Jade would say was "we are a traditional publisher". So what do you offer? So she asked me to email her, so I did, and I asked her to give me some details. What book stores are you affiliated with? What is your distribution network like? How many copies would be pre-printed? What are your sales projections? I sent her a plot outline, and asked if she could sell that, and how much she thought she could sell it for.
No answer at all, which I thought was rude since she asked me to email her. I thought maybe she hadn't got it, so I emailed it a second time a day later. Nothing. I wondered if perhaps it went to spam or junk or something, as I use hotmail, so I told her what my email address was and sent it to her a third time. Nothing. So I sent a message on the forum to say "I emailed you" and sent it a fourth time. Still nothing. So at this point I am getting a bit annoyed, and then she writes on the forum a whinge about people who send her emails that don't follow the submissions process. Well, I wasn't submitting anything. This was asking her to give me details as to why I'd want to consider her publishing house. She didn't respond in the forum either. It was like it was a black hole.
She responded to other things, maybe 50 comments about random stupid things, but still nothing to do with this. I thought okay maybe she wants to wait to make a proper response. Maybe she's busier than she looks. Maybe she wants to get it right.
Then, two weeks after I sent the first email, I check and she has unfriended me. My thought is "how immature". So I decided that it is not a real publisher, because a real publisher wouldn't do that, so I wrote to her, in the group (in a sub-thread that we were the only ones participating in) to say that I was no longer interested in the anthology or in publishing my book.
Curiously, in spite of not seeing me say "I emailed you", she did see me say that I was no longer interested. It was in the same thread.
She wrote back saying that it had only been a day, and that I should give her a break. I'm sorry but 2nd of October was 2 weeks ago, wasn't it? She claimed that we had never been friends. Well, not in real life, but certainly on Facebook! Then she claimed that I had submitted to her.
In email she said that she was rejecting me. LOLOL. Rejecting what? I hadn't submitted anything! She said that I had a bad attitude. She said that my work was good and maybe with some improvement it could be published, but I needed to fix my attitude. So she hasn't seen my work, so that's just a guess, and what attitude? Asking a publisher for more details about themselves? I think that's pretty normal! Other publishers answer. Why doesn't she? Bigger publishers usually have it clearly visible on their website!
I didn't know if they were a vanity press, but I know that they aren't legitimate, and they lie like crazy. I mean, major red flags when they refuse to answer for two weeks a question as to who they are, and when they do answer, they don't answer! She still hasn't told me! She sent me an email saying I had been rejected for a submission I didn't make!
Can we like put up a warning for people not to get sucked into this? According to their Facebook page, they've sucked in a few people already.
I wasn't particularly close to getting sucked in, but if situations were different I might have.
I think we need to warn people.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I really struggled finding people willing to speak good OR bad of Dragon Soul Press, and this entire thread reinforced some icky feelings I had after submitting to them. For one thing, they demand you have social media and use "any means available" to promote the book. And while, yes, social media is a reality of publishing today, I found it odd that there was no indication that the publisher would assist in promotion, even in the contract. Going to their facebook (the medium they claim is 'very active' and preferred), I found barely any activity. Their Twitter account is even more desolate, and I struggled finding other authors promoting them at all.
But I'd already submitted a short story to one of their anthologies earlier this year, mostly because in my initial search, I couldn't find much in the way of disclaimers. After submitting though, I eventually found this thread. As others have said, DSP's initial presentation seemed square. And while they seem to have done away with
some of their more overtly vanity press qualities, their website still sells more to authors, not to readers. There's quite a bit of tutelage of their acclaim (where their work has been featured, industry credentials of 'staff', where they distribute etc), but they never give trackable proof. If I was featured in reputable journals and digests, I would totally link to the article, wouldn't you? But, nothing. As others have pointed out, no staff is listed, and there's no way to prove that anyone there works in 'one of the big 5' publishers, as is claimed. There is also a claim somewhere in the FAQ's that Barnes & Noble is among their distribution vendors, but I couldn't find any of their books through B&N. All I found was some of their author's novels available on Kindle. Their Amazon books have almost no ratings/reviews, and those that exist are clearly friends of particular authors.
In addition, there's some irony in a publisher's website being in need of a proof readers. Minor grievances aside, reading through their FAQ's, I got a strong sense of a singular person who felt very...entitled. So, Morgan's exchanges with Jade felt very genuine and un-exaggerated in that context.
And that was
BEFORE I received an acceptance letter. The email was very brief, with a contract attached, and capped off with "If we don't hear from you in 48 hours, we'll move onto the next person in line." Okay, so, I've received a handful of acceptance letters before, and this last line was a red flag. No publisher I've worked with, regardless of size, has ever been like "omg, we love your work" and in the very next paragraph, switch moods like "sign it, or get out." Have some requested a response within 48 hours? Yes. But, not like this. Anyway, I read over the 1-page contract (2-pgs, if you count the signature line!), which proved barely any more professional than the sample version on the website. A few points in it gave me pause, which others have already mentioned (the weird pay, the unverifiable charity, etc), but what really made me wary was how VAGUE all the clauses were. And since the email didn't invite negotiations (something any reputable publisher would be willing to discuss), I replied to express my concerns and to decline the offer based on that (and of course, the advice and experiences from this thread corroborating my tingling spidey-senses, though I didn't mention this in the email.)
I got a nearly immediate response. Jade
could've simply said something like "sorry to hear that, best of luck," but instead, I got "Oh, you misunderstood me. I needed *any* response within 48hrs, not the signed contract, but we'll go ahead and remove all your submissions for future considerations." Now, I only had the one submission, but I do recall warnings (bragging, really) on the DSP website about how Dragon Soul Press would "blacklist" noncompliant authors. So, I interpreted this email as both a snotty, unnecessary dig, as well as my entry onto their black list.
Couldn't be more relieved, honestly!
