[Publisher] Erewhon Books

Wow--definitely keeping an eye on them. Thank you for posting.

Looks very promising.

Oh, hey, this looks very promising. A seasoned team with a reasonable two-year lead. I'll be watching them.

Wow, this does look good. Nice to see a new publisher start up that looks like it actually has the expertise and the credentials. And they do SFF! Whoo!

Sniffle. I like my current publisher, but I really wish Erewhon had been around last year.

Yep, if I do a SFF standalone Erewhon is my first choice.

Thank you!

Harlequin said:

Update on Erewhon's distribution: https://twitter.com/2muchexposition/status/1052596273696690176

And the TOR article: https://www.tor.com/2018/10/17/hugo...aunches-new-publishing-company-erewhon-books/

Click to expand...

In my experience, distribution with Workman is fantastic news for this publisher. My bookstore is pretty tiny and we don't get a lot of attention from most big 5 reps. Workman has sales reps throughout the country as part of publisher groups, and ours is one of my very favorites (he also represents Abrams, Houghton Mifflin, IPG and a bunch of others). He gets us good ARCs, visits us each season, pays attention to what our particular store's needs are (vs just saying 'these are the big books this season' - our store is weird lol), and Workman itself puts out some great titles and has a *very* strong backlist, so we order from them regularly.

Needless to say, if Erewhon puts out great books we will be very likely to carry some of them. SFF is our strongest genre area by far, and we genuinely love to introduce small/new high-quality publishers to our customers.

Sniffle. Looks like I need to write a standalone.

There were a lot of positive comments in this thread about this publisher when it launched 5 years ago now - yet nothing at all here since. Did it live up to the comments here? Any other thoughts or news about this publisher?

They were accepting unagented submissions, especially at time of launch. They might also have had submissions regularly since then. I wonder if they closed to them recently or early on? I'm not sure as I hadn't checked until I remembered them again lately. Plus don't many writers here have agents who might have submitted to them? Anyway, my own experience is I did submit back in 2018 and got a rejection (form). I never went on to buy any of their books myself, but just given the comments/brief discussion about them on here back in 2018 by people who seemed to know more about them than I did, the consensus back then seemed to be that they were one to watch!

ETA: For anyone who wants to know a bit more, they have 26 books published since 2020 (according to what's on their website). Covers are nice. Will have to purchase a couple or check inside them on Amazon to see how they're edited/formatted. Fairly active on social media, decent (but maybe low-ish?) follower count. Their Twitter bio says they're an "Imprint of Kensington Books", which surprised me. I searched for that and found Kensington bought them just last year (2022), according to PW:

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw...icle/90800-kensington-buys-erewhon-books.html

"Current distribution and fulfillment agreements for Erewhon Books will remain in place until January 1, 2023, when the imprint will move to Kensington’s distributor, Penguin Random House Publisher Services."

(Does this thread have to be merged to Kensington now?) Also, I believe Kensington does accept unagented submissions so I wonder what that means for Erewhon's submissions (if they don't). Maybe as an imprint they're staying closed to submissions. According to the PW article, much of their team (at least in 2022) was staying intact:

"Erewhon Books will continue to be led by publisher Sarah Guan, a two-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Editor, who joins Kensington with four members of the Erewhon team, including Martin Cahill, publicity and marketing manager. The purchase includes about 12 backlist titles and another 10 unpublished works. Beginning fall 2023, Erewhon will release 12 new hardcover titles within its first year."

I visited the website last night out of curiosity. Several of the people involved are names I recognize. I think I've submitted to two of their people, either in their past roles as agents or perhaps during RevPit.

If the details are helpful (I'm not sure how they are) I can pull up my spreadsheet and retrieve the names etc. My recollection is I received form Rs or maybe CNRs. Don't recall if I subbed to them as a press open to unagented authors, but if I did they R'd the submission. Personally, I don't have an opinion except that surviving is a better sign than folding.

I remember my (now-former) agent brought them up back in 2020, so they were still a going concern back then. She had some complaints about dealing with them, but I have no idea if they were systemic or just individual personality things.