We want you to be as involved as you like in the production aspect of your book. Unlike a traditional publisher, you can help with cover selection and blurb writing and many other distribution decisions—or not!
From a quick browse of their site, it looks like a bunch of self-pubbed/vanity-pubbed people went ahead and set up a press to ...god only knows? There are SO MANY of these 'we're for authors, and were frustrated with being rejected by actual agents and publishers so we set up our own press!' deals I can't even count how many I've seen. They usually go out of business in a year or so, if they do any business besides their own books at all. I can't find specifics on whether they're a vanity or masquerading as an actual publisher, but the 'once you earn back... your royalties increase' thing is suspicious.
There are errors all over their pages, btw, in addition to a disturbing number of exclamation points. To wit --
The more we learned about traditional publishing, the more ridiculous the whole scenario felt. You get an idea, work your butt off writing, revising, editing, proofing, and finessing the idea. You then send a...wait for it...letter?
To an agent? Who may or may not read anything beyond that letter?
For the lucky few who get an agent to read part of your novel--congrats! But then the agent has to choose your book. And while they are reading it, don’t even think of sending it somewhere else!
After rejections, some of which are form letters that automatically populate your name, you might, after months, finally get one agent who then TRIES to sell your book.
That’s right, folks. No guarantee of a book deal yet. And IF a publisher picks up your book, you’re given an advance you have to earn back before you can earn a paltry 10% of the sales price in royalties.
Those are some seriously bad covers.
It costs us about $500 to publish a book, with another couple hundred to market said book.
Those are some seriously bad covers.
Has anyone heard of them?
So in Pitmad it looks like two or three of my pitches were liked by different representatives of this publisher. I'm not really looking for publishers as much as agents, but as usual agents just don't seem very interested in Pitmad, at least not my Pitmad I guess. So now I'm left in a bind like do I submit just because? I looked at their website and I was more than a little skeptical.