Publishing Offer vs Self-Pub?

I picked three authors at random from their list.

First off, check out their covers. Do they say professionally done to you? There are great cover designers out there who will make you a quality cover if you self-pub that will look good and compete against trade-pubbed books. Are their covers inspiring you to buy?

Author #1 had four books listed on their site. I checked on Amazon. All four books had abysmal reviews--1 or 2 stars, with comments all saying they were completely unedited. Author #2 had better reviews, but their ranking was in the 1.5 million range. Author #3 had one review, their book had been out for a year and a half, and was ranked in the 1.7 millions. So, you can probably do a lot better than that on your own.

Where else have you subbed? Did you try agents first? How long have you been trying to find this book a home?

In general, you want to make sure they can help you in ways you can't help yourself. Otherwise they're taking a cut for, well, nothing.

There's a thread of them in the Bewares section. Please read over thoroughly. Not a good place at all.

Published a few kiddy books with them and they are absolutely horrible. Run like hell.

Run. There have been many authors right here on AW who have shared horrible experiences with them.

If you want my advice, I wouldn't sign with any publisher that can't do something I can do myself. If you are going trade then go for the big dogs. Many of these small presses can't do much for you that you can't do if you self-published. Also, many are imploding so that alone would make me not work with a small press. I used to love the idea of them but now not so much. Just seen too many either crash and burn or become horrible situations for authors.

I used to be trade published and now I am on my own and love it. You gotta make your own decisions but I warn you to always research before submitting anywhere.

I've one thing to add. Beware of dividing publishers into the biggest and the smallest. There are some three dozen publishers who put out 90 to 20 new books a year. All of them have been around for several decades, do a good job for their authors, and sell lots of books.

One example is Baen Books. This includes a healthy number of reprints. I believe the last year their totals for new/reprint were something like 60/30. Among their best-selling authors are Lois McMaster Bujold and Eric Flint.

https://www.baen.com/

Three of these middle-sized publishers accept unagented manuscripts.

Hi Mattward congratulations on your many accomplishments. You should definitely check out the link to the company in question in the bewares background checks subforum as some here have suggested.

You do seem, I must say, to be particularly well suited to pursue self publishing, especially if you can leverage the Disrupters platform to promote your book to some extent. It appears, in your bio, that you have already published one book, albeit in an entirely different genre, so you have credentials that, if coupled with a well written query letter, would certainly get you some serious consideration from one of the big name publishing houses. Unless you can pull off a rare E.L James, or in your case/genre more of a Hugh Howey, I think the traditional route of agent/publishing house would be the best bet. But what do I know?

Best of luck to you either way.

Stay far away from Solstice. I published with them and it was a horrendous experience. My editor was so bad she had to be fired, and I had to have my book edited one more time. Their covers are also awful. They send you to a (limited) stock photo website, have you pick 1 picture, and then slap some poor looking text on it. That's all they do. When I had the option of renewing my contract, I even told them I'd pay for my own covers, because I wanted them to look professional and like they belonged in a series. That doing this would help sell my books, which helped both of us. They said no. I took my books back right then and there. They also have no marketing.

Everyone I know who was published by them has run for the hills when their contract expired.