Since this thread has bubbled to the surface, just thought I'd mention that Canada Post has a similar service. If you can have your actual baby on a stamp, why not your book baby?
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Outskirts Press
- Thread starter CaoPaux
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Since this thread has bubbled to the surface, just thought I'd mention that Canada Post has a similar service. If you can have your actual baby on a stamp, why not your book baby?
Authors can underestimate how relentless author solutions providers can be. The Authonomy community went the same way with authors regularly stalked. It now seems to be part of the marketing roadmap for many companies touting services.
Publisher outskirt press
Have anyone tried outskirt press, They self publish at a range from 200 to 1000 dollars and allow you to set your own royalties. They also have professional editing and covers? I thought their deals were good, but I wonder if anyone published with them? Their biggest achievement was someone who made 100,000 dollars from their one book.
Have anyone tried outskirt press, They self publish at a range from 200 to 1000 dollars and allow you to set your own royalties. They also have professional editing and covers? I thought their deals were good, but I wonder if anyone published with them? Their biggest achievement was someone who made 100,000 dollars from their one book.
Mockingbird, I am on a tablet right now so I cannot give you direct links. A minute of Google searching the keywords 'Outskirts Press' and 'complaints' showed me plenty.
Mockingbird, I've reviewed a number of books from Outskirts.
In each one, the editing was at best pedestrian and at worst, dreadful. The books were cheaply produced, with curling, peeling covers and pages which detached themselves from the book's spine as I read. And the cover designs? Awful. Amateurish, clumsy, and in two cases that I can recall featuring images at far too low a resolution to work at the size used on the book.
They don't help you self publish, as their name will be listed as your publisher: you're paying them to publish you in a substandard way.
If you want to self publish, find your own editors, cover designers, etc. There are plenty of people out there who will work with you and give you a far better service than Outskirts.
In each one, the editing was at best pedestrian and at worst, dreadful. The books were cheaply produced, with curling, peeling covers and pages which detached themselves from the book's spine as I read. And the cover designs? Awful. Amateurish, clumsy, and in two cases that I can recall featuring images at far too low a resolution to work at the size used on the book.
They don't help you self publish, as their name will be listed as your publisher: you're paying them to publish you in a substandard way.
If you want to self publish, find your own editors, cover designers, etc. There are plenty of people out there who will work with you and give you a far better service than Outskirts.
I went with Outskirts Press about this time last year for my first book, Sunrise Caye. They did a reasonable job of designing the cover although it wasn't quite what I wanted. I asked several times that their 'artist' read one specific page and evidently that didn't help. I had already had two critique and line-edits through other sources so I declined their added-cost edit. I've been told of only three typos that got through.
But they do nothing for marketing, even if you buy the various add-on packages. I made the mistake of doing so. The most aggravating to me is the "Book Review Submission" package for $299 for which they send 10 reviewers a copy of the book. They do use the legally necessary wording. For example, we should know they can't guarantee a favorable review (what good would that reviewer be if they were guaranteeing a favorable review). But I got one review out of the 10. It was favorable but absurdly short and hard to find online. Honestly, I feel like they committed fraud in selling the idea that you'll get 10 honest reviews when the most they do is send a copy of the book out with a letter of some kind.
I won't be using them in the future. For my next one I'm thinking KDP for the electronic copies (sold more of them than the paperbacks anyway) and someone else for hardcopies.
But they do nothing for marketing, even if you buy the various add-on packages. I made the mistake of doing so. The most aggravating to me is the "Book Review Submission" package for $299 for which they send 10 reviewers a copy of the book. They do use the legally necessary wording. For example, we should know they can't guarantee a favorable review (what good would that reviewer be if they were guaranteeing a favorable review). But I got one review out of the 10. It was favorable but absurdly short and hard to find online. Honestly, I feel like they committed fraud in selling the idea that you'll get 10 honest reviews when the most they do is send a copy of the book out with a letter of some kind.
I won't be using them in the future. For my next one I'm thinking KDP for the electronic copies (sold more of them than the paperbacks anyway) and someone else for hardcopies.
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Any reason why you're not looking at a commercial publisher, where they pay you, instead of the other way around? Just curious.
Gravity: sorry for delay. I think the old process of getting an agent and having them shop a book around doesn't work for the majority. The time involved is just too long. One agent I know of has on their web-site they don't respond to initial emailed inquiries for 8-10 months.
I think that Kindle and Nook sales are the most likely market for most of us and you don't need a publisher for that.
Just my opinion, but I don't think the old rules still work.
I think that Kindle and Nook sales are the most likely market for most of us and you don't need a publisher for that.
Just my opinion, but I don't think the old rules still work.
If you're not prepared to wait, that's one thing. But that has nothing to do with why the querying process "doesn't work" for most writers: it's because most books aren't good enough (and how you define "good enough" is important here) for trade publishing, because trade publishing is focused on finding the best books to sell to its customers, the readers, and not on somehow making things work for writers.
However, you're entitled to seek publishing however you please, and if you don't think trade publishing is for you, then self publishing is a good way to proceed. Paying Outskirts for publication is not self publishing, however, and I'm glad you've decided not to use them again. I've seen several of their books now, and not one was produced to the standards I'd expect.
Outskirts Press popped up in one of the Google ads here (including on this very thread, which is entertaining), which pretty much reinforces the "A publisher or agency using Google ads to solicit your novel probably isn't anyone you want to write for" tagline.
In clicking around this thread, though, another ad popped up for "Word & Spirit Press" (wordspiritpress.com) and I'm wondering if these two might be related since they have the exact same graphics and format for their ads. Can't get the actual site to pull up because I'm on my old garbage work computer.
In clicking around this thread, though, another ad popped up for "Word & Spirit Press" (wordspiritpress.com) and I'm wondering if these two might be related since they have the exact same graphics and format for their ads. Can't get the actual site to pull up because I'm on my old garbage work computer.
Could be. I'm on a tablet, which makes cut-n-paste searches interesting. Outskirts & its kindred imprints have been chasing religious and spiritual writers for years: easy targets for affinity marketing, if not outright affinity fraud.
Oddly enough, I just stumbled on an Outskirts nonfiction book published a few years ago by an author I was researching. This author's second book in a different genre was published two years after the first, by an equally dubious small-press publisher. That novel languished in print to bad sales, and now seems to be out of print. This author apparently turned down agent representation for the second book, too.
This is anecdotal only, but in six years of watching authors and publishers, I've noticed that authors who start out with vanity pubs tend to make the same decisions again with different vanity (or just clueless) publishers. It's disheartening. I've mostly just given up trying to warn off authors, and just wait to see the inevitable fireworks.
Oddly enough, I just stumbled on an Outskirts nonfiction book published a few years ago by an author I was researching. This author's second book in a different genre was published two years after the first, by an equally dubious small-press publisher. That novel languished in print to bad sales, and now seems to be out of print. This author apparently turned down agent representation for the second book, too.
This is anecdotal only, but in six years of watching authors and publishers, I've noticed that authors who start out with vanity pubs tend to make the same decisions again with different vanity (or just clueless) publishers. It's disheartening. I've mostly just given up trying to warn off authors, and just wait to see the inevitable fireworks.
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One more reason not to use Outskirts Press: the company you'll be keeping, and the amazing lack of standards. http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canad...-‘big-deal’/ar-BBpPZG1?li=AAggXBV&OCID=FIRPLC
They published a book by a serial killer, and soaked the guy who facilitated the process (identified as the author on the cover of the book) for $2500. (I assume he won't get much of it back, as Amazon has apparently pulled the book, due to pressure.) There is no mention of editing.
They published a book by a serial killer, and soaked the guy who facilitated the process (identified as the author on the cover of the book) for $2500. (I assume he won't get much of it back, as Amazon has apparently pulled the book, due to pressure.) There is no mention of editing.
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