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julesjonesI'm doing very little blog-hopping these days, so I didn't see the latest piece of erotic romance industry news until a couple of days after the faecal matter impacted the air circulatory device. New epublisher Quartet Press has closed, before it even opened.
This is significant news, because this wasn't your typical "it would be fun and easy and profitable to be an epublisher" epub start-up. Quartet Press was set up by people who had some relevant experience, and who had the nous to headhunt a highly respected chief editor from an established epublisher. I wasn't paying much attention to it, because I haven't been paying much attention to the market at all for the last year other than what my own publisher is up to, but I did sit up and pay attention when I heard about them recruiting Angela James.
My own uninformed reaction to their progress was that they appeared to have the background that indicated a fairly low likelihood of the management going batshit insane (an unhappily common occurrence in this publishing sector), that it appeared to be a serious business venture by people who understood what they were getting into, and thus I thought they had a better chance than most start-ups of making it through the first year, that nevertheless I didn't understand why all the love for them from some of the blogs before they'd even opened, particularly as their background was skewed print rather than ebook, and that I really didn't like what I eventually heard about their royalty payment structure and their rationale for it.
I wouldn't have submitted a novel to them, even if I'd had something available at the time. Established publishers crash and burn, yes, and established publishers screw over their authors, sometimes in very bad ways. But the odds of something bad happening are a lot worse at a start-up, and I would not risk a novel at a start-up if I had a chance of selling it somewhere else. Yes, I sold several manuscripts to Loose Id before they opened for business, but I understood the risk I was taking, and back at the start of 2004 publishers willing to look at m/m romance were nearly as rare as hen's teeth.
What I might have been willing to risk at Quartet was a short story, or even a novella that wasn't suitable for Loose Id. And one of the reasons I might have been prepared to gamble at least that much of my material is what I referred to above -- that the people involved appeared to be treating it as a serious business venture. I thought that there was a high risk that the publisher wouldn't make it -- but that there was a fairly low risk that the management would simply disappear, or hold books hostage, or publicly post the real names of any authors who dared to criticise them during the final tailspin, or any of the other idiocies authors and readers in this genre can tell you about.
And indeed, it appears that they have closed the operation down cleanly, accepting responsibility for their actions, and reverting rights to authors immediately so that they can get on with trying to sell the manuscripts to another publishers. It's not a good situation for an author to be in, but it's a *much* better situation than simply being left in limbo, or being stalked and smeared and even physically threatened. It's early days yet, but for now this is looking a lot less messy for the authors than some past failed publishers.
This is why it's important to think hard about submitting to a start-up. It's not just the high probability of the publisher closing down within the year -- it's how well they'll handle it if it happens. Even if you're willing to take the risk with a new publisher, you need to be choosy as to which ones.
This is significant news, because this wasn't your typical "it would be fun and easy and profitable to be an epublisher" epub start-up. Quartet Press was set up by people who had some relevant experience, and who had the nous to headhunt a highly respected chief editor from an established epublisher. I wasn't paying much attention to it, because I haven't been paying much attention to the market at all for the last year other than what my own publisher is up to, but I did sit up and pay attention when I heard about them recruiting Angela James.
My own uninformed reaction to their progress was that they appeared to have the background that indicated a fairly low likelihood of the management going batshit insane (an unhappily common occurrence in this publishing sector), that it appeared to be a serious business venture by people who understood what they were getting into, and thus I thought they had a better chance than most start-ups of making it through the first year, that nevertheless I didn't understand why all the love for them from some of the blogs before they'd even opened, particularly as their background was skewed print rather than ebook, and that I really didn't like what I eventually heard about their royalty payment structure and their rationale for it.
I wouldn't have submitted a novel to them, even if I'd had something available at the time. Established publishers crash and burn, yes, and established publishers screw over their authors, sometimes in very bad ways. But the odds of something bad happening are a lot worse at a start-up, and I would not risk a novel at a start-up if I had a chance of selling it somewhere else. Yes, I sold several manuscripts to Loose Id before they opened for business, but I understood the risk I was taking, and back at the start of 2004 publishers willing to look at m/m romance were nearly as rare as hen's teeth.
What I might have been willing to risk at Quartet was a short story, or even a novella that wasn't suitable for Loose Id. And one of the reasons I might have been prepared to gamble at least that much of my material is what I referred to above -- that the people involved appeared to be treating it as a serious business venture. I thought that there was a high risk that the publisher wouldn't make it -- but that there was a fairly low risk that the management would simply disappear, or hold books hostage, or publicly post the real names of any authors who dared to criticise them during the final tailspin, or any of the other idiocies authors and readers in this genre can tell you about.
And indeed, it appears that they have closed the operation down cleanly, accepting responsibility for their actions, and reverting rights to authors immediately so that they can get on with trying to sell the manuscripts to another publishers. It's not a good situation for an author to be in, but it's a *much* better situation than simply being left in limbo, or being stalked and smeared and even physically threatened. It's early days yet, but for now this is looking a lot less messy for the authors than some past failed publishers.
This is why it's important to think hard about submitting to a start-up. It's not just the high probability of the publisher closing down within the year -- it's how well they'll handle it if it happens. Even if you're willing to take the risk with a new publisher, you need to be choosy as to which ones.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-12 10:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-13 11:10 am (UTC)Small press, effectively a one-person outfit as far as I'm aware. As far as I remember Nazarian worked for Wildside Press for a while, so knows something about the business, and she has some good reprint titles and anthologies in her catalogue. With print publishers, one acid test is to walk into a bricks and mortar bookshop and see if you can find any of their titles on the shelf. There are other marketing outlets open to specialist small presses (eg dealer's rooms at cons), but if you never see their titles on shelves in bookshops, neither does anyone else, which says something about how many copies are likely to be sold. I can't say whether Norilana passes that test, as I'm in the UK now, and wouldn't expect to see their titles here.
I know a couple of people who had shorts published in one of the anthologies, and they seem to be happy with the experience.
As I understand it, the near-bankruptcy is because the owner nearly went under due to large and unexpected personal bills of the "shit happens" variety rather than the "wastrel" variety. This is a standard hazard with small presses run by only one or two people -- anything happens to the owners, and the press has had it. They don't have to be bad people or bad at publishing, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
All you can do is reduce the risk. Even sane small presses go under. I was waiting for Meisha Merlin to re-open to submissions so I could try a particular manuscript there -- and instead they shut down. Personally, I wouldn't cross Norilana off the list, but I'd try publishers higher up the pecking order first if possible.
ETA: And I'd note that I wanted to submit a short to one of the Lace and Blade anthologies, but couldn't come up with something suitable. As noted in the original post, it's easier to gamble a short story.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-13 03:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-15 06:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-15 11:40 pm (UTC)Thanks for taking the time to reply!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-15 07:51 pm (UTC)Looking at science fiction and fantasy -- the SFWA list of qualifying markets for membership is a good starting point. After that you need to look at small press, but you also need to think about putting those in order. For print the first test is as we've said -- can you find their books in a chain bookstore? (For comparison on the romance side, if you look in Borders you will find print titles from Ellora's Cave, Samhain and Loose Id on the shelves -- and they are primarily epublishers.) If not, can you find their books on the shelves of smaller specialist bookshops that focus on that genre?
A good place to start making a list is Ralan's market listings at http://ralan.com
After that, check out what people are saying about a publisher at the Absolute Write Water Cooler http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/ or similar forums. Handle with care, because you get writers in the first flush of enthusiasm after being accepted, and writers with an axe to grind; but if there's a pattern of complaints, or bad reactions from the publisher and/or its authors to criticism, stay away.
Check their website. Do they look like a publisher you would buy books from? If not, cross them off. (At the bottom end of the ladder, one of the fastest ways to weed out vanity presses is to check their website. If their focus is selling "being published" to authors, rather than selling books to readers, run away.)
Then of course there's the whittling down by are they open to submissions, and what are they looking for.
I'm out of touch with the current state of the sf markets, but as Sean dropped by to comment, I had a look at the Wildside site to see what their imprints are doing at the moment. (This isn't a specific recommendation, just an example of what information I'd be checking if I was looking for a publisher. Juno's got a decent reputation but I don't focus on them as a market because I'm all about the pretty boys, and they're female protagonist focused, Wildside is primarily reprints, I'm not really familiar with the others.) Looks like Juno is currently open to fantasy, and Cosmos is about to open for sf submissions. Juno's got really good detailed guidelines which make it easy to work out whether your manuscript is likely to be a good fit for them right now.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-15 11:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-16 11:44 am (UTC)