Reck House Press

This publisher has requested my full manuscript to read after having looked at the 1st 35 pages.

http://reckhousepress.com/

If anyone here is familiar with the publisher, I'd like to hear your thoughts. It doesn't seem like they have a large book list, and I cannot find their books on amazon. That doesn't mean they're not there, only that I did not find the ones I searched for.

Seems a dearth of info on them out there.

I'm not able to find any titles of theirs on Amazon, BN or anything in TBM Bookmanager.

Nada

By contrast, Virtual Tales (By no means a titan of publishing) shows up in all three places.

Anything with an ISBN will show up on Amazon. Either their books don't have ISBNs or they haven't taken the ten minutes it takes to input the data into Amazon.

Also their reviews are a single paragraphs signed by people like "M.N. Chicago, IL"

Way too many red flags.

No advance. No distribution.

Not much of a service, eh?

Yesterday she sent an email saying that they are still interested. She asked for a modified manuscript before she could commit to a contract. The critique is a good one. She identified a major problem in the manuscript which should be addressed.

It's too long and has too much detail in what she calls the wrap-up following the climax. The problem exists because I saw the climax as being later in the story than where she sees it, and having had the manuscript gathering dust for a few months, I see it differently now.

Whether I publish with her or not, I am taking her editorial criticism as good advice.

There is still no amazon presence for their books, but they do have ISBNs.

Here is what she said about her company:

"Reck House Press is a tiny publisher with very limited resources. Our design and editorial work are done to the highest standards, but our initial promotion and sales necessarily rely on the web and targeted e-mails rather than bookstores. Once a portion of our costs has been recovered, we place the book in selected independent bookstores. Big-box bookstore sales, because they can absorb more than half a publisher's potential profits, are unaffordable until a book is in wide demand."

If sales rely on the web, are the books available from all the major online bookstores: Amazon, B & N, Borders, etc.?

Shelagh wrote:

If sales rely on the web, are the books available from all the major online bookstores: Amazon, B & N, Borders, etc.?

Not as far as I can tell from their website and by googling their titles. I will ask them about that. I asked once before and the question got overlooked.

If the books are only available on their site, then the sales are extremely low or the main customers are the authors themselves. Chris loathes PA and thinks that they should be more upfront about who they target to buy the books they publish. I would say that the website for this "small press" is not totally upfront about how sales are generated.

Also, the publisher offers editorial services; I would be very surprised if her editorial services are not part of the publishing package she is offering -- although there is no mention of this on the site.

Don't give your work away too quickly...get all your questions answered. Note they are looking for cost recovery up front. That's more like a vanity press....\

That does not mean they are not quality. We have a vanity press locally, Berringer Press, that requires a financial contribution up front; but their work is exceptional. Just depends on your goals.

If you have the time, you may want to look some more. Personally, I'm curious how you make sufficient sales to offset costs when they are waiting for those sales to widely distribute the book.

The publisher sent a contract. It was completely unacceptable. I declined.

I am now under contract for the work with another publisher. Not sure where to make that announcement.

I hope the new contract works out well! Keep us informed!

The new publisher is Musa Publishing. They have an interesting business model, which aligns with how I think things will be going. They publish e-books first and print editions later.

http://www.musapublishing.com/

Good luck with this, Al.

Congrats, Al! Glad to hear it. I know you've worked hard on that manuscript.

I've looked at the royalties structure and wonder why you are giving Musa money to produce your ebook.

"Smashwords—85% of what THEY get from other sites. So if they get 50% from Barnes and Noble, for example, they pay us 85% of that. And we pay you 50% of that."

Why not upload the ebook yourself and have 100% royalties?

http://musapublishing.blogspot.com/p/royalties.html

I interviewed Shane Joseph in the second volume of the Literature & Fiction Interviews book. I also included two of his stories in Forever Travels.

Earlier this year, he asked me to publish his novel, The Ulysses Man. I explained that he would earn more from sales of the book if he self-published. He was extremely reluctant and we exchanged dozens of emails before he was conviced. He set about formatting the manuscript for POD printing. He signed up with Lightning Source ad set up a company website. Ten months after that first submission to me, the book is available on all the online stores. He has even published a book by another author. He contacted me recently and thanked me for persisting with convincing him to self-publish. Here's the website:

http://www.bluedenimpress.com/

Will Musa market it? If so, that's probably the deciding factor.



I don't know anything about Musa or their marketing, which is why I'm asking. If they're just another of the hundreds of "publishers" that basically toss your manuscript up on all the sites, then I guess it's for the convenience of not doing it yourself? Not everyone wants to even set up their own website to sell books (although I'm aware Al already has that).

Musa was only launched on October 1st 2011, so it hasn't done any marketing yet!

http://musapublishing.blogspot.com/2011/08/getting-to-know-musa-publishing.html

Well, maybe they will? I'm sure Al picked them carefully.



About you persuading that person not to publish with you. Is that your way of saying you didn't want to publish him, or are you getting out of the publishing (for others) business?



BTW, posts now appear with large spaces between the paragraphs that aren't there when being written. Is that a glitch in the forum software?

I guess it's a glitch. This is a beta forum.

I persuaded Shane because I couldn't match his expectations of a small press publisher. He wanted the kind of marketing you expect from your publisher. When I explained (and I had to do it several times!) exactly what was on offer, the penny finally dropped and he realised that the profit margins are small and he might as well have all the profit himself instead of me taking the lion's share to cover my time. Time is money and someone has to put the hours in.

If you do it youself, you can keep all the profit and be recompensed for the hours of work. If someone else does the work, they have to be paid. It would be great for authors if they could get someone else to do all the work and keep all the profit for themselves ... but in the real world, you have to pay people for their time. I told him to do it himself and reap the benefits. Not everyone can ... that's why they go to PublishAmerica. That's why I did until I learned how to do it myself.

BTW, if you switch editor mode, you don't get the extra lines of space.

My choice of Musa was based on several factors.

I don't like marketing, never did, never will. Self-publishing works for me if I already have a platform and if I am writing to a niche audience. My self-published computer programming and ventriloquism books have done well. The other e-books have done so-so mainly because I'm not out there pushing them. I don't have the John Locke kind of personality. Musa's marketing manager is available online and posts openly about their marketing plans, which are a lot better than what I could do.

I like the startup small press approach. It's how I got started publishing 25 years ago. An author can grow with a startup.

I like the unagented approach.

Musa's management and editorial staff are accessible and responsive. But, more to the point, they seem to understand the publishing business and know what they are doing. They are taking a slow, financially conservative approach. Their business plan is to build a platform with e-books and then come out with print editions. This is the reverse of the traditional approach and it's what I predict is the future of publishing fiction.

Other small presses, such as L&L Dreamspell, and all the agents to whom I submitted rejected the book.

The Musa contract is available online and they willingly answer questions about it.

They are not a publish-whatever-you-submit company. They use a conventional pre-publication editorial process and provide cover design.

Three-year contract. If they don't publish within 18 months of signing, reversion.

I made this decision after considering all the alternatives. One of them had to do with timing. The book is about the JFK assassination. For it to take advantage of the interest that the 50th anniversary will generate, it has to be on the market by the beginning of 2013. Given the typical time it takes to find an agent, for the agent to sell the book and for the publisher to get it out, I had run out of time. It was do this or self-publish and self-promote. I took the easy way out.

I should add this incentive. I want a wall-to-wall editorial treatment of the book. It's been through a lot already, but another pair of experienced eyes can't hurt it. I recently priced such a service from a known editor. $2,000. That's everything from structural assessment through line edit for a work of this length.

I also want a really good cover, the kind of work that only a good commercial graphics artist can do. With me in the loop. I never priced it, but I would expect it to be in the $1,000 range. At least that's what I've been told.

Those services are provided by the publisher at their cost. If I self-published the e-book, I'd have to sell maybe 1,000 copies, probably more, to break even. I am not confident enough in my own marketing skills to ensure that.

Only time will tell whether Musa can do it better. I have confidence. And while they're doing the work, I'm writing the next novel.

I know these kinds of decisions are controversial. There are sides to the argument, usually based in someone's own experience and druthers. We are on the brink of some big unpredictable changes in publishing. Whatever I decide is a crapshoot.