Questioin about a publisher

[Lysander22000]

Everyone,

I've been lurking in the Literotica forums for a month or so and I was surprised to see discover the seriousness and professionalism of some of the writers. The amateur pic feed is cool too. Anyway, I haven't posted anything because I wanted to get a feel for the place, and because my main intention behind writing erotica is for publications and I didn't know if posting a story on this website would hurt my chances of finding a publisher.

My question is, my first story has just been picked up by MIDNIGHT SHOWCASE. Does anyone have any experience with them, and is there any advice anyone can give me. They seem really nice thus far, and I'm happy to be picked up by them, I just wanted to know if anyone has dealt with them before.

Thanks.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

My opinion of LIT is its a vanity showcase. You make zero dollars, and so long as youre docile, they'll post anything you submit.

My preference is to submit to real editors and get real money for my stories. Money talks, bullshit posts feedback.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Never heard of them, but what do you mean by "picked up"? Are they paying you a flat fee for it, are they publishing it as an E-book, in a hard-copy magazine, or what?

To me, sales to hard-copy publishers or publishers who have established market presence (Harlequin, Dell, Penquin, all have "erotica" lines) qualify as real sales. Sales to a small-time E-book publisher is really no big deal, because all they do is take your book, proofread it, make it available for downloading, and then let you try and sell it while they take ~60% of the profits. If you can't sell a book to some E-publisher, you really shouldn't be writing at all. They publish everything.

The real business of publishiing isn't the publishing itself, it's the advertising and marketing, without which you'll be lucky to sell 5 copies of your book (mostly to family and friends). You want to find a publisher who will spend money marketing your book. That's when you've really made it. You're still not going to get rich, but at least someone has thought enough of your scribbling to invest some of their own money in getting it sold.

Ask them about their advertising and marketing plan, and that will tell you all you need to know about them and how serious they are. E-book publishers are a dime a dozen.

Good luck.

--Zoot

 

[impressive]

Midnight Showcase is run by a woman (Mae Powers) who is an author herself. Rather than publish individual titles, it serializes its catalog -- like a periodical -- and gets (free) ISSNs instead of (pricey) ISBNs.

Hrm... It appears to have abandoned this tactic, for a quick peek at the site doesn't show any registered numbers at all. That keeps overhead quite low.

It has some good authors in its catalog, and it has been publishing for years. I've never heard any noise about payment being delayed, however I've heard lots of griping about sloppy editing. (The one reprint submission I received for Coming Together that had been initially published by MS reinforces this. The book was a complete disaster -- and the author sent me the final, published PDF. Lit would've rejected it for the spelling & punctuation errors.)

Its cover art is improving. Used to be hideous, but now is just so-so. And when a webmaster uses tables to align its cover images, they often get squished out of proportion, which looks awful.

I have no data on sales numbers, but I seriously doubt a new release would exceed 100 copies sold in its first month.

I don't think it'll hurt your chances of being published by a traditional epublisher if you contract with MS, but it's not going to help, either.


ETA: Looks like its print titles are published through Lulu, which means it doesn't contract with a big printer (like Lightning Source) that has wide distribution. While you can pay a fee to have Lulu get self-published titles into the major distribution databases (Ingrams and/or Baker & Taylor), I kinda doubt MS shells out the bucks to make that happen.

While I agree with Zoot to a certain extent, there are some ebook publishers that are selective. Samhain, Ellora's Cave, Loose Id, and Phaze all have a below 5% acceptance rate. That means they're turning away 95% of submissions. That's far from publishing "everything."

 

[dr_mabeuse]

While I agree with Zoot to a certain extent, there are some ebook publishers that are selective. Samhain, Ellora's Cave, Loose Id, and Phaze all have a below 5% acceptance rate. That means they're turning away 95% of submissions. That's far from publishing "everything."

I didn't know that about some of those publishers. I know EC is selective, I thought the others take anything.

Even EC has stopped doing marketing and promotion, though. They expect you to do your own. Of course, inclusion in their catalog is marketing after a fashion, because they have such a large chunk of the market.

--Zoot

 

[impressive]

Even EC has stopped doing marketing and promotion, though. They expect you to do your own. Of course, inclusion in their catalog is marketing after a fashion, because they have such a large chunk of the market.

--Zoot

Yes. And EC recently invited other publishers to use its shopping cart. IOW, they decided to become a retailer (like Fictionwise or ARe -- taking 40% off the top) in addition to selling just EC books. Pissed off some EC authors in the proces. I don't know if this has gone live yet or not. My publisher (Phaze) chose not to participate at this time.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Yes. And EC recently invited other publishers to use its shopping cart. IOW, they decided to become a retailer (like Fictionwise or ARe -- taking 40% off the top) in addition to selling just EC books. Pissed off some EC authors in the proces. I don't know if this has gone live yet or not. My publisher (Phaze) chose not to participate at this time.

Samhain was opening up theirs, too. I think the biggies want a piece of the action Fictionwise sees. But they're selective, too, in who they'll let place books with them.

I wouldn't agree that ALL epubs publish anything. But I would agree that if you keep shopping around, you will eventually find an epub who will publish anything.

 

[AoNoDoY]

If you were going to apply to work at EC, to whom would you address the letter, out of these people:
http://www.ellorascave.com/aboutec.asp

The publisher? I'm thinking the publisher.

I'm an out-of-work editor, can't hurt to send them a letter, right?

 

[WRJames]

I've started to do some of the screening and editing for Club Lighthouse Publishing -- and although Dr Mab's remarks are quite accurate, I would say that we don't take EVERTHING. Any publisher who puts their hand up and asks for submisions is swamped, almost immediately. So it has to be something that appeals to us.

The level of literacy is appallingly low, and a lot of the stuff we get in is so poorly written, so poorly edited, that it is not worth our time to deal with it. Proofreading is one thing, trying to rework into presentable Englsh is another. We have done that some in the past, but as we get larger and have to deal with more submissions we are getting more selective.

My advice to prospective authors --

Take every sentence you have with more than twenty words in it, and break it up.

Look at every gerund with deep suspicion.

Write out your numbers.

Watch out for the wordos. You may very will know the difference between "there" and "their", "its" and "it's" -- but your fingers will betray you.

Work up the courage to make that final proofreeading pass.

Set Word to check spelling and grammar, spaces between sentences, etc, and fix that stuff before you send it to a publisher.

I know this sounds like very basic stuff, but we rarely see a book come in in anywhere near publishable condition. I've started to tell authors to clean things up before we look at the complete manuscript, if there are problems in the sample chapters.

 

[PrincessErin]

.....

 

[WRJames]

I'm finding this thread to be very useful. Not that my writing is ever going to be good enough to be published but I would have thought proofreading and editing was common sense. I guess not.

Erin

Well, I'm probably preaching to the choir. But you would be astonished at how poorly edited most submissions are.