FirstWord Publishing

[Mazuri]

This is more an FYI than a cautionary post as some may not find this person's practices to be as offensive as I. Recently, I was contacted through Lit's feedback/contact page with the following email:

Hi, I've been perusing some of your work on the site here, and wow! You really know what you are doing.

I represent an independent publishing consultancy firm, FirstWind Publishing. We have extremely powerful publishing strategies which, combined with the right author, are capable of generating astronomical sales figures on Amazon, B&N, and SmashWords.

I want to make an investment in you in the form of hiring an editor, format conversions, graphic design, promotion, and execution of my publishing strategy. I'll take care of everything so you can just focus on your writing.

Sound good? Get in touch with any questions you have. I look forward to hearing from you!

Regards,

Adam Miller
Managing Partner, FirstWind Publishing

Granted, at first I was tickled pink; however, we all know the old saying: "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is." So, after I did a tiny dance, I sat down with my good buddy Google to discover just what kind of publishing house FirstWord truly is. What I read over at Booksie was definitely not the sort of publishing house I'd ever wish to use.

They are looking to glut the market with mediocre to good work, valuing speed and quantity over quality: I am looking for good writers who can produce good stories fast, not great authors who produce great stories slowly. [...] I can't stress enough the importance of being able to produce good content at a good pace. I'm not talking deadlines here, you just need to be able to keep good content coming in without huge gaps in production. The more stories I can get out there the more money we make, and there is nothing else required on your end except to keep creating easy-flowing, novel content.

They will not publish under your name or even your chosen pen name but under one they choose: The content will usually be out there under branded pen names, not under your real name. The titles will be reconfigured in most cases to generate maximum immediate interest.

Now, under this profile, there is nothing listed in the "Published Books" tab which makes me wonder just how he knows that he has "developed a skill for marketing and monetizing medium to high quality fiction (and some non-fiction)." If he's not published anything, then this is all theory, not fact. If he has published something, then list it.

He's also listed on CraigsList which is, I'm sure, the first place any aspiring author goes when seeking a publishing house.

I post this here because it appears he's data-mining Lit authors. It is my guess that he's targeting those in the "Hall of Fame" segment as I know of a few other non-human authors who have received similar emails from this individual.

I suppose this post could be construed as slightly cautionary, but if this is someone you feel you can work with, more power to you.

 

[sr71plt]

Good for you for checking before (or rather than) biting.

 

[Jaisen]

Yes, I got one of the same "form letters". Made my hair stand up on end. I'm sorry, but he's using Smashwords, and adding a middleman layer that isn't needed in order to sell to Amazon. sigh...

 

[bashfullyshameless]

I got one from "Powerful Films and Books" along those lines. It had what looked like a real website at first glance, so I went ahead and replied with a fairly neutral "show me what you've got" sort of letter. But then the more I clicked around on the website, the more often I found links going to pages empty of significant content. The stuff that was actually filled out wasn't all that interesting after all.

Ultimately, even if it is a real business, it would appear all they really offer is cover art. It'd be nice to not have to worry about that for whenever I self-publish again (I'd be more eager to do so if I had an easy time arranging cover art), but I doubt that would be enough to make that company (if it's real) worth my while.

I suspect ultimately that it's one of those companies that charges you a fee to publish your stuff.

 

[Mazuri]

It wouldn't surprise me to find out that it's, ultimately, a vanity press publishing house though they claim not to be. What also threw me is no website that I could find anywhere. Not even a freebie blog sort at Blogger or Wordpress. What kind of publisher who is so skilled at marketing and selling other people's work doesn't even have a website for people to go to? I also couldn't find a Twitter or Facebook account which struck me as odd.

 

[mokkelke]

That is one huge gap there. if he so claims to know all the tricks and what nots to make an author shine, why can't he provide works and/or authors he already worked with?
not a peep about copyright, only thing he wants a cow he can milk for story after story.
there isn't much you can find about him but the booksie post speaks volumes.
bin it is what i say.