John Hunt Publishing / O Books / Perfect Edge

john hunt said:

Or let me put it this way. Can you tell your paper vendors that you'll pay them for the paper only after you've sold the first hundred reams? Can you tell your electricity company that you'll pay the bill only after you've sold your first print run? No. You can't. The author is EXACTLY like your paper vendor and your electric company.

Ok, on this and the 12.13 post.

I understand, I just don't think they're reasonable comparisons. We can be "exactly" like the electricity or paper company, if that's what you want. We'll pay a royalty on every copy sold (I think we're going to do that anyway,on the basis of these comments) but then maybe we don't send out review copies at our cost ($15 a time). We won't pump books into shops that we're likely to get back in returns. Should the author pay for those that aren't sold? (It's often going to cost vastly more than the royalty per copy sold).

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Most trade publishers manage to send out review copies, get their books onto bookshop shelves, cope with the levels of returns they get, pay their authors advances, and pay royalties on all books sold, while also making a reasonable profit on their publishing endeavours.

Why is it so difficult for you to do the same?

We can drop all the subsidy titles and stay in business, no problem at all. We'ld probably do better, financially. We were trying to create a route to market for authors who don't have the track record to initially get published, and get to the trade.

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RED HERRING ALERT!

All writers were unpublished once, John.

No one needs a track record to get published: they just need to write a really good book. It's deceptive of you to suggest otherwise.

john hunt said:

You're talking about books as if they were cans of baked beans, units.

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No, we're not.

john hunt said:

We think of them differently, throughout the business.

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Clearly.

Since I'm guessing you'd never ask a grocer to give you money in exchange for taking a can of baked beans, and then talk about what a favor you're doing him for taking his baked beans when no one else wanted them. And if you stopped demanding money for to take the baked beans, then what would all those poor grocers do with all those baked beans they were stuck with?

Thus, whatever your words say, your actions demonstrate that you consider a writer's work to be LESS VALUABLE to you than a can of baked beans.

john hunt said:

Couldn't agree more. 90%+ of the work in our business is done by freelancers. Almost all of them authors. In reporting, editing, design and PR. We have a very small central overhead.

and they're paid, but quoting this for truth; a regular complaint, is that "this author is more trouble than he/she is worth, I'm not getting paid enough for dealing with her/him. I'm subsidizing this, I'm not expecting much, but my time has to be worth something."

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Ah, but you're paying them something. And I hope they're not waiting to be paid until you have money coming in.

I guess we could just not offer them. No problem with that, in principle, it would mean a loss of income for a few dozen authors/creatives who currently do reporting/editing/design/PR and so on. It would cut down on the communities involved in the FB pages, the numbers adding contacts and info to the database. I think it would be a retrograde step. but it's up for discussion.

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I just have to say that you apparently did fine before you started doing subsidy books. And there's an easy way to fix the problem without firing all these other people (nice way to try to turn that into a guilt trip, btw): just take on books you think will sell well.

If, on the other hand, you're implying that you would have to fire people because you wouldn't have the money to pay for them without the subsidy income, then you're living beyond your means in the first place.

ETA: The "I linked the wrong thing/looked at the wrong thread/accidentally typed the wrong number" thing is getting old. Seriously. If you're that apt to make mistakes, read your darned post twice before you say something, because right now it just looks like you're making lame excuses when you're called on the bullshit.

I'm a teacher. I see plenty of lame excuses from students all the time. It's always more obvious than they think, and it's more obvious than you think as well.

john hunt said:

We can drop all the subsidy titles and stay in business, no problem at all. We'ld probably do better, financially. We were trying to create a route to market for authors who don't have the track record to initially get published, and get to the trade.

If that's all a big mistake, OK,. maybe we should drop it.

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Old Hack said it but I'll say it again: gubbins. Everybody begins life without a track record. Many create that with a novel contract at the top of the page.

As you don't need the subsidy publishing to stay afloat, and you have massive problems with being labelled a vanity publisher, I'd say yes, you probably should drop it.


So, let's move on to your hideous practice of not paying royalties until you've covered your own costs. It's not usual, it's not normal, and I would advise everybody to stay the hell away from any contract with those terms. It's an alternate vanity publishing model, and may well be what earned you that Not Recommended stamp from Pred & Ed.

The writer gets paid.

It's kind of funny because I just commented in another thread about how sick I am of hearing people argue that they're trying to help unknown authors get published.

I'll say here what I said there: great books get you published, not having a track record or a big name. If you were interested in helping unpublished writers get published, rather than taking their work without paying for it, you could direct them toward writer resources to help them improve the craft because that's the reason authors get turned down more than anything else.

Or, you know, publish them for real and pay them if you really think they're that great.

A writing credit with a publisher who charges some authors a subsidy, and sometimes withholds royalties on the first X books sold as an additional fee, is not going to help a writer get published elsewhere.

Any trade publishing contract they are offered with such a credit, they would have been offered without the credit. It is the strength of their work and their luck with timing that gets them published.

If they sell an impressive number of books through your publishing house, that may be noticed by other publishers. But since the subsidy authors are the ones you don't expect to sell in amounts that would impress another publisher -- it's disingenuous to hold a "writing credit" out as a carrot to entice writers to pay you.

LindaJeanne said:

A writing credit with a publisher who charges some authors a subsidy, and sometimes withholds royalties on the first X books sold as an additional fee, is not going to help a writer get published elsewhere.

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Also this.

There's also the fact that selling few copies can make it harder to sell a book in the future. So publishing someone who only sells a "few dozen" copies, as some of the ones John mentioned up thread have, can actually hurt their chances of being published in the future.

john hunt said:

Or let me put it this way. Can you tell your paper vendors that you'll pay them for the paper only after you've sold the first hundred reams? Can you tell your electricity company that you'll pay the bill only after you've sold your first print run? No. You can't. The author is EXACTLY like your paper vendor and your electric company.

Ok, on this and the 12.13 post.

I understand, I just don't think they're reasonable comparisons. We can be "exactly" like the electricity or paper company, if that's what you want. We'll pay a royalty on every copy sold (I think we're going to do that anyway,on the basis of these comments) but then maybe we don't send out review copies at our cost ($15 a time). We won't pump books into shops that we're likely to get back in returns. Should the author pay for those that aren't sold? (It's often going to cost vastly more than the royalty per copy sold).

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I grew up with passive aggression as a parenting tool, sir. It doesn't really work well on me.

What you're talking about doing--sending out review copies, pumping books into shops where you know they'll sell, rather than where they won't--is a basic practice of the book business. You are, in effect, saying that you should not be responsible for doing business as a publisher.

Pardon the french, sir, but that's bullsh*t.

You're talking about books as if they were cans of baked beans, units.

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What are they, then? Dreams? Ambitions? Unicorn hair? Fairy farts?

You're talking about running a business. Romanticism shouldn't be what you're selling.

Unless you're a vanity publisher, in which case romanticism and rose tinted glasses are pretty much your bread and butter.

We think of them differently, throughout the business.

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Then what DO you see them as? Why are you even in the book selling business if your goal is not to sell many many individual units of books?

We read submissions.

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Okay.

Sure, we look at sales potential, previous sales, comparative sales, comment on the manuscript, reckon on what we can do, make an offer on what we think could work, and if the author doesn't want it - that's fine.

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Yep, that's part of what publishers do. But I note you have not said one concrete thing about what books really are to your business, if they're not individual units you intend to sell for profit. This is something you need to articulate VERY clearly.

We can drop all the subsidy titles and stay in business, no problem at all. We'ld probably do better, financially.

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Then do the smart thing for your company and stop carrying product you can't sell.

We were trying to create a route to market for authors who don't have the track record to initially get published, and get to the trade.

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Sir, I've checked several of your amazon titles, and the rank numbers I see aren't any better than the average self-publisher's. I see nothing to recommend your "route" over an author going it on their own.

I have, however, seen a lot of deliberate avoidance, guilt trips and passive-aggression rather than concrete facts and answers.

You are running a business. Not Willy Wonka's dream factory. Someone running a responsible business avoids products they do not believe they can sell, and (this is the really important part) they pay their suppliers.

we do pay authors, 15% of our total revenues go to authors in royalties. (Given that some titles for historic reasons do not have an author attached the like-for-like rate is higher than that). The % increases by a few points per year as the proportion of ebooks grows, where we pay 50% royalties. Next year we'll probably be up around 20%.

I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at different ways of re-balancing risk and investment, if it also gives the author an opportunity for maximizing revenues. What's a fair royalty rate? They vary anywhere from 5% to 70%.

The average in publishing on print books is 10%, on ebooks more like 15% with the big publishers (rather than ebook-only pubishers), and a max I think of about 25% - you'ld probably know more about this than me.

If a title in a genre fiction area is going to sell mostly in ebooks, which is increasingly likely, the author is going to be a lot better off with no royalties on the first 1000 copies of the print edition but 50% on the ebook.

That increases the author's revenue overall, and reduces the cost/risk to the publisher (in physical copies going back and forth in returns from one warehouse to another, until the title is more established so the level of returns diminishes).

I still can't see the objection to that in principle.

but point taken, thanks for the comments....we will move to paying royalties from the first copy sold on all titles, on new contracts.

John,

What percentage of your subsidy-paying authors have earned enough in royalties to at least break even financially?

I asked that question six pages ago and never got a straight answer.

This is like pulling teeth.

aliceshortcake said:

I asked that question six pages ago and never got a straight answer.

This is like pulling teeth.

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Yup.

Another overlooked question which I hope will be addressed.

Anna_Hedley said:

John, let me ask you something. What editing do all of your manuscripts receive (regardless of which tier they're accepted at) that the author does not have to pay for? Please note, I'm asking only about editing, not marketing. A simple yes (meaning, yes, we do this in all our edits whether we are paid to or not) or no (we do not do this or only do it if we are paid to) answer to these will suffice:

Spelling and grammar? Yes/No.
Larger technical issues, like run-on sentences and cliches? Yes/No.
Pointing out inconsistencies in characterisation e.g. character A's actions in scene X make no sense in light of what he's claimed his motivations to be in scene Y? Yes/no.
Pointing out plot holes? Yes/No.
Pointing out repetition in phrasing? Yes/No.
Identifying areas where the narrative could be tightened up, e.g. scenes which are out of place or unnecessary? Yes/No.
Proofing once all of the edits suggested have been done? Yes/No.

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And I presume, of course, that the edits are always sent back to the author, so that the author can incorporate them, rather than made directly by the editor. Can you confirm?

What percentage of your subsidy-paying authors have earned enough in royalties to at least break even financially?

Fair enough, I vaguely remember it from 6 pages ago, I think I answered it along the lines of saying that we don't encourage subsidy authors to think they're going to get their money back, we point them to things like-

But they are rare. If we promoted each book with the optimism we feel for it, we would go broke in short order. Hence this rough breakdown. It is not science, but it is being honest about expectations.

You can publish cheaply yourself, through a company like Lulu, and sell through a single source, Amazon. More on this further down the page. .... If we do not sell more than 1,000 copies of the print edition, with minimal returns (more further down the page in How much profit are you going to make out of me?) we lose money. Most titles published, whoever the publisher is, do not make that level (see Estimate of likely sales).

Which is why it is hard to find a publisher. We publish more than most, relative to size, because our own overheads are low, we rely on networks and systems rather than a central office, and we share costs/risk on some of the books.
If we offer you a contract with an author subsidy, and you can not afford it, we're sorry about that, please don't take it, or stretch yourself financially. If you object to it on principle, well, we just have to differ. Either way, keep looking, or publish yourself. For some authors it's small change. For some authors, particularly in the academic world, it's common practice.

For just getting your book out, making it available, there are cheaper alternatives to working with us, if we have offered a contract at level 3 or 4. You can do it all yourself. Have a look, for instance, at; http://searchwarp.com/swa578084-Review-The-Fine-Print-Of-Self-Publishing.htm

and

So we are not the cheapest route possible, but we are well down the price scale, a small fraction of these prices. We can not do what we do for less. Or more quickly. It’s the time the job takes, and getting it to the market, circulating the information. Whoever you work with, do not expect royalties to recover the cost.

I can't give you a straight answer on that one, I'ld have to back through the subsidy titles we've done over the last couple of years individually and tot them up. Later this year we'll have a means of summarising p/l per titles including subsidy/royalties from our point of view and the authors across all titles, and i could let you know, at the moment we haven't, without going into all of them individually. I don't mean to duck the question, it's just where we are. I'ld guess that some would have covered the subsidy, most won't.

Where we differ, is that it doesn't worry me if the author is not expecting/relying on making money from trade sales. I guess it's going to be a bit different with fiction compared to non-fiction, but we publish a lot in the non-fiction area (95%+ is non-fiction) where revenue is not always the main motive (and those authors are less likely to be on a website like this). It's certainly not the case in the more academic market, where we do some, which is a good chunk of the overall market (and where sales are going to be limited but you just push the price up to compensate) and I've simply got to agree to differ that in all areas of the market quality is in direct correlation to sales.

Which touches on this kind of thing-

Yep, that's part of what publishers do. But I note you have not said one concrete thing about what books really are to your business, if they're not individual units you intend to sell for profit. This is something you need to articulate VERY clearly.
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Then do the smart thing for your company and stop carrying product you can't sell.

Sales/profit...it's like royalty rates, 5% or 50%? Do you price a book at $0.99, $9.99, $29.99 or $99.99? It's not too difficult to make it work if you push up the price, print POD etc. We make a lot of compromises, in that, say there are books that we could probably price at $39.99 to realistically make a profit, but do them at $19.99, and so on.

you have not said one concrete thing about what books really are to your business, if they're not individual units you intend to sell for profit. This is something you need to articulate VERY clearly.

I'm not sure what's being asked for here - a statement about how we believe in books, in authors, and we do it because we love the work and are committed to it,how most of the people in the business are authors themselves and want to help other authors? You wouldn't believe me anyway...

I can get more concrete if we go to specific examples. The Perfect Edge imprint for instance has featured on this thread. We published the first title (100 years of Vicissitude) before Christmas. The author had published before, hadn't done well through the bookstore trade, sales in two figures. we loved the book, wasn't going to work trying to push it into the trade (as per earlier comments, sure, if the author hasn't sold well before it can be a liability in terms of getting into bookshops, because they just look up the previous figures, understand that). We focused on the social networking area, and have sold 100 copies of the print edition, and 2700 of the ebook. The author isn't getting royalties on the first 1000 copies of the print edition (which is something we'll change in the next month on new contracts) but it's 50% on the ebook. So I struggle to see how that's a hard deal.

And I presume, of course, that the edits are always sent back to the author, so that the author can incorporate them, rather than made directly by the editor. Can you confirm?

Yes, the copy -edited manuscript goes back to the author for approval/incorporation, on every title.

Thank you for the info, John. Would you also be able to answer Anna's question (which I quoted) about the specifics of editing?

john hunt said:

we do pay authors,

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That you pay authors is not the issue. That you only pay authors when you want to is the issue.

THIS is the issue:

If a title in a genre fiction area is going to sell mostly in ebooks, which is increasingly likely, the author is going to be a lot better off with no royalties on the first 1000 copies of the print edition but 50% on the ebook.

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BULLSHIT.

Are you getting money for the sales of physical books? Yes? THEN THE AUTHORS DESERVE TO BE PAID FOR THE PHYSICAL BOOKS TOO.

I still can't see the objection to that in principle.

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Because you are making money and the author is not getting paid. BECAUSE THE AUTHOR IS NOT GETTING PAID.

But hey, you've said you're going to start paying your authors for every sale on *sigh* your new contracts.

Great. For your new authors.

So let's move on to the next big question, already echoed below: How many of your subsidy authors earn back their investment?

And how about the other one: What is the nature and quality of editing you provide?

Because the question really is what advantage does your company offer over self-publishing?

I'd say "other companies" but we're not even in that ballpark anymore.

Your subsidy prices would make an author's investment for a 100K word book $1600 under one contract and $3200 for another.

I'm a self publisher. I'm just starting to plan for a print run of a 100k word book. My research says I can do it all--hire an editor of middling quality, professional proofreading, professional typesetting, cover artist and manufacture/distribution through Lightning Source--for $2400 bucks, plus periodic charges for returns (Research and google-fu so far say Lightning Source charges you manufacturing fee+shipping for returned books. You CAN have a returnable POD book as long as you're willing to eat the costs on returns). I'm really confident I can do it for less, but let's assume I can't.

We're not adding in the cost of an offset print run. With POD technology there is no reason to do an offset print run of a book that you assume is not going to sell well. If you are irresponsible enough to risk your company's finances on a print run you know you can't sell that should not be the author's problem and they shouldn't have to pay for it.

You're charging a subsidy author with a book roughly the same size $1600 under a level 3 contract, and $3200 under a level four.

According to my research, and I'm really willing to admit that I'm wrong if someone has better numbers than mine, you're charging a level three author over half what they'd pay on their own, and almost a thousand dollars more for a level four.

And my sales numbers? As a self publisher? With no professional editing, no professional formatting, no professional artist, no book designer, no advertising and marketing whatsoever? They are as good or better than every single title of yours that I've looked at so far. Better in some cases, maybe a little worse than others, but it's all in the "I sold a book in the last 72 hours, maybe" range. If my books are on a similar standing with those of a publishing company? There is something very, very wrong with that publishing company.

That's why I have a problem with what your contracts propose. They offer your subsidy authors no financial advantage over self-publishing.

You have ignored and/or refused to answer this question: How many of your authors earn back their subsidy investment? So I have to assume that your company offers authors no substantial sales advantage over self-publishing.

You have ignored and/or refused to answer this question: What level and quality of editing does your company offer authors? So I have to assume that your company offers authors no substantial quality advantage over self-publishing.

Self publishing is baseline zero. Right now your company looks like less than zero, in my humble yet vitriolic opinion.

If you want to clear up this impression, stop giving circular answers, stop trying to use emotional blackmail, knock the passive-aggressive s*** off, and give two clear, concise answers to the following questions:

HOW MANY OF YOUR AUTHORS EARN BACK THEIR SUBSIDY? Give us the actual number.

WHAT LEVEL AND QUALITY OF EDITING DO YOU OFFER YOUR AUTHORS? give us the list of services.

If you CANNOT give a clear and simple answer to either question, or you continue to avoid these questions, it means that you damn well know that there are issues with the answers, which in turn means there are issues with what your company has to offer authors. Which means that authors are better off publishing their own books on their own dime than they are giving their books to you. But if your company really is on the up-and-up, and you really are offering a viable opportunity to authors, answering these questions will make this clear.

Straight answers, sir. A number and a list of services given (NOT OFFERED) to both subsidy and non-subsidy authors.

HOW MANY SUBSIDY AUTHORS EARN BACK THEIR INVESTMENT?

WHAT LEVEL AND QUALITY OF EDITING DO YOU PROVIDE FOR YOUR AUTHORS?

He did sort of answer my questions about editing here:

john hunt said:

What editing do all your manuscripts receive that the author does not have to pay for?

Doing it to our house style. So copy editing (spelling and grammar, run on sentences, clichés, repetition) and proof reading, yes. Inconsistencies in characterization, plot holes, tightening up narrative, not necessarily, though that would normally be covered in the reader reports, and the extent of the different publisher’s involvement then varies.

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Although it was buried among some truly mammoth paragraphs.

john hunt said:

but point taken, thanks for the comments....we will move to paying royalties from the first copy sold on all titles, on new contracts.

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So where would that leave current authors? Would they have the opportunity to renegotiate or are they SOL? If not, you're still not treating everybody fairly and equitably.

replies;

So where would that leave current authors? Would they have the opportunity to renegotiate or are they SOL?

'Fraid we couldn't do that, not physically possible, in terms of the number of contacts, the number of recalculations....

If not, you're still not treating everybody fairly and equitably.

You mean every author should be on the same terms? for how many years back? Decades? Getting in touch with deceased authors' estates to renegotiate contract terms irrespective of how many have been sold (we have some of those)? The kind of thing you're asking for here just isn't possible, for any publisher.

I think we get closer to that than most (similar equitable contracts for all authors), but earlier in the thread I was criticized for not encouraging authors more to go with agents, and isn't their job to negotiate different terms for different authors? Are you suggesting I go back to the agents we work with and say we need to renegotiate on old titles because we want to rewrite the contract and pay $25 extra on a title we published 15 years ago, which would take someone a few hours to figure out?

Although it was buried among some truly mammoth paragraphs.

Yeah, well, I've been trying to respond to everything, and everyone keeps asking for more detail, so I give more detail, and then I still haven't answered enough....and what I say is too short, or too long, or not direct enough...... and I'm either talking about books as units and not what publishing "means" to us on the one hand, or I'm being full of "passive/aggressive sh**t" on the other, or whatever...

I'll repeat that we do pay royalties

we do pay authors, 15% of our total revenues go to authors in royalties. (Given that some titles for historic reasons do not have an author attached the like-for-like rate is higher than that). The % increases by a few points per year as the proportion of ebooks grows, where we pay 50% royalties. Next year we'll probably be up around 20%.

and in overall industry terms, particularly for small publishers, it's a high level.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with

I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at different ways of re-balancing risk and investment, if it also gives the author an opportunity for maximizing revenues.

I don't understand this kind of thing-

BULLSHIT.
Are you getting money for the sales of physical books? Yes? THEN THE AUTHORS DESERVE TO BE PAID FOR THE PHYSICAL BOOKS TOO.
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I still can't see the objection to that in principle.
Because you are making money and the author is not getting paid. BECAUSE THE AUTHOR IS NOT GETTING PAID.


in that I can't see the problem about not paying on royalties on some print books where we don't make money, but lose it, and paying more on ebooks where we could, if the author is going to multiply their earnings as a result, and we could publish more authors.

The reason profit margins at the big publishers are still high is that they keep the ebook royalties fairly close down to the levels of royalties on print books. which don't have the same physical costs. And they don't publish in print authors they think are pretty certain not to sell in the high thousands range.

We are, and we'll go down to hundreds (and in the non fiction area, in our specialist subject areas, we've got a pretty good idea of the likely sales). And we're just saying, in terms of not paying royalties on the first print sales, "look, this may not work in terms of your income and our costs, but our costs are a lot lower on digital, because we don't have to shift books thousands of miles around different warehouses and back again, let's multiply the royalty there and drop the royalty on the first print books where it's all just expense and we lose out, and it's win-win all around".

Which seems to be evil. OK.

And we do sell books. And work hard at it.

in my humble yet vitriolic opinion

It's getting too vitriolic for me. And taking too much time. I feel like I'm a criminal in the dock on this site. it's not worth it.

I'm not asking anyone here to publish with us, or to recommend us. I was hoping to convince you that we're not a vanity publisher, not just ripping off authors. I can see why not many other publishers get on here, even if they're categorized as vanity publishers on the Preditors & Editors site (like hay House, which is just absurd).

but i guess I'm not going to be able to do that. No worries...we'll carry on doing the best we can for the authors we have, and they'll come back and publish with us again, and recommend us to other authors, or they won't. We'll see how it works out.

But i can't spend more time like this....increasingly lengthy/detailed explanations to people who aren't going to publish with us anyway, are always going to hate us whatever I say, and have never had any contact with our company - so I won't be getting back on here again. All the best with your publishing.

john

john hunt said:

It's getting too vitriolic for me. And taking too much time. I feel like I'm a criminal in the dock on this site. it's not worth it.

I'm not asking anyone here to publish with us, or to recommend us. I was hoping to convince you that we're not a vanity publisher, not just ripping off authors. I can see why not many other publishers get on here, even if they're categorized as vanity publishers on the Preditors & Editors site (like hay House, which is just absurd).

but i guess I'm not going to be able to do that. No worries...we'll carry on doing the best we can for the authors we have, and they'll come back and publish with us again, and recommend us to other authors, or they won't. We'll see how it works out.

But i can't spend more time like this....increasingly lengthy/detailed explanations to people who aren't going to publish with us anyway, are always going to hate us whatever I say, and have never had any contact with our company - so I won't be getting back on here again. All the best with your publishing.

john

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We get lots of publishers in these threads, and if you take a waltz around them you'll notice a few. I like the guy who boasted about how the army taught him to profile people but didn't realise I was female. Oh, and the woman who then wrote a blog about how we were "talking smack" about her publishing house and how she'd gone and told us what was what. Sometimes we get people who *just happened* to have joined AW the day their publisher got some critical gazes levelled on it and want to tell us about how the publisher is a family, etc. On a really good day we get a new member starting a thread about a new publishing house who is absolutely not the publisher wearing a sock.

All of which means: you should be aware we are a lot more used to this than you are.

So, rest assured, we don't hate you. Obviously I can't speak for anybody other than myself, but I'm unlikely to think of you at all.

And, for all you know we *may* have had contact with your company. Or PMs may be flying about behind the scenes. Or, we may be Andrew Wylie in disguise. That's why it's a *really* good idea to not be petulant about things.

But good luck, and do give some thought to actually paying your authors for every single copy they sell. Until you do, you may as well charge everybody up front so at least they are clear it's not normal practise.

john hunt said:

I understand, I just don't think they're reasonable comparisons. We can be "exactly" like the electricity or paper company, if that's what you want. We'll pay a royalty on every copy sold (I think we're going to do that anyway,on the basis of these comments) but then maybe we don't send out review copies at our cost ($15 a time).

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I understand that ARCs can be more expensive to print than regular physical copies, but $15 per copy still sounds awfully steep to me. Perhaps printing fewer of those and offering digital review copies through Edelweiss or Netgalley would be a smarter option.

john hunt said:

You're talking about books as if they were cans of baked beans, units. We think of them differently, throughout the business. We read submissions. Sure, we look at sales potential, previous sales, comparative sales, comment on the manuscript, reckon on what we can do, make an offer on what we think could work, and if the author doesn't want it - that's fine.

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Bolding is mine there. Do you print to those numbers? Or close to them? Your books are distributed to bookstores by National Book Network. Can you get estimates from their sales force on how many copies of an upcoming title they think they'll sell? Even if you can't get those numbers, they ought to be presenting your spring/summer list to bookstores about now -- when you look at how many books are currently on order, do you print close to that amount?

I ask because the impression I've had from your posts so far is you're printing thousands of copies when your estimates say you'll sell hundreds. So why overprint that extensively?

John Smith Publishing

Hi,

Has anyone worked with this publisher. I was interested in submitting to this line

http://www.axismundi-books.com/submissions.html&i=40

Axis Mundi book, but the submission process seemed a bit strange.

Just wanted to see if anyone has any feedback.

Thanks

Theo81 said:

So, rest assured, we don't hate you.

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I dunno, Theo; after reading John Hunt's virtuous proclamations that he could restrain himself to only publishing books he thinks he could actually sell such that all authors would begin earning royalties on the very first book sold, but if he did that then so many poor authors would be left with no route to trade publishing, as though the privilege of basically giving away a publishable manuscript to him for Nothing! Zero! Zilch! in return were such a benefit to underpublished authors--

I dunno. I have a hard time hating anyone I don't personally know, but--and I'm hoping y'all will appreciate the distinction here--I'm working up a pretty strong potential to despise him.

And that's before we get into his endless repetitions of "I misread that," "I quoted the wrong link," "I was moving too fast," "Yeah, I guess I have been changing the numbers every time I mention them, sorry, careless of me"--for the sake of holy hell-kittens, man, why would anyone want to put their manuscript in your hands if you have such a hard time with the written word?

Has anyone used John Hunt Publishing? I'd like to hear from someone who has used them.
Thanks