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Sarah Book Publishing

CherokeeParks

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Howdy y'all! Happy New Year!

For those truly interested, there have been some big changes at Sarah Book Publishing. The old contract so many of you had a problem with has been replaced, partially because of negotiations with a well know literary agency - who has already placed one author, and many more will undoubtedly follow.

The website has been changed to reflect more of what SBP is all about - including that the author will never be asked for money. As I stated way back in this thread, a new marketing system is being implemented that will reach globally.

All I really have time to say is that I'm happy as a hog in doodoo in my experiences with them. (The grandkids are wanting us to take them out to eat, so I've got to go.) So if you're happy where you're at, good for you. But if not, don't count these folks out. They aren't going anywhere but up.
 

justbishop

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Website still seems very writer-centric, rather than aimed at readers. And the mere existence of the "Our Services" page still makes this seem like a vanity operation, IMO.
 

aliceshortcake

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Books published by Sarah Book Publishing can expect the following (at no cost to the author)

We will send your title review and front page to 3,200 book retailers in a news letter and 35,000 librarians for four consecutive months

How effective is this? Because if it's all done by e-mail it sounds like spamming.

We will a send press release to 126 media outlets, plus media outlets provided by you in your immediate vicinity and provide your book upon request to media outlets for review

Another echo of PublishAmerica. How many of these media outlets actually request a copy of the book for review? As for media outlets in the author's immediate vicinity, a 'local person writes book' article is unlikely to sell many copies.

We will work with you to send signed copies of your books and cover letters on our letterhead to media outlets of your choice. (limit is ten)
http://www.sarahbookpublishing.com/we-help-get-your-book-to-retailers/

Why the heck would media outlets want a signed copy?!

Also, would one of SBP's professionals PLEASE proof-read the company's atrociously-written press releases. Are these identical to the ones being sent to media outlets? If so, they aren't doing the company any favours. And please don't enter your books for phoney awards as it makes you look desperate.
 
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Momento Mori

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CherokeeParks:
The old contract so many of you had a problem with has been replaced, partially because of negotiations with a well know literary agency - who has already placed one author, and many more will undoubtedly follow.

I'm really glad to hear that, Cherokee. Can you share which agency this is or will all the details go up on Publisher's Marketplace?

MM
 

victoriastrauss

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I'm really glad to hear that, Cherokee. Can you share which agency this is or will all the details go up on Publisher's Marketplace?
I'm curious about this too, since it doesn't look as if Sarah Book Publishing pays advances, and reputable agents don't generally work with non-advance-paying publishers.

- Victoria
 

JMDisque

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Sarah

WRITERS BEWARE.
THIS IS JUST ONE REASON YOU NEED AN AGENT ----- AND WHY YOU HAVE TO STOP CELEBRATING AND HAVE PATIENCE

=====================

Hi (XXX-edit),

This is going to take a little while. I'm juggling about 30 issues.

Is this your first potentially-published book?

I'm a little leery because Kathleen is their only editor. A small publishing company can be a very good thing because they have to be very careful about what they spend their money on. It can also be a very bad thing because they may not have the money to market your book like it should be marketed. - So proceed with caution.

They sent you a standard contract.
Your negotiable issues at this point are: your primary rights, your secondary rights, the territory, the advance, your payout schedule, the royalty % (but I would be happy with what they offered on royalties <== this will not be true for your next book. Just for this book if it's your first book), and your subsidiary rights.

Everything else is boilerplate. (They'll be hard-nosed about it).

Have they offered you an advance? (This is money they send you to finish the work if it's not complete or to maintain your lifestyle while your waiting for them to get it on the shelves. It's like a loan that is subtracted from your royalty checks until it's paid back). Once you deposit that money you are signing and committing to the contract with or without your signature.
If they have not mentioned the advance - this is your first issue to question.
It will be anything between $2,000-$10,000. If they offer more than $10,000 they're convinced they have a very sellable product and are serious about the whole issue.

One of the good points about what they're doing is: they can get your work on the shelves in 3 months. That's a lot faster than most publishers.

I have not gone over the contract at all and will get back to soon (1-2 days) and I'll attempt to explain the terms I've mentioned in
easy-to-understand-English along with what you should ask for.

================

After reading the standard contract I wrote the following... - but, at that point, I had not read the author packet which is where all your concerns are.

The offer they’re making is valid for 2 months from the time they sent it to you.
It’s a standard contract. It’s not good and it’s not bad.

Because your book is poetry and does not have movie potential you don’t have to worry about that issue - but - if it told a story and was a novel or documentary – I wouldn’t sign it until they offered 50% of their movie rights.

Once you sign this and they receive it – they own all rights to your book for the next five years or until it goes out of print or they stop all aftermarket sales. Technically they could keep it listed on the internet forever, do nothing to market the book and continue to get 85% - 90% of the profit should you decide to self-market.

Your manuscript is due no later than 10 days from the time they receive the signed contract. This includes any pictures, illustrations or graphics or ideas for cover-art. / If you have ideas for the cover you HAVE to convey that issue now before they begin paying their cover people to begin working on it.

If you have pictures or artwork – the responsibility for purchasing these things is in your hands – not theirs. If one of your friends is giving you permission to use their work – you HAVE TO get this in writing to protect yourself in the future.

If anything is plagiarized (stolen excerpts, graphics, phrases “anything” the publishing company is not responsible and have put any potential lawsuits into your hands. You will be sued – not them.)

I would spend at-least a few weeks continuing to shop the book to bigger publishers with the first sentence of your cover-letter mentioning the fact that you have an offer from Sarah Book Publishing. They may offer 12/14/17% royalties or, in the very least – you’ll capture their attention for considering future projects.

======================

From that point I read the author packet and you have a ton of red-light, and very questionable issues.

The above email is not professional advice and I’m under no legal obligation should the author (XXX-edit) become dissatisfied with my advice or the terms of the contract with SBP.

Don't do anything until you read my next email.

=====================

There’s a lot of red flags - --

After reading some pages of their books and going over the author packet - this appears to be a “print-on-demand company” paying you 10% for nothing, (with the possible exception of editing), that you couldn’t do yourself and get 30% for.

When searching for some of the vital company information you find a printer – not a publisher.

Your book will be in paperback until it reaches 2500 copies sold (At that point they MIGHT produce it in hard-cover if they feel it will continue to sell at the price it will take to justify the cost) but they only mention their website sales and other online sales. It looks like they’re putting the retail store sales and internet promotion, book signings and every other aspect of marketing into your hands.

QUOTE - "Although Sarah Book Publishing assists authors in various ways when marketing their book, and it is the author's responsibility to be proactive in this process as well. After all, nobody can market a book like the author himself or herself."

They mention the above a few times while mentioning premature comparison between themselves and other publishers.

After this – they mislead you about the cost of a publisher getting a book on the selves. The costs they represent may be the cost of YOU printing, binding and covering your book at 1-10 copies at a time but it’s not the cost of a large publishing company printing many thousands of copies. If it were – there’d be no books on the selves.

They make no mention of printing in mass quantity or selling your book to the bookstores unless you can get it on the shelves yourself, which you won’t be able to do.

Also – they use the term “one of our editors will be assigned to the author.” (XXX-edit), - they only have one editor and, from the samples I read of the books they own, the editing, if there has been any, is very poor.

When viewing a book publisher's website you’ll see them marketing the site to the readers and to bookstores while promoting their books and newest releases.
I’ve never seen a publishing website use all their time and energy attempting to get authors on-board and signed with them.

This company has only been in business since 2011 and, as far as I can tell, none of their staff has any experience in the publishing industry.

Basically - it looks like they're trying to take all the risk and work out of the publishing process and put it into your hands.

Being I do not represent you I’m not going to advise you on what to do. In this case it’s 100% up to you.

====================================

(XXX-edit) came to me for advice – not to officially represent him. He is a friend and not a client.

I, John M Disque, would not sign the contracts sent to me by Sarah Book Publishing, nor would I sign it for any of my clients until they rewrote the contracts and made their marketing intentions very clear - including bookstore marketing and distribution, hardcover marketing and distribution, mass production, book signing expenses and bookings, media releases and all other promotion, sales and distribution.

John M Disque
JPM Enterprises | East TN News | Independent Media Association | JPM Literary Agency
 

FluffBunny

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Mr. Disque, my apologies, but your post is extremely difficult for me to read. Are some parts of it quotes from emails to/from Sarah Book Publishing or you or your friend? If any parts of it are quotes, could you please edit it to make that clear either by using quotation marks or placing [ QUOTE] at the beginning of the quoted passage and [ /QUOTE] at the end (remove the spaces)? If you could also note who any quoted parts are to/from, it'd make it easier to parse. Something like this:

Hi (my friend),

Blah, blah, blah.

Yours,
SBP

Or:
Dear (my friend)

All kinds of text here.

Yours,
John

Your assistance would be greatly appreciated. Also, is yours a new agency? I was unable to find you or your agency listed on QueryTracker, Preditors & Editors, AAR or through Google. The closest hit I found was your agency's FB page and that seemed more concerned with social issues.

ETA: Disregard. Filigree seems to be having no problem with it. I'll blame my lack of reading comprehension on the Thera-Flu fuzzies or this nasty virus or both.
 
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LindaJeanne

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Mr. Disque, my apologies, but your post is extremely difficult for me to read. Are some parts of it quotes from emails to/from Sarah Book Publishing or you or your friend?
...
ETA: Disregard. Filigree seems to be having no problem with it. I'll blame my lack of reading comprehension on the Thera-Flu fuzzies or this nasty virus or both.

It took me some effort to parse it as well :). I almost posted to ask if he had gotten permission from the person that sent him that very detailed e-mail to post it publicly, until I realized he WAS the sender (rather than the recipient) re-posting it, sans info that would identify the recipient.

I agree that quote tags would make it easier to read; this is how I understood the post; hopefuly JMDisque will come back to correct things if I've mis-understood. :)

WRITERS BEWARE.
THIS IS JUST ONE REASON YOU NEED AN AGENT ----- AND WHY YOU HAVE TO STOP CELEBRATING AND HAVE PATIENCE

Hi (XXX-edit),

This is going to take a little while. I'm juggling about 30 issues.

Is this your first potentially-published book?

I'm a little leery because Kathleen is their only editor. A small publishing company can be a very good thing because they have to be very careful about what they spend their money on. It can also be a very bad thing because they may not have the money to market your book like it should be marketed. - So proceed with caution.

They sent you a standard contract.
Your negotiable issues at this point are: your primary rights, your secondary rights, the territory, the advance, your payout schedule, the royalty % (but I would be happy with what they offered on royalties <== this will not be true for your next book. Just for this book if it's your first book), and your subsidiary rights.

Everything else is boilerplate. (They'll be hard-nosed about it).

Have they offered you an advance? (This is money they send you to finish the work if it's not complete or to maintain your lifestyle while your waiting for them to get it on the shelves. It's like a loan that is subtracted from your royalty checks until it's paid back). Once you deposit that money you are signing and committing to the contract with or without your signature.
If they have not mentioned the advance - this is your first issue to question.
It will be anything between $2,000-$10,000. If they offer more than $10,000 they're convinced they have a very sellable product and are serious about the whole issue.

One of the good points about what they're doing is: they can get your work on the shelves in 3 months. That's a lot faster than most publishers.

I have not gone over the contract at all and will get back to soon (1-2 days) and I'll attempt to explain the terms I've mentioned in
easy-to-understand-English along with what you should ask for.

After reading the standard contract I wrote the following... - but, at that point, I had not read the author packet which is where all your concerns are.

The offer they’re making is valid for 2 months from the time they sent it to you.
It’s a standard contract. It’s not good and it’s not bad.

Because your book is poetry and does not have movie potential you don’t have to worry about that issue - but - if it told a story and was a novel or documentary – I wouldn’t sign it until they offered 50% of their movie rights.

Once you sign this and they receive it – they own all rights to your book for the next five years or until it goes out of print or they stop all aftermarket sales. Technically they could keep it listed on the internet forever, do nothing to market the book and continue to get 85% - 90% of the profit should you decide to self-market.

Your manuscript is due no later than 10 days from the time they receive the signed contract. This includes any pictures, illustrations or graphics or ideas for cover-art. / If you have ideas for the cover you HAVE to convey that issue now before they begin paying their cover people to begin working on it.

If you have pictures or artwork – the responsibility for purchasing these things is in your hands – not theirs. If one of your friends is giving you permission to use their work – you HAVE TO get this in writing to protect yourself in the future.

If anything is plagiarized (stolen excerpts, graphics, phrases “anything” the publishing company is not responsible and have put any potential lawsuits into your hands. You will be sued – not them.)

I would spend at-least a few weeks continuing to shop the book to bigger publishers with the first sentence of your cover-letter mentioning the fact that you have an offer from Sarah Book Publishing. They may offer 12/14/17% royalties or, in the very least – you’ll capture their attention for considering future projects.

From that point I read the author packet and you have a ton of red-light, and very questionable issues.

The above email is not professional advice and I’m under no legal obligation should the author (XXX-edit) become dissatisfied with my advice or the terms of the contract with SBP.

Don't do anything until you read my next email.
There’s a lot of red flags - --

After reading some pages of their books and going over the author packet - this appears to be a “print-on-demand company” paying you 10% for nothing, (with the possible exception of editing), that you couldn’t do yourself and get 30% for.

When searching for some of the vital company information you find a printer – not a publisher.

Your book will be in paperback until it reaches 2500 copies sold (At that point they MIGHT produce it in hard-cover if they feel it will continue to sell at the price it will take to justify the cost) but they only mention their website sales and other online sales. It looks like they’re putting the retail store sales and internet promotion, book signings and every other aspect of marketing into your hands.

QUOTE - "Although Sarah Book Publishing assists authors in various ways when marketing their book, and it is the author's responsibility to be proactive in this process as well. After all, nobody can market a book like the author himself or herself."

They mention the above a few times while mentioning premature comparison between themselves and other publishers.

After this – they mislead you about the cost of a publisher getting a book on the selves. The costs they represent may be the cost of YOU printing, binding and covering your book at 1-10 copies at a time but it’s not the cost of a large publishing company printing many thousands of copies. If it were – there’d be no books on the selves.

They make no mention of printing in mass quantity or selling your book to the bookstores unless you can get it on the shelves yourself, which you won’t be able to do.

Also – they use the term “one of our editors will be assigned to the author.” (XXX-edit), - they only have one editor and, from the samples I read of the books they own, the editing, if there has been any, is very poor.

When viewing a book publisher's website you’ll see them marketing the site to the readers and to bookstores while promoting their books and newest releases.
I’ve never seen a publishing website use all their time and energy attempting to get authors on-board and signed with them.

This company has only been in business since 2011 and, as far as I can tell, none of their staff has any experience in the publishing industry.

Basically - it looks like they're trying to take all the risk and work out of the publishing process and put it into your hands.

Being I do not represent you I’m not going to advise you on what to do. In this case it’s 100% up to you.

(XXX-edit) came to me for advice – not to officially represent him. He is a friend and not a client.

I, John M Disque, would not sign the contracts sent to me by Sarah Book Publishing, nor would I sign it for any of my clients until they rewrote the contracts and made their marketing intentions very clear - including bookstore marketing and distribution, hardcover marketing and distribution, mass production, book signing expenses and bookings, media releases and all other promotion, sales and distribution.

John M Disque
JPM Enterprises | East TN News | Independent Media Association | JPM Literary Agency
 

FluffBunny

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I read C++, but it has a lot more square and curly brackets and the occasional brocket, not to mention shorter lines. And, thankfully, usually while not on Thera-Flu. *goes for more tissues*
 

LaneHeymont

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Once one thousand (1,000) paperback copies of your book are sold, Sarah Book Publishing will consider converting it into a hardcover edition. Sarah Book Publishing must ensure that popularity and sales of the paperback version have covered the original cost of the paperback, prior to making the extensive expense on a hardcover edition. Please keep in mind that most publishers won’t even consider a book for hardcover unless the author is “known”, or the paperback has sold over ten thousand (10,000) copies in number. The publication process for hardcover editions will take at least 8 weeks.

Bolding mine. There's no way that can be true. A friend of mine just had her debut novel released by one of the 6 (5) in a hardcover only. So far, that is.

ETA: Took this from SBP's "submission guidelines."
 

JMDisque

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What are your questions?

I'm new here and learning the site.

A friend came to me with two contracts from Sarah and asked my advise. Or - in his words - "if it's a good deal."

I did not have time to rewrite and re-explain everything I wrote to him so I cut my three email responses to him and pasted them here so anyone searching for the same answers could find them here.

The standard contract was fine unless your book falls into certain categories but that contract itself is misleading and does not represent what this company is all about.

The second contract - "the Author Packet" magnifies the fact that they never intended to do much more than edit, print, bind, cover and list the book on the net while the author does the marketing.

Most authors are not marketing experts and do not have the contacts or time to sell thousands of books. They're agreeing to give 90% of retail sales to a publisher so they are free to do what they do best - write - while the publisher markets, sells thousands of copies of their books and do what they do best - publish.

If you're a great marketer - fine - sign with this company and they'll print and ship everything you can sell. If that's worth 90% to you you might want to see a shrink.
 

aliceshortcake

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Please keep in mind that most publishers won’t even consider a book for hardcover unless the author is “known”, or the paperback has sold over ten thousand (10,000) copies in number.

Oh, FFS. Why do outfits like Sarah Publishing tell this lie and why do people believe it? Spend half an hour browsing in your local bookstore and you'll find hardback novels by non-celebrity first-time authors. And haven't they noticed that hardbacks tend to be published BEFORE paperbacks?
 

DreamWeaver

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And haven't they noticed that hardbacks tend to be published BEFORE paperbacks?

That is pretty funny. Yes, the unbelievably vast majority of books that are published in hardcover are published in hardcover BEFORE they're published in paperback. The opposite situation is extremely rare.

Source: experience as a bookseller in a bookstore.

Caveat: there are a few books so popular that they have multiple hardcover and paperback editions over the course of years; The Lord of the Rings comes to mind, as well as many classics. That's completely different, of course.
 

aliceshortcake

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I sometimes wonder if the people who believe such nonsense spend much time in bookstores and libraries. I've often got the impression, particularly from the PA threads, that many vanity press victims are keen to be writers but don't do much reading.