*snipped for brevity*
Having self-published a print book, I'd rather not do it again. Yes, I made it a success. But self-publishing is a business, and all that running a business entails. I'd much rather let Musa or other publisher do that if the royalty percentage made it worth it. Musa seems to get that, whether their cut is 20% or 35%, but in the end, can they give an author a fair shot in the marketplace? I have no idea. Celina?
You've only made ONE post at AW and it's about Musa--and coupled with the expectation that
I personally answer your questions despite the fact that I got home from the hospital yesterday..
I feel honored.
However, I'm drugged out of my mind right now so let me try to help you out here before my mother-in-law/guardian-supposed-to-keep-me-from-working comes in here and catches the laptop open.
1. With that in mind, I'd like to know the percentage of books MUSA rejects?
We are currently accepting about 5 percent of manuscripts submitted to us at Musa. The ratio at Penumbra is, obviously, quite a bit lower. At the eMag, we're accepting 5-8 stories/poems out of over 500 submitted per issue.
2. Can Musa get their books to reviewers? With the amount they are publishing each month, this seems difficult to me. Musa, on its own, could bury any reviewer on any given day.
Yes. We send our books out to over 100 review sites (quite a few genre specific) including Publishers Weekly, RT, Coffee Time, Night Owl et cetera et cetera et cetera, and are now preparing our literary and speculative fiction lines to move to ARCs. According to the schedule I've set up for my staff, I expect Musa to go completely to ARCs by the end of June.
Self-published books are notoriously difficult to get reviewed. On a side note, you want to make sure your tagline, blurb and excerpt are designed to attract interest in the story from both readers and reviewers. Musa had a huge head start with reviewers because we already had a good working relationship with them while at our previous publishing house. And we had multiple titles pick up 'best of' nominations at two houses: LR&M and TRS, and winners at both review sites too.
3. How does Musa decide on the cover price? What does the average book sell for?
We sell our books based upon length, from 99 cents for a short story (under 15k) to 5.99 for 100k or above. Our books are spread fairly evenly throughout the spectrum of our price range.
4. mscelina, in one post, says "what we do for our 20%." As I read the contract, I'm a bit confused on this one. If the author gets 50% of sales and Musa 50% of sales from the 70% that Amazon pays, for example, isn't that 35%? As I read the contract, it isn't 50% of the cover price (which would put Musa's cut at 20% as mscelina said). Only on Musa's site does the author royalty rise to a true 50% of the cover price, but that's still 50% going to Musa. I don't have a problem with Musa's royalty system. After being with a big traditional publisher, that seems fair, but I don't get her 20% comment. Can anyone enlighten me? No matter how I do Musa's math, I can't find where they take this little.
*sigh* When you self-publish at Amazon, the author receives 70% of the royalties if they're lucky and hit all the right buttons. Length, style, and whatever other arbitrary things Amazon decides when it determines the royalty rate a book sale will pay out at. Some books only get 35% royalties whether it's self-pubbed or e-pubbed. At Musa, authors get 50%. 70 minus 50 equals 20%. So for that 20%, the author gets a professionally done cover, interior book formatting, formatting and coding to create the ebooks, editing, line editing, proofing, promotions, marketing, distribution to reviewers et cetera et cetera et cetera--all the stuff a self-pubbed author has to either do himself or pay someone else to do.
5. I know Musa is new, but what is their best seller? How many units in total do they move a month?
Well, that's hard to calculate, because we don't have all those numbers right at the end of the month from all the distributors we use, but I'll give it a whirl, using the fourth quarter sales numbers.
Our top selling book was released on December 8. Through the end of the year, the title sold 223 copies at ARE, 122 at Amazon at 70% royalties, 78 at Bookstrand, 8 at Amazon 35%, 4 at Amazon UK, single digits at the other sites that have already reported their fourth quarter sales to us (the other Amazons, Diesel, Barnes and Noble, all the Apple stories, Rainbow and Smashwords), and 56 at the Musa home site.
(Those numbers are, by the way, available to that author on the Delphi database, which allows an author to access their sales figures as soon as we get them posted or as soon as a purchase is made on the site.)
These numbers will rise in the early part of 2012 as more people become aware of Musa and as this author gets closer to his next release. The best-selling book on the Musa website is an entirely different book by an entirely different author--a true historical fiction (non-romance) which has sold 63 copies to date.
The trend I've noticed at Musa over the last few weeks is that our sales percentages are continuing to rise. Our sales numbers at Amazon for the first six weeks of 2012 have increased in the double digits percentages for the last six weeks of 2011--superseding my stated sales goal by over 10%.
6. The Musa contract doesn't mention ancillary rights. Does the author retain 100%? I assume so.
Musa asks for electronic rights and North American print rights. All other rights remain with the author.
7. If a title sells enough units to justify a print run, does Musa have a distributor? Not a wholesaler. A distributor with a sales force.
Since at the moment we are only publishing electronically and have no immediate plans to move to print runs in the next few months, no we don't have a distributor. When we DO go on to print runs, however, we won't print withOUT a distributor.
8. Does the author have final say on anything? Focal took my great cover that sold thousands of copies, and did a cheap copy of it. Don't ask me why. They also changed the interior to save 20 pages on their print run. It had a negative outcome as far as I'm concerned. Does the Author have a right to say "No" to cover/interior design at Musa? Do you work with authors in that way?
Musa retains final approval of all cover art that goes out under our branding. We coordinate the author and the artist to create covers that both parties are happy with. So we work closely with the artist to develop the vision/aesthetic he wants for his book. However, at some point in the process someone has to have the last and final say. At Musa, and with most other publishing companies, that final say is delivered by the art director.
as for this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarieSalvros
I'm not triing to be negative. I hope musa turns out to be really good. It just seemed like there was alot of cheerleading in here becasue the owner is a longstanding member of this board and I didn't think the cheering was related to anything other than, "this is a friend of mine."
good luck to all the authors I hope you come back in a year and tell us about your experience.
Originally Posted by LillyPu
Why the kid gloves for Musa? A red flag is a red flag. I don't get it. Would only a new person recognize this 'rallying around'? I understand it, but is it genuine to the service AW provides for all of us? Sorry, I don't mean to get in the middle of anything... But as an 'outsider' I'm seeing something that's off.
LMAO! You guys think Musa has gotten the kid glove treatment? Anyone will tell you that if you're talking trash about my family, cats, or friends, gloves won't be necessary. A person without fingers can wear mittens. But this?
This is BUSINESS. Perhaps you're misconstruing the obvious respect that I have for some of the denizens of AW for some kind of pay off. Maybe you think that because Old Hack or Stacia or Uncle Jim are questioning my publishing house that I'm going to get insulted and raise hell. Maybe even you DO think that "I recommend that you not publish with Musa at this time" is some kind of preferential treatment or something. That's fine by me. But don't try to make it look like Musa is getting a free pass here. We aren't. Hell, I don't WANT one. And, quite frankly, I don't NEED one.
We started Musa the DAY we ditched AMP because of business practices we were uncomfortable with. We had business model and plan sketched out for implementation at that previous house, and just put the plan into action (with some modifications) at Musa. We bought the line I'd personally conceived, developed and built from the publisher to anchor our early catalog, and opened to submissions. Some writers were invited to submit to us; most were just general submissions after Musa was announced at Duotrope and Ralans and other submissions information sites. The staff that I'd vetted, tested, and brought on to the former publisher happily came to Musa as the horrors of the financial situation that house was in became general knowledge.
We started out big for a few reasons--we had the staff to do it, we wanted the company to generate a lot of notice, and we wanted a strong foundation of sales to build from. Our first three releases were written by well-known trade published authors: popular romance writer Cindi Myers with a new book to add to her incredible backlist of stories I'd edited for her at Aurora, popular sci fi/romance author Gini Koch and her rabid fan base, and USA Today bestselling author Sharon De Vita, who returned to publishing after a five year hiatus with a completely different type of book--one her old publishers had no interest in. We also launched our e-magazine on the same day, and reissued the Aurora Regency line we'd bought. So we started with over FORTY titles--more than 10% of that four hundred everyone is so worried about.
We didn't just wake up one day and pull Musa out of our asses. We started Musa with a business plan, with concrete and reasonable goals, with a substantial start-up financial war chest, with the best contract I could provide that would keep us solvent, and with writers and staff that were willing to trust us to implement their vision. We literally stepped from one house to another without missing a step--and because our business plan had been developed to SOLVE the problems of a struggling publisher, we were able to go full steam ahead almost immediately.
That includes the editing process (minimum of two full content edits, a historical edit/fact checking, line edits, proofreading and galleys), where in the beginning I had to train my editors off some bad "other house" techniques as well as editing myself. That includes the interior book designer, who is flat out one of the best in digital publishing. That includes the IT staff, who've developed a database for every aspect of a publication schedule as well as a royalties calculation system which permits our authors to know where they sold every book on each pay period. That includes our art department, who not only create book covers, but all the websites and blogs, all the promotional art, all the artists' promotional art PLUS the magazine. That includes our marketing/promotions department who are currently putting together multiple genre-specific marketing campaigns for Musa AND Penumbra--with print ads upcoming in major periodicals or on big sites, radio interviews, and organized social media and networking. That includes our interns, who give us a few hours a week in exchange for hands on training, professional credits in art, editing, or the e-magazine, our Master Class program (open to authors and staff too) where twice a month we have industry professionals do workshops on various aspects of publishing including the Writer Beware 'How Not To Get Published' presentation and upcoming workshops in March--one with an agent, the other with a bestselling author on character development.
So you see--THAT'S why I don't need any kid gloves and why these folks aren't giving me any. I'll let Musa stand on its own merits, and it doesn't affect my respect for my friends in B&BC in the slightest. I'll answer any questions that are legitimate and not obvious attempts to start pissing matches, and I'll do so while being as professional and courteous as they are.
But, since this answer was an epic and my incision is really screaming at me to lie down--not to mention the MIL shaking her finger at me from the door for sneaking my laptop open when I'm supposed to NOT sit up for a few weeks, the other questions will have to wait until I can go back through the thread for a little ways. I'll try to get to more of these tomorrow.