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Musa Publishing

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response time

I have a quick question about the response time for Euterpe, Musa's YA imprint.
I sent a query, synopsis and first twenty pages on March 16. I didn't receive a response, so I sent a follow up email on April 22, and still- no news one way or the other.
Should I be concerned? Is no news good news or does no news mean not interested?
 

VanessaNorth

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No, it's not the same. If you're paid an advance and the books don't sell, you still got paid. If you get the advance and the press decides not to publish the book, you still got paid. If you get the advance and the press goes under. You still got paid. Getting the money in advance and getting a royalty is not the same.

And paying royalties in advance before they are earned is a player in publishers going out of business, so....there's that.
 

Mustafa

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And paying royalties in advance before they are earned is a player in publishers going out of business, so....there's that.

Far more presses that don't pay advances go out of business than those that do. That said, I never said I was surprised that musa didn't pay advances. I was suprised that an agent would deal with a non-advance paying epub. Also, I took issue with mscelena's suggestion that she felt she was doing authors a favor by not paying advances. That's all
 

VanessaNorth

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Far more presses that don't pay advances go out of business than those that do. That said, I never said I was surprised that musa didn't pay advances. I was suprised that an agent would deal with a non-advance paying epub. Also, I took issue with mscelena's suggestion that she felt she was doing authors a favor by not paying advances. That's all

Agents will deal with publishers who can sell books. Period.
 

Mustafa

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Agents will deal with publishers who can sell books. Period.

Thank you, Vanessa, but I think you'll find that generally agents deal with publishers that authors can't get to on their own. And generally, those publishers offer advances.
 

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Many e-publishers don't offer advances and can offer higher royalty rates in the process, and many agents won't deal with e-publishers because they don't offer advances.
 

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I have a quick question about the response time for Euterpe, Musa's YA imprint.
I sent a query, synopsis and first twenty pages on March 16. I didn't receive a response, so I sent a follow up email on April 22, and still- no news one way or the other.
Should I be concerned? Is no news good news or does no news mean not interested?

We respond to every submission--or we should. Please email me directly at editor at musapublishing.com with your title and name and I'll look into it.
 

mscelina

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I find it interesting that this thread turned into a dogpile because Musa, like just about every other epub in the world, doesn't pay advances. So I spent some time browsing through epub threads in this forum, and didn't find a single like demand and/or furor about advances for those publications. Therefore, I respectfully opine that an epublisher who pays 50% royalties and pro rates for stories in its magazine, is paying at or above every comparable epublishing market.

And if that's not enough for some of you--well, I'm sorry you feel that way. My personal opinion is that Musa is doing enough and more than enough in comparison to other epublishers--and I do not feel that a ten-dollar advance is worth all this fuss.
 

Mustafa

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The dog pile, if that's what you're calling the few posts (most in your favor) on this subject, is not regarding you not paying advances. It's about your rationale: that it's better for the author. It seemed such an egregious display of ignorance that I was taken back by it.

I didn't intend this to be offensive. I was genuinely curious about the agents you deal with because it was my understanding that agents did not deal with non-advance paying presses. Clearly I was wrong. Veritas is a good agency. I can find almost nothing about Parkeast, but that is beside the point.
 

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Take Control books is a non-fiction mostly technical ebook publisher.

They pay no advance, and 50% of the purchase price minus vendor transaction fees of a book to an author.

The royalties are paid monthly via check. Each time a Take Control book is purchased from the publisher's site the author gets a notification of what book(s) were purchased, and from what state or country.

The vendor reports are compiled and sent out within 30 days of the vendor providing the data to the publisher.

I have to say, those checks which come in pretty much every month, are kinda nice. There's usually more sales in the first month or so after release, but a new release by the same author then results in more of the previous books being sold.

The absence of a hefty advance check for Take Control in my experience is countered by regular royalty checks starting within 30 days of the books release.

The agony of waiting for the various advance portions to arrive, and then waiting for the book to sell through is at least in my experience countered by the ease of receiving regular income for a selling book.
 
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For those of us who are not Gena Showalter or George R. R. Martin, and therefore probably will never score a huge advance, getting royalties off immediate e-pub sales is a good result. The whole 'I want money now!' game avoids the fact that an advance can be a bad trade-off for long-term royalties and favorable contract terms.

Let's say I have two mms. One took me 3 months to write, and 3 months to sell. A $500 advance on that would have been gravy, but not a deal-breaker either way. A $500 advance for a book that, off and on, took me 10 years to write is more of an insult. I'll aim it toward the Big Six, with agent help, and leave the little e-pubs out of the equation.

I'm not piling on the Musa dogpile for reasons about their no-advance policy, or supposed lack of street cred among agents (not true, as I can personally attest). I'll admit Musa has done some things I found mystifying. So I'll wait it out, send them short pieces, and see how they're doing a year on. If their business model works and they sort out those other issues, be sure I'll come up with something bigger to send them.
 

Mustafa

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For those of us who are not Gena Showalter or George R. R. Martin, and therefore probably will never score a huge advance, getting royalties off immediate e-pub sales is a good result. The whole 'I want money now!' game avoids the fact that an advance can be a bad trade-off for long-term royalties and favorable contract terms.

I'm not quite sure how to respond to that. It's not, get an advance or get favorable contract terms. You can get both. Well, I'm not familiar with epubs, so maybe that's how it is with epubs. If you look back at my posts, you'll see that I was never put off that musa didn't pay advances. I expected that they didn't. But no advance is not a good thing for authors in general.

Now, I really was going to just let this go, but mscelena's rep to me made me shake my head. It isn't me, mscelena who doesn't know what I'm talking about. Alow me to bold the points in your posts that you need to do more research on, shall I?


Right now, the risk is entirely Musa's. I have no intention of increasing that risk when we're still so young. I mean--surely, you realize what we're putting into each book, right? We're paying for cover art, interior design, editing, line editing, and formatting. We're paying for publicity and marketing. We're paying for website and IT costs. We're paying salaries. We're paying for ISBN registration. We're paying for everything.


For an epublished book? Sorry, but it makes perfect sense. Let's try this ONE MORE TIME--YOU CANNOT COMPARE AN E-PUBLISHER TO AN ESTABLISHED PRINT HOUSE. They're not the same thing at all. Authors turn to e-publishing for a number of reasons--and one of the main ones is for the monthly income. (Well, monthly at Musa at least. For some others, the income is quarterly) There are a couple of larger, older e-publishing houses that are paying token advances to some authors--but not many. Advances are not the normal status quo in digital publishing--because they aren't necessary. Publishers give advances against future earnings when they contract a book. Why? Because it takes anywhere from a year and a half to two years to get a book into print and out onto the market, and another half a year to a year to get paid for the first sales of that book. In epublishing, that wait is substantially less. Most of Musa is only at four months between contract and publication.

Therefore we don't pay advances, and we don't need to do so. I don't have a darn bit of trouble being held to a standard that is normal within our particular sphere of publishing. But I'm most certainly NOT going to be held to a standard that doesn't apply to the digital sector of publishing and one that our competitors/peers aren't held to. Musa will start paying advances when the other thousands of epublishers start to pay advances.
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With a 50% royalty rate? Seriously? Why would we need to pay an advance?

In epublishing, it is my OPINION that it's far better to begin getting royalties a month after publication than it is to give the author an advance and then let them sit around and twiddle their thumbs until the advance is paid off.
 
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Dude, seriously. As you posited earlier on your post, things are different in e-publishing. Learn a few more things about the business before you start telling somebody who's worked in the business a hell of a lot longer than you that they don't know what they're talking about.
 

VanessaNorth

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I'm not quite sure how to respond to that. It's not, get an advance or get favorable contract terms. You can get both. Well, I'm not familiar with epubs, so maybe that's how it is with epubs. If you look back at my posts, you'll see that I was never put off that musa didn't pay advances. I expected that they didn't. But no advance is not a good thing for authors in general.

Now, I really was going to just let this go, but mscelena's rep to me made me shake my head. It isn't me, mscelena who doesn't know what I'm talking about. Alow me to bold the points in your posts that you need to do more research on, shall I?

Look, you admit you don't understand the business model of epublishing, and then you act surprised that agents will work under that model, and suggest that mscelina doesn't understand the business model.

The fact is, epublishing is AWESOME for authors, whether they are going digital -first or launching their backlist into e-format for long-time fans, it is access to a very diverse and GROWING market.

Agents understand this. Publishers understand this.

The no-advance/higher royalty model has proven successful for all the epub giants, and it does not surprise anyone familiar with the industry when young publishing companies adopt already-proven models.
 

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Let's not derail this thread into a epublishing vs. print publishing debate, please. Mustafa asked a question. Celina has answered with Musa's position.

Let's move on.
 

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The Big 6 (such as Avon Impulse and Forever Yours) are also using the no advance/higher royalty with their digital-first lines.
 

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Mustafa, the purpose of rep points isn't for you to give other members instructions on how you want them to respond to you. I have nothing I wish to say to you privately, and therefore I haven't PMed you. Nor do I intend to. I prefer to reply to public posts in public.

Ontopic, Mscelina isn't wrong just because you say she is. Time will tell whether she is wrong. She has, after all, put her money where her mouth is.

So far, the demonstrable facts that e-published authors are happy with the current practices and that agents are submitting to e-publishers don't support your opinion that the practices are bad and that agents don't submit to non-advance-paying publishers.

E-publishing isn't for everyone. I daresay it's not for you. That's fine. It doesn't mean that people who have different goals and priorities from yours are wrong.
 

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I expected that they didn't. But no advance is not a good thing for authors in general.

For my part, the relative predictability of monthly royalties is a huge advantage. It can be tricky to figure out estimated taxes when your income is dependent on advances in lump sums, and the possibility of royalties.
 

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The advantage of an advance, to me, is that you get some sense that the publisher is confident that you will make at least SOME sales! It's hard to get reliable sales numbers, especially for new/small publishers, so if an e-publisher is willing to give me a $1000 advance, I appreciate it because it's an indication that they, with their knowledge of their sales numbers, think I'll be making at least that much money with them. Once I've worked with the publisher for a while, I have my own sales numbers to refer to and the advance becomes less important. But if I'm shopping between e-publishers to commit to and one of them is willing to commit back to me, at least a little, it's reassuring.

So, I prefer publishers who offer an advance. Obviously it's the publisher's decision whether they're able to or not, but when they can, it's nice to have.
 

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I don't see what this fuss is about. Either send your damn book to them or don't. It is Musa's choice as to whether they give advances or not.

Honestly, even if it was common in e-publishing, it wouldn't matter. Bottom line: Musa isn't even a year old yet, and simply does not have the funds lying around for them to give advances to authors.
 

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I don't see what this fuss is about. Either send your damn book to them or don't. It is Musa's choice as to whether they give advances or not.

Honestly, even if it was common in e-publishing, it wouldn't matter. Bottom line: Musa isn't even a year old yet, and simply does not have the funds lying around for them to give advances to authors.

Is it really a fuss? And is anyone saying that it's not Musa's choice?

I'm seeing this thread as just some people tossing some ideas around. I'm not sure why you have the perception that it's something more aggressive.
 

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Is it really a fuss? And is anyone saying that it's not Musa's choice?

I'm seeing this thread as just some people tossing some ideas around. I'm not sure why you have the perception that it's something more aggressive.

Not necessarily on this page (and not even you, by the way,) but on the last page there was some slight contempt.

And it's not necessarily fussing, but it does come off a little bit like a debate that had ran off the rails.