Parker Publishing

They've been around for a while; I'm familiar with the name and a few of their authors, though I can't speak absolutely as to the quality of their work.

But they have been in business for at least three or four years now. How much weight that carries, and how much it carries with respect to the general footprint of the company in terms of being well-known, is up to you.

I recognize both the publisher name, and a few of the author names. As Stacia said, they've been around for at least a few years. And they've managed that without any major online kerfuffles (that I know of anyway).

They're also hitting a niche market, and have been since the beginning, with no apparent interest in branching. Niches may not always see fabulous sales, but they do have a tendency to garner loyal readerships.

A kerfuffle? http://marciacolette.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/do-not-buy-this-book/

My main impression of them comes for the Hollowstone shenanigans and the fact that when I last checked their print copies on Amazon were coming out through Createspace, with Createspace listed as a the publisher. I can't say that created a great impression in my mine but I never really looked into it.

I had no idea that they published Hollowstone (for those who missed the shenanigans, it's a book from an author who has said some hurtful and insensitive things in pretty high-profile online venues, and who then marshalled a legion of sockpuppets and sycophants in his own defense when people brought it up in relationship to his book and some of the insensitivities and prejudices they saw there).

Yeah, having "CreateSpace" listed instead of your publishing house's name isn't very professional--it was probably a matter of someone filling out one of Amazon's confusing screens wrong, but it seems to me that not fixing that speaks to a lack of attention to detail that I wouldn't be comfortable with in a publisher.

If the post from Marcia Colette that Bubastes linked to is accurate, that's another big red flag.

Their titles appear to be distributed through Atlas Books, which doesn't have a good reputation. They are known for taking on POD and self published authors and as such, they have very low sales power in the marketplace. Their Bookscan numbers (not reliable) are very low.

It's a small thing, but on their books, they call the ISBN an sku, which is incorrect. Yes, the ISBN and sku are both identifiers, but you don't refer to a book's sku because bookstores put their own barcode on their stock. You always refer to a book's ISBN. It's a nitpicky thing, but, well, there it is.

Any recent experience with this place? Given that my lead and 3/4 of the supporting cast of my horror novel is black, their Isis imprint seems like a natural place to submit if it's worth submitting to.

The Hollowstone author, Dennis Upkins, just released another book through Parker Publishing: West of Sunset. The back cover of the book has numerous grammatical errors, and in particular includes the sentence:

In Keepers, Brecken is enlisted to aid the Jacob and Joshua Phoenix; twins, the last Pyrians, the last of an ancient race.

Click to expand...

[all errors in original]

As such, it looks like Parker doesn't do a very good job of copyediting, among other things. I wouldn't trust them.

Ouch. The rest of that blurb isn't much better.

"All your blurbs are belong to us."