I hope it does very well for you. Good luck!
I can't find it now but I recall seeing that they charge for marketing advice, and for editing. If I've got that correct then they are a vanity publisher.
How do they provide this support and advice? And how does their support and advice exceed that which a good trade publisher provides?
It is not true that a 50% royalty is unheard of in trade publishing. Be aware also that a 50% royalty can work out to no money in your hand at all if it's based on a dubious definition of net.
It's not true that authors with good publishers have to do their own marketing. If it were true, how would foreign and translation editions ever sell?
So they don't market or promote your book for you, and they don't edit books very well either. Nor do they have full distribution.
Are you sure that they are "more supportive and advisory than most"? Because at the moment they're looking pretty ropey to me.
New writers with no track records get picked up by big trade publishers all the time. All you need is a good book.
Networking with other authors is fun but it won't sell books. Why do they not encourage you to reach out to your potential readers instead?
I wish them the best too, but I see a lot of problems here.
I'll answer a few of these.
They don't charge for marketing advice or editing. I inevitably had to get a publicist (who was actually on the editorial staff of my literary magazine the entire time, but that's a different story) to promote my book for me, because I just can't maintain my platform, not when I have a life outside of writing and promoting. The publisher still does promote our books to a certain extent. We can submit posts, like blog posts and interviews and what not, to their website, and they'll display these on the front page of the website. They claim it gets thousands of views. I'm not going to comment on that because I really don't know.
We receive weekly e-mails about platform building, but it's more or less the same stuff, so I've just begun ignoring it all. Some advice includes reaching out to bloggers as a way of networking, reviewing each other's work (really?), or contacting the Amazon top 100 reviewers (really???).
As for the 50%, I can tell you I receive more money than books sold. My monthly royalty statements show me that, as well as my royalty checks.
You're right. We shouldn't do our own marketing. There is a big difference between marketing and promoting, though, and even big-time authors like John Green, Anne Rice, and what not still have to promote. This is why a lot of authors, even traditional ones, end up paying for a publicist. When I was researching publicists, I found a lot of bestsellers with traditional houses were with some publicists I was considering--until I found out the prices they charged. So I have a publicist who takes care of interviews, guest posts, reaching out to libraries/bookstores, and all of that stuff for me, which I wish AEC would do, but they gave up on the idea of putting our books in bookstores and libraries, which is infuriating, because I was promised that in the beginning. Instead my readers have had to order my book through their libraries and get it stocked in their bookstores themselves. I just maintain 2 blogs, a monthly newsletter, Twitter, and that's about it. I want to get back to my Youtube channel, because it's just fun, but, well, some things in life take priority over other things. I also have a website I update occasionally.
They do encourage us to reach out to our potential readers by seeking out those who may be interested in the genre and the market our books are in. I've found mine on Twitter and Tumblr: teens. On Tumblr, I encourage them to send me questions about anything they have, writing-related or not. On Twitter, I just casually talk to them, perhaps about their favorite books or whatever.
As for the not editing books well, I'm not quite sure where you're getting your opinion of this from. I've got great reviews for my book, and so do a few other authors--unless this is with the newer books, when the founder decided to step away. In which case, I haven't read those ones, so you may not be wrong. After all, I did say the quality of the company started to slip when the founder stepped away. But no complaints about the editing for my first book. Some reviewers with self-published books will say, "The editing wasn't that great, but the story was, so no complaints there!" Haven't had that. May not mean much, but books are meant more for readers and not editors after the book's been published, so it's the reader's opinion at the end of the day that matters. *shrugs* If a book is selling, a book is selling.
Their website leaves much to be desired, though, with little to no information for authors wanting to submit to them. They did have a full roster this year, but I have no idea about next. All I know is my sequel will have a release some time in 2015.