AEC Stellar Publishing

Adding to your comment, aliceshortcake: a poorly-edited book is likely to have problems with its storyline, not just with its spelling and punctuation. And that's definitely going to put people off.

aliceshortcake said:

I don't understand this at all. If I buy a book I expect it to have been edited to a professional standard - however good the story may be I can't enjoy it if I have to overlook wrongly used words, incorrect spelling or wonky punctuation. And if a book is very poorly edited I'll avoid both the author and the publisher in future.

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I had to stop reading a book because I found OVER 60 ERRORS in the first 100 pages. I didn't set out to find them; they were that glaring. Inconsistencies in formatting (a title was "in quotes" then later in italics then "in quotes"; punctuation didn't match; line spacing; etc.) killed the entire book for me. I really, really wanted to like it because I liked the premise but that many errors just put me off it completely.

Then the most egregious of all: the author's name was misspelled in the bio at the back.

aliceshortcake said:

I don't understand this at all. If I buy a book I expect it to have been edited to a professional standard - however good the story may be I can't enjoy it if I have to overlook wrongly used words, incorrect spelling or wonky punctuation. And if a book is very poorly edited I'll avoid both the author and the publisher in future.

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You would be surprised. I've seen it around Goodreads. I've read poorly edited self-published books that have received great praise with readers saying, "If you're not a Grammar Nazi, this book is great!" But the errors are SO glaring!

Some readers don't have a solid grasp of grammar and spelling, so they may not *see* many errors. Or care.

I can usually spot them by the errors in their reviews (grin). But they read books, too - and even inadvertently, their reviews might help more-alert readers.

Even people who don't have a solid grasp of grammar or punctuation are put off by poorly edited and typeset text. They might not realise why they don't like a particular book, but they will still put it down and buy something else.

I am here to update that sadly AEC has closed its doors because the publisher could no longer handle the business side of things. It didn't close due to financial reasons; however, I can't presume to know why AEC couldn't have been bought by anyone else or whatever, but I know it was a hard decision on my publisher's behalf.

I'm not sad about it at all. I simply see When Stars Die traveling on a new journey. I have several houses lined up who I know take pre-published work. WAMM is one of them, even though the covers REALLY turn me off; however, the publisher assured me the covers are being changed, books have won awards, the business has been around for about 3-4 years, and from reading AW, you guys seemed to have given your stamp of approval. Even so, books one and two already have gorgeous covers, and you're all probably going to beat me in the head, but I darn well will pay for the third cover for the book since the previous cover designer is the only one who can do right by the third, unless WAMM can come up with something a zillion times better--or they BETTER pay for the cover themselves. No one can replicate the template or whatever that has already been set in place for the trilogy. Book 2 already has a cover. It just never had the chance to be published.

I have all of my rights back, so that was a very smooth transition. Now I simply have to wait for all distributors to remove my book before querying. You can't buy Kindle on Amazon anymore, and you can't buy anything from Smashwords. However, the print is still on Amazon, both e-book and print are on B&N, and e-book is still on Kobo, so I have to simply wait and prod my publisher about it. Last-day sales were on the last day of January, but I wanted to opt out as soon as possible to get this journey started.

Make no mistake. AEC treated it really well, but it's time for a new path. One door closes, another opens. That's my attitude. If you guys have more publishers to recommend who accept pre-published books, I will be eternally grateful. I know WAMM does. I'm not certain about Month9Books or Curiosity Quills, but both of those are on my list and it doesn't hurt to try.

Thanks for the existence of this thread. It has allowed me to communicate my experiences with them. I will admit the copy edits for The Stars Are Infinite were awful due to a new copy editor coming on board, as my proofreader actually had to fix the copy editor's errors that were added in, so it's likely for the best. I know WSD will find a new home, and I am excited about the new adventure it will be going on. This trilogy is not something I will drop because of a roadblock, but I will have to write an actual query letter for it, as AEC accepted a partial due to a simple pitch. So I'm looking forward to you guys helping me out with it!

Michael Drakich said:

Take it from my own experience. Amazon will never remove the print copy. Like you, I had a previous publisher and that relationship ended with me getting my full rights returned. Amazon's position is that the old version must stay up because of returns. They may also have a copy or two unsold. That's life.

Barnes & Noble require an actual email from you requesting the old copies to be removed. Simple to do. Don't rely on an out-of-business publisher to do it. More than likely, that individual just wants top put everything out of sight and mind.

KOBO will eventually remove it. They're just slow. I don't know why.

Good luck on your re-start!

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Thanks so much for the advice! I greatly appreciate this.

Sorry to hear this, but glad to see you are moving forward.

Please make sure you have your reversion in writing from the publisher, rather than just a quick email promising you a reversion, or worse, a promise via the phone that they'll do it.

Yep. As one of my cousins, an old country lawyer, puts it, "if it ain't in writing, it ain't real."

Old Hack said:

Please make sure you have your reversion in writing from the publisher, rather than just a quick email promising you a reversion, or worse, a promise via the phone that they'll do it.

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Yep! I got all of that. Thanks for supporting me, you guys.