Favorite and Profitable Small Presses in SF&F

[soloset]

Heya all! I think triceratops made a very interesting suggestion over in the Capri Publishing thread that is deserving of its own thread.

Originally Posted by triceratops

Folks, I have been thinking about this issue for the past six months. We DESPERATELY need to define and list our favorite AND profitible small press publishers. I would love to create an entire thread that caters to SF and Fantasy, but maybe we can include them all. We need to list them and examine their operations, as far as can be gleaned from current authors that have books out by these companies. How would we define a legitimate, worthwhile small/independent press?

Small advance ($200 and up?)
Catalog
Returns
Large to deep discount? 45% to 60%
National distributor?
Offset print run or POD?
Fair contract
Good royalty percentage with esculating clause?

I think you get the idea. Because of the internet, just about anybody can now own their own label, and many of them start by publishing their own books. This can be a mine field. I'm seeing literally hundreds of these small outfits that function a few notches above PA, and more are appearing every day! I've fallen into a few ruts myself, as I currently have a trunk novel under submission with some of them.

Is anybody up for this type of list? We can call it the best 50 independent labels, and perhaps have a seperate catagory for e-pubs.
Anybody with me on this?

Tri

Depending on what format triceratops had in mind, I can provide some modest but sturdy webmastering talents. But I'm not exactly "in touch" with the market (besides what I read here, that is).

What? I did my BIC for the day already! (Mostly.)

[triceretops]

Soloset--thanks for bringing this over here. We need this badly. For the past six months I've been tripping all over myself investigating small press and indies. We're also facing a POD stigma, and that does not mean that all of them are incompetent or lacking in industry knowledge--but a HUGE percentage of them are, by masquerading as legitiment presses, when in fact they are labels for their own books. (Reagent Press comes to mind as a fake front, IMO). I'd like to include "horror" pubs in on this since many times that genre is listed with SF and Fantasy.

Some criteria to consider:

Small advance ($200 and up? Or do we really need it, if given a large enough royalty percentage with (some) guaranteed book store placement?
Catalog
Book store placement
Returns
Large to deep discount? 45% to 60%
National distributor/s?
Offset print run or POD?
Fair contract (No major rights grabs)
Good royalty percentage with esculating clause?
Able to obtain reviews in recognized trade sources?

Okay, we certainly don't have to have all of this on our plate, but it would define a publisher that we'd be proud to represent with one or more of our books. I've also noticed a select few small niche publishers who require agents--we can eliminate this bunch if you wish.

I'm off to do some research. I'll be back with some of my favs. For the time being, I'll list Behler and Nomad, even though they are not in this genre. Just thought our newbies should know these two examples since they are represented here by active members, who have a ton of savvy about real publishing.

MUNDANIA--I've always like this press. They seem to be growing by leaps and bounds--getting very big for their britches. I'm not sure if they offer small advances--perhaps they would if approached by an agent, who had a knife in one hand and a money bag in the other. I think they have some pretty good distribution channels and some book store placement. They are so popular they are inudated. But they are well worth the effort and wait on replies.

NIGHT SHADE BOOKS:
Main Office
Night Shade Books
1423 33rd Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94122
Phone: 415-759-8901
Fax: 603-590-2754
night@nightshadebooks.com

Authors

Night Shade is actively seeking submissions, primarily novels. We are looking specifically for science fiction, fantasy and cross-genre novels, but we'll also take a look at dark fantasy novels.

We are not accepting proposals for anthologies. We do them very rarely, and generally they will be developed in-house.

Short story collections are by invitation only. That means we will contact the authors we are interested in talking about collections with.

We are not accepting any horror submissions at this time. We don't publish a lot of horror, and horror is 95% of the manuscripts we receive. If it's cross-genre and horrific, we'll look at it.

We are not accepting poetry, individual stories, non-fiction, crime, or mainstream fiction. We like those as well, but that's not what Night Shade does.

Submissions must be emailed to submissions@nightshadebooks.com. We are no longer accepting printed manuscripts. Length should be 70,000-120,000 words. We do not care what font you use, or whether it's double-spaced. Please include a synopsis in the body of the email, and please attach the ENTIRE manuscript as an RTF file. We're not looking for queries or sample chapters. Unless you email us the entire manuscript with a synopsis, we're just going to delete the email.



Tri

[soloset]

Originally Posted by triceretops

I'd like to include "horror" pubs in on this since many times that genre is listed with SF and Fantasy.

Excellent idea!

I think all of the criteria you've listed are fairly doable; I don't see any information on there that a reputable company wouldn't want to share.

The only thing I'd change is to give "bookstore placement" its own line. <g> I think it's a hugely important part of making a decision which small pub to go with.

Oh, and one more -- has the publisher published anything not by the founder of the publishing house. That's one of those things I know I'd want to know up front.

[triceretops]

Thanks, I just included book store placement (slaps forehead). Also, there are quite few small publishers that have exstensive message boards, and I don't know how effective this is in terms of sales. I guess it certainly couldn't hurt since the audience is built in and the members support each other via purchases. Black Death Books comes to mind--kind of a nice little horror press with a lot of enthusiasm. Addmitedly, some of the Black Death authors I've talked to have said that distribution could be better, since they feel "cut loose" after publication. But this is certainly a trend we see in most POD.

I think what we're looking for is a POD that does a fair to good amount of marketing, which is an entire department by itself.

ETA: Yes, I think that a publisher who uses their own press for his/her own books, or invites a close knit few friends in on the operation, probably doesn't harbor the sincerest concerns for the general author audience. It's a question that should be addressed.

Tri

[Popeyesays]

There are a lot of E-publishers who also produce tradeback versions of the book for sale and sitribution:

Ellora's Cave
Whiskey Creek
Chippewa Publishing
and a lot of others--are they in the ball park?

Regards,
Scott

[triceretops]

Good observation, Scott. I forgot about the publishers who are, and have gone in both mediums. EC is certainly one of the brightest stars coming up, as well as the others you mentioned.

Tri

[triceretops]

Ooooh, I like ArcheBooks! I would qualify them as a MEDIUM publisher, but they do require an agent. An AW member has gone this route successfully, and I'm impressed with the layout and production.

Tri

[victoriastrauss]

Archebooks has a nonstandard contract, and according to a number of authors who've contacted Writer Beware with complaints and documentation, its marketing and distribution capacity appears to be somewhat south of iUniverse's. Authors report sales in the double digits, and have had trouble getting royalties for even that tiny amount. Except for one, who seems to be connected with the publisher's owner, all the "agents" I've found who work with ArcheBooks are questionable in some way.

There's an extensive thread about ArcheBooks in Bewares.

- Victoria

[triceretops]

Thanks for the heads up, Victoria. I'll go check it out. Matter of fact, I'll check our bewares beforehand.

Tri

ETA: Okay ArcheBooks looks like it's had some problems with timely royalty payments and production schedules. This is fairly recent news and unless they've changed policy, you'll have to have your agent negotiate any flaps or doodles out of the contract. Their distribution channels are questional. Seems like they publish hardback and e-book only.

[JulesJones]

Add Loose Id to the list of epublishers with some print books and bookstore placement. My publisher, so I have a vested interest, but I also had a vested interest in going to check whether the distribution deal with Borders was actually resulting in books in bricks-n-mortar stores, and it was. No advance, but I mention them because they have a specific interest in cross-genre erotic romance and are looking for sf/fantasy/horror romance.

[Alan Yee]

And of course, there is Small Beer Press, run by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant. Their books get reviewed in Publishers Weekly and other venues, there's an extremely enthusiastic and dedicated audience who specifically likes Small Beer's books, they get lots of word-of-mouth publicity among writers, and I think independent bookstores tend to stock their books. To really understand what they like, you have to be familiar with their books (of which they only publish 3-6 per year). They tend toward weird, quirky fantasy for novels. They publish Kelly Link's short story collections, novels, the chapbook series, full-length story collections, some non-fiction, and some other weird-but-cool stuff.

[triceretops]

Thanks Jules and Alan. Duly noted. I think good reviews, distribution leading to at least some book store placement qualifies for what we're talking about. More and more we're seeing the no advance policy, so I suppose we're going to have to take it on the chin as far as this goes regarding the small press.

The biggest argument that I see will be the authors that are dead set against POD, who see no future in it at all, and those of us who see an alternative, but certainly with limitations restraints.

Tri

[victoriastrauss]

A few additional small/independent SF/fantasy presses in the US and UK that are respected within the SF/fantasy community:

- Prime Books
- BenBella Books
- Gale Group/Five Star (they sell mainly to the library trade, but do a good job of marketing and production. They're handled by a packager, which makes for a somewhat less attractive contract)
- Edge/Tesseract (this Canadian publisher does a very nice job, but is reportedly quite slow on turnaround)
- Red Deer Press (also Canadian; may specialize in Canadian authors, but worth a look)
- Golden Gryphon Press (mostly does collections, but seems to be branching out into novels)
- Meisha Merlin
- Monkeybrain Books
- Tachyon Publications
- Wheatland Press
- Earthling Publications
- PS Publications
- Cemetery Dance (does mostly horror)
- Telos Publishing

- Victoria

[victoriastrauss]

Re: the POD issue--many of the small presses in my previous message use POD, or use a combination of POD and offset. However, as a publisher becomes successful--in the sense of increasing its sales--it will move away from POD, because POD has a higher unit cost, and if you're printing in volume, offset is more cost-effective. If a publisher uses POD exclusively, that tells you something about its average level of sales per book.

- Victoria

[triceretops]

Thank you so very much, Victoria, for this list. I didn't have the courage to bug you for your recommends, but certainly you have the files, intelligence, and inate knowledge to know who can pass muster.

I agree with you about the offset print issue. If a small press is gaining any headway in the business of popularity and sales, I would think that eventually trading over to offset would be a good indicator of success, via public demand. Afterwards, who knows, small advances could follow, more distribution, more frequent and better reviews=larger readership=more sales.

I think it was Comstar that said they first started out with offset print runs, but then later decided that POD was the way to go. I can't help thinking that this reason for the switch had something to do with lack of sales and other provisions that were not intack. Kinda like one step forward and two steps back.

Tri

[triceretops]

Ah, crud. The list above is so popular that most of them are closed to subs, two are book sellers (it appears), one is canadian writers only, and one is for horror. They all look very, very good. But alas, we'll have to keep our eyes on their websites for reading and query announcements.

tri

[victoriastrauss]

Which two appear to be booksellers? I saw books from all these publishers except for Red Deer Press this past year.

- Victoria

[Alan Yee]

Victoria, I was up in Vancouver this summer, and in one of the Chapters bookstores I picked up a brand-new anthology of stories based on Canadian songs and legends.

Mythspring, edited by Julie E. Czerneda and Genevieve Kierans. It was published by Red Deer Press this year, but since it's of Canadian-only interest, it's probably not found in as many U.S. bookstores.

So Red Deer Press is still alive, as of August of this year.

[triceretops]

Hi, Victoria PS pubs takes me to Wriggly Cross books which seems to be a seller of titles. I don't know if I'm hitting the right webiste or not, but that's where it took me.

Monkey Brain shows no submission or author info. Just a tiny website about distribution and titles. I can't glean too much from them unless they have another website I haven't seen.

Tri

[triceretops]

Golden Gryphon is totally legit. We're in contact with Gary, but he's not ready to read yet.

Ben Bella books (glenn Yeffeth)--My agent submitted to them. But I'm confused. They list themselves as a science publisher of non-fiction only. Unless I'm missing something here.

Lou Anders of Promethus checks out okay, but he rejected me with a referal to Baen.

Tri

[triceretops]

PLEASE NOTE: Due to our government funding and grants, we are limited to publishing books that are written or illustrated by Canadians and that are about or of interest to Canadians.

This is Red Deer Press.

Tri

[Popeyesays]

Mesiha Merlin is probably an excellent press but this message has been displayed under submissions since last Paril:
SUBMISSIONS
AUTHORS
Meisha Merlin is currently not accepting submissions. Due to an increase in our work load with the new Heinlein project and the past reshuffle of previous projects with Diamond Distributions, we will not be accepting submissions for new work.
Please check back with us at a later time. (There is no such thing as sending submissions in early to get in line). If you have any questions, please email me. And please...no queries via email.

[Popeyesays]

"- Gale Group/Five Star (they sell mainly to the library trade, but do a good job of marketing and production. They're handled by a packager, which makes for a somewhat less attractive contract) "

Five Star was prompt getting back to me after a full manuscript, but they were not terribly interested in sci-fi at that time, that was last June.

[Popeyesays]

Edge Books says they are reading submissions at this time:

"Writer's Guidelines

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Printer-friendly version

We are currently seeking high-quality novel-length science fiction and fantasy submissions of all types. We are not interested in young adult, horror, erotica, religious fiction, short stories, dark/gruesome fantasy, or poetry.

Manuscripts should be written in good taste and be aimed at an older (aged 20 and up), well-read, mature audience. We prefer novels of between 75,000 and 100,000 words, although we occasionally accept longer works. We work with new and established authors.

We particularly like stories with:
depth and insight
great writing
original ideas
interesting characters who have believable behaviors, motives, and relationships
believable dialogue
strong plots
solid science or magic systems
unique settings
well designed, innovative alien life forms and environments, and
richly detailed and original cultures.
Please be sure that you send us the best version of your work. Before you submit your work (see requirements below), your novel should be complete (not a work-in-progress) and have already undergone extensive editing and revisions."

They weren't when I was submitting Sword of the Dajjal.

Regards,
Scott

[Popeyesays]

Tachyon posts this in their FAQ:

"Question: How do I submit my manuscript/artwork?


Unfortunately, we are not taking writing submissions at this time, as our publishing schedule is set for a while. We recommend that you check out the excellent Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website: www.sfwa.org. Please do check back at our website, as we hope to take submissions again soon.

Happily, we *are* taking art submissions. Please don't send us attachments, as, like everyone else, we won't open them unless we already know you. If you can point us to a link on your website, that'd be optimal. "

This has been the case since last May.