My Journal #2

Vanity Press or Quick Pubishing?

April is here. The tulips and other spring flowers are blooming in spite of the lack of sunshine in the Pacific Northwest. I want to pass on something that happened over the past two weeks.

Last week I got a voicemail from Rebel Press. Nice Jon called and left a message. He called while I was at work so I didn't pick it up. I tried to call back but the wait time was too long. I hung up.
Jon happened to catch me at lunch when he called again. He introduced himself. I never did ask how he found my name and number.  After some conversation about what he was asking it came down to questions he didn't want answer or didn't know how to. He called the backup or the big guns. Ken, the entrepreneur, then pumped out information about how he started his publishing company to be the Next Generation of publishers. He would in fact have editors and proofreaders as well as people to help make my manuscript ready for publishing. They have access to audio readers and a store to sell your books on. They also will list them on all the big name on-line stores.
I listened but Ken had to rush off to his plane connection and I had to get back to work. After another call that lasted almost the length of my lunch, it was decided that I talk to them after work.

Now my conversations were with Ken. Jon listened. Ken said Jon was the "closer."  I think he just did the paper work.  Ken is Charismatic and a good salesmen. He sounds honest and that he genuinely wants you to succeed. I asked a lot of questions since I'd already had one unpleasant experience with a publisher.  He promised they weren't like that. After the conversation that evening I came down with this this idea of how Rebel Press works.

You pay up front for your manuscript to be readied for publishing. My guess is its a minimal workup I read a couple of books they published and there were simple things that needed to be tightened. The over use of "was", "were," "had and had been", "that," and "this."  When you're reading and a paragraph is filled with these words, they act as road bumps in the story. A rewrite and training to use other words to eliminate their over usage, makes the story tight, and clean.

They offer an audio version of your book at an extra cost. So the initial cost includes What? set up of your social media platform if you don't have one. This is free to you anyway and if you don't have one, you probably aren't selling your books anyway. I'm not sure what you actually get for their lowest package (Silver).

Here is what you are required to do if you want to supplement your payment.  Let's say you agree to their price. That means your part will be $780.* (aprox) a month for 8 months. You also have to pay around $70.00 a month on top of that. I'm not clear about that fee.  You can write a minimum of 2-250 word "articles" per week which they pay you for. This can be from $200-700.00 depending on how many you write. You then need to post them on your Facebook, linkedin, twitter, WordPress and any other social media accounts you have. The more followers you have or garner in the process the more they pay you. (that's my supposition)

What they are doing is setting up a platform to announce your book launch. They are hoping all the people following you will buy a book. Once they publish your book and it goes on all the big book sites, they are hoping as you continue to build a following you will be bringing them more business.

When I signed up on their www.goread.com site I found many articles these people write. However the people on their site are writers. They hope that these will buy from each other. It sounded good, but it doesn't work that way. Writers rarely buy from each other unless it's in the genre they like to read and cheap.
I sent in two manuscripts. One is a work in progress the other was a few chapters of the one I'm republishing. I got an honest review. The full MS needs lots of work. They were ready to publish the other one, since that one was ready to go.

I said I'd talk to my husband about it and let them know today.  I did a little more research. The reviews were 55/45 negative.  I still wasn't sure I wanted to pay someone that kind of money and then have to work so hard each week to get part of the money back. I'm sure there are people who would take half that money edit it and help me publish it. 

My hubby said NO. What he said was, "I thought you told me I was stupid and "publishing didn't work that way", when I told you to just pay someone to publish for you." I did and now I was eating my own words.
I sent an apologetic email saying thanks but no thanks.  Four hours later I see I've got a phone call that went to voicemail. Like all high pressure sales, I'm sure they want to sweeten the deal.
Ken did say, "Tina, you have a better understanding of marketing than most people. I can talk and you understand where I'm going."

I do. It finally got though to me. Advertise. I began to post on my blog. Each week I will post one or two articles about my new book. I will tweet to get people to go read it. Oregon Crime story-Why I'm writing it.  I'm hoping to grow my blog, twitter and maybe my FB. I hope people will want to know why I chose this story and what its about.  It's not going to cost me $6,000.00 + to get it published.