Friday, June 28, 2013

The Dark Path with Publishers



It’s about time I talk about my wretched experience with publishers, and why you might want to consider self-publishing instead.

The big question this decade has been, Should I go traditional, or should I go the self-publishing route? Increasingly so, many have been saying to go the self-published route, and I have to side with them.

For the record, I’ve published three works. Two self-published, one published by a small publisher—and let me tell you, going with them instead of publishing on my own has been a regret that has stuck with me every night since I’ve signed that contract with them.

As a disclaimer, this is only my opinion and my experience. I believe some authors out there can do well going strictly the traditional route. It all depends on people’s circumstances. But I’m not talking about those people, I’m talking about my experience—something I’ve lived through and know happened for a fact.

I just read a compelling article from the author Dean WesleySmith on why you shouldn’t start up with traditional publishing, but should start self-publishing, and maybe even not ever deal with traditional publishers. It’s a great read, and he’s quite impassioned about his viewpoint. I suggest giving it a read sometime. But why I bring that article up is because my recent publisher, Unlimited Publishing (AKA UP), is guilty of many of the money-grabbing practices that Dean describes in his article, and it’s sad that I realized this too late.

 My Experience with UP


Part of the contract I signed with UP states that I’m not allowed to discuss specifics about the pay or the contract itself, but I can mention my experience with them in general.

Originally, I had sent them this proof to work with
It is understandable that signing on with a publisher means that you are ultimately going to take a smaller cut of the profits, but it is also expected that you’ll receive something for having the publishers take that cut. For me, it was the editing, formatting, cover art, purchasing the ISNB, publishing it on multiple different outlets, and marketing. I figured these services would help recoup the low profit I’d be making per book sale. (It’s down to cents what I make from the book I signed with UP, when I make around $2.00 with my self-published pieces.)

So, you can imagine my disappointment with UP when they changed one word in my manuscript for the editing treatment that they promised, formatted the book for publishing on the Kindle (but in the process added errors to my text that I had to notify them of to change), was going to publish my book with this cover…
 Which after I mentioned some obvious poor design choices, they changed it to this...
And once it came out, their attempt to “market” my book came down to telling me to sign up for Google Alerts, and asked me to retrieve some fax numbers from local outlets for them to send a fax out to.

I was less than happy about how our relation had gone at that point; but, I’m a pretty laid-back kinda guy, and decided to wait a few months to see if they kicked into gear in four or five months.

I asked how many copies I had sold, but was given no number. I mentioned the quarterly payment was coming up, but was told that I had to reach a high threshold amount of sales before I could get paid, I wanted to know if they had any plans of continuing to market my book and was told that maybe I should stop being lazy and start marketing my book for them (like I wasn’t already, literally out in the streets, speaking to creative writing high-school classes, doing my best with the usually social media outlets, begging anyone I had connection to in the world to PLEASE READ MY BOOK, working my butt off every day trying to promote my work).

Eventually, enough was enough, and I mentioned that I wasn’t happy with the way our relationship had gone, and, even though I knew they had me in a contract and that they didn’t have to respect my request, I wanted out, and if they would be so kind to just terminate the contract, I’d be very please.

Of course they place my dissatisfaction and blame on myself, saying that if I didn’t complain so much, and, again, spent more time marketing the book, that I’d be getting more sales—but that wasn’t my point. My point was they were not delivering on their promises, and to be honest, at that point I started to wonder why should I try to sell my book for them? I made only a fraction of profit from each copy, when they made over half of the total sale, and there was no talk whatsoever now about print publishing, which they had previously had alluded to as being almost an inevitable course for my book.

It’s a sad story, and one that’s not ending anytime soon. I’ll have to wait just under three years now to get my book back from them, and that’s sad since I’m working on the rest of the series, and will need to wait to release a box-set of that series.



 

The Takeaway


My experience isn’t unique. I know others have had similar experiences with publishers. And while much of it comes down to doing you research and making sure you know what you’re signing up with, a big portion of this whole fiasco with my publisher couldn’t have been foreseen, since they listed much of what I desired a publisher to do in the contract, saying that they’d provide it, but then only completing the legal bear minimum to make sure they weren’t going to get into a lawsuit over it.

This is why self-publishing is my road going forward. I’ve been scared off from traditional publishing for the time being. I tried that route and got burned. I’m not saying it’s an invalid route to take. I’m not saying everyone’s experience will be similar. I’m saying that this is what happened to me, and for you to take that experience into account. Take from this story what you will, and hopefully I’ve helped some other writers out there become the wiser, not having to go through this sort of experience themselves.
 

 


Saturday, June 15, 2013

The Dream Keeper



I’m back! It’s been a week or so (I’ve been hard at work writing the next installment in The Bracken Covenant series) but recently I became acquainted with a fellow writer in a writers group I’m in, and he’s recently published a book that I wanted to let you guys know about. That having been said, give his book a look. If the teaser catches your interest, his book will too, so pick it up.

THE DREAM KEEPER

 

Dreams: Dorothy called it Oz, Alice called it Wonderland, but Nightmares call it HOME.


When an evil shifter takes over the gateway to the realm of Dreams, it falls to 14-year-olds Parker and Kaelyn to stop him. Their only hope lies with Gladamyr, the Dream Keeper, but can they trust a Nightmare to save their world?

 


ISBN:
Hardback: 978-1-939993-01-4, Paperback: 978-1-939993-03-8, EBook: 978-1-939993-02-1

PRICE:
Hardback: $19.95, Paperback: $12.99, EBook: $4.99.

BIO:
Mikey Brooks is a small child masquerading as adult. On occasion you’ll find him dancing the funky chicken, singing like a banshee, and pretending to have never grown up. He is the author/illustrator of several books including BEAN’S DRAGONS, the ABC ADVENTURES series, and author of the middle-grade fantasy-adventure novel, THE DREAM KEEPER. He spends most of his time playing with his daughters and working as a freelance illustrator. Mikey has a BS degree in Creative Writing from Utah State University. He is also one of the hosts of the Authors’ Think Tank Podcast.

AUTHOR LINKS:
Twitter as: @writtenbymikey

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The Bracken Covenant



 A bit on The Bracken Covenant


The Bracken Covenant is a dark and enlightening book series that will lead you to forsaken cultist dens, leaving you wondering if you’ll ever make it out alive.



The Bracken Covenant series is an occult/suspense fiction series with gothic ties. The premise of the series begins with the journals of victims of a horror experiment being found, read, and passed from person to person, the journals affecting the readers each in different ways. Tome of Victims is the novella that sets the stage for the following books in The Bracken Covenant series.

The first full-length book in the series, The Covenant, follows directly after Tome of Victims, and follows a professor as he learns of a kidnapping that one of his colleagues is involved in. Following the kidnapper, he discovers an underground cultist hideout, whereupon he becomes a captive, trying to escape with his life, along with a group of desperate kidnapped kids that he finds down in the cultists’ den.

The second full-length book is scheduled to be published later this year. I’m currently writing it, and what I can say about it is that the main protagonist will once again be Dr. Carver, the lead professor from The Covenant.



Tome of Victims

(prelude story in The Bracken Covenant Series)

Tome of Victims by Paul Yoder


When the century-old ruins of a madman’s torture chamber are unearthed, they release one of the most deadly weapons known to man—knowledge.

A set of journals hold the accounts of multiple victims of a psychotic mad-man’s death experiments. Once these journals are discovered and dispersed, the owners soon realize the truth of the journals.

Call it a curse, or define it as the grave psychological effect that the written word can have on a human’s mental faculty, but all proprietors of the journals, soon after acquiring the tomes, fall prey to ill, and even deathly, fates.

Tome of Victims is available on Amazon for $2.99


The Covenant

(first entry novel in The Bracken Covenant Series)

The Covenant by Paul Yoder
Dr. Carver, who is the head of the English department at Stanford University, would not be the most likely of men to embark on a mission to save a group of kidnapped kids from devil-worshiping zealots in an underground facility, but after trailing a suspected colleague, and witnessing a kidnapping first hand, his pursuit quickly lands him in an underground bomb shelter, renovated as a secret monastery for a cult that calls themselves "The Bracken Covenant."

Dr. Carver and the group of kidnapped kids struggle to survive the horrors of the elaborate underground cultist den. Outnumbered and vulnerable, with the kids being easy targets for not just the demonic zealots, but the wretched, feral animal experiments that the zealots keep underground, Dr. Carver has to lead the kids through trial after trial of both man and beast to escape before the covenant can cave in the underground passages, trapping them inside a den of evil—doomed to share the same fate as the hundreds of tortured spirits that reside there.

The Covenant is available on Amazon for $2.99