implicitly not seeking m/m, or haven't thought about it much which is curious given that it tends to substantially outsell m/f.

It does?
 

I don't have exhaustive data but know it currently does at three erotic romance epresses. I may be over-generalising, of course.
 

I'll support your generalization. Since 2005, I don't have a single m/f romance that's outsold any of my m/m (or m/m/f with a strong m/m element) stories at any of my (4) publishers.
 

I think their ppppps is a bit off the mark. I'd bet a nickel the reason an awful lot of epresses fail is either their product generally sucks (bad editing, horrid writing, torpid plots, and suchlike things) or that the folks running the press don't know what the hell they're doing and don't figure it out before they run out of cash.

Not that the second reason is unique to e-presses, it's the reason a lot of new businesses fail. (The first, too, I suppose, if you generalize it to 'product sold or service rendered isn't worth the money')
 

This is undoubtedly the main reason, they list that, lack financing etc as well. I just don't see being genre-specific as an issue. Samhain seeming to be betting on specialising rather than generalising and they seem to know what they are doing.
 

Having focus works, definitely. Samhain has it for sure, but for them it's more than just focus, it's quality. I can't speak for their M/F stuff (not my thing, thanks :) but their M/M work is excellent. They're the only press I've bought from that I can honestly say I've never been even a little disappointed in what I've gotten.

Quality's one of those dodgy things with e-books, too. Writing a good book is hard, as I'm sure you're more than aware of, and it just doesn't pay well enough to make a comfortable living at unless you're insanely prolific or very lucky. (And I'm not sure anyone's been that lucky yet) Almost everyone's stable of authors are essentially mildly compensated hobbyists, and some times, well... the stuff that's pumped out's just crap. (I've a couple of presses I won't buy from because of that) If a press latches on to a few people who can bang out a steady stream of okay stuff, or a bunch of folks who've got just one good novel a year in 'em, they can make it.

That startup's gotta be a bitch, though. If someone writes reasonably well there are enough presses out there that any startup's going to be fifth or sixth (or seventh, or eighth) on the list for people submitting. And given the quality of some of the stuff the majors publish, I'm not sure that anything that falls through to the new presses is going to be worth a whole lot.
 

Weyr they used Weyr? Do these people know about miss lawyered up the yin yang McCaffrey Estate?

Do they have even have an vague idea how to use Google? Oh my my my.
 

Yep, I can add my thumbs up to your generalization too. My M/M titles sell the best. Of course, it's been a while since I wrote something "straight". :)

Amanda
www.AmandaYoung.org
 

Some very scary basic spelling and grammar mistakes on that site. And a couple of those names are familiar. Ex-Silk's Vaulters, I think. Now there's a guarantee of quality...

- Lynn
 

Pointless. We all know they're going to fail. Quietly or spectacularly, they are going to fail.
 

I'll pass, especially after finding writing errors on their "About Us" page alone. Professional? Think again, folks....bye, bye...
 

I hope the books being rereleased with new titles will be clearly marked as previously published. A reader would probably be pretty unhappy if they ended up buying the same book twice....
 

I couldn't finish reading their guidelines because I kept hitting obvious errors. What's really funny is that on their Submissions page, they go on and on about the importance of submitting work free of typos and grammatical errors.
 

The scary thing is that writers will flock to them and praise them like they're the second coming of Christ...it happens every single time.
 

I just noticed that in the guidelines they refer to Anne McCaffrey *and spell her name wrong*.