A Notice from Samhain

"In the most recent issue of the RWA’s Pro newsletter (Prospects) it was reported that Samhain is closed to submissions. We’re unsure where the erroneous information came from, but we are not closed to submissions and have no plans to be." [Angela James, Executive Editor]

Useful interview with Samhain's Angela James -- Jules

Reader blogger Jesse Wave has posted the latest in her series of publisher interviews, this time with Samhain's Angela James. Lots of good stuff in there, worth your attention.

Previous interviews were with Treva Harte of Loose Id, and Nicole Kimberling of Blind Eye Books.

He Said, She Said...and You Said--veinglory

In the comments on this post TeddyPig said: "Hell, I would gladly publish these type of lists from each ePub and the covers and sales links to each book just to be able to show in as unbiased a way as possible how well the ePubs are doing and who the top sellers of the year were."

And Angela James replied: "Challenge accepted. At the end of the year, Samhain will release the top ten list of sellers at My Bookstore and More, and maybe a few other top ten lists if we can pull them together in the time list."

And no doubt realising that purchasing a book is only part of the story there will also be a listing of which Samhain books reader's most enjoyed. So if you have a Samhain book you particularly enjoyed this year please fill out the survey here. (You can also vote for cover art and share any other opinion you might have).

Press Release: Linden Bay acquired by Samhain--veinglory

-----[quote]-----

In a bold move, Samhain Publishing announced the purchase of Linden Bay Romance. In light of the downward spiral of the economy and the rapid consolidation of many of the larger publishers, Samhain Publishing has seized their chance to expand their market share by creating a new fiction line under the popular Samhain brand.

"From the beginning one of my goals was to create multiple lines within Samhain," says Christina Brashear, owner of Samhain Publishing. "With Linden Bay Romance's excellent reputation, I made the offer in the hopes the owners would see this sale as a mutual benefit to both houses."

"We hadn't considered selling Linden Bay and we were slowly making inroads with regards to increasing print distribution, but we've found, especially in light of the economy, neither sales teams nor buyers are very open to taking a chance on something new," says Lori James, part owner of Linden Bay Romance. "Samhain Publishing has the relationships in place that would take us years to develop." James continues, "The offer came at a time when we realized under the Samhain umbrella, Linden Bay Romance will be stronger and reach its full potential faster."

"For Samhain, it is a win-win situation," says Brashear. "We will expand our lines with an established name in the electronic book industry and we'll acquire an excellent stable of authors, editors and artists."

Samhain Publishing opened its doors on November 1, 2005 and already they've made a splash in the publishing world. From Publisher's Weekly features to dozens of fiction and cover art awards, this publisher is one to watch.


-----[end quote]-----

On topic, off topic and what topic?--veinglory

Most annoying quote of the week. A man who used 13 minutes of computer time and 12 cent's of electricity to create computer compiled books from internet sources says he might do computer-constructed romance next, because "There are only so many body parts." I hope some of the medical writers scavenged by his algorithms get their teeth into some of his more tender body parts.

Thanks to new archive you can now see Darwin's handwriting here. Do any of you have hand written outlines, manuscripts or character pictures to share? I would love to see them.

Hmmm. "Twenty books later, Holt cracked the New York Times Best Seller list in March and has earned herself the title “Queen of Erotic Romance,”... I have a question, who decided she had that title? Because if I was going to crown anyone the name would probably start with ... well, who would you pick? I mean at least Tina Turner had Beyonce call her the "Queen of Soul" rather than self-coronating (although I'm with Aretha on that one). Am I wrong on the crown being self-bestowed? Please let me know.

At Piers, and by direct report, it seems that Dark Castle Lords don't require artists to buy the Lordy art. But is seems they do sometimes require (rather than permit, or allow) payment for advertising. I remain interested in sales figures for this press as so far it looks like it would take... well, let's just say a long time, to earn a $100 share in a print ad. Meaning that authors might effectively not be paid in terms of net profit?

Finally I must say that after years of skepticism I am starting to be more convinced about the bad ides for Ellora's Cave. I do not think they are in serious trouble as a business. But with 8 releases a week and sales that really do seem to be slipping they look to be in danger of losing their front runner status. Add to that their print books are fast vanishing from stores--go check your local store and count EC books versus say Samhain, you may see what I mean. In fact if you get a chance to do this please let me know the figures.

Samhain re-opens to submissions -- Jules

Samhain has re-opened the slushpile. Note new guidelines. More info at Angela's blog:

http://nicemommy-evileditor.com/blog/?p=1235

Samhain+ Sony CONNECT--veinglory

As already mentioned by TeddyPig, Christina M. Brashear of Samhain has announced:

"Samhain Publishing ... just signed with Sony Connect Inc. to distribute and sell Samhain titles!!!

I'm very excited about this new venture and the expansion of the digital side of Samhain. I personally favor ebooks over print and I'm happy to have made a deal that increases our earning potential."

And what increases their earning, increases my earning, so I am all for it :)

[OH NO PROMO] Hypocrisy and Promotion--The Power of Numbers

My original training is in psychology, so I am at peace with hypocrisy as a natural human condition. However, it is still an uneasy state of being--and, rationally, not a strong one. So hypocrisy is going to be the theme of this mixed commentary-slash-promotional post. This is based on some of my more recent promotional windfalls.

Firstly there is my novella 'Son of a Bitch' in the anthology The Call from Torquere press. First off, kudos to Torquere Press on several counts. First they approached the contributors to their themed anthologies directly rather than relying on an open call. I appreciate it when a publisher specifically wants my work and makes a place for it. Secondly they responded to author requests for print production and put these anthologies in print. I know, in most cases epublisher make their money of ebooks--print editions are something they do as a service to authors. And I do so love having a physical book in my hands. Which brings me to hypocrisy number 1.

I am not really thrilled with Amazon.com for many reasons. One of these being they way the suddenly delisted all ebooks to cater exclusively to mobipocket. So why am I so happy to have a book listed at Amazon? Because they are the single largest book distributor out there. For many people (e.g. Shelfari users) if a book does not appear on Amazon it simply does not exist. Ergo being on Amazon makes me feel more 'real' as an author--even if it shouldn't. It is also a gateway to more sales.

My second happy moment was hearing that King of Dragons will appear in an advertisement for Samhain Publishing appearing in the December issue of Romantic Times. Now you probably know by now what I think of RT's advertising policies relating to the small press and to M/M books.. The public statements of their staff even stopped me from buying this magazine which I had been reading regularly. All the same, an ad in RT is a big deal because they have circulation, newsstand and subscription, that is an order if magnitude higher than the nearest competition.

The romance genre is overshadowed by behemoths such as Amazon, Romantic Times and Romance Writers of America. And behemoths do have a habit throwing their weight around, often to the detriment of minorities and individuals. But one of the reason for this is that they can, especially with the weight of the general readership behind them. It is easy to complain about the things they do to secure and retain their power, but who would refuse to benefit by association with them? In the long run, certainly not I.

Hypocrisy, I tell myself, is a natural human condition. But if I am willing to do things that may not be 100% in accordance with my beliefs in order to make a bigger profit--am I really in any position to complain about organizations that do the same?

Samhain has now reopened to general submissions with a few stipulations.

Attempting a List of Dropped Publishers

Re: publishers no long qualifying for "official publisher participation" at RWA cons [proxy recognition]. If you have news, please share.

* Ellora's Cave (from Jane, Dearauthor.com, unofficial, and I am only guessing what this terse message means?--also see here)

* Samhain (from Angela, Samhain, posted here unofficial in that it is not confirmed by RWA)

* June Editor Paula Juran suggests that St. Martin's would not qualify.

There are various rumours about the 'vanity' definition and whether it will be applied as literally described. The $1000 advance requirement, however, seems firm. Quite coincidentally ebooks tend to earn only through royalties. Of course I would like to hear whether this is affecting formerly recognised print presses that pay lower advances than this.

Here, for reference, is the list of recognised publishers:

Avalon Books
Avon Books
Baker Book House
Ballantine/Ivy
Bantam Dell Publishing Group
Barbour Publishing, Inc. & Heartsong Pocket Books
BelleBooks [?]
Berkley/Jove
Bethany House
Brilliance Audio
Broadman & Holman
Cook Communications Ministries
Crossings Book Club
Dorchester Publishing
Ellora's Cave [?]
Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books)
Granite Publishing
Harlequin Enterprises
HarperCollins/HarperCollins Children's Books
Harvest House
Hodder Headline Publishing Group
Howard Publishing
Hyperion Books for Children
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Kregel Publications
Llewellyn Worldwide
Loose Id, LLC
Loveland Press
Macmillan
Medallion Press
Multnomah Publishers (Random House)
New American Library (NAL)
Premium Press America
Red Sage Publishing
Revell
Samhain Publishing [?]
Severn House
Sourcebooks, Inc.
St. Martin's Press [?]
Thomas Nelson
Tor/Forge
Triskelion Publishing
Tyndale House Publishers
Virgin Books Ltd.
Zondervan

---

p.s. on the issue of: "After extensive discussion, the Board decided not to add an erotic romance category to the contests due in part to the inherently indefinable nature of erotic romance."

It's a romance with sex scenes. Love + HEA + fornication. Now was that so hard?

---

This post at AbsoulteWrite is gold.

[MARKET] Samhain special call

I am happy to announce Samhain Publishing is seeking submissions for their Valentine’s 2008 anthology titled Strangers in the Night.

Stories must be RED HOT (erotic) and must be a romance. Submissions should be about 25,000 words in length.

Submissions are open to all Samhain authors and authors aspiring to publish with Samhain. Submissions must be new material, previously published material will not be considered.

Chosen manuscripts will be published as separate ebooks in January 2008 and combined as a print title, which will release in January as well.

The theme is "Strangers in the Night". I am considering all genres. So use your imagination, play a little Frank Sinatra for inspiration, and get those stories written.

To submit a manuscript for consideration in Strangers in the Night, please include:
The full manuscript of 25,000 words with a detailed 2-3 page synopsis. Please include a letter of introduction/query letter. Full manuscripts are required.

Submissions are open until June 1 and final decisions will be made by June 10.

Send your submission to jessica@samhainpublishing.com. Please put Valentine Anthology Submission in the subject line.

If you have any questions about the project, please feel free to email me at the above address or ask here.


*** Permission to forward***

---

Oops. I just packed the pet meme prizes. The move is coming up and without a car (mine had to be scrapped recently) I can't get to the post office. But I will be unpacking again in a week or so and moving to an apartment right next to a post office ;) So go to the Pet Meme post and vote!

All Romance eBooks

Authors these days tend to be very aware of the importance of distribution. All the promotion in the world does you no good if you can't get the actual book in front of readers. With paperbacks that means having a print run, deep discount and returns policy that allows your book to be stocked in chain stores. For ebooks it comes down to websites. Some epublishers have a large readership that hits their own website and webstore. Others depend more heavily on third party distribution.

Ever since Amazon shut out every format other than mobipocket (a move that created a noticeable lack of protest even from authors and publishers), the big dog in ebook distribution has been fictionwise. They have a good customer base (40,000 books sold every month) and can cause a significant spike in sales as well as exposure to readers who are not part of your specific publisher's readership. However, it must be said that the costs of converting to their formats are prohibitive for some small publishers and may well not be worth it even for the larger houses who will make a higher profit per book from selling the books directly. (Authors should be aware that a publisher not using a distributor is not necessarily making a mistake.)

There have always been other ebook distributors out there but they are generally minor players selling only a few copies per book. But I am very impressed by a relative new comer All Romance eBooks. They require no special formats and take 40% of cover price. I am told that a list of the participating e-publisher can be found on the site--but I could not locate it. I saw books from reputable presses listed, including: Samhain, Liquid Silver Books and Phaze.

When I hit their website the very first thing I noticed were these categories on the sidebar "Erotica, Gay/Lesbian, Multiple Partners, BDSM." Thank you, AReB! Let us please call a spade a spade and a gay a gay. Writers may be familar with how we throw around terms like m/m and the dreaded "alternative lifestyles" but in the real word these terms are meaningless or even have radically different meanings from those many publishers seem to give them. My guess is that All Romance eBooks will do very well.

I have a postcard that provides a code to register and get your choice of one of ten ebooks free. I have not used it and will pass it on to the first person to comment here and ask for it--please provide and email address :) (The options are Waxing by Megan Powell, Opposites Attract by Cat Johnson, One Foot Forward by Rose Middleton, One Handsome Devil by Rob Preece, 24/7 bu Susan DiPlacido, Killraven by Arline Chase, The Queen of Cherry Vale by Judith D. Glad, Forbidden by Samatha Sommersby, Once Burned by Jackie Griffey & Double Dare by Leigh Ellwood).

[NEWS] Samhain RWA recognized

This just in, add Samhain to the ranks of RWA recognized romance epublishers. :)

[March 17] Apparently RWA are now going to "review" the conditions for recognition. Quell surprise.

Are Some E-Pubishers Author Mills? (or: Chicken Writer Strikes Again)

Okay guys, here is one of my rambling opinion pieces. I don't promise to be right--I may have a thought one week and completely change my mind the next. But the point of this organisation is to put out some information, thoughts and discussion topics from the point of view of a writer in this genre, particularly an e-published one. So here we go. If I have it all wrong, let me know:

"Author Mill" is a phrase attributed to Victoria Strauss from Writer Beware. And it has been a phrase much on my mind recently.

An author mill has three key qualities:

1) An author mill "...publishes a very large number of authors in the expectation of selling a hundred books or so from each (as opposed to publishing a limited number of authors in hopes of selling thousands of books from each, as commercial publishers do)."

Now, this is frequently the case with epublishers which may release as many as half a dozen books per week, and typical sales will be 300 copies or fewer.

However, 2) :...they do rely on their authors as their major source of income (through books purchased by the author for re-sale, or sold to "pocket" markets the author him/herself is responsible for identifying)"

This is clearly not typically the case with epublishers. Most ebook author receive ample free copies for promotional activities and it would be almost unheard of for them to sell their book directly.

Finally 3) "...mills tend to share a business model with vanity publishers: no editorial screening of submissions, no meaningful pre-publication editing, no meaningful post-publication marketing or distribution."

I would argue that this is variable. Certainly the better epublishers are highly selective, rigorous in their editing and have effective marketing and distribution strategies. Their limited market is more a factor of format and genre than quality.

So I must conclude that a epublishers are not literally authors mills, however some tremble on the brink of this status. I would still argue that many epublishers compensate for the lower sales per book by increasing output in ways that benefit the publisher disproportionately over the writer. The publisher benefits from every book released and the author only from their own, this many high output strategies can be detrimental to less prolific authors. Even in cases where points 2) and 3) clearly do not apply I would suggest that this practise might be seen as less than ideal and perhaps could be referred to as "author farming" when there is not also investment in individual authors and books.

Consider this analogy. When a farm keeps laying hens, if they put more hens in a cage, each hen has a poorer quality of life and produces fewer eggs--however the cage produces more eggs. Likewise of the hens are pressed to produce more eggs they become ill with broken bones and poor health--but the farmer finds it cheaper to push the hen and them buy another--hens are plentiful and cheap. Thus, crowding and high production benefits the farmer but not the hen. Eggs from happy hens taste better, but the cost more, and in the open market place the battery cage is still king.

Publishing is a business no matter how you cut it. And when an epublisher sells well, however they do it, the author benefits. But as authors we still need to think very carefully about where we built our nests--rather than assuming that publisher always knows best. There are always three levels of marketing, book, author and publisher--and if you produce .01% of the publishers annual output where do you think you should be placing most of your effort?

So what is my point? It is that authors should look for epublishers who invest in authors and specific books as well as at their level of their own brand and total output. Do not always assume that high output always equates to success as epublishers with fewer releases may be better equipped to target and market those books to increase their profitability for the author.

In short, with epublishers as with small presses it can actually be an excellent sign when epublishers such as Samhain and Mojocastle (see a relevant discussion here) close their submissions in order to focus on the authors and books they have already acquired. Epublishers such as Cobblestone who actually encourage their authors to mention 'out of house' new releases demonstrate an understanding that to thrive we need to invest in our author brand as well as supporting them as our publisher. Epublishers such as Loose Id provide me with an editor who gets in touch with me with suggestions and support--rather than just waiting for the next egg to roll into her inbox.

Perhaps it is inevitable that niche authors such as those who write ebooks will be "farmed"--but some farms are better than others. Let the layer beware.

Is There Something Rotten in the State of Ellora's Cave?

Ellora's Cave must be acknowledged as the tallest poppy in the erotic romance epublishing garden. And there is a saying in New Zealand, that the tallest poppy is the one that tends to get its head cut off. That is, people tend to knock and criticise the most successful companies.

However, I cannot help but notice a trend in reader's blogs such as Karen Scott's mentioning disatisfaction with the content and quality of EC's recent output. Both Karen Scott and Mrs. Giggles have mentioned Liquid Silver Books and the relative newcomer Samhain as favorable by comparision (full disclosure, I am an author with Samhain).

Mrs Giggles says: "I don't care much for Ellora's Cave books anymore due to the overkill of the whole "BDSM alien/furries/vamps" formula."

and Karen Scott: "I have tried the new authors, but most of the newbies that I’ve read, have sucked in a big way..."

And yet Ellora's Cave books continue to sell well and fill the trade paperback shelves. Do they really need to change the way they do things, or just have a website make-over and show some signs of listening to readers? They did (finally) open to m/m submissions and it wouldnt hurt to have more works outside the bondage vampires and so on--although this rather depends on writers submitting quality work in fresh areas? There has been criticism of EC's branding from the beginning and the Ellora's Cave management proved to know what they were doing each time.

While their sales are way ahead of the others I think Ellora's Cave have great cause for complacency, but the pack may just be closing in on them?

.

Predators & Editors Results

The Predators and Editors readers poll has been closed and the results tallied. In the category of "Book Publisher" the winner is...

1. Samhain Publishing*

The top ten include: Whiskey Creek Press*, Siren Publishing*, Double Dragon Publishing, eXtasy Books*, Hadesgate Publications, Mundania Press*, Ellora's Cave*, Changeling Press*, The Wild Rose Press*, Liquid Silver Books* and Wings ePress.

So that is 7 in the top 10 that are either an erotic romance e-publisher or an epublisher with an erotic romance imprint or focus! Congratulation to Samhain Press and all the top 10 finishers. If you, your editor, artist or any other associate placed in any of the categories please let us know!