Before deciding to publish with a small press, especially a fledgling like us, think about your goals for your book and the time, energy, and skills you can bring to marketing it. We are learning along with our authors, so we are looking for people who will put as much love into their own works as we do.
A very good discussion of why and when to pursue a small press is given here:
http://www.lldreamspell.com/PublishingRealityCheck.htm
Here are some things we can offer:
1. Personalized attention. It may take us a while to read your query, but you can be sure that we are going to read the whole thing. If you don’t have a great “hook” in your first paragraph, we don’t care–we’ll keep reading. Many times the very best books start out with a weak first chapter, which can be re-written later–or not.
2. Editorial excellence. Among all our editors, we have over 100 years’ experience with editing and copyediting all sorts of documents, from textbooks to grant proposals to getting approvals for a new cancer drug to popular science. Because we are such nerds, we will catch errors in stories that many others would not. Your character has a rare disease? Falls from a height? Designs a robot? We’ll poke at the science until we’re sure it’s right. We’re also hard-core grammar nazis, so you can sleep soundly knowing that dangling participles, subject/verb problems, apostrophe errors, and the very trickiest of subject vs. object problems will magically disappear from your text. Our editors are fluent in French, Russian, and German, so we can help give some of that je ne sais quoi to your foreign phrases and quotes.
3. Responsiveness. Once we respond favorably to your query and assign you a main editor, you can contact that person by phone or email and be assured of a rapid, friendly, and (we hope) helpful answer.
4. A personalized distribution and marketing plan. Each of our books is submitted to a distributor individually. We try to choose the very best distributor for each work, depending upon its genre and other features such as local color. We write individualized press releases for each of our books as well. We encourage our authors to help us come up with ideas for electronic and print marketing. We are in this together!
5. Author-friendly contracts. We offer simple terms and we are very open to negotiation. We ask only for rights that we wish to use.
6. French translations. Since we’re half based in Montreal, we have some excellent volunteers ready to turn your manuscript into the cleanest International French. We hope to pursue French versions of all of our books.
As we continue to grow, we will have a larger and larger catalog, and the decision to publish with us will also be based upon whether you enjoy our books.
Questions? Comments? Please respond using the Contact page.
