"California Tiki" by Jason Henderson & Adam Foshko - General Tiki

PP Prikli Pear Tiki Socialite New Braunfels, Texas Joined: Jan 04, 2017 Posts: 980	PP Prikli Pear Posted posted on Tue, Oct 23, 2018 11:48 AM On 2018-10-23 09:29, tikiskip wrote: So they figure that each "author" has at least 100 friends and family that will buy the book and all they need is 400 others to buy the book to make money. To an extent, but HP (bought a couple of years ago by Arcadia) is a legit publisher. They have national distribution deals and have had a few national bestsellers. They're more concerned with active historical societies and point-of-sale tourist attractions. A true vanity press offers no advance, charges the author outrageous fees to print the books, then makes the author sell to friends and family. A different model doesn't charge the author anything upfront, but publishes massive numbers of would-be authors as ebooks (no materials cost) with little editorial oversight, then gets the author to shill those "copies" for a miniscule royalty. Oh, and the "publisher" usually grabs every right in existence, so if the book becomes successful despite the odds, they can profit more by selling the reprint/movie/merchandising rights and not sharing with the author. It may not sound like much, but that national distribution is a huge deal. HP has some turkeys in their backlist, but there are also some pretty cool titles on subject matter that wouldn't likely interest larger publishers. Texas Shipwrecks, for one, is fascinating. In the end, they're looking for books and topics that sell.

On 2018-10-23 09:29, tikiskip wrote:
So they figure that each "author" has at least 100 friends and family that will buy the book and all they need is 400 others to buy the book to make money.

To an extent, but HP (bought a couple of years ago by Arcadia) is a legit publisher. They have national distribution deals and have had a few national bestsellers. They're more concerned with active historical societies and point-of-sale tourist attractions. A true vanity press offers no advance, charges the author outrageous fees to print the books, then makes the author sell to friends and family. A different model doesn't charge the author anything upfront, but publishes massive numbers of would-be authors as ebooks (no materials cost) with little editorial oversight, then gets the author to shill those "copies" for a miniscule royalty. Oh, and the "publisher" usually grabs every right in existence, so if the book becomes successful despite the odds, they can profit more by selling the reprint/movie/merchandising rights and not sharing with the author.

It may not sound like much, but that national distribution is a huge deal. HP has some turkeys in their backlist, but there are also some pretty cool titles on subject matter that wouldn't likely interest larger publishers. Texas Shipwrecks, for one, is fascinating. In the end, they're looking for books and topics that sell.

Post #790628 by Prikli Pear on Tue, Oct 23, 2018 11:48 AM