A new Indie ‘traditional’ publisher has emerged, but authors need to look closely at what LM Vintage Publishers are offering before signing up. For an author to get an ebook published, I suggest it would be far easier – and the author would retain 100% of all royalties – to self-publish with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, Smashwords, Draft2Digital, and IngramSpark.
LM Vintage Publishers calll themselves a ‘traditional’ publisher, but will only produce a print book in Print on Demand (POD) format after the author has sold $1,000 in ebooks! That is not how a traditional publisher operates. They suggest they will produce a POD version immediately if the book is a sci-fi novel, or part of a series, which is curious and somewhat ambiguous. Why not to it immediately for all genre?
Most reputable ebook/POD publishers offer a sample contract on their website. This is not the case with LM Vintage Publishers. I would look very closely at this deal before venturing to sign a contract with them.
According to their website, this is their mission:
Our Approach:
We are a new publisher. We are more nimble and willing to take more risks on a book – publishing a novel that may not get picked up elsewhere. It still has to be great writing and attractive to readers.
We don’t offer the big name that others do, but we are a traditional publisher. We do cover production costs and utilize the time and knowledge that comes from being successful indie authors/working with them.
We offer unconditionally:
– the pride of being traditionally published in e-book format (*please see below)
– a modest advance
– 50% royalties paid quarterly
– the cost of production of a beautiful, polished book
– an initial, limited, but strategic marketing spend, marketing activity and advice
– an expert marketing plan for the author to implement to build a platform and further sales.
– authors retain all subsidiary rights (including but not limited to: motion picture, print, audio, translation, etc. – we only take worldwide English language digital rights).
– Support and some amount of further marketing at our discretion with continual price adjustments and advice as needed to maximize sales.
We offer conditionally:
– Print: Upon reaching $1,000 in sales (or immediately if in the sci-fi genre or a series) we offer the option, but not the obligation, to publish your book into print on Amazon POD paperback in English. This includes purchasing the ISBN in our name, cover design and interior formatting for print as well as uploading/publishing. In this case we only take 50% financial interest in your English language paperback global rights (not hardcover or audio or any subsidiary rights)
– if you reach $5,000 in sales in a given year, we will offer to publish you through Ingram Spark and submit to a distributor service we have been connected with to try to get your book into indie bookstores in an attempt (not a guarantee) of shelf placement.
– if you reach $2,000 in sales in a given year, and wish to try out multiple retailers and library digital sales in addition to Amazon – we will try this for a quarter with a reasonable marketing spend to see if this will increase your sales.
– if/when sales justify – we will conduct additional marketing spends.
*Except as noted above we only publish e-books and only on our publisher’s account in KDP Select (exclusivity with Amazon). We do this because with newer authors this is the best way to maximize exposure and revenue. We make exceptions on rare occasions where the author has a highly developed reader base/platform.
https://www.lmvintagepublishers.com/
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