THE Group for Authors! discussion

20 FB friends?

I had over 3700 and cut it down to 1475.

There's more work to be done by you,...

I had nearly 100 at one point, but I cut down. I don't accept perfect strangers, I toss people I don't talk to...real easy.

But if you're not going to be helpful, then let's stay on topic, please.

Dayanara wrote: "I have 20 Facebook friends and a fan page and twitter feed that everyone ignores. Next?"

Blog. Don't try to push books, at first; just provide reasons for people to read your blog. Build your readership gradually by posting great content. Follow other blogs, good ones, and comment there. Network.

...and no one follows my blog. Ever. No matter how much I comment. Even if I manage to attract a large readership for one topic, they all go away.

===

Now, since I had every intention of staying on topic--as we're SUPPOSED TO--I should say that I finally heard back from a local author that used Tate. He told me that he's only sold six hundred copies and said that Tate did the majority. (Of what, I wonder? Was he one of the lucky ones that had to pay less than $4k?)

Six hundred copies seems all right for a first timer who is (or was) a high school student But with everything I saw in the paper about his book (and signings, etc.), I seriously expected him to have higher sales.

Just because someone has press in a local newspaper or other press related news doesn't mean there are sales. What it comes down to from my experience has more to do with getting your book physically into larger stores where people see the book in person. Unless there is something tangible, it's an up hill battle regardless of the blogs we write or the networking we do online. Granted, there are always exceptions.

But that's the whole root of this discussion, Jonathan. Tate says you have to pay them $4k for a publicist, but what's the point of having a publicist if they're not going to do the legwork needed to sell your book? That's what we're all talking about, here; that Tate is full of *bleep*.

I apologize I didn't look at the entire thread. Tate is full of it then if you have to pay the additional amount to market the book.

That's okay...long thread. :)

Summary: Tate won't pick you up unless you pay them $4k for a so-called "publicist", who many say does pretty much nothing for you. They lie about being exclusive. You shouldn't have to pay a real publisher to be published (the exception of being "pay to play", like iUniverse and the others). Multiple complaints. Agreement among myself and others than Amazon is the best for self-publishing, as it's not P2P and the extended distribution (releasing to Ingram and others -- https://www.createspace.com/Products/...) has become free within the last three to six months.

I would have to agree. A legitimate publishing house pays you, not the other way around.

There is an old adage, money flows to the author...

Dayanara wrote: "Happy? Who's happy? I don't see any happy Tate authors here.

A few naive ones, maybe."

Well said.

I'm happy. In fact, very happy.

In my limited experience, publicists can't make a book sell well. The only thing that moves books is having an extensive "platform." This can't be built overnight. Here's our approach:

http://8greatstorytellers.wordpress.com/

We also use Twitter.

Jill wrote: "I've just gotten an acceptance letter from Tate Publishing. After doing some research I'm thinking of waiting to hear back from other publishers.

Has anyone had any experience with Tate Publishin..."

Hi Jill, my name is Jacqueline. I just had a book published by Page Publishing. I too was accepted by Tate Publishing. They are a very good publisher and they were very caring and informative as well as patient. But I did not publish my book with them because they wanted too much money at a time when I could not afford it, so I went with Page Publishing instead. I think it is a good idea to research the publishers first before making a commitment. Both Page and Tate are good publishers, but I could not afford one but could afford the other.
Jacqueline

Jacqueline wrote: Both Page and Tate are good publishers, but I could not afford one but could afford the other."

*headdesk headdesk* I don't know how many times I, and others in this thread have to repeat ourselves. You do NOT pay to publish. If ANY publisher is asking for money in order to publish your book you are being scammed.

Legitimate publishers make their money by selling your books to the reading public. Dubious publishers and vanity presses make their money by taking it from naive writers who want to see their book in print.

Do your research. Money flows TO the author.

I thought she meant...well, now I realized I was thinking of "New Page Books"...until I read "could afford". :P

A.W., did you get my message?

Jeannie wrote: "I'm happy. In fact, very happy."

What are you happy about? Your book does not come out until June, if Tate does not screw up. B&N is not even listing it yet and they should be. Tate should be generating prelaunch notices way in advance, at least 3 months in advance...

Also its 45 pages and does not list price. If its as expensive as your other book listed on Amazon by another publisher, $45 for 250 pages, I have serious doubts it will earn back.

But of course, I am sure you can afford the loss, and that must be what makes you happy. TAX WRITE OFF

Dayanara - yip, have replied :)

Page Publishing are not a publisher, they are a vanity press, which is why it is so important to do your research.

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showt...

I look forward to seeing all these happy Tate customers on the NYT bestseller list, because 4k in marketing *must* land you there, surely? ;)

Wow... I am so sorry I got involved in this thread. I was just trying to share my experience with Tate as I thought feedback was what people were looking for. Obviously I came in late as so many are upset if I say my experience was good. I can see no one wants to hear that and I will just trust that everyone has their own reasons.

Please hear me . . . I wish everyone good luck with their books. I hope everyone finds a publisher, or self publishes or if they are able, has a vanity publisher - whatever - I just have to believe that someday one will hit the best seller list! Just keep believing in your work. So goodbye to you all…..and again wishing you the very best!

I know I'm late in posting this comment but I just got a contract for them myself. I was so excited when I first started reading it then I thought I'd better Google and find out more about them. Saw all these complaints down below. WOW! I think I'll rein in my enthusiasm for now and keep submitting to agents and other publishers. Good luck to you.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/misc/t...

Linda wrote: "I know I'm late in posting this comment but I just got a contract for them myself. I was so excited when I first started reading it then I thought I'd better Google and find out more about them. Sa..."

And it's not just Tate, but any publisher who wants you to pay up front is a vanity press. Even a more reputable one focuses on selling services, not books. Publishers should pay you, not the other way around, and if it is not possible to get a contract with a reputable selective publisher, self publishing through Amazon is a viable alternative.

You're so right!

Jeannie wrote: "Obviously I came in late as so many are upset if I say my experience was good."

Jeannie, your book hasn't been published yet. I don't think people are upset about the timeliness of your comments, or don't want to hear that you had a good experience.

The issue is more likely the fact that you haven't had a publishing experience yet. So far, you've given Tate $4k and they're working on publishing your book.

You can't say yet if they did a good job. And a lot of people agree that it's a bad idea to pay a "publisher" thousands of dollars to publish your book.

If they get your book in stores and it does well, then when you say you're happy with them, it will mean something.

As it stands now, there's no reason not to think that you've simply been duped, and that you could easily afford to be duped.

I hope you'll come back after the book has actually been published and tell us how happy you are. You might still be. I've read about one person who was happy afterwards. For now, you're pleased with the experience you've had leading up to publication. But that isn't what you forked over the big bucks for.

If you pre-pay for a car, it doesn't mean a lot to say that you're happy with it when you haven't even driven it yet. You've only talked about what color its going to be painted, whether it will be manual or automatic, etc.

I've been offered a free marketing and publishing contract by Tate. What should I do?

Nicholas wrote: "I've been offered a free marketing and publishing contract by Tate. What should I do?"

Personally, I would decline, or at the very least have a lawyer look over that contract to make sure it is actually free. However, someone else on the thread did say that there are two publishers named some variation of Tate, so it could be the other one.

Nicholas wrote: "I've been offered a free marketing and publishing contract by Tate. What should I do?"

You do your research. Talk to other authors with the publisher, ask them about their experiences, what they like, what they don't like. If they don't want you talking to other authors HUGE red flag.

Look at their titles on Amazon, where are they ranking? How many reviews do they have, what is the average of reviews. Do the covers look professional? Use the look inside feature, what is the quality of the editing?

Wow, one of the rare free contracts. Amazing! Of course, if you take it, you may end up hurting your reputation, so it's up to you.

This isn't about Tate per se, but a very good blog post on a similar house, Author Solutions, with a lot of the same issues:

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/20...

Nicholas wrote: "I've been offered a free marketing and publishing contract by Tate. What should I do?"

It won't be free. They will probably come to you and tell you to pay for the PR firm, or require that you purchase a set amount of your own books, usually at a cost of thousands of dollars.

Even if it is free, Tate does little to know editing. They may run your manuscript through spell check, but that's about it. So, even if it doesn't cost you a dime, they will not put out a quality product.

It's better to remain unpublished than to be published badly. This is your reputation.

I also recommend you read the following article. It's very enlightening. This is a very shady company.

http://www.thelostogle.com/2014/05/28...

I don't believe that you should have to spend $4,000 just to say that you "have tried everything to get published." Writing is a business as well as an art form. Often times, you have to work your way up from the bottom. This means putting in the time and hard work to achieve your own goals. Not pay someone to achieve them for you.

Personally speaking, I believe whole heartedly in the message of my in production children's book. I want the story to touch people's hearts and change the way that they look at special needs animals. I would not consider myself a successful author unless my readers felt connected to the book's characters and message.

If you are self-publishing, you too are paying with your time. (...) So I ask you, what is your time worth?

Despite what economists say, "opportunity cost" is free. Four thousand dollars is four thousand dollars.

I don't have to calculate the opportunity cost when writing/publishing my books, because writing is not just a passion, it's an extension of myself. If I'm not writing, I'm playing games. I've put in a lot of time on breaks at work in writing. What would I be doing otherwise, if I wasn't writing? Reading.

There is no way on Goddess's green earth that you can tell me that the opportunity cost of writing a novel is the same as shelling out four thousand to a useless company. As everyone here has said repeatedly, "You don't pay a publisher, they pay you." If you love what you're doing, opportunity cost is irrelevant.

By the by, your little comment on "you're not an author until you've sold two thousand books"? BS. You're not a true blue author until you have to report your royalties to the IRS, however small they may be.

I had to tell the IRS about my royalties when I filed my 2013 taxes. If that isn't real, nothing else is.

Corine wrote: "I’m sure I will get backlash over my comment but I will say it anyway. There are a lot of people in this group who look down on or have negative comments about people who use vanity publisher or p..."

I'm sorry, but with all due respect, Tate is not going to teach you about publishing. They are not going to do anything that you could not do on your own. Respectable publishers will not ask for money, they will hire a professional cover artist, editor, and will get your books on the shelves. Without asking for a dime of your money. Tate will not do any of that for you.

You would probably sell more books self publishing than you would through Tate.

Time is free. That's why it's "free time"?

I never have to get a job to earn time. Never have to play the lottery, never have to sell things...I just switch my life around.

Money is not that easy to get. I don't think I'm being purposefully dense in this situation...I think you're that naive, Corine.

Corine wrote: "Because Tate is working on this book, it has freed up my time to work on several others. Again, you either pay with your time or you pay with cash. One is not better than the other."

Well it's cost you $4,000 and bravo that you have that kind of cash to throw around in pursuit of your dream. I am published with a small press, you know what it cost me to have my book published with them? NOTHING. You see they pay ME royalties and THEY bear all costs associated with publishing. They pay for artwork, editing, formatting etc. I then receive a percentage of sales.

You are correct in that if I self published I would bear those costs myself (which still wouldn't amount to anything like 4k, my next novel I am self publishing will cost under $1,000). But here's the big thing to also consider - I keep 100% of all royalties.

Tate has cost you $4,000 up front in cold hard cash. Do you keep 100% of royalties for paying to play? Or do they take your money AND your royalties?

Since you seem to be big on time/money comparisons - have you calculated how many books you have to sell before you will break even on your 4k investment? How many do you have to sell before you see a return on your time by going the Tate route?

By going with a legit publisher I made a return on my time with the first book sold.

"I can always find a way to earn extra money."

Not everyone has this luxury. The economy of the United States is quite horrible. I have a Bachelor's Degree and was working part-time for a year. "Extra" money is certainly hard to come by. Especially now in a world where the price of literally everything is steadily climbing, the full time position that I now hold makes enough money for my husband and I to pay the bills and feed our fur babies. There is nothing "extra" left.

To those of us that were not born into wealthy families or were unable to obtain high paying jobs, the idea of spending $4,000 on something that may or may not have return potential is simply a horrible idea. My dreams are not worth losing my home and family.

I've self published three books. I think the last one took about two hours to get the layout right and in PDF format. It cost me nothing to upload it via CreateSpace. (If I recall, my first one cost me something like $25 to open up an account.)

At my royalty rate, I'd have to sell over 800 copies to break even. If I wanted to put another $4,000 into any of my works, it would be in marketing.

It's just the way I see things rolling. But we're all different creatures!

Tony Latham

We should not jump too vigorously on Corine. She makes a lot of good points. But, two things occur to me: one, equating money with time is not so simple. They are similar enough that the comparison is appealing, but dissimilar enough so that the analogy soon collapses.

Two, the roles of author and publisher are often blurry in these discussions, and this one is no exception. The role of the author (the one actually doing the writing) is of course essential, but this angst about bringing the book to market is more of an economic problem. Real authors don't get validated from how many books they sell, or where and how they are sold, or how much they cost. They get validation from writing.

Having said that, it's believable to me that people choose Tate because of a perceived need to make their writing real. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the people at Tate are lying in wait for. Ditto the IUniverse people. Taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times Book Review (with the authors' money, of course) does not make one iota of difference. It's just one more example of how the aura of industry-stamp-of-approval success can blind naive authors to the requirements for true success.

I am in the process of getting my book published with Tate Publishing and I personally love them as a company. I have had nothing but wonderful encounters with them. They aren't a vanity publisher just because they ask for a retainer fee. Most publishers I sought after asked for a $25-50 fee just submit my manuscript. Then on top of that I would have had to pay for my own agent AND a publicist which would have cost me roughly around $3000. What makes these companies NOT vanity publishers? Is it because the size of money asked? I don't care if no one agrees with me or thinks I'm just plain stupid, but people really need to think before tagging a company as "vanity" or just plain awful.

K R wrote: "I am in the process of getting my book published with Tate Publishing and I personally love them as a company. I have had nothing but wonderful encounters with them. They aren't a vanity publisher ..."

Those companies are also vanity publishers. Some publishers, particularly the household name ones, want submissions through an agent. Reputable agents want a percentage of the take, not upfront fees. Reputable publishers do not ask for fees for submissions. These things should be red flags.

There are agents who ask for small fees, and not all of them are scam artists, but there are plenty that do not.

K R wrote: "I am in the process of getting my book published with Tate Publishing and I personally love them as a company. I have had nothing but wonderful encounters with them. They aren't a vanity publisher ..."

If you have to pay a company money, any amount of money, it is a vanity publisher. No reputable publisher will ever ask for money. Publishers make money by selling large amounts of books. Any publisher asking for money upfront is making it from the author, not by selling books.

Ask yourself who would work harder to sell your book. The company who needs to sell your book to make a profit, or the company who has already been paid. This also applies to agents. The agent who receives a percentage of the sale works much harder than an agent who has been paid upfront.

I've never heard of a legitimate publisher with a reading fee.

Realize that even some of the big houses (Harlequin, Simon and Schuster) have opened up vanity imprints as a way to make money off of new writers.

To those signing up with Tate, all I can say is good luck. Love to hear what you have to say a year from now. Or even three years.

ETA: Link http://the-digital-reader.com/2012/11...

Judy wrote: "I've never heard of a legitimate publisher with a reading fee.

Realize that even some of the big houses (Harlequin, Simon and Schuster) have opened up vanity imprints as a way to make money off o..."

They are, however, fairly upfront about what they are (Archway and Dell'Arte), and I suspect that you get what you pay for with them, which might make them a better choice that someone like Tate. There's a reason why they make fewer promises, though...

Reyna's Mom wrote: "K R wrote: "I am in the process of getting my book published with Tate Publishing and I personally love them as a company. I have had nothing but wonderful encounters with them. They aren't a vanit..."

I don't need to ask who would sell my book better. I've made my decision and I'm sticking to it. Go ahead and slander the company, but I've done my research. I'm LDS and fervently thought about my decision with going with Tate Publishing. So please, don't tell me that I need to ask myself who would do this better or not.

It is not slander to state that their practices are not industry-standard, even as a "for-fee" publisher.

K R wrote: "Reyna's Mom wrote: "K R wrote: "I am in the process of getting my book published with Tate Publishing and I personally love them as a company. I have had nothing but wonderful encounters with them...."

KR, please do not accuse me of slander. It is not warranted. Where did I say anything about Tate that is not true?

Your statement that all publishers ask for money simply gave me pause. Because, no reputable publisher will ask for money. That is a fact.

If you are getting exactly what you want from Tate with your eyes wide open, then I am happy for you. However, there are many who will read this thread and realize that Tate will not meet their needs.

K R wrote: "They aren't a vanity publisher just because they ask for a retainer fee. Most publishers I sought after asked for a $25-50 fee just submit my manuscript. Then on top of that I would have had to pay for my own agent AND a publicist which would have cost me roughly around $3000."

Yes, actually, they are. If they ask for money = vanity publisher. If you are submitting to publishers who ask for a reading fee, again = scam. Same as agents who ask for money = scam.

There is ONE very simple rule:
money flows TO the author.

You do your research before submitting to any publisher or agent. There are websites like QueryTracker and AgentQueryConnect who maintain databases of reputable agents and publishers. Another resource is AbsoluteWrite which has extensive discussions about agents and publishers. Like this one about Tate: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/s...

If you go into your Tate contract with open eyes then obviously that is your choice but please don't try and make out all publishers/agents charge money because legit ones don't.

I would love to have an open discussion with Tate authors about what services and marketing they receive for $4,000. I would be fascinated to hear how that monetary push has affected their sales ranking at retailers like Amazon and B&N. How many units do you have to sell to just break even? What total sales do you have after a week, a month, a year? What is the reach of a 4k marketing campaign? I am really interested - my publisher never charged me a dime so I am curious to compare experiences and results. Unfortunately to date no one will talk about their post-publication experience & sales, which I find speaks volumes.

That's why I say I would love to hear from Tate-published writers a year after their publication. Because I haven't heard much good yet, post-publication. I may be self--published, but I'm seeing profits. Can they say the same? I look at some of the Amazon sales-rankings from people who posted earlier in this thread and were happy about their experiences, and the Amazon ranking isn't just bad; it's abysmal. Two million and higher. (that means it hasn't sold anything in about a year.)

Now that doesn't mean they aren't selling elsewhere. But since they're not posting about their experiences, it does make me wonder.

I really do mean good luck. I just think writers need to really research the contract that they are signing if they choose to enter into a contract, of any kind. And I think this is true for legitimate publishers as well.

But especially any place that asks for an up front fee.

Reyna's Mom, I respectfully disagree with you on that. I apologize for accusing you of slander, but in my personal opinion you seem to not understand the complete facts on Tate Publishing. They ask for a retainer fee because it's for a publicist. If the author has one then it doesn't need to be paid. I didn't have a publicist so I have paid the fee which in fact was cut down exceedingly. So in reality I have only paid maybe $2000 at most. Also part of marketing a book calls for the author's own willingness as well. A publisher helps get it out there, but an author needs to be willing to do their part.

As for A.W. I disagree with you as well. My comments above give my reasoning as to why. Plus after selling a 1,000 books I get my money back paid in full along with every royalty earned stated in the contract. I did my research thoroughly on Tate Publishing so don't accuse me of trying to make out that every publisher charges money because they do. I have looked it up and done my research. I will be more then willing to speak with you about post-publication if that's what will help you be a little more open-minded. I'm not trying to be disrespectful or rude, so I ask that any of you not be offended by my comments. This is a wonderful discussion that I'm sure has helped many see that Tate isn't a right fit for them. They were for me and I'm grateful for the opportunity I have with them. If in the long run I end up going to a different publisher for my other book ideas then great! If not then I will be happy to share good and bad experiences with you all.