Lessons Not Learned

 My last post seemed to be a bit confusing as to whether or not I encourage "vanity publishing." I can say I, personally, am not a fan of it, nor would I encourage it, but some people have done very well in that world. As always I say, "do what's best for you." Oh, how I wish I had learned...but as always a journey is full of ups and downs, rights and wrongs, steps forward and steps back...on to Tate Publishing.

After being with Westbow Press for 3 years, I started looking for other opportunities. I had finished book II and was in the process of editing. I was too afraid to go it alone and self-publish, so once again I turned to the internet. I came across Tate Publishing (now bankrupt and gone). Their prices were better than Westbow for what I believed I would be getting, and after talking with the representative it sounded like they would be helping more with the marketing AND after I sold a few thousand copies I'd get my investment back. *Let's all stop here for a moment and laugh; or cry* 

Like all authors, I believed that in the right hands my story would sell oodles of books, so I had no doubt that I would reach the magic number and all would be right in the world. *another pause for laughter*. Moronically, I decided to republish my first book to have all my novels with the same company. Leaving Westbow was easy enough and I began the new path with Tate. It went through another editing process, which surprisingly was very good. Not only did they catch some of the grammatical errors that I had neglected to correct from my first editor, they also found a POV error. I didn't think it was a big deal, but the editor explained how it really needed to be fixed, so after a few back and forths I figured out what she meant. (Again, I was a novice at the time and didn't understand all the intricacies of writing. Tate re-did the chapters and type setting as well as giving me the cover I really wanted and book one was up and available.

As far as marketing went, they did help me coordinate with some local book sellers for shelf space and put me in their catalogue, but as with Westbow the rest fell to me. I had a book launch party that had okay attendance for my small town, and began hitting local events when possible. I made some sales, but was still not getting as much help as I wanted. I had realized that this part of the business would fall on me. They set me up a web-page, and I did my best to get the word out while finishing up book II, which had grown so long I had to split it into another book, giving me a three book series.

I started getting concerned with Tate, when the editing for the second book was basically non existent. They sent me back grammatical corrections but no content reviews. However, much I wanted to believe my book was "just that good", in my heart I was worried that their standards had slipped. However, I had it beta read and unprofessional content edits, so I trusted they wouldn't let a bad product go out and continued the process. It struck me as strange that the interiors of the books didn't match (as one would think a company producing multiple books from a single author would do), but I had a deadline set for publication and wanted to get the book out. All the interior work looked good and the cover was good, so I moved forward. Once I received the hard proof I noticed that the spine did not have the subtitle--on EITHER book! How did I miss that? Since I already had a hundred copies of book one I wasn't going to get it changed, so I had them add a small "book II" at the top of the spine and just keep the title Resistance. 

After receiving all the soft covers I had ordered of book II, I began waiting for the hard covers to arrive. And I waited and waited. I tried contacting Tate and didn't get any responses. After a month of trying to get through I began looking on the internet for comments from other authors. Turns out that Tate publishing was going bankrupt. They put out a statement (not getting in touch personally with their authors) letting people know how to deal with their projects. I did get all my rights and copies of the PDF files of both books, but never received the money back for the hard covers and never received the books themselves. I had two author copies of the hard covers that I'd already received--one I kept and one I sent to someone who had preordered it. *sigh*. Finally, I had learned my lesson and was done with vanity presses. I would finish book III and learn how to independently publish. I went to a conference and bought some books and started on my new journey... Then the phone call came from Greenberry Publishing, a "hybrid-publisher". Can you guess what happens next? Come back next week and I'll let you know if I learned my lessons or not...

Keep the faith! Keep resisting! And never give up.