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Other Useful Information
- We will acknowledge receipt of your manuscript by email. If, after three or four weeks you do not hear from us, please feel free to call.
- If we accept your manuscript for publication, you will receive a standard publishing contract by mail within four weeks. Please read the contract carefully and please have someone with a legal background read it also and explain sections that are unclear to you; there are many aspects of the publishing business that can be confusing. Remember, a contract is a legal, binding document for both parties, so it is to your advantage to take the time to understand such concepts as the buying and selling of rights, primary and subsidiary rights, work for hire, and author copyright. If you are satisfied with the terms of the contract we send you, please sign and date it, and then mail it back to Central Avenue Press.
- We usually offer an advance against royalties for the first print run.
- Writing is essentially a solitary endeavor. Musicians, actors, even artists receive almost constant feedback from their audience, but writers rarely do. Even though Central Avenue Press will accept unagented submissions, it is to your advantage to have your work reviewed by a critique group before submitting a manuscript.
- This may come as a surprise to some authors, but no one makes any money from the sale of a book unless an actual person buys it. Bookstores do not buy books, they provide shelf space to publishers for a period of three or four months. If after this period, your books have not been sold, they are returned to the publisher, sometimes at the publisher's expense, and no one, not the publisher, not the author receives a dime. Why is this important for you to know? Because if your work is published by Random House, it has about ninety days to become a success, and if it doesn't, it disappears from the face of the earth.
Advantages and Disadvantages
There are both advantages and disadvantages with having your work published by a small press. We spend considerable effort differentiating between large and small publishers because we want authors who consider entering into a business relationship with Central Avenue Press to have realistic expectations about what we can -- and can not -- do for them and their title.
First, let's cover the advantages:
- Central Avenue Press will take a chance on works by new authors, even authors without agents. It can be as difficult to retain an agent to represent your work as to get a publisher to publish it. We understand this and will accept unagented submissions, but if you have been turned down by a hundred literary agents, consider revising your manuscript.
- We will keep pushing your title and keep it in print longer because it represents a larger part our total assets.
- We treat authors with respect and deal with them fairly. We believe all authors deserve to be treated as authors. We feel that if your manuscript is good enough to be published, you should receive a standard publishing contract and an advance. No author should be expected to pay for the publication of her own work. We will also seriously consider your input regarding interior and cover design, but will, of course, reserve the final decision regarding all front and backmatter.
Okay, now for some disadvantages:
- You will typically receive a larger advance from a large publisher than from a small publisher. The size of an author's advance is generally based on the size of the first print run. For example, the typical print run for a trade paperback title is between 10,000 to 20,000 copies. If the book sells for $15.00 and the author receives a 7% royalty, the size of the author's advance is typically $15.00 x .07 x 10,000 or about $10,500 against royalties. A small press may offer the same advance but for a much smaller print run of perhaps 1000 copies. Most titles will not earn out their advance, and very few of the 100,000 plus titles published every year will sell more than 20,000 copies.
- Big publishers usually have larger marketing budgets and this can lead to increased sales of your book. Each year, a very few titles will receive large marketing campaigns by the big publishing houses. Good advance publicity and reviews have the potential to generate excellent sales and revenue for a book. Please understand that Central Avenue Press is small press with limited marketing resources. Each book we publish will have a marketing plan associated with it limited to about $2,000.00 -- enough to place a few ads and/or take part in a few publishers' marketing programs. We rely on our authors to promote their titles. If you are an introvert, if you don't like to speak in front of an audience, your title will probably sell poorly regardless of any attempt on our part to market it. There is no better tool to market a book than the author himself. If you are an author who feels that it is solely the publisher's responsibility to market your title, then you should send your manuscript to Random House, not Central Avenue Press. Be advised, however, that unless you are a superstar, even the big houses expect a certain amount of author participation in marketing their titles.
- Large publishers have the resources to produce large print runs. Central Avenue Press doesn't have the resources to produce print runs of more than a few thousand copies of a title. If your title takes off, we don't have the resources to produce a 50,000 copy print run, especially with returns at the large chain stores running at 40 to 50 percent. Independently published titles that sell more than a few thousand copies have the potential to get noticed by the bigger houses. In this case, Central Avenue Press will consider selling some or all rights to the work to the larger house. Authors please note that if your title is sold, the house that acquires your title must adhere to the terms of the original contract.
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