Chaucer may have a Twitter, but Erastes has a Twit.

[erastes]

“his heart leapt in his chest.”  - Yes, well it would be worrying if it leapt elsewhere, wouldn’t it?

“raven-haired beauty”  - What was I thinking?  Next I’ll be discussing his limpid emerald orbs, or have someone say they like a man with spirit.  Any mention of these, please shoot me.

It’s over a year now since Lucius last went on one of his jaunts – perhaps 18 months – and he’s not been in for his breakfast.  I’m not panicking yet, he’s been known to skip a meal from time to time, as he’s quite capable of catching his own food, but I miss the boy.  I hope he’s not gone walkabout again.ETA: He’s home, the ingrate. Eight hours late. grumble grumble grumble. and with an expression that says: “What?” grumble grumble sassaffrassdickdastardly. Cats can’t live with ‘'em, can’t eat ‘em.

I see that QUARTET PRESS has folded before it even started up. 

I’m not surprised at this, any more than I would be if any new venture had started up, or folded. Although I see there’s a positive fandom-style wailing and gnashing of teeth going on.

What I WAS surprised at was the completely over the top effusive snogging fest that went on when Quartet was announced. Until that began I had taken little notice of the announcement. Meh – another epub starting up – so what?  Despite the BNF(big name fan) aspect of the people starting up Quartet, why on earth should anyone have assumed that it was 1. going to do well 2. going to be quality?  And what does this sentence REALLY mean?

we didn’t want to compromise and lower the quality

Compromise on what?

The thing is that it seems that what they are saying is (I could be wrong), in talks with the digital vendors, they found out that they had too many people on board to make a living.  Which is what “We could have restructured” probably means e.g. they could have kicked someone out.  But what the hell has THAT to do with lowering the quality?  Your QUALITY is only affected by the quality of submissions you are getting in.  You, as an editor and publisher can only affect the quality detrimentally by bad editing, or bad covers.

What was important to them? 

Comments

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

I love these...worryingly I have lost count of the times I have read 'his cock hardened in his trousers' (as opposed to his sock, perhaps?) but my own collection of typos are the best ever...*sigh!*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.

Perhaps I could write, his heart leapt in his trousers and you could then have, his cock hardened in his chest.

Cliche-Swap!

[pepperlandgirl4.livejournal.com]

The fact that anybody still takes them seriously and is acting like this is some sort of tragedy boggles and sickens me. The only reason anybody even cared about this was because of the BNF factor--but they didn't even understand how the business works? Nobody would open a print press without understanding distribution. I repeat, nobody would open a print press without understanding distribution. And if they did, nobody would take them seriously for one second, except authors who are so fresh and new to the business that they don't understand distribution is important. How could so many supposedly intelligent people not grasp that digital vendors work on the same principle? Sure, there aren't "reserves against returns" and you don't pubs don't have to tell their products to the websites to be listed because there isn't limited space, but the vendors are important and they take their cut and that is a plain reality of epublishing that should have been self apparent to anybody interested in opening another digital press.

They would not have had to compromise on quality, since you don't require any capital to attract quality authors in epublishing--nobody around here expects an advance, after all. They probably lost their biggest investor or they were too top heavy and not willing to put in the years of work it takes to create a successful publisher.

In other words, they fell victim to the same stupidity that other faithed digital presses fall victim to. Their hubris (hyped far and wide) was the only real difference. As much as the big bloggers hate Ravenous Romance (and I'm no fan of them either) at least seem to grasp the realities of the business.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Exactamundo, and thank you for that. it was the comparison to the Ravenous start up (and blogging evisceration - although I agree with you, the two books i've read of theirs have been truly awful) that made me pause with the fandomosity of it all. They certainly do (RR I mean) seem to know what their are doing business wise and contacts wise.

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

A lot safer than his cock hardening in someone else's chest.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

*loses tea over keyboard*

Now that's an entirely different genre.

*Points you out of the room*

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

Medical porn?

"Doctor, I think we got a stiff!"
"Yep, me too"

Aw, Miss *pout* *shuffles out of room but peeps through peephole in door*

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

If I saw "raven-haired beauty" in one of your stories, referring to a guy, I'd assume you were taking a gentle poke at the cliche.

Re Quartet..The quality of a file is pretty uniform. The quality of the writing is dependent on what the publisher accepts for publication. The distribution... should have been in place before they opened their doors, no?

When I've seen "quality" used as a reason for not putting something on the market, I can believe it if it means that the materials or cost of transportation have become too costly. Neither of these are a factor in e-publishing. What this sounds like is another way of saying, "We can't make as much profit as we wanted to, as fast as we wanted to, so we aren't going to bother." They saw Samhain making lots of $, they figured they could jump into the market and immediately clean up.

But they forgot that it takes awhile for writers to trust that a publisher is going to be there. On the face of it, this looks like the same thing Samhain did in buying Linden Bay -- jump in with both feet and then say, "Well, now what?" It worked for them, more or less, because LBR was a self-sustaining organism and all they really had to do was not poke at the works until they wre ready to do something. It meant months of uncertainty for the writers, but not much bother for Samhain in the way of start-up costs or time-lag to build a readership.

I don't get excited over the rah-rah of a new publisher, because I ran my own business for nearly 20 years and I know that you can't put the enthusiasm in charge of the purse strings. Half of all new businesses fold in the first year. Gotta do the groundwork first and get excited when you've actually accomplished something.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Uhm. I agree.

1) These aren't the best times to start a venture.
2) YOU WRITE A BUSINESS PLAN BEFORE YOU ANNOUNCE ANYTHING.
3) YOU WRITE A BUSINESS PLAN BEFORE YOU SIGN AUTHORS.
4) Said business plan includes costs. All costs. Every little cost. Each one. Seriously. Even the ones that hide under the sofa.
5) Things like this are usually bootstrapped. Means, people pay it out of their own pocket. Then come the three f's: friends, family and fools. Then you scrimp. And cut costs. And do it part time in addition to the day job.
6) Years pass. You grow a reputation, you grow sales.
7) Eventually, somebody makes a living.
8) Going out there strutting your stuff about how your quality will be great and much better and then failing at basic business practice makes this a fairly sad, tragical thing.

*desky head*

Edited to add: I respect anybody who takes the risk to start a business. But this looks like really really bad business planning.

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

We could do that, yes, in the forthcoming anthology "Weird Gay Aliens from Mars"...

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

Stop going all financial on us, Vash, the minute I attempt to start up a conversation about gay space aliens.

*huffs*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

*snorts*

It's ok, she's new (to the madness) she doesn't know when to shake a tentacle and when to stick it back in the trews.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I've considered several times starting something up. Then I've tied myself to a bed of nails until I feel better.

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

I did start something up, but in my case I knew full well what I was getting myself into since I'd done this before with a print zine. Ebook is a lot easier in some respects. You don't have to worry about whether your printer's going to screw up the job--happened to me once--or go out of business on you between issues--which also happened.

But my advice to anyone to anyone would be -do not- start up an epub right now. There are too many popping up run by people who seem to think it's the road to wealth, which is totally wrong -especially- in the current economic situation.

Shadowfire Press is doing okay because we had a business plan, and knew what we were getting into before we took the first step. We also discussed it for a year before we decided to go forward with the venture, so it wasn't 'a wild hair' decision made on a whim.

We've already gotten through our first year, and that's the hardest one to survive. Sure there have been rocky patches, but as with any business you don't throw in the towel over a problem, you work past it and move on.... Well at least that's what you do in most cases.

I have my suspicions that Quartet didn't figure in the fact that distributors take a -huge- cut of the cover price. So if they'd planned to pay 35% of the cover price from distributors I can see how they would be in trouble before they even opened. Fictionwise often discounts so deeply--I've seen my own books discounted as much as 75% at one point which netted me a whopping ten cents per sale on a $2 book--that it leaves very little for the publisher and even less for the author.

If they didn't allow for that then they would be doomed to financial collapse in short order.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Thankfully, my friends have always talked me off the ledge, too.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Sowwy :( Or,actually, German-accented "Sovvy". :)

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Interesting to know. :)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

*poke*

Iron Cross?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I was I was...I actually wrote it sang froid without even noticing I did it - I didn't SPOT it until I reworked last night's work this morning. Arghle! Also, the last half a page slipped into first person. BAD STORY! BAD!

Couldnt agree more with everything you say, either.

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

Well, make a bit more effort next time, ok? Nothing major, just show willing, for God's sakes...you know...um...ectoplasm...two-headed creatures with multiple penises (penii?) and slimey green tentacles...etc. That sort of thing.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

You want me to write after a ten hour day? *drools in a corner*

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Can I go for the fallen angel look? Blue skin, six pierced nipples and bat wings?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

:) I have an enabling stick and know how to use it.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

*pictures something terribly inappropriate*

Hmmm. Maybe I can find a few words somewhere. Haven't dusted the corner over there in a while...

[rwday.livejournal.com]

Personally, I like a man with spirits. Gin, tequila. Not Scotch, though, as I think it tastes like dirt.

I don't know anything about Quartet, but I think it's probably wise of them to go ahead and fold now, before they've got authors hanging on a string, waiting to be paid. The quality thing sounds like a lame excuse for not being properly capitalized or having a business plan that's based in fact, not fandom squee.

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

Oh for pity sakes.... Has anyone else seen this post by one of the Quartet principles?

http://booksquare.com/how-i-spent-my-summer-vacation/

They announced their existence THEN decided to find out the fine points of ebook publishing afterward apparently. If they'd done their homework first they might have saved a lot of people time and trouble.

To say I'm dumbfounded at the way they went about this is an understatement.

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

A huge cut, and there's at least a 1-quarter time lag for the publisher, 2-quarter for the writer.

If I were ever insane enough to do publishing, I'd probably do exactly what EPIC turns up its nose at -- enlist a techie to format the files, sell them from my own website, and promote like mad. I've done print zines, too, in my mad youth, and downloads would have to be a LOT easier.

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

Well Fictionwise is taking around 60 days to make payments and some places only pay out after the money in the account reaches a certain dollar amount.

Downloads ARE a lot easier. No trips to the printer, no delays because they've got a 'bigger order' to do first that delays your job for two weeks. And you don't have to figure out where to store the extra stock until it sells because everything you ever published fits on a harddrive.

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

in my mad youth,

Would not have pictured it any other way!

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

It was probably the fumes from the stencil correction fluid. We're talking mimeo here...

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

I used to trap myself in an airconditioned room with alcohol based markers and cynoacrylate glue fumes. It was called "design".

Loved it!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, that's not the part of it that I was referring to as fandom squee, sorry it came across like that - it was all the fandom-like pre-hype from people saying "they looked good" and "they were bound to be a success" because of who was running it, rather than waiting to see the result, especially after the vitriol that was splashed by the same people over Ravenous Romance because it was started by someone that the "fandom" have a down on.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes I read that this morning. Unreal. And full of such buzz-words it made me feel quite ill.

I mean - what does this MEAN??

"he is viewing ebooks and digital distribution through a physical lens"

As opposed to what? A virtual lens - which is what she means, obviously.

Glad she never got to edit me. And handle my finances.

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

It's just doublespeak for 'we didn't know what the heck we were doing' as far as I can tell. In fact, read through the lens of 'been here done that' I can see how absolutely clueless they were from the outset based on her post.

She continually cites things like Amazon--over priced ebooks anyone?--and the NYC pubs that issue ebooks at hardcover prices because the book is only out in hardcover. (NYC is clueless on ebooks for the most part.)

Then the whole bit about ISBN numbers... Surprise, they're very expensive. For a small start up that would be $300 for the first 10 numbers folks (this includes a 'set up fee' to get your publisher's identity set up).

And the fact that their business model changed and I quote "A lot" tells me they didn't bother to find anything out before they went forward and got outside people involved.

It just boggles the mind. It really does.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I was discussing this this morning and this sentence also amused me:

"most customers shop at Amazon or the Sony Reader store or Fictionwise or Books on Board because these entities aggregate ebooks from many publishers."

er - I'm fairly sure that if you did a poll of "why do you shop at Fictionwise (and others)?" that reason would appear precisely NOWHERE.

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

Very true. The reason people shop at those outlets is because of the discounts in Fictionwise's case, and the fact that Sony and Kindle are proprietary systems. Once you have either a Sony or a Kindle you go back to their sites to shop there, not because they 'aggregate ebooks from many publishers'. A site--I can't recall which one--did a poll on why people shop where they shop a year or so ago, and those were the main reasons given for all three sites.

Nearly all people who responded also bought books directly from the publisher's sites also.