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    Unbound Publishing

    I first became aware of this imprint lately after Pat McCabe utilised it to publish his latest novel, Poguemahone, and the model certainly sounds attractive, as authors secure support for their putative book through crowdfunding, making it a theoretical example of co-operativism in action. Of course, the practice proves rather different when one views the website, with some projects vastly oversubscribed, and others rather languishing, but any initiative that breaks the stranglehold of global conglomerates on what gets greenlit can only be welcome.

    #2
    I eagerly await imp's reaction to this thread.

    The Quiet Fan is one of several books I have supported on Unbound, all of which have exceeded my expectations

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      #3
      I can only say that crowd-funding my own book was the most depressing, soul-destroying work-related task I have had to undertake in my entire life. When you reach a certain point and you know that you‘ve repeatedly bugged all available potential buyers, but the publisher‘s exhorting you to keep going and every day you wake up wishing you had decided not to publish this fucking book at all… that‘s not good. Ultimately, it became just like any other publisher I‘ve worked with - no one gives a shit about your book, no one in publicity or marketing is prepared to answer your emails let alone actually do any work with you on it (bar putting out a single fucking tweet), the only positive was the editing - a three-tier process that was even more professional than on my previous two books. But those editors were sub-contracted by Unbound, they weren‘t part of the company.

      That‘s why I‘ve loved working with a much smaller company on my latest - communication has been excellent from day one and they never keep me waiting for an answer and they don‘t just ignore my emails. Plus, they actually care about the book and are publishing it because they want to, not because they think it will make a ton of cash.

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        #4
        How could a publisher ignore emails? That's just astonishing.

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          #5
          Originally posted by diggedy derek View Post
          How could a publisher ignore emails? That's just astonishing.
          Not at all unusual in my experience. I've just had a book published (by a major very well-known publisher) and the moment that my role in production was over the marketing people have just dropped off the face of the earth. The book has been physically in existence for nearly two months now and I still haven't seen a copy.

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            #6
            Can we know what this book is?

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              #7
              Here's all the info, Sporting.

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                #8
                https://www.cambridge.org/va/cambrid...er-development

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by ad hoc View Post

                  Not at all unusual in my experience. I've just had a book published (by a major very well-known publisher) and the moment that my role in production was over the marketing people have just dropped off the face of the earth. The book has been physically in existence for nearly two months now and I still haven't seen a copy.
                  Unfortunately, this is par for the course. With most publishers, I get the impression that - creative personnel aside - most of the people working there would far rather publish books without the inconvenience of authors who are impertinent enough to submit simple requests for information like: print-runs, press contacts, sales, foreign rights interest etc. All that kind of information appears to be a closely guarded secret from the writer for reasons that are presumably also a closely guarded secret. It's no better with agents - send them a book proposal, they'll tell you they've sent it out to a dozen publishers, but not to which ones. Then sit back and hear nothing for weeks, as texts and emails go unanswered (I once read a writer's guide book in the US that said a good agent will phone/contact you once a week - hilarious!), then finally you hear "No interest." Why not? In the case of Reffing Hell, it was "No one's interested in refereeing books. They don't sell." Which is why I ended up going it alone and fixing up a deal by going directly to a publisher that seemed to care about content.

                  Agents are great if your writing career takes off and you need someone to take care of all kinds of legal and administrative and copyright and royalty issues - I don't doubt that for a minute. And if they can negotiate you a huge advance, you'll be thankful for that too. For writers at the lower end of the scale, though, that advance question becomes a burden - if a publisher offers a small advance that translates into 15% of very little (say £2-3k.), then the agent might reject the offer without telling you, the writer, that it was ever on the table.

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                    #10
                    I've been positively bedevilled by spam for imp's latest collection of drunken recollections and half-remembered truths and have promptly ordered it. Go man go.

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                      #11
                      Thank you very much, WOM. One good thing about Unbound is that I still have a ready-made outlet to all the people who backed TQF. I wavered on using it to plug Reffing Hell, but then I was in a publicity drive mood this morning and thought, why not. My old pal Ray Hudson then tweeted the link to the message, bless his heart. Unbound could have blocked that message, given that it's trying to sell a book they have no interest in, but they approved it and sent it out, so bless them too.

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                        #12
                        Here's an Unbound book I'm crowd-backing that some of you may be interested in.

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