Long Tale Press

Although I am wholly with you on being irritated when publishers change the title of authors' books because they "know better," in the movie-maker's defense they're using the title that the U.S. publisher of Northern Lights had already changed it to. It was that title under which the book got famous under, so I can see why the studio would keep it.

Rest assured, here at Long Tale Press, although we may give authors some guidance as to what makes for a good title, authors still get the final say in what their books are called.

I believe you're right, that in the traditional book world a publisher doesn't go to the bother of producing an audio book unless the print book is a clear success. But then again, their stock-in-trade are print books, so it's more or less the default option for them. Our stock in trade are eBooks and Audiobooks, which are downloadable, and as such don't penalize anybody for printing and distribution costs.

We like the model: our generous royalty structure means that an author is going to see a lot more money per copy on one of our audio books (even though we sell them for less) than they will with print books through a traditional publisher. Our low production and distribution cost means that we can risk publishing stories that no traditional publisher would touch--the offbeat, innovative, creative, and magical stories that are wonderful to read (or listen to) but don't necessarily fit the cookie-cutter mold of what the traditional publishing industry is looking for--because we don't need to sell nearly as many to break even.

Here's how I would encourage you (and any other writers reading this) to consider it: if you have a finished, polished, well edited manuscript (see our submission guidelines for details), you may as well submit it here. If your work is good (and it is, right?), then the community will say so and that's all we need to hear in order to publish it. You really don't have anything to lose by trying. The only time I'd encourage anyone not to submit an excerpt is if the manuscript isn't really finished (particularly according to paragraph 3 of the submission guidelines); if you throw half-baked fiction into the submissions area, don't be surprised if people don't review it well. You should only ever submit the best work you are capable of producing.

Submitting an excerpt to us is conceptually no different than sending an industry standard query letter to any other publishing house: it is a for-real submission for consideration of publication. We just use a different process than they do for selecting what to publish from the submissions we receive. Best case scenario, the community here likes your work and you win (hint: nothing stops you from recruiting your friends and family to join the community). Worst case scenario, you don't and you're literally not out anything but you do come away with a stack of legitimate feedback from real readers that you can use to improve the work, our compliments. You can still shop your book around to other publishers in the traditional way, or you can revise it and re-submit it here. Whatever tickles your fancy.