bad publicity is still publicity

Looks like Torquere is making the blog rolls as a subject of major speculation. Bad press is still press, I know, but at the risk of being termed unprofessional, I want to answer a few things, just for the edification of our readers and writers.

We're not a vanity press. Vanity presses *and* self publishing houses like LuLu charge a fee to publish your work. We are a royalty paying (on time and at 35% gross, which is e-book market standard) press with over 100 authors to our credit.

We've never changed hands. Torquere *did* incorporate a few years ago, but Shawn Clements and Lorna Hinson are still 50/50 on the paperwork and still do at least 75% of the work work ;)

We publish our own books. Show me an e-publisher who doesn't, and I will send you the name of the owner and one or more pseudonym that they write under. It's the nature of the beast. Most of us started our companies because we wrote in a niche market that no one else wanted to publish. With as many authors as we've published over the years, I would say we were right about there being an interest in the market we wrote in. We've never hidden it.

The clique accusation I can only answer with the thought that if an author is unhappy with us, I wish they would come to us with their complaint, because we can't address it if they don't. This applies to our editing. This is the one complaint that we worry on, and strive to improve, but like all publishers, e-book and NY, we have to find a balance between getting the book out on a schedule the author approves of and doing our best to edit the book on time. There are publishers out there who state that they do not edit, period. Still others say that if they find a single typo in a manuscript, they will not accept it. We choose to try to take on stories that have great ideas or great characters and fix as many of the mistakes as we can.

No press is perfect for all writers and readers. Of course, we hope that many of both will find us a good fit and come see what we're doing. The bottom line, however, remains that this is a business. And no one knows our business better than we do.