After over 100 rejections from literary agents, I finally landed Michael an agent for the series. This person shopped it around for about nine months with no nibbles. When her husband became seriously ill Michael's agent quit the business to care for him. She suggested that we present the book to some small pressess that, in general, don't require an agent. I submitted the book to four or five small pressess without much hope for publication.
This was in 2006 and I also started to investigate self-publishing as an alternative. I decided on a name for the company to form (Ridan Publishing) and created a few hundred books to be used for review copies. Just then a very small press (Aspirations Media) made an offer to publish the book.
AMI put out The Crown Conspiracy and it sold very few copies. Still, I was determined to find an audience for the book and started actively markeitng it - especially here on Goodreads and to the book blogging community as a whole. Sales started to increase and AMI asked to publish the second book as well.
AMI used the traditional publishing model, where several thousand books were printed and placed in a warehouse. Due to cash flow problems they were unable to pay the warehousing fees and so the books would go "out of print" as the warehouse would not ship any books until the payments were made.
We actually ended up paying the warehouse dirctly nearly $2,000 (in exchange for books) to get them flowing again.
In March 2008, one month before Avempartha was due to be released AMI admitted they had no money for the print run. We had the rights reverted and put Avempartha out under our own Ridan brand.
Ridan put out each book in the series at six month intervals, and when The Crown Consipracy sold out of its print run the rights for it reverted to Michael and we published that as well. With the release of the 5th book, Michael's sales showed significant traction and we decided to resubmit the books to New York.
At that time, Michael had a foreign rights agent as a number of Czech Republic publishers wanted the right to sell the books there. She put together a proposal and sent it to 17 publishers. Within days she had 7 of them interested.
We had originally thought it would take months or years (if ever) to find publication, we had thought that the sixth and final book would have been released by then but matters escallated quickly and we had an offer for the entire series in November 2010 which meant that the last book could no come out on its scheduled April release date.
The Ridan versions of the print books were removed in August 2011 and the ebooks will go out of print at the end of August. This is in preparation of the Oribt release in November, December and January. To learn more about the Orbit version refer to the following thread.
This was in 2006 and I also started to investigate self-publishing as an alternative. I decided on a name for the company to form (Ridan Publishing) and created a few hundred books to be used for review copies. Just then a very small press (Aspirations Media) made an offer to publish the book.
AMI put out The Crown Conspiracy and it sold very few copies. Still, I was determined to find an audience for the book and started actively markeitng it - especially here on Goodreads and to the book blogging community as a whole. Sales started to increase and AMI asked to publish the second book as well.
AMI used the traditional publishing model, where several thousand books were printed and placed in a warehouse. Due to cash flow problems they were unable to pay the warehousing fees and so the books would go "out of print" as the warehouse would not ship any books until the payments were made.
We actually ended up paying the warehouse dirctly nearly $2,000 (in exchange for books) to get them flowing again.
In March 2008, one month before Avempartha was due to be released AMI admitted they had no money for the print run. We had the rights reverted and put Avempartha out under our own Ridan brand.
Ridan put out each book in the series at six month intervals, and when The Crown Consipracy sold out of its print run the rights for it reverted to Michael and we published that as well. With the release of the 5th book, Michael's sales showed significant traction and we decided to resubmit the books to New York.
At that time, Michael had a foreign rights agent as a number of Czech Republic publishers wanted the right to sell the books there. She put together a proposal and sent it to 17 publishers. Within days she had 7 of them interested.
We had originally thought it would take months or years (if ever) to find publication, we had thought that the sixth and final book would have been released by then but matters escallated quickly and we had an offer for the entire series in November 2010 which meant that the last book could no come out on its scheduled April release date.
The Ridan versions of the print books were removed in August 2011 and the ebooks will go out of print at the end of August. This is in preparation of the Oribt release in November, December and January. To learn more about the Orbit version refer to the following thread.
Orbit Path to Publication