I've been sitting on this for a couple of weeks, but I reckon it's time to let the general public know: Permuted Press has released me from my publishing contract.
Settle down, folks, you won't be able to hear the explanation if you keep carrying on like that. First off, it's through no fault of my own, and I'm not the only one who got the axe. I have no official count, but I'd say at least thirty people, including myself, are without a publisher now. It may be far more than that, I don't know.
As for how it came about, I daresay it began back in October last year. Permuted sent out letters to their authors informing us that they were making some adjustments to both their publishing schedule and business model. A recent evaluation of their business practices revealed that they were spending more money on certain aspects of their business than they were making. One of the biggest problems was the printing of actual, hard-copy books: the majority of Permuted's revenue comes from e-books, and the hard-copies of some titles barely sold one a year. So they announced that they were rescinding their previous policy of automatically publishing hard-copies of every title. From here on out, e-books would be the default offering, with hard-copies only offered for titles that they felt could actually move units (no more publishing a single copy for your Great-Aunt Tilly).
As you can imagine, many authors got upset, and some asked to be let out of their contracts. I wasn't one of them: I contacted the powers-that-be and asked what would be considered the minimum number of hard-copies ordered that would make printing them out worthwhile to Permuted. There wasn't a specific number, but I got the impression that a couple hundred would do it. Considering that I'd need hard-copies to sell at both conventions and brick-and-mortar bookstores, I figured we could work something out when my release date came around in August 2016 (presuming it didn't get pushed back). So I decided to stay.
Within a month or two, the "kerfuffle" (as we authors came to call it) faded into the background, and those of us who stayed with Permuted continued on with our work, be it gearing up for an impending release-day or (in my case) working on the follow-up novel. In other words, life went on as before. Then in late February this year, a note was posted in the private Facebook forum set up for Permuted authors: the company was "refocusing" their brand, so they were reexamining the titles that were scheduled to join the already-established Permuted Press lineup. "Book by book, author by author, we evaluated how these projects fit within our new publishing strategy," they said, and had mailed out letters to each and every author in their stable, informing them of their place in this re-branded company.
Long story short: a Western sci-fi/fantasy novel by an unpublished author doesn't fit with their new publishing scheme, so they exercised a clause in my contract and let me go. As I said earlier, I'm not the only one who got the axe, so I'm not taking it personal. Yes, I am upset, but I'm not screaming my head off and/or damning Permuted to Hell. I will say that, if this trend continues at Permuted, the company might not be around much longer, or at least fewer authors will want to sign with them since they can't be certain what Permuted will decide to change next.
As for myself, I'm in the midst of re-gearing my brain back towards the submission process. I found out last week that HarperCollins is holding open submissions on a weekly basis, so I'll be sending them samples tomorrow. If that doesn't pan out, I'll move on to some local publishers that I wasn't aware of a few years ago. As my dad put it, I've got moxie, so I'll keep plugging away at this until I land a new contract.
Stay tuned...
