I know there has been a temporary stay of execution in the Deseret Book/Seagull rift but do you have any idea of what this will actually do to manuscript purchases? Will Covenant and smaller LDS publishing houses reduce the amount of manuscripts they purchase for the next little while, adopting a wait-and-see attitude? Would an unpublished authors find it better to adopt that same attitude and hold off submitting until the financial concerns of all these smaller publishers have calmed? I would hate to submit and have it rejected because the timing was wrong and the companies weren't buying.
Thanks for all your help. I hit your site frequently and find so much useful information! [Thank you.]
I don't know what Covenant plans to do. I've heard that they've said the estimates putting DB products at 40-50% of their sales are incorrect--that they are not that high. And Covenant has been pretty aggressive in the past, so maybe they'll be fine.
As to smaller companies, I can't speak for other publishing houses, but I can tell you that this has not affected our publishing schedule. We haven't postponed releases or rejected anything because of this.
Publishing is a high risk business and people with very conservative, fearful, "wait and see" attitudes usually do something else for a living--like accounting or massage therapy or greeting at Wal-Mart. If a publishing company plans to stay in business, they have to publish. No new titles = no sales.
I would guess that if a company received a submission they really liked, but they were in the "wait it out" mindset, they'd still accept it, but give it a later release date.
If your book is ready, send it out.
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