The Dreaming Big Publications FAQ
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Q: What will it cost me to publish with Dreaming Big?
A: We are a traditional small press publisher. Not a vanity press, not a self publishing service. If we decide to publish your work, you would not have to pay us anything. That said, we do ask that you help market and promote the book.
Q: Can I submit something that has been previously published elsewhere?
A: In some cases, yes. We prefer previously unpublished work, but if you have a book that has been out of print for a while, we will consider it. We get many submissions from authors whose previous publisher went out of business and rights reverted back to the authors. If we accept a previously published piece, we will put it through the same editing process as unpublished work, and sometimes authors are not okay with making changes to something that has already been published before, so keep that in mind. The royalty rate will be smaller for previously published work as well. However, as a general rule, if a book has already been published before, including self published, we will not consider it. We have only considered previously published work under certain special circumstances.
UPDATE 6/15/18: Lately we have been getting submissions that the authors have self-published already on Amazon and sometimes Createspace. We only want new, unpublished material. If you have published it on Amazon or Createspace, it is now published, and we won't take it. It doesn't matter if you offer to take it off those sites - it has been published, and we will not consider it for publication.
Also, if we have your book under consideration, wait to hear back from us. Some authors have recently decided to self publish before we had a chance to get back to them with an answer, thus completely ruining their chances of us picking up their book for publication. Additionally, we have used valuable time and resources reviewing their book only to get back to them and find they have done this in the interim, and that doesn't exactly leave us with the warm and fuzzies. Please respect our time. We have been experiencing longer than normal response times lately for a number of factors, but if we have your book under consideration, we will get back to you with a final answer. If you decide to do something else with your book before you hear back from us, let us know ASAP so we will pull it from consideration and be able to spend our time more efficiently on other projects.
Q: Do I retain the rights to my work once submitted?
A: Some authors seem to get confused about the difference between ownership and rights.
Sometimes, a story might be a Work for Hire, in which your story is bought from you and you no longer own it or have any rights to it. Dreaming Big Publications may occasionally put out a Call for Submissions like this, but we don't do that very often. When we do, it is usually because the stories we are asking for are based on licensed characters and worlds of someone else's creation. Our titles "Plushinomicon", and "Bugs in the System" are two examples of this.
Don't confuse rights with ownership! As author, you own your work, always (except in specified Work for Hire situations, as stated above). When you sign a contract with a publisher, you grant them specific publishing rights that must be adhered to for the duration of the contract.
Please, please, please do your research into publishing contracts so you will understand what you're signing. It is advisable to have a lawyer look over the contract before you sign it so you can be sure you're getting a fair deal. Ask questions of the publisher if you are unsure about any part of the contract. It is okay to attempt to negotiate terms with the publisher. Newbie authors often jump into contracts without questioning anything, without understanding what they're signing, and have been known to violate the terms of the contract because they didn't understand their obligations to the publisher, or to not be able to get out of a contract they're unhappy with. There are certain rights that you grant us as publisher that are exclusive to us for the contracted terms, and these need to be adhered to. Rights does not equal ownership, however, and at the end of the contracted time, all rights revert back to you as author.
We want our authors to understand the contract before they sign it. This makes for a better working relationship, and that's what we strive for. We have our authors best interests in mind, always. We have a common, standard contract. No surprises, no tricks.
Q: What can I expect as compensation for my submission?
A: Any submissions accepted for book collection/anthology publication will require a signed contract which will be negotiated with the author at time of acceptance of the poem or story. In most cases, payment will be token only, but will be negotiated on an individual basis based on the collection or anthology you're submitting to.
Full length manuscripts receive a royalty agreement. No cash advance is paid.The royalty will be negotiated for each book. On average, we pay 25% royalty for previously published work and for some manuscripts that may not be as marketable as others. Small niche, or new authors with no platform or fan base, etc. This is the lowest rate we offer, and it is still higher than the average. The most we can offer is 50% royalty share, but this is for established authors with a fan base and proven previous sales. Most of our contracts are in the 30% to 35% range. We don't do different rates for the print version versus the ebook or audio version. The royalty rate is flat across the board for all sales. We do not subtract any production costs or anything like that before calculating your royalty share. Payments are calculated based on what we get paid from vendors/distributors, not from cover or retail price. So for example, if we get a payment of $50 from Amazon, we send $25 of that to you if we have a 50% royalty agreement. We send out payments once the author's share has reached around $20.
Q. Does Dreaming Big help promote the book after it is published? I hear that a lot of small presses don't, and leave it all up to the author.
A. We absolutely do help promote a book after it is released. The initial news release goes out to our email list that is mainly targeted to reviewers. This list grows daily, and the number of emails on our list is in the thousands. Some of the reviewers may feature your book on their blog, leave reviews on places such as Amazon, Goodreads, or even a video review on Youtube. In addition to the ever-growing mailing list, we have a team of marketing interns working on individually contacting hundreds of bloggers and reviewers to ask them for a review.
Your book gets blasted on all our social media sites which include facebook, twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr. In fact, we highly encourage you to follow us on all these sites so you can share/retweet/repin your book whenever you see us post about it, and/or tag us in your own promotion on these sites. The more interaction we can have with you on social media, the better. Most of us also share the official announcement to our personal social media, and as reviews come in to us, we will share some of them to our blog to continue bringing attention to your book in the public eye.
We also have many, many news release and free promotion sites that we tirelessly work on to promote your book. Too many to list here. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that we may not always have time to tell you about, but don't worry! We're working hard to get word of your book out there.
What we can't do, because budget doesn't allow, is pay for promotion for you. This is up to you, and I highly recommend that you invest in promoting your book. We've already invested a lot of our own money and time to produce it in the first place, so we count on you to put some money into various marketing opportunities. This includes you buying copies of the book to give out to the reviewers who want a physical copy because we can only afford to send out ebook copies. You can hire virtual book tour companies that will promote for you. We can share our list of promotional sites that we use. We use the free options on these sites, but they also all offer paid promotions, and some of them are very reasonably priced. Just ask us for these if you're interested. We have no affiliation with any of these and receive nothing for recommending them.
ADDITIONAL PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS: It's no secret that we have an intern program. Sometimes we have interns who are able to do things like make promotional videos, banners for your website, and bookmarks. Although we cannot promise that we will have someone on staff to do this at all times, whenever possible we will provide these things for you to use in your own marketing and promotional attempts at no charge to you. If you were to hire someone to do a promotional packet like this for you, it would cost hundreds of dollars.We do it for free. Keep in mind though that it is interns doing the work, so you don't get to be picky about what they do because their skill levels may not be up to the task of doing professional quality work. It's up to you if you'd rather hire someone to do these things yourself, or let our interns take a crack at it. The offer is there.
Q. Does the author have any input into cover design? What if I already have a design that I made? Can you use it?
A. The author gets input into the cover design, absolutely. We may or may not be able to use your already made cover depending on the size and type of the file.
Q. What about editing? How does that work?
A. Every manuscript goes through at least 2, sometimes 3 or more, rounds of editing, starting with content and working through to copy or line editing. Yes, even those that have been previously published, because we find a lot of times those manuscripts were not edited to our high standards and still need some work. Don't expect us just to look it over for punctuation and grammatical errors and then rush it to print. We do a thorough content editing, which at times might mean some major changes such as changing the whole manuscript's tense, taking out scenes, rearranging scenes, and any number of things. How much, or little, your manuscript needs edited is not something that can be answered until we look at it. As a small press, we are known to take on manuscripts that the larger companies would pass by. i.e. ones that need a lot more work than they are willing to put into it. That might be difficult to hear, but be assured that we will work hard with you to make it the best book we can within the bounds of our skills as editors and yours as a writer. We wouldn't have offered a contract if we didn't see potential. If this bothers you, then this might not be the home for you. But if you're happy about the idea of a thorough and professional edit on your manuscript, you'll fit right in!
Q. How will my book be produced (in what formats) and how will it be distributed?
A. We publish all books in paperback through Print on Demand, and we also produce an ebook and audiobook version in most cases. Books will be available in a variety of ebook format and available anywhere books are sold. We do not have any control over what stores may wish to stock books on their shelves, or what expanded distribution catalogs our books may be listed in.
Q: I have never had anything published before. Can I get published with Dreaming Big Publications?
A: Yes, if we like what you submit, we would love to get you published. While we do reserve the right to decide not to publish a submitted work, don't let that stop you from submitting.
Q: I have a completed manuscript I want published. Can I send it to a few publishers at once?
A: Technically yes, but that's not a good way to start the relationship. This is called a simultaneous submission, and a lot of publishers don't like it when you do that. We spend a lot of time reviewing a manuscript and deciding if it is right for us. It can be frustrating when we spend all that time considering your work, only to have you pull it from our consideration to give it to someone else. If it is a simultaneous submission, please let us know that right away. However, you have a better chance of us wanting to work with you if it seems like you really want to work with us, too. Generic submission inquiries that look like a copy and paste make us think you haven't taken the time to really look into our company, and make us think you don't know anything about us. It looks like you're submitting to a lot of places without bothering to learn anything about them. We ask that you respect our time, and only submit to us if you're sure you want Dreaming Big Publications to be your publisher. Wait to hear from us with an acceptance offer or a rejection before submitting elsewhere. This is what we prefer. If you're not ready to submit, but want to get in contact with us, use the contact us form to get more information.
Q: Will you tell me how much royalty you pay before I submit my manuscript to you?
A: We negotiate each contract differently based on many factors, so it is impossible to talk terms with you until we have had a chance to review your manuscript, decide if we want it, and then offer you an acceptance. If we want your book, we can talk terms at that time. Remember, you aren't locked in with us until a contract is signed, so if negotiations don't happen satisfactorily, you can decline the acceptance and go elsewhere. Once the contract is signed, you are locked in with us,but the time between acceptance and signing is the time to work out all these details - not before. We have detailed information about the royalty range we usually pay, and how payments are calculated in the FAQ above, but beyond that general information, we won't be able to give exact numbers until we have had a chance to look at your manuscript and author platform.
Q: I have this great idea for a book...
A: That's great, but go write it first. This is not the time to be looking for a publisher. We'd love to hear from you when you've finished and polished your manuscript though. Make it shine and submit it with confidence.
Q: I live outside the U.S. Will Dreaming Big Publications still publish my work?
A: Yes, but we need to know upfront if you don't live in the U.S. as it will make a difference in how we approach certain challenges. For one thing, the shipping cost is too expensive for us to get author copies to you at a discount. If you don't plan on purchasing copies for your own use, then we won't have a problem, but if you want to purchase a large quantity to sell at conventions, give away to reviewers, or whatever you want to do with them, we most likely won't be able to do that due to the shipping cost. And, unfortunately, authors who don't purchase books for their own use, in our opinion, are not really doing a whole lot on their end to try to market or promote, and we don't see many sales.
Q: I submitted my work, but haven't heard anything back. Did I not make the cut?
A: We're very sorry that you didn't hear back. We try our best to answer every submission. If we missed you, it's likely that your message was lost in the shuffle, please submit again and we'll be in contact. We look forward to hearing from you.
Another possible reason you didn't hear back from us is you may not have adhered to our submission guidelines, so we may not have a way to contact you. This happens often. The guidelines state that we need all your information and book information at the top of the manuscript when you send it to us. Yes, we know we ask for this in the initial query, too, but we need it inside the manuscript as well. Many people neglect to include their contact information inside the manuscript like we ask, and then when we're done reviewing it, we don't know how to contact you to let you know our decision so it goes into the reject pile.. We have a whole team dedicated to reviewing submissions and giving detailed recommendations. They work hard.
Blog Related
Q: Can I submit something that I've already submitted elsewhere?
A: Resubmissions are accepted for website blog submissions. Please tell me where and when your work was first published so proper credit can be given.
Q: Do I retain the rights to my work once submitted?
A: You retain all rights to your work published on the blog. Your work will be archived on the website. All I ask is for proper credit and a link given when resubmitting your work elsewhere for publication, and this includes your own personal website or blog.
Q: What can I expect as compensation for my submission?
A: For website blog publication, no monetary compensation. This website receives on average just over 700 visitors a day. Your blog post gets shared on my Facebook and Twitter, with a reach of approximately 4,000 followers. Readers sign up for the RSS feed and are able to read new posts daily. (I highly recommend that if we are publishing a book of yours, especially nonfiction, that you submit articles on a regular basis - excerpts from your book or topics related to your book - because putting these on the blog is great advertising. Seek out other bloggers who want guest posts as well and see if they will post your article.)
Q: I submitted a post for the blog, but I haven't heard back about it. What happened?
A: We receive a lot of submissions for the blog and it takes a lot of time to go through it all. Unfortunately, we just don't have the time required to respond to every blog submission. We suggest you sign up for the RSS feed and follow us on Facebook or Twitter if you want to be able to see when your submission is posted.
A: Resubmissions are accepted for website blog submissions. Please tell me where and when your work was first published so proper credit can be given.
Q: Do I retain the rights to my work once submitted?
A: You retain all rights to your work published on the blog. Your work will be archived on the website. All I ask is for proper credit and a link given when resubmitting your work elsewhere for publication, and this includes your own personal website or blog.
Q: What can I expect as compensation for my submission?
A: For website blog publication, no monetary compensation. This website receives on average just over 700 visitors a day. Your blog post gets shared on my Facebook and Twitter, with a reach of approximately 4,000 followers. Readers sign up for the RSS feed and are able to read new posts daily. (I highly recommend that if we are publishing a book of yours, especially nonfiction, that you submit articles on a regular basis - excerpts from your book or topics related to your book - because putting these on the blog is great advertising. Seek out other bloggers who want guest posts as well and see if they will post your article.)
Q: I submitted a post for the blog, but I haven't heard back about it. What happened?
A: We receive a lot of submissions for the blog and it takes a lot of time to go through it all. Unfortunately, we just don't have the time required to respond to every blog submission. We suggest you sign up for the RSS feed and follow us on Facebook or Twitter if you want to be able to see when your submission is posted.
