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Welcome to the Revolution
in the Traditional Publishing Industry
At RockWay Press, we focus on our authors, on
the quality of their writing (no matter what genre), on the best way
in which the author can reach his audience (or how he can reach a new
or expanded
audience), and on the
author's long-term goals and career. Sadly, this concept that has disappeared among
most major trade publishers, small presses, and some literary
agencies. Big companies look at profits, not at the quality of the
author's writing. Conglomerates want published books to "pay for the investment" that the company has made in the book in as little as
six weeks, six months, or, at the most, usually one year. If the book's cost isn't repaid by that time,
the book is pulled off bookstore shelves, taken out of print, and
remaindered — a practice whereby the publisher makes some additional
money by selling the books at cut-rate prices to remainder houses,
which then re-sell them to the public at a profit. The authors
themselves receive no royalties on the remaindered books — not when
the publisher sells them, and not when consumers buy them.
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Founded by the respected, award-winning, and critically acclaimed author, Alexandria Constantinova Szeman (formerly writing under the name Sherri Szeman) , RockWay Press is changing the
traditional publishing industry by returning the focus back to the
author, the quality of the author's work, and the author's long-term
career goals. RockWay Press is committed to the author and his work,
no matter the sales.
Additionally, the editor who purchases the
book personally assists the author in revisions and does
line-editing, something rarely done by the big trade houses these
days, who out-source copy-editing to various freelancers, leading to
inconsistencies in the works published by the houses.
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At RockWay, books are
available in bookstores across the United States, Canada, and the
United Kingdom. The English version of our books is available
internationally through Amazon.com, Borders.com, Barnes&Noble.com,
Wal-Mart.com, Target.com, and through Independent bookstores.Want to know more about the distribution
process? Read our page on Distribution.
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RockWay sponsors an Annual International Writing Competition, in all genres.
Prize-winners receive contracts & their books are published
(sometimes as early as) the
following calendar year. There are no reading or entry fees
for the competitions!
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RockWay often acquires new talent through queries, made either by the author
himself or by the author's representative (agent or attorney).
Authors without agents who are interested in querying RockWay must
learn to professionally "pitch" their books, just as
their agents would have to do at any traditional house. Any author
who doesn't know how to "pitch" a book can read our guidelines at "How to Pitch
your Book". Books may be "pitched" by phone, by regular mail,
and by e-mail. Our preferred method of receiving pitches is by
e-mail (unless done by an agent, who may call).
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RockWay also acquires books from established
authors whose work was originally published by a literary press, a
university press, or a large Trade publisher which took the work
out-of-print. All year 'round, we consider books for our
Out-of-Print Series.
See the guidelines for submissions on that page.
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Yes, RockWay Press turns books down.
We
reject queries. We reject samples of manuscripts. We reject entire
manuscripts. RockWay Press is a traditional publishing house. All
legitimate publishers, no matter their size, reject books. It doesn't mean that your book or your writing
is bad. It may mean that we already have another book (or several
books) on the same topic; it may mean that the topic of your book
didn't spark our interest sufficiently for us to want to acquire it.
It may be the type of book we don't publish, such as children's
picture books, or it could be a book that we simply can't afford to
publish (a book with color-plates, for example, or a scholarly book
intended specifically and virtually exclusively for other scholars
in the field rather than for lay readers). Don't take professional
rejection personally. All books get
rejected. All authors get rejections. It's simply the nature of the
business.
(For the best response to a
rejection letter ever, see Bernard's Letter.)
[Note: If you've had several books "published"
without any rejections whatsoever, then, in all likelihood, your "publisher" is
merely a printer, usually, but not always, a Print-on-Demand (POD)
printer. This type of printer preys on uninformed and/or first-time
authors by not asking for any money up-front, by calling itself an
"e-publisher", an "online publisher", etc. and asking, after the
manuscript is accepted, for "design fees", "trade paperback
availability fees", and — worst of all — outrageous "contract
cancellation fees".] RockWay Press is not a printer, an online or
e-publisher, a self-publishing house (printer), a vanity press, or a
(POD). We do not accept money from our authors at any time, and we never charge
them fees for anything.
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RockWay cannot pay cash advances at this time, but
we build individual websites for each of our authors, give them 12
free copies of their book when it is published, pay bonuses based on the author's sales, and, as far as we know, RockWay
pays the highest royalty percentages in
the publishing industry (which is based on the number of copies of a
title sold):
10%
of the cover price on 1-5,000 copies sold
12.5%
of the cover price on 5,001-10,000 copies
15%
of the cover price on 10,001-25,000 copies
17.5%
of the cover price on 25,001-50,000 copies
20% of the
cover price on 50,001 + copies
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At RockWay, we understand that sometimes books
need word-of-mouth advertising, book club discussions, or library
space to encourage sales. So, we give the books all the time they
need to sell. We do smaller print runs than the larger Trade
houses, but our books are always
available in the major wholesalers' warehouses for immediate
distribution to the bookstores if the store runs out of a particular
title. Ingram and
Baker&Taylor are RockWay's wholesalers / distributors. When
books in the warehouses reach a certain level, RockWay's printer
automatically reprints those titles to replenish the stock. Most important of
all, we never take a book out-of-print or remainder it. That way, the book can have the time it needs to
become a bestseller or a successful back-list title (which sells
lower numbers, consistently, continuously, over a long period of
time: the classics are examples of back-list titles.)
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To ensure consistency in the quality of
RockWay's books and to make each author feel equally valued, our founder/publisher,
Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, works directly with each
editor & author, from the book's overall concept to line-editing.
[Note: Though RWP works with the author on the editing and
revisions, the final editing and revision decisions are the
publisher's, just as it is with most publishing houses.] She works
with the Art Director to find the cover most appropriate, attractive, appealing,
and irresistible to potential readers. If the book's tentative title is too long, awkward, or
lacks urgency, she finds the book a new title — usually from within
the book itself. [Note: Final cover design & title are determined by
RockWay Press, as it is with all publishers.]
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Are you tired of conglomerate trade publishers
censoring what we read by choosing what they think will be "best-selling"
books or "celebrity" authors?
Are you tired of hearing about the million of
dollars some authors, celebrities, and even criminals receive as advances
— money
which they never have to pay back no matter how few books sell — knowing that the kind of money
those people are getting could publish hundreds of thousands of some of the
finest books being written today? Books written by you, perhaps?Are you tired of having chain bookstores
decide, at the corporate level, what books they'll stock on their
shelves, often limiting their selections to proven "best-selling"
authors, to classic back-list titles, or
to new books with the largest advertising budget, thus censoring what we'll read?
If you're tired of the profit-mongering,
disposable-author, monster that most of the publishing industry has
developed into, then you might be a candidate for RockWay Press. If you care more about your writing than about
an advance which may be the only money you will only see, if you
want your book to stay on the bookstores' shelves for more than
six months, if you care more about the time you spend working on your
craft than the time you spend sitting around talking about being a
writer, if you want to grow as an
artist & improve your writing skills with each book, if you never
want to write the same book twice (or even the same type of book
twice), if you want a publisher who, as a respected author herself
(in all genres) and as a former university professor of world literature &
creative writing, knows how to tell you exactly what you need to do
in order to become a better author (and who will tell you, frankly
but kindly), if you need to write or die, then you might be one of the authors we're looking for.
Check
out RockWay
Be a "Big Noise"
Join the Revolution
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