Authors Publish was founded by creative writers who wanted to encourage other writers to publish their work and establish themselves as authors. Since the very beginning our principles have guided every review we have ever written and every article we have ever published. For the first time we are formally publishing our principles along with explanations.
The principles are listed in no particular order, all are important to us.
1. We always pay our authors
Each and every article we post is written by someone who was paid to provide their thoughts on writing, novels, working, a publishing company, or a literary journal. Many creative writers are not paid for their writing elsewhere, so while we do not publish creative work directly, we try to support creative writers financially, even if it just a small amount of money.
We also make sure that every author gets a link to their biographical statement and website. If they have a Facebook author’s page we promote that along with their articles. One of our authors has gone from under 100 fans to well over 1000 largely due to our promotion of his page.
2. All the publishers we review do not require agents or previous publications
Many big name publishers will only look at your work if an agent submits your manuscript to their company. This agent is acquired by submitting a query letter and part of your manuscript to a number of agents. This agent gets a portion of all your earnings if a publisher accepts your book.
We have written articles about acquiring an agent, but we only review publishers that read manuscripts directly.
3. We do not have relationships with the publishers we review
We choose the journals and presses we want to review. We never receive anything when we review a journal or press; no one ever pays us in order to receive a review. Occasionally a press or journal will contact us seeking publicity, and we occasionally review these presses, if we find positive information about them from reliable sources. Our reviews are unbiased and often include conditions or concerns we have about a press, if we have any.
4. We research all the publishers to make sure that they are legitimate
Before we review we always research.
Most of our research now is done on Writer Beware and the Absolute Write Water Cooler. The bewares section of the forum on Absolute Write is generally where we get the best information, but it does require a lot of leg work. We also use various other websites for information, including Glass Door.
We never review a publisher that charges their writers anything. That publisher is not a legitimate traditional publisher.
Because many publishers don’t make it past a year, we only review publishers that have been actively publishing books for two years.
5. We do not feature markets which charge a fee for all submissions
We do not feature journals which charge a fee for all submissions. The exception to this is our lists – sometimes a list may include a journal or a resource which charges a fee, but we will always state this upfront. In case of journals, we always try to list one which offers some fee-free alternative, like postal submissions, or fee-free submission periods, or fee-free submissions for a certain demographic, and we always try to make this clear. For a stand-alone review, we will never publish one which charges a fee.
6. All markets that we review are open to submissions regardless of writers’ nationalities
We have readers from all over the world; therefore we would never review a journal that is only open to work from one country or region. A lot of the journals we review are not even based out of America: we have reviewed journals from the UK, China, Canada, and many other countries.
We do mention journals and manuscript publishers that have geographic limits but only occasionally and only as parts of lists, never as stand alone reviews.
Hopefully after reading this, you can understand how we work and how we are always focused on supporting writers. If you have any questions or comments, please email us at support@authorspublish.com