Wait and hear back from them by all means, as it may not be what it seems. From what this Zoe says though on the other site, it does sound suspicious, and a leter signed by 'the editing team' would I must admit, also raise alarm bells for me. Personally I would try and contact one or two of their authors and see what they have to say.
What though led me to 'vanity publishing' is really very similar to your own story. After contacting agents and publishers from the Writers and Artists Yearbook (and other sources like the internet), and getting heaps of rejections, I started to research the industry and self publishing in particular in earnest. I like in the UK, whereas you are in Germany, but the principals are the same regardless. I used several books which I found very helpful - 2 by a lady called Jo Anthony - What do I have to get to get published and What do I have to do to sell a book, and Anna Crosbie's How to Publish Your own book (this one is brilliant). Basically there are 2 ways of doing it - short print run and print on demand (POD). Both have certain stigmas attached to them, but that is slowly changing as more and more people choose these routes.
Short print run though is where you are responsible for the whole thing - you do, or sub contract people to design the cover, do the internal layout etc, etc, regsiter the ISBN, send library copies off etc and commision a printer to do a set print run. You have to then store and market all the books yourself, being responsible for all forms of marketing, as well as setting up accounts with wholesalers etc and doing all the invoiving and fulfilment yourself.
I had neither the time nor the funds to do this, let alone the space to store huge amounts of books, so I chose POD. With POD the books are stored as a digital file at the printers headquarters (Lightning Source or Anthony Rowe for the UK) and the books are printed on demand quite literally as and when the orders come in. You do not then have to store any books yourself (although I always keep some to sell via my own website and at talks, book signings, book festivals etc).
Most POD authors do as I did - find a POD provider who oversees the whole process for you - for a fee of course (I paid around £1100). For this I got full bespoke cover design, proof reading and editing service, legal library deposits, ISBN registration, internal layout and formatting, uploading to amazon and publishers own site (as both an ebook and paperback) and most of the things in fact a mainstream publisher provides. Orders are filtered through the POD providder rather than through me, which leaves me free to concentrate on marketing. They do this in exchange for a percentage of the royalties which are split 60/40 in my favour, which means that I end up with around £2.50 a book - not a great deal, but more than I would have got from a mainstream publisher, whjo typically pays around 10 percent of the cover price (to me then £1.49).
There are certain obstacles though that POD authors face, mostly with regard to the supply chain. Namely that for the most part, such books are not available through wholesalers on sale or return. I though have been very lucky in that my publisher saw the efforts that I was putting in and so when I reported to him that many stores were refusing to order copies because of this, he asked the wholesaler to take the book on those terms. Since he did this, around 6 weeks ago, I have managed to sell over 120 books and got orders from almost 40 branches of Waterstones plus several Borders and independents as well. This though is very unusual and most POD authors do not have this level of success. My publisher does not do this for everyone either - only those who are prepared to do an awful lot of work in promoting themselves and their work.
The name of my publisher is then Authors OnLine Ltd, and they can be found at
www.authorsonline.co.uk The thing that attracted me to them was that everything is honest and upfront with all the information freely available on their site and in the literature that you can download from their site. Richard, who owns the company is very easy to talk to and gives no illusions to any of his authors as to what POD is about and what they can expect. There is total honesty all the way down the line and no sales patter, like you get from so many that I looked at.
Authors OnLine were in fact the first POD provider in the UK, and this year celebrate their 10th anniversary. They are also one of only 4 POD providers in the UK deemed worthy of a mention in this years Writers and Artists Yearbook on the page about 'vanity publishing'. Actually I hate this term, as it is so misleading. It is only vanity imo if the publisher fills your head with nonsense as to what you can expect, and Richard has never done that. If you trawl through the net you will not find one complaint about them, but nothing but well deserved praise. I would highly recommend them and have already have done in fact to several friends both on and off the web !
You may also like to read an article which is on my website, which gives more detail about my own particular journey and have a read of my blog as well. The link to my blog is in my signature but the direct link to that article is here
http://www.juneaustin.co.uk/insidersguide.htmlHope this answers your questions anyway !
June
