Self-published author Aubrey Rose wrote an essay on her blog, explaining why she decided not to work with Amazon Publishing’s Montlake Romance imprint.
According to the author, an Amazon editor wanted to republish Me, Cinderella?, Rose’s new adult romance novel. Check it out:
The advance they offered was less than I had made in my first month of sales. As I looked through the Montlake catalogue, I saw a mix of breakout hits and complete flops, with some recent books that just had the worst covers imaginable for romance. And I would have to pull my book from every publisher except Amazon. It was hard for me to say no. Ever since I was a little girl I’d dreamed about being a ‘published author.‘ However, I needed to make the best decision for my book and for my fans.
On reddit, the author shared more details about the potential deal with Amazon Publishing.
They offered $5k, with 35% royalties … The one really nice thing about this was that I was able to get in contact with an agent from the Knight Agency, and she gave me some good, honest advice about what I could expect if I shopped the book around. Also she read a few chapters of my book and liked it, and said I could send her the next one I wrote (new adult is apparently a hard genre to shop around to trad publishers unless you have a ton of sales already, since it’s such a new category).
