I am completely new to this. I have written a story for children which I submitted to Olympia Publishers. They have offered me a contributory contract with £2500 towards costs and 20% royalties. I have not got a clue if this is good or not. This is one story but I have already got a follow up in the planning so want to get this right for me and my family. Any advice is welcome. What do I do next please?
Well said, Lorraine, as usual.
Unfortunately even some previously reliable mainstream publishers now have offshoots who'll offer 'contribution' contracts to authors turned down by the parent company. I suppose these might be suitable for some very specialist non-fiction works which would not otherwise see the light of day, but it's so easy to self-pub at minimal cost these days I wonder anyone pays middlemen at this sort of level.
Don't touch this lot, Diane. They are vanity publishers, and this is not a good contract. They want you to pay £2500 and they say you'll get 20% royalties - but only if your book sells. They will not publicise it - that will be down to you. They will not put it in bookshops - that will be down to you. They will have got their money upfront, and you will never, as a complete novice, earn enough from sales to recoup that outlay.
As a comparison, Amazon pay 35-70% royalties if you self-publish with them - with no huge bill upfront.
If your book was priced at £5, for the sake of argument, you would have to sell 500 copies to break even; then you would in theory begin to earn 20% royalties. But what length of bookrun will they give you for your £2500? (That's how many copies they will actually print.) Do they print on demand? An unknown writer is unlikely to sell that many books unless there is a big publicity drive behind them - which there won't be.
Will they edit your work?
These people prey on would-be writers, knowing that we are all desperate to get a contract and to be able to say we've been published. Well, you can publish your book yourself for a lot less than that, and do the publicity and so forth - which you would have to anyway.
If you google this lot, you'll find them on the warning lists. They have traded under other names, and will no doubt do so again.
Any company that wants you to pay money up front should be avoided like the plague. They do not have your interests at heart. They make their money before they do anything for you at all. Read the contract closely and see what if anything they undertake to do for you - but frankly, if they thought your book would sell well, they'd be happy to make their money from sales, not from you writing them a cheque now.
If your book is worth publishing, and has been edited and edited again, and you have a cover ready, you can upload it to Amazon as an e-book or as a paperback for no cost at all. The process is simple and logical - I'm doing it myself. If you want any more info, do send me a message.
Lorraine