Fatcat Press FAQ

This FAQ offers further information on authors' submissions, on contract and business issues for authors, and on customers' purchases.

A. Traditionally, paper-based presses select genres or "lists" that dovetail with each other, and the presses then concentrate on acquiring works in just those areas. This simplifies the processes of editing, design, and marketing, because the contents of the books are similar. A publisher might elect to publish books on bicycling, aerobic activity, and healthy cooking, for instance, because the manuscripts and resulting books have similar production requirements and marketing.

Electronic presses like Fatcat face a different landscape because not all traditional book genres -- not all book-buyers -- are friendly to electronic texts as yet. So for the time being we've reverse-engineered our lists: we are emphasizing those genres that already have a well-established, electronically competent and knowledgeable readership. We look forward, incidentally, to the day when ebooks are just another format alongside paper-bound, cloth-bound, books-on-tape, large-print, etc.

Q. I have my story written out in longhand. How do I submit it?

Q. I hear that publishers won't look at your work unless you have an agent.

A. This is often true in paper-based trade publishing, but not at Fatcat Press—we don't work with authors' agents.

A. Our authors normally hold their own copyrights, and they grant us the right of publication for a specified period.

A further point regarding authors' rights -- technically you as author hold copyright in your work regardless of whether your copyright is registered with the Library of Congress. That is, some other author can't come along and claim she or he holds the copyright to your work, just because the copyright hasn't been filed with the Library of Congress. Still, we feel authors have more security if their copyright is actually registered. We provide the forms and instructions that enable authors to register their copyrights with the Library of Congress should they elect to do so. We do, on the other hand, assign an ISBN for each Fatcat Press title, which helps identify the title in the publishing world at large.

A. In order to list their titles with large distributors like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, presses must pay those portal sites a not-trivial amount, sometimes as a percentage of sales, sometimes in the form of a discount on the list price. Rates we have seen at the present time are prohibitive for ebooks, because ebooks as yet carry relatively modest purchase prices.

In addition, as a general principle, books that are listed with very large sites tend to get lost in the shuffle. At Amazon, for instance, any title has to compete for visibility against the thousands and thousands of other titles that they carry, both old and new, in multiple formats. This is a formidable task: the most recent work from an extremely popular lawyer-turned-author has a sales rank only in the low 2,000s. A book from one of the Beatles has only been able to manage a number in the low 400s.

A. When you buy a Fatcat Press book, you receive its electronic file immediately. As you shop, you add your selected titles to your shopping cart. When you are ready to purchase them, you enter purchase information (name, credit card number, address information such that we can reach you if something goes wrong, etc.). You then advance directly to a secure URL on our site, where you can immediately download the titles you have selected using a password that we provide to you with your completed order. Because we offer titles for immediate download, we require you to pay by credit card, rather than check, PayPal, or other such methods that have a built-in processing delay.

A. Check out our mini-FAQ regarding the MobiPocket Reader and the MobiPocket Reader Pro. We know you'll like it. We've read thousands of pages using it - we much prefer it to other ebook and doc readers we've tried (and we've tried many).