What is La Gr@not@? How does it do the things that it does?

La Gr@not@ [English: The Frog] is a dream, a crazy idea, a publishing house without a house, and one which isn´t THAT interested in making money. It was born out of a frustration at the conditions that many publishers impose on the CREATORS [writers and illustrators] of a book. The idea came from a writer.

Here are some of the crazy rules under which La Gr@not@ is to be managed:

1) Book projects are NOT to be chosen on the basis of "What´s in it for us?" i.e. "Is it likely to sell really well and make us a lot of profit?" but on "Do we REALLY like this book?" We will only consider publishing books that we will be proud of.

Example: If J.K. Rowling were to approach us and say that she´s unsatisfied with her present publishers and wants to sign the future publishing rights to the Harry Potter series over to us, WE WOULD TURN HER DOWN! (Boring books, with warmed-over conservative values ["ALL the ´goodies´ are on OUR team, ALL the ´baddies´ are on another team, the other 2 teams aren´t even worth considering" - straight out of Cold-War / Third-World-oppressing foreign policy]) The same goes with the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien and Lord Of The Rings. The writer of this fact-sheet read TLOTR as a teenager and liked it, even bought it as a gift for siblings; but then as a young adult read it again and HATED it (it´s racist, it´s sexist, it glorifies war and supports the idea that international problems MUST be solved through violence: any ONE of these 3 attributes would disqualify it from being published by La Gr@not@)... gave it another try decades later. ("Is it REALLY as bad as I thought back then???" - It is.) We admit it: we´re opinionated.

WE WOULD RATHER FUNCTION ON A SHOESTRING THAN PUBLISH SUPER-SELLERS THAT VIOLATE OUR ETHICAL AND/OR QUALITY STANDARDS!!

2) We do NOT buy all the rights to book/writings/illustrations. In fact, we don´t buy ANY rights. The creators maintain copyright and full control over their creations. We work as partners of the creators. And if we can act as a springboard, bringing a book to the attention of a major publisher who then offers the writer a juicy contract, we will be happy that a book that we are proud to have published makes it into the big time. The only condition that we impose on the termination of a publishing partnership is that a publishing contract with another publisher will NOT bar La Gr@not@ from selling its remaining stock of already-printed copies.

3) Given that we´re quality-obsessed and ethics/obsessed as opposed to profit-obsessed, we will be eternally damned (unless a runaway best-seller author decides to remain with us, turning us into the publishers of a best-seller) to working on a shoestring budget. This has its drawbacks:

a) We cannot offer an advance on royalties to ANYBODY. You have to be clear about that right from the beginning.

b) We've found that - to send printed-edition books many parts of the English-speaking world - postage costs more than the price of the book. We have, therefore, recently converted to a publisher only of digital books (with very few exceptions).

c) We haven't got the finances to advertise each book in major publications. (We've observed that, nowadays, large publishing houses only do this for a very few books, anyway.) We WILL try to get our books noticed, by submitting them for review, using YouTube, etc.

4) We advise authors to use the spelling/grammar check function of their word processor AND to send their manuscripts to beta-readers, to help "polish off the rough edges" BEFORE submitting them to us. It's rather frustrating to wade through an interesting book which is full of typos and/or atrocious punctuation. We are more likely to reject a ms which appears to come from an author who can't be bothered with literacy.

5) Profits on each published book will be divided as follows:

50% to the creators (writer, illustrator, translator[s] – where applicable). How this 50% is to be divvied up between writer and illustrator (and translator) will be decided on a case-by-case basis, with the creators actively engaged in the decision-making process.

25% to La Gr@not@.

25% to worthy causes. (These will often, but not always, be registered charities.)

6) Sales are mainly to be via Internet. Since printing, packaging, and postage costs have been eliminated - and in order to keep things simple - each book will have a price of 2€.

7) We´re sure that more will occur to us later. Any ethical and/or creative suggestions will be appreciated.

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To see our range of books, go to http://la-granota.com/list.htm

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If you’re an author / illustrator and want to send us material for publication, see our creators' guidelines

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