RFI: Napkin Books

[james_davis_nicoll]

Someone pointed out Napkin Books to me in email. There's not a lot of information on their website about the company. Does anyone know anything about them?

(Yes, I've sent them email asking about the company but there's no reason to expect them to answer my questions out of the blue)

Comments

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

Being a Canadian company at the moment

Sounds like they expect that to change without warning.

[quicktongue.livejournal.com]

When I googled "Napkin Books" the text below the link said:

Napkin Books is a Canadian company with a second office in Dublin, Ireland. The aim of Napkin Books is to make modern literature accessible.

....but that doesn't appear anywhere on the site itself.

[cat-collector.livejournal.com]

From their website: "Napkin Books is looking for fresh idea's..." Would that include fresh ideas about English usage? It doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me.

[quicktongue.livejournal.com]

I caught that one too, but no others...I guess my proofing skills are suspect. My beef with their site is the use of red text on a black background. White or yellow text please.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

all i can think is: i do not want my work associated with anything that is flimsy, disposable, and used to wipe people's mouths after a good greasy meal of ribs.

and i can hardly claim to write anything that anyone should take seriously. i can't imagine that anyone more literary would feel far differently than i do. :p

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Maybe these are *sanitary* napkins.

Oh. That might be worse.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Or wait -- baby's nappies!

Oops. Definitely worse.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I am told that 326 Erb Street West is an apartment building. I guess I could swing by and see whose name is on apartment 7's mailbox (Canada 411 lists nine numbers for that address but not AFAIK by apartment #).

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Given the poor knowledge of either grammar or proofreading shown on their website, if I was an author I would hesitate before submitting a manuscript to them…

[iayork.livejournal.com]

Is there any reason why being a Canadian company means they can only deal with Canadian citizens? I could understand Canadian residents, so they don't have to deal with international contracts and payment, but why citizens? Or is it another part of their general incoherence and amateurishness?

[redbird]

I'll just note that I had no trouble whatsoever handling a one-time financial transaction with a Canadian university some years ago: sending money to someone with only a U.S. bank account was perfectly ordinary for them. Granted, Waterloo is a large institution, but if these people aren't big enough to do some of their transactions in U.S. dollars, they should be able to send someone down to Canada Post to buy and send US-denominated money orders, which I also used to get regularly and cash with absolutely no trouble.

Other currencies might be more problematic--I've never dealt with that sort of transaction, other than changing Canadian cash for pounds once--but surely they could simply say that they do all their business in Canadian currency, and leave the author to decide whether that's a reasonable offer.

[quicktongue.livejournal.com]

Now let's be fair. I got the impression that they can deal with non-Canadians, they just don't want to. Most publishing companies are focus driven, and these guys think there's a market for Canadian SciFi/Fantasy. It's no odder than many publishing focuses out there.

[(Anonymous)]

Because to receive Canadian grants, publishers must take ONLY Canadian citizens. There are many publishers in Canada that will only take Canadian citizens or they lose their grants from the gov't.

[(Anonymous)]

Because to receive Canadian grants, publishers must take ONLY Canadian citizens. There are many publishers in Canada that will only take Canadian citizens or they lose their grants from the gov't.

I've talked with a staff member of Napkin Books and will be meeting them in couple of weeks. I want to suss them out before I agree to anything with them.

Karen
angelofdeath@rogers.com

[glomp.livejournal.com]

Please let me know how it turns out?

[(Anonymous)]

It's because, as you will find with MOST Canadian publishing houses, that to qualify for grants from the Canadian Council of the Arts they have to produce Canadian authors. Napkin Books is new in Canada. Having met and spoken at length with the publishers, I can honestly say that they are genuine, hardworking and dedicated business folk.

Karen Dales
soon to be published by Napkin Books

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Please ask them to address the grammatical errors on their webpage and to consider adding more information about the company. I think both would help their image.

[quicktongue.livejournal.com]

Hey James, I'm still thinking about these guys, and their Canadian citizenship requirement, and I think I figured it out. The Canada Council for the Arts' grants for "Emerging Publishers" has a Canadian content requirement.

http://www.canadacouncil.ca/grants/writing/of127227340679531250.htm

[glomp.livejournal.com]

I just came across this entry of yours after I googled Napkin Books, and I was wondering if you'd gotten more information about them? They just friended me on LJ, and I don't know what's up with that. I'm currently trying to write a fantasy story, and I have no clue how they found out about this, or if that's even the reason why they friended me.

Please let me know if you know more about them? Thank you.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

No, I still don't know much about them.

[allrightwithme.livejournal.com]

They friended me randomly today as well--I googled them, and the only place I could find information about them was actually this post.

Honestly, I think they're just friending anyone who lives in Canada and has writing as an interest--my livejournal is mostly a sex blog, as is fairly obvious by my profile page, but they've still got me friended.

Anyways, I'll be watching this post to see what other information comes up about them. Something about them kinda sketches me out, but I can't quite get my finger on it.

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Another new friending here, too. I'm a little concerned that their website doesn't list any published works, or works in progress, or whatever it is that will make a vendor wish to order from them. Okay, early days, but an "under construction" section would at least have indicated they were planning to sell what they publish.

[lstaylor.livejournal.com]

This kinda creeps me out, too. Hope you don't mind that I'm adding you.

I posted a similar question over at the Compuserve Books and Writing community. Will let you know if I learn anything -- though my post is more likely to receive dire warnings from authors instead.
http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webtag=ws-books&tid=60815

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I don't mind people friending me. There was some meme going around that rated friending policies that classified me as "total slut".

[velochicdunord.livejournal.com]

You're not a total slut - you're not on Facebook yet. :)

[eleika.livejournal.com]

Here you go, their response. Good news: I think they're legit!

Hi Laura,

Thank you for contacting us we are happy to answer your questions.

Firstly in regards to Livejournal, the only social networking site we were
familiar with at the time was Myspace. Therefore did not realize it
would cause any problems to add people. We wanted to increase
awareness of our site. Our Livejournal account was suspended for
having too many friends too quickly, we were not deleted for this. We
have since learned a lesson from this. We never specifically asked
anyone for their work.

Because we are a new company it took us the better part of 2 years to
get the manuscript we wanted to launch with. We advertised in
University papers and the Globe and Mail.

Our specifications for what books we would accept are only genre
fiction by Canadian citizen's. As we are new, we are open to different
lengths and audiences. We do list sample story topics we accept on our
site. To our knowledge we are the only Canadian Publishing company
that is exclusively genre fiction.

We are not a vanity press or e-publisher. We print hardback, stitch
sewn, plate printed novels for book retailers.

Regarding our website, the current look of it was only put up Aug 1st.
We only started using Livejournal after Aug 8. We are currently in
negotiations for a exciting genre fiction novel. Once we have the
rights to discuss and promote it, our website will be full of
information and updates. Until then our website states exactly what we
are doing, going through manuscripts.

As for the name of a contact person, you state that "you are actively
interested in getting published". It is the policy of large publishing
companies not to accept unsolicited manuscripts, Most large publishing
companies require authors to have agents. Both Random House and
Penguin Group do not list contact person's for submissions but
discourage submissions. So we are not sure to whom you are referring
to that posts their editor contact details. We are a Publishing House
and our editors are employed to edit after our directors have selected
work which they feel they can promote and will be successful. [Here I was referring to the fact that a lot of the SF/F houses do accept unsolicited manuscripts, e.g. Tor Books. And since Napkin Books does, I thought they would at least list a contact editor.

For yourself before you submit anything to anyone; you should mail
your own copy of the work to yourself. Leave it sealed and date
stamped by the post office, so if ever need be you could open it in a
court of law to prove it was yours.

As for our "street cred" we imagine these questions will be cleared up
once our novels are in stores at which point we will also not accept
unsolicited works anymore.

Napkin Books is a new company, as our website states. If we are not
the Publishing House for you, you are under no obligation to submit
your work. Either way we wish you all the best in your future literary
career.

Thank you for your interest in Napkin Books.

The Napkin Staff.

- lstaylor / eleika

[(Anonymous)]

... you'd think that a professional publishing house would at least understand the correct use of the possessive apostrophe, and refrain from peppering their business letter with sentence fragments.

to my eyes, that doesn't bode well.

[medievalist.livejournal.com]

For yourself before you submit anything to anyone; you should mail
your own copy of the work to yourself. Leave it sealed and date
stamped by the post office, so if ever need be you could open it in a
court of law to prove it was yours.

This is a Giant Red Flag that the writer / Napkin Books is totally unprofessional and down right clueless.

Mailing yourself a copy of your manuscript will not, at all, anywhere in any country that signed the Berne Convention (yes, Canada, and the U.S. and the European Community signed) offer you any additional protection in terms of copyright. It's known as "poor man's copyright," and if you look in both Canadian and U.S. case law, you'll find it's been officially contested since 1921.

No one who has a clue about publishing would advocate using this method as a protection of copyright--one that is A)Useless, B) Not needed (you have all the rights you can have from the moment you start writing/creating).