X-Isle Press

X-Isle Press X-Isle Press is dedicated to finding the best new indie authors and stories to bring to our readers. We all work together to help produce and market the books.

X-Isle United Press is an independent publishing house created by a small group of authors with the purpose of supporting indie authors & helping them to publish the absolute best quality work possible. When joining the X-Isle family, you are not just submitting to a small press. We are a group of authors who publish under one house name, but publish the books on our own individual author publishi

ng accounts through Amazon, D2D, Smashwords, etc. This means all authors associated with this press keep all their own royalties, but are required to help market and promote each others works as well as the product of each book. All authors in this group work together to handle editing services, graphic artwork, marketing/promotion, and formatting. For this reason, any author asked to join us must have some type of expertise in one of these fields. If you would like to be considered for a spot in this small group press, please follow the below guidelines:

Submission guidelines:

1. We accept only non-fiction works. Genres include paranormal, erotica, mystery, science-fiction, thriller, young adult, romance and steam punk. We do NOT accept children’s book at this time or photo books.
2. Please submit a one page query letter including synopsis along with author, contact information, if the book is part of a series, and the first 3 chapters (no more than 10K words) to [email protected] The query letter should be included in the body of the email. IF THE WORK IS PART OF A SERIES: a synopsis of the series should also be included in the query letter along with the synopsis for the work being submitted.

3. The sample chapters should be attached as a separate Microsoft Word Document.

4. The subject of your email should be “Manuscript Inquiry” along with the title of the work.

5. Please indicate if the project is currently for sale via any outlet i.e. Amazon, Smashwords, iBook store, etc., if it has been published by any other publishing house, or if it has been self-published.

6. Please indicate if the project is currently posted for free on any website and include the URL.

7. All authors brought into X-Isle Press must have some expertise in one of the following: editing, proofreading, marketing/promotion, graphic artwork, or book formatting. Please include in your query letter which of these items you have expertise in. Due to the number of manuscripts received, the time frame for an answer regarding queries is approximately three months. Failure to include all information or follow the above guidelines could result in an extended turnaround time and/or rejection of your manuscript. ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTS:
If your manuscript is accepted, you will be required to remove the item from all outlets and revamp the copyright page to include X-Isle Press as the publisher, and also update the book's "about" information through KDP to include X-Isle Press as the publisher.

18/03/2024

While I have not personally confirmed this, word over on Reddit among authors is that PayPal (along with Stripe) is once again pushing to include "spicy" literature into the same group as those who have OF accounts. To date, GumRoad is officially removing any spicy literature from their website offerings and will no longer allow it to be sold due to PayPal and Stripe threatening to not process payments for them since these companies now lump spicy literature in with any other work done in the adult industry. Some authors have reported that Smashwords has delisted their spicy novels as well.

If this is the route PP and Stripe want to take, and Smashwords, D2D, or GumRoad does not fight back, it is not going to end well for authors. I can't imagine GumRoad would even survive as a site after this. Maybe D2D can take the hit since they merged with Smashwords, but considering that spicy romance is one of, if not "the" largest genre in literature, I can only imagine even D2D will take a huge hit.

Either way, none of this is going to end well for authors.

Okay, guys, it's time to address yet another elephant in the room. First off, it's incredibly sad that I even have to ma...
09/02/2024

Okay, guys, it's time to address yet another elephant in the room. First off, it's incredibly sad that I even have to make this post. At this point, I can't consider this ignorance, or even willful ignorance, on the part of authors. It's more like the whole "well, everyone else is doing it so I will, too" mentality that is running rampant in this industry. This has been happening more and more lately, and I fear it will only get worse thanks to the use of GenAI.

Look, as an author, no one should have to explain Intellectual Property rights, copyright law, and trademark law to you. If you are going to be a part of this industry, you have to know IP law inside and out. And it's not just a matter of what your lawyer said was "okay", but the Terms and Conditions you agreed to when you signed up with Amazon. Your best bet is to stay far, far away from anything that could potentially get yourself into trouble. Needless to say, this author's account has since disappeared, potentially permanently banned from Amazon. This means this author will never again be able to sell any book on Amazon, not even through a 3rd party aggregator such as D2D or Smashwords. And most authors will straight up tell you they have zero empathy when this happens because the author should have known better.

People, get with the program. There is far too much information out there for something like this to be a continued occurrence. I have personally mentored hundreds of authors over my thirty years in this industry. I run several indie author help groups, multiple book promo groups, and I have done all of this on my own time and free of charge. At this point, with this much free information and literally hundreds of people who are willing to help you out, there is ZERO excuse for this to keep happening outside of authors just not giving a rat's behind about IP.

And rest assured, just because you have gotten away with it so far doesn't mean you won't eventually get caught. All it takes is for the wrong person to see your book, know you are breaking IP laws, and post about it. Your account, and with it your author career, could literally go up in smoke in less than 24 hours. But hey, if you are willing to take that chance, then be my guest.

I made the (very disheartening) mistake of looking at my sales figures for the past 13 years , since making the switch o...
15/01/2024

I made the (very disheartening) mistake of looking at my sales figures for the past 13 years , since making the switch over to Kindle Direct Publishing through Amazon (I had spent the 5 years prior to this offering paperbacks direct through LuLu before making the move).

Readers, if you want the honest truth about why you can't find good books any more, it's because a huge chunk of authors who have been around for years (or in some cases like myself, decades) either can't, or do not wish to, compete with the "burn and dump" authors - those who routinely embrace the MVP model where they publish as often and fast as they possibly can while putting as little work into their books as possible. It's not financially feasible to continue to spend thousands of dollars producing a decent quality book when we are literally getting paid pennies per copy with rarely more than a few dozen copies sold.

And before anyone tells me I just need to market more, I am very well aware of that. And yes, I also know how to market my books. I've literally spent thousands of hours over the years and no telling how much money on courses and books and in groups and doing research and learning from authors who were routinely bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. The problem isn't that I don't know how. But I also know I can't have a successfully thriving business by only spending $10 a month on marketing and promotion. It takes money and time to be able to successful market a book, and, unfortunately, more and more of us simply do not have any more money or time to spare. Most of us already invest every single spare second and penny we have into producing our books. There simply isn't anymore we could possible give. The struggle is REAL.

For so many of us, the stress and financial burden of publishing is no longer a viable option, no matter how much we want to continue to write and create. As AI continues to infiltrate every last nuance of this industry, I fear more and more of us will no longer be able to afford to publish, or have the heart to watch all of our hard work go down the drain as more and more readers turn to cheap or free disposable entertainment.

This is a harsh reality for 99% of authors out there. It's not easy, it's not pretty, and it certainly isn't cheap. But those sales numbers? Those are real, and it outlines just how tough this business can be. Unfortunately, we can't fund the production of books based solely on the power of dreams and wishful thinking anymore.

01/01/2024

Happy New Year Everyone!

On the author front, 2 big announcements. First, for those who are signed up for my newsletter, this information was dropped last week. For a limited time, all full length novels have been enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program. So if you have a KU subscription, you can now read all of my full length novels for FREE with your subscription plan.

And second, Blood Kiss, a Fallen From Grace novel, is scheduled to release early this year. Right now the plan is to have this ready to go by or before Valentine's Day.

Happy reading, all you beautiful book divas!

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X-Isle United Press is an independently owned promotion company specializing in helping indie authors market and promote their books by offering low-cost and free marketing and promotional services.