Tribute Books: Interview with Nicole Langan

Nicole!

Hello, hello! Today I've got something a little different in store for you. One of my favorite things about the blogging world is getting to meet new people and make new friends. Book bloggers are especially friendly, and I've gotten to know other bloggers, authors and publishers through my adventures. It's a lot of fun! And today, I'm featuring an interview with Nicole Langan, the brains behind Tribute Books. I've worked with Nicole before, and love checking out her book blog, so when she emailed asking if I'd host an interview to help spread the word about her new venture, I wholeheartedly agreed!

AWW: Tribute Books is fixing to undergo a pretty big change, and is traveling in a cool direction. Can you tell me a little about how it'll look and work once everything's up-and-running?
Nicole: Well to tell you where we're headed, let me tell you a bit about where we've come from. Tribute Books began in 2004 and we've published over 30 titles since that time. Some of our books have gone on to win awards such as the Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year and the Mom's Choice Award while others were endorsed by PBS and The Thoreau Society. We've covered a wide range of genres from children's picture books to history to sports under both traditional and subsidy contracts. In 2012, Tribute Books will transition into a royalty-paying ebook publisher of young adult titles.

AWW: What made you decide to leave the more traditional route and become an ebook only YA "press"?

Nicole: Over the course of 2011, we've watched our ebook sales outpace our print sales by 2 to 1 due to the explosion in popularity of e-readers such as the Kindle, Nook and iPad. The under $5 price point of most of our e-titles and the ease of purchase and delivery surely facilitated this rapid change.

Overall, our transition is based on three factors. On a business level, the young adult genre sells especially if it is well written and has a paranormal romance theme. On a marketing level, the devotion of the young adult fan base is unparalleled. On a personal level, I thoroughly enjoy a good young adult novel and review many on my blog at http://tributebooksreviews.blogspot.com. I'm a believer in doing what you love and working with like-minded people, when it's at all possible.

AWW: For authors, or author-hopefuls, what should they know about the new look of Tribute Books? Are you open for any YA authors who want to e-pub, or do you have specific genres?

Nicole: Our preference is for damn good writing, the particular topic is secondary in importance. However, books written with a series in mind or those that delve into the paranormal will have a slight edge.

Manuscripts that have already been professionally edited will receive greater consideration. Our preference is to work with authors who have already been published through a royalty-paying press and who know the ins and outs of book promotion. An established social media platform is a must, and we will not consider writers who do not have a well-followed blog, Facebook page or Twitter account.

Interested authors can submit their manuscripts via email to info@tribute-books.com. There will be no charge for the authors we select to work with, and they will receive 50% of the net profits of their ebook sales in quarterly royalty payments. We're looking for Microsoft Word documents with a maximum of 350 pages of text with no photos, charts, illustrations, graphs, etc.

AWW: What excites you most about this new adventure?

Nicole: My hope is that we are able to recruit some talented writers of well-written, well-crafted stories in order to develop an eager fan base for the titles we publish. We want readers to be excited about the ebooks we produce. Young adult authors have the most devoted fan followings out there, and we'd like to introduce that audience to a whole new host of talent.

We try to keep an active online presence with our web site (http://www.tribute-books.com/), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Archbald-PA/Tribute-Books/171628704176), Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/TributeBooks)  and blog (http://tributebooks.blogspot.com/). We'd love to have anyone who loves young adult literature to join us for the ride. 

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I don't know about you guys, but I am definitely looking forward to seeing how this develops! Nicole's plan is to work with 12 authors in 2012, publishing one novel a month. Pretty cool, no? So if you are, or know, a YA author who might be interested, let them know! And if you, like me, are an avid read of YA - I think we're fixing to have a great new source for reading material!

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, Nicole, and best of luck in this new adventure!