I know Granite distributes for other smaller publishers and individual authors. But they also publisher their own books, right? Do you notice any niches they specialize in, or direction they appear to emphasize?
Yes, Granite does publish their own books and they do a little bit of everything—from children’s to romance to non-fiction.
It’s hard to tell which titles Granite publishes though because their website dumps everything all together and there’s no indication of publisher for any of the books listed there.
Here is the link to their submissions guidelines—although that’s not a lot of help either because it’s so vague.
This brings up a topic that I love to rant about, concerning LDS publisher websites. Most of them do an inadequate job of promoting/marketing their titles. Each title should have all the info a reader would need to walk into a bookstore to special order it—including the ISBN #, the publisher and publication date. Genre category, size, binding and page count would also be nice.
I can hear the publishers saying, “If they’re at our website, they can just order the book online from us and they don’t need all that information.” Well, yes. Perhaps. But some people are loyal to their local brick and mortar bookstore and want to get it there.
AND all publisher websites should all have a New Release section by month, so that we can easily find what new books they’ve published.
Oh, and one more thing: They should make sure their books are listed on the website by the actual title that’s printed on the front of the book and that their author’s names are spelled correctly. (Uhm, yes. I’ve been unable to find books posted on publisher websites because they’ve made these very mistakes.)
Amen on publisher websites–More than once I have spent a big chunk of time (like five whole minutes) trying to find a specific book, or a specific author. Not only does the author not have their book info on their own website (or have a website for that matter) I can’t find them through their publisher. Granted, it could very well be me–in fact it probably is–but then some websites make it easy for idiots to find their books, those are the websites that make my smile instead of swear. I still have a couple book titles I keep hoping I’ll run into one day, since I can’t find them online–that’s a shame, and it’s poor marketing.