Read a pretty good submission last week. The Last Spartan by John Saunders. TLS fell into the category of, "A book I'd like to publish, but we can't sell enough copies to make it financially responsible." I was initially interested in the manuscript because I thought it might have motorcycle riding scenes. We've had some success selling a "motorcycle type" book in the past. But Saunders' content was just a little off the mark in meeting our content needs so I had to send it back with regrets. BTW, Saunders took the news in a gentlemanly manner.
Read a pretty good query from Rick Jones. He pitched his novel Vatican Knights via ScriptBlaster and the query accomplished a monumental feat. It made me want to read the manuscript. However, I did not ask to see Jones' mss because, again, I know we couldn't sell enough copies to be profitable.
So there you have it folks. There's good content out there. Even great content. But we can't publish them all, primarily because we can't make the business side of the equation function profitably. If a rich heiress were to donate 200 million (Google Ruth Lilly's donation to Poetry, it's quite a story.) to SavPress, then maybe we could publish books from people like Saunders and Jones. But, as we've learned from nearly 20 years of publishing, just printing up the book and making it available does not guarantee wide readership.
Good luck, and, above all, have fun writing your stuff because the real pay-off has to be in the writing because just getting published does not a fortune make.
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