[Teresa Edgerton]

That they don't pay advances is a bit troubling, but the royalties are not at all bad. I don't know what else is in their non-negotiable contract, but it's a large, well-established, and respectable company. As such, their boilerplate is going to be full of clauses that are unfavorable to the writer -- on the other hand, it's not going to have some of the more horrifying clauses you can get from a small press publisher.

And you get the name and reputation of this old, international firm behind your book, and your book is handled by a staff of professionals from the editing to the printing to the marketing. All these things you will never get by self-publishing or small press publishing or vanity publishing.

But if your book is so good that they would choose it for their program ... well, your chances of getting an agent (eventually) and selling to some other large publisher with a standard contract instead (eventually) are not so bad. In which case you'd have the advance and a chance for your agent to negotiate the contract.

As an alternative to looking for an agent or submitting to one of the few large houses that will still look at unagented submissions, this is maybe not such a great idea unless you're already weary of the search for an agent, or don't have the patience to look for one in the first place. But as an alternative to self-publishing or any of the other non "traditional" routes, this looks very good indeed.

So I think it depends on what you were already planning to do before you heard of this program.