Becoming a Micro-Publisher

Tomorrow, Sarah and I are going to be talking to the Derby Rotten Scoundrels Chapter of Sisters in Crime about our publishing journey. Preparing for this talk has made me do a lot of thinking about our micro-press and all the work that has gone into learning to create books. It required learning about formatting, new software, what fonts worked well together, what kind of covers were needed, how to get covers, and what budget they needed. Timetables had to be set up for what needed to be done to take a book from manuscript to published. We had to learn about everything from hypertext and metadata to ISBNs and Library of Congress numbers. 

The strangest part of this journey is that neither of us started out with a plan to go into publishing. Frankly, we were and are still writers first, which is why the press will never grow beyond being a micro-press. It is not possible to write and publish a large number of books at the same time. Each is a full-time job. Now that I have retired there is more time I can devote to other projects, but not that much more. I didn't gain those eight to ten hours a day that used to be taken up with my job. Instead, there were new responsibilities that ended up on my plate. 

Publishing is challenging. There are so many other books on the market that it is very difficult to get one book to stand out from the pack. The pack for us isn't the big publishers. It is the other small independent presses and the self-published authors that we vie for shelf space with. Standing out is about finding the right keywords on Amazon, the right blurb for the back cover, the right places to get reviews, and the right price points to get sales. It is all still a work in progress. 

I am grateful for the people who have helped us along the way and awed that I have reached a point where others consult me with their questions. It is quite a journey from writer to publisher, one that I could not have made without Sarah and her editing skills. 

Switching Hats

Hats are one of the wardrobe essentials of strange characters like me. Whether it is the top hat that I don to hang out with my gangster gal or that Greek fisherman's cap I use to keep the Florida sun from baking my tiny brain, hats bring little personality changes that give me a lift.

About now you are probably wondering if I am going to post tons of photos of me in various hats. Well...No. I'm just using these hat photos to show that at different times and for different reasons, I decide on a change of hats. In the figurative sense, switching between author and publisher is the same kind of hat trick.

When I write short fiction, the story is usually written with a specific publication in mind. In the best cases the story was requested by a publisher who knows me and wants me to write a story for their publication. More often, the story goes to someone who hasn't heard of me and I am judged by how well I fit their needs and the quality of my story. One of three things happens with cold submissions. The editor loves the story and sends me an acceptance email. Sometimes, the story is short listed, and I have to wait to find out if I make the final cut. The final possibility is rejection. My author's ego gets bruised by editors who reject my work.

Like most authors, I find rejection difficult. It is hard to remember that the editor isn't singling me out. Intellectually, I know it isn't personal. Emotionally, it hurts. Rejection will always hurt because my stories are personal. They are part of me.

Now that Sarah and I have started a publishing house, rejections are part of the job.We are the ones putting out calls for submissions. That publisher's hat is an uncomfortable fit. I have to look at the work writers send, work they have tailored to my request, and poured their talent into creating. I must say "no" to many writers and send acceptance emails to the precious few who make the cut.

Maybe, in time, this new hat will have a more comfortable fit. I hope not. I don't ever want to feel entirely comfortable with rejecting work that I know is created through the sweat and dreams of an author. Even if the work submitted isn't ready for print, the words on the page are much more than words. Stories are part of who we are and what we know. Stories are the human experience. The best ones take us beyond the story and into the world created by the author's imagination.

How do I find a good hat for that?

Independent Publishers are Crashing the Gates

The publishing industry is changing. Independent publishers of all sorts are crashing the gates. The range and quality of these publishers are as varied as the books they print. What the independents have in common is their willingness to try something new. Now, before anyone grabs their keyboard and fires back about the value of the current system, let me say that this post is not about getting rid of agents or the big publishing houses. Changes in the industry might eventually create a different model, but that's a long time away. What's more, the future of publishing isn't likely to create a better model for authors.

Most writers would love to have a contract with one of the big houses and a good agent to negotiate that contract. Who in their right mind would turn down a nice advance on their book, or someone to help with the promotion? But the facts are that good books are being produced by writers who have none of these advantages. Many of those books would never see print if the author hadn't crashed the industry gates.

These are difficult times for writers. On the one hand, big houses are consolidating, cutting out mid-list authors, doing less to promote books. Many of them are not willing to take a chance on unknown writers. On the other hand, there are disreputable and unscrupulous vanity presses just waiting for the chance to fleece unsuspecting writers. What's a writer to do? There are writers who have chosen self-publishing or e-publishing their work and done well, but most will never recover their costs. Once they get that book published, the work of promoting alone is amazingly hard.

Somewhere in the middle of all that are the independent publishers, those small presses carving out a place between self-published and the major houses. They are talking directly to authors, reading their own slush piles, and coming out with quality books, and doing what they can to help their writers get noticed. The result is interesting. So far the industry gatekeepers have managed to shut these books out consideration for reviews and awards, but the gates are crumbling. Publisher's Weekly acknowledged that when they recently blinked on reviews. It is only a small crack in the wall of exclusion. For now, PW is only offering to review the top 25 independent books, and they're asking the independent authors to pay for the privilege.

I, for one, won't settle for being invited into PW as a "second class" writer. I will keep working for full and equal inclusion for small press books in the reviews. But I don't underestimate the significance of the gesture. The industry knows we are at the gates and they cannot keep us out forever.