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| SFReader Forums > Writing > Small Press vs. Big House > small press & distribution | Forum Quick Jump
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nathan
Sage
      
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2122
| Posted 3/5/2007 2:07 PM (GMT -5) |   | | I don't haunt this folder very often because I'm not that well versed or involved in most of the wise things discussed here. I have been mullying over a question of late and I think (I think) this is the best place to ask/discuss.
I have been lucky enough to have several good oppurtunities with small press publishing over the last year or so. I have had a book put out using Lulu that I was frankly more impressed with than the mmpb of my GE stuff. I have had to turn down ops to work with strong minds, ethical people, and even good friends to do writing I would LOVE to do because of money.
I've purchased small press anthologies and e-novels filled with writing every bit of good as anything I've bought of the rack when I impulse buy at Wal-Mart. Based on the people and products I've dealt with I would even be extremely likely to to break my money-up-front rule and happily enter in a shared royalties gig: after all, that's all the advance is, an advance on royalties right?
The only thing that holds me up, that keeps me banging out stories where I know the money is, is the issue of distrubution.
It seems as if the issue of distrubution, not quality or talent is what holds the small press down. Small presses simply can't get their books out to the book chains, let alone to the Wal-Marts and Save-On book racks, thus they can't get that good, experimental or young writer or underdeveloped genre in front of enough people to make the effort result in more than a fore-the-love enterprise.
I would happily enter into partnership with any of half-a-dozen "small" guys I know, dropping money up front as long as I knew the books were going to get good saturation of even just a handful of major urban centers. I just don't see this happening.
Is this true? Is there a chokepoint of distrubution that is keeping small presses from getting audiences for their strong works? That is; there is enough talent out there coming up to produce a next Jordon or Grisham or Whomhave you from out of a small press but because of book distrubution companies only large houses have a chance.
Do I have it wrong?
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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Christopher_Heath
Eternal Champion
Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1156
| Posted 3/5/2007 9:11 PM (GMT -5) | | "I would happily enter into partnership with any of half-a-dozen "small" guys I know, dropping money up front as long as I knew the books were going to get good saturation of even just a handful of major urban centers. I just don't see this happening."
Nathan, if you figure something out, I'd be interested.
Also, I think you're right about distribution being one of the main culprits in keeping small press down, the other being competitive pricing.
Christopher M. Heath
"Azieran: The Breaking of Hell's Bones" in Black Sails by 1018 Press
"Azieran: Distilling the Essence" in Sails and Sorcery by Fantasist Enterprises
"Azieran: The Conquerors" in Chimaera Serials
"Azieran: Pawn of the Serpentine Witch" in Chronicles of Fantasy by ComStar Media
"Azieran: Sentinel of an Ageless Reign" in Chronicles of Fantasy by ComStar Media
"Azieran: The Lakeshorn Mirrors" in Chronicles of Fantasy by ComStar Media
"Azieran: Crestfallen in Mal'kyrrik" serialized novella in Forgotten Worlds
"Azieran: Wyrd Sins" in Rogue Worlds
"The Coruscate King" in Freehold: Betrayal - Ghourlesh Book I
"Azieran: Beyond the Black Veil" in Stalking Shadows
+ others
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2122
| Posted 3/6/2007 12:50 PM (GMT -5) | | What a cold splash of water your matter-of-fact reply was Ed. This, then is a serious problem--any argument about quality can be defeated by small press samples of good writing. If the books can never get out though...
Chris, I'll let you know when I can walk on water too, lol. You're almost "there" anyway.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 3/6/2007 12:54 PM (GMT -5) | | Guys, I don't think distribution is as big of a concern as it may seem. In my own experience in small press publishing, finding a distributor and getting the books into retail stores presented very *little* problem. The problem is sales. I've said before and I say again: 80% of the books you see in a bookstore never sell a SINGLE copy. Retailers stock books but nobody can make people buy them. This holds for FMAM and not just PB -- both found retail distrbutors without much problem.
The biggest problem facing small press publishers is consumer confidence and advertising.
Consider this also: if you have retail distrubition all across America for your books, and every bookstore in a mid-sized to large city stocks 3 copies of your book, you are still looking at 600-800 books and then these have to sell. Or they are returned. When you send your books to retailers, you (the publiher) take an immediate 55% cut in cover price, your payments are held for 90 plus days by your distributor against returns. Since it doesn't make any difference to the retailers or distributors whether your books are returned, since you are paying for it, you can expect upwards of 20% in returns and that would be a GOOD margin.
In fact, getting retail distribution can be the kiss of death for many small press publishers and having a distributor with your books in retail stores, alone, is not a path toward profitablity. Big publishers typically lose money or break even on 9 out of 10 of their projects and bring in profits from one out of ten. A small press publisher, obviously, can't afford to do business on that model and distribution to retailers hikes the cost of any titles production and marketing.
The best way for a small press publisher to survive is by carving out a niche *first* through direct sales and whatnot and then, after establishing a track record, searching for possibilities with retail distribution. Still, ancillary rights, foreign rights, merchandising, and *non-book* sales account for upwards of 1/2 of most successful small press publisher's roster. And, oh yeah, most succesful small press publishers generate at least 1/2 of their titles in-house, to help conserve costs.
In big or small publishing, it's normally the writers who take the biggest brunt of the cost-slashing; hence, the practice of big publishers obfuscating royalites, and small press publishers offering no advances or upfront pay.
Daniel | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 3/6/2007 1:44 PM (GMT -5) | | Jordan,
That can help and in theory and in pratice it's a really great tool to have in the PR arsenal; however, you will find very few authors who are capable or willing to poromote their works with any gusto. Finding places for book-signings (and getting people to show up) can be a real battle. Better invite your friends unless, like I said before, you already have a celebrity shout-out, a Hollywood tie-in, or Oprah put you on her list. The point is: author signings aren't any good if no-one knows or cares who the auhtor is. Even when they do it can be tough. Just as ONE example (and I have dozens) I met a man who is a book reviewer for NPR at an author signing once and he has access to millions of listeners per day to help promote his book of literary criticism. He told me that although he has thousands of people who approach him wanting a review of their book (or a friend's) the most books he ever sold at a signing was 15 and he had a big University Publisher behind him, plus NPR etc.
I've seen author signings where there were 50 authors and 20 books sold. At big shows in big cities. If you or I or anyone else form this board scheduled an author sigining tomorrow at the biggest bookstore in their toown, odds are no-one would show except the author's friends and you'd be surprised at how many authors actually do invite their friends and family to signings to avoid being totally shut-out. It happens all the time.
Blogs are a good idea, but you still have to FIND bloggers (and a way to contact them) who can and will blog about whatever you're selling and then blog about it at the RIGHT time when your books are available ready for the blog-readers to find. Since most blogs have a 1day life span per installment and bookstores hold books on their shelves a couple of weeks, timing this all out and driving traffic to the right blog and the to the right bookstore (regional geo considerations) becomes quite tricky. Odds are that if someone hears about your book and they are interested, if they can't get it THAT second at the right price, they'll just forget about it altogether.
Again, it is can be helpful to ask these questions of yourself/ How many author signings have I attended? Have I ever *worked* to find a book I wanted to buy? How many books (fiction) do I buy a month? How many different new small press writers of *ficiton* have I read in the last year? And did I pay to read any of them? When was the last time I troubled myself to find a book and buy (not borrow) it? When was the last time I bought a book from a small press publisher? These kinds of questions can help, but you have to keep in mjind your answers will probably be non-typical of the general population. Most people don't read at all, those who do read greatly favor non-fiction, of those who read fiction more than 80% read romance/glitz and out of those who are left, only a very small portion actually seek *new* writers and new publishers for their reading fix. Most buy through book clubs or their fave haunt and choose writers they have known for many years or books that these writers recommend. They don't impulse buy as a rule. They don't even impulse read usually!
If you put up a website and paid someone to drive traffic to it and tried to GIVE away a novel for free, you'd probably get fewer orders than you may think. SO why would folks who wouldn't take something for free buy it in their bookstore?
The point is: retail distribution is NOT a panacea to slow-sales for small press publishers and it certainly is not, in and of itself, a path to profitability.
Daniel | | Back to Top | | |
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Kuroboshii
Shogun
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 549
| Posted 3/6/2007 3:07 PM (GMT -5) | | Daniel said...
Still, how many people here have EVER walked into a bookstore and bought a book from a previously unknown writer, published by a previously unknown publisher where the very first inkling you had that this book and publisher existed was because you saw the book on the shelf?
Hm...well, I have bought books from authors I hadn't heard of before (most recently Joel Rosenberg's PALADINS, also Brandon Sanderson's ELANTRIS, because I liked the back cover and cover art, respectively). But the publisher bit takes me out of the running.
Admittedly, there's a few reasons I rarely buy anything from small presses. First is because, if the press is new to me, there's no quality gauruntee. It might be the greatest indie book ever released, but I have no way of knowing that. I have read a couple horrible self-published or small press books which were a waste of time and money and even those had enthusiastic reader reviews.
So, unless someone I trust recommends it (say, Orson Scott Card), or I know and like the editor's work, I just have no assurance that the book will have even a minimum level of quality. I've hated some books from big publishers, but rarely have I read one where the writing wasn't passable and which didn't have SOME redeeming qualities.
Then there's also the fact that I have limited time to read, and thus quality or entertainment value is not my only consideration when buying books. I also want to read books which will further my knowledge of the genre and/or what is currently being published. My preference is to read more recent books rather than older ones (so I know what's currently being published) or classics of the genre (i.e., something like Dune, which I loved). I picked up David Weber's ON BASILISK STATION because I wanted to see what the massive Honor Harrington series is all about (well...it was also available in a $3.99 edition). If the author is going to be a guest at a con I'm attending, that'll also influence me to try their work. That's how I started reading Bujold and Lindskold, both great authors. I just picked up a Jack McDevitt novel for that very purpose.
Even if a small press title might be enjoyable, there's the simple fact that no one else will be reading it--it won't further my knowledge of the "mainstream" genre, I'll draw bug-eyed stares if I refer to it on a panel discussion, it won't fill be in on the genre's past, and it won't give me an example what has been successful w/ major publishers in the past. The SFReader community was a big part of what encouraged me to buy Amazing Journeys and Pitch-Black products--I knew, at least online, some other people who were reading the stuff.
Price is also an issue. Why should I buy a small press book for $15, with the problems mention above, when I can snag HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON and also give Jack McDevitt a try for the same price?
Given that I myself have had a book put out by a small press this probably all comes across as hypocritical. But, honestly, I've found my experience with that to be mixed. I got awesome cover art, a couple nice blurbs, and great reviews (Thanks Nathan!), and did a fair little bit of self-promotion online. In the end I think I sold just under 90 copies, half of which were e-books from Fictionwise.com. That doesn't include copies I've given various authors (including Paolini, who kindly sent me a thank-you note  ). Now, though, the publisher seems to be dying/dead--not certain, but the website hasn't been updated for a year, and it's been quite a while since they released a book or showed any other signs of life. I've not even sure if they're still fulfilling orders.
So...from my point of view as a reader and a consumer, small-press books aren't even on the same playing field as mainstream ones. They have more than just ignorance to contend with. It's much harder to convince me to give a new small-press a try than it is to wrangle me into buying a $7.99 paperback from Tor or Baen.
Sean T. M. Stiennon (AKA Suuran Songforge)
Check out my author page at www.sfreader.com/authors/seanstiennon | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4539
| Posted 3/6/2007 3:23 PM (GMT -5) | | Which is why small press publication is not the easiest path to success a writer can take, though it can be a step, even a large step, toward that goal.
Its why small press publishers get a table at a science fiction convention to sell their wares at, something no "mainstream" publisher ever does. The economics dictate that, for a small press with savvy about the convetion scene, it _may_ payoff. Payoff being break-even and get the word out, more than sell enough to show profit. The only place I've seen signings move books is at a con, and not always then. At least, if you've done your homework, you get your titles in front of a couple hundred potential customers. It only works if you were going anyway, and books and table don't have to earn back the whole trip.
And it doesn't always work even then.
Distribution is a great thing, when a company is ready for it. You need titles, and not just a couple. You need marketing, preferably proven, effective marketing. By the time a small press company can really get the full benefit of distribution, they are hardly small press any more. They've become "medium" press-- a not so small, independant company. I can only think of a few-- Wildeside maybe, or Cemetery Dance publications. There are others I don't recall, I'm sure.
But it is possible for a small press to make money off a book. Not easy, possible. It helps to have the author pushing in the right direction, it helps to have an established web-presence. I think one reason small presses put out so many anthologies is that it gives them more writers pushing their book. What an author can do for a mass market paperback, while not unimportant, is small. What effect an authors efforts has on the percentage of sales for a small press book is proportionatly larger-- a couple of hundred more books moved is a bigger deal there, and may be the difference between profit and loss. Twenty authors doing a honest minmum of promoting is the equivalent of a multi-city book tour by a new author, more likely to help just enough to make the difference.
I spend more money promoting my work, and myself as a writer, than I've so far made. I think most do in my position. I justify it only because I do it in a way I'd be spending anyways-- I promote myself through local conventions. If I didn't sit panels, sign copies etc. I'd still be at the hotel, same expnses anyway. It is the other half of writing-- getting people to read your work, and know you so that when they see your work, they will pick it up. There are other ways and mine probably isn't the most efficient-- I'd try teaching at the college level instead, given the choice, as that comes with a paycheck. (Not a huge one usually, but still.)
Every writer that makes the big bucks was once a writer that nobody ever heard of. So many of us never get past that point but you don't write just for the money (note, I said just). You can be coldly calculating about every aspect of what you do, and still fail. You can be completely true to your vision, write only what you want, and still succeed. Most fall between the two and most people fail. Anything worth doing most people fail at. Its what makes doing worth while. People have succeeded at the writing game using almost any path you can imagine.
Publishing now-- that is a little different to me. Not every small press operator _wants_ to grow into a medium sized company capable of benefitting from mass market distribution. Thats not on everyones to do sheet. Companies that have a firm grasp of what they are trying to accomplish are more likely to last-- a company that plans to sell eight hundred to a thousand copies of your book and does is a success (if they did their numbers right) whereas a company that plans to sell three thousand copies and only sells a thousand is in trouble-- or unlikely to take on another project with you, anyways. The best a writer can do is know what a given publisher expects to be able to do, and make sure that fits in with what the writer expects.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 3/6/2007 3:36 PM (GMT -5) | | Not every small press operator _wants_ to grow into a medium sized company capable of benefitting from mass market distribution
***
Indeed, "small and profitable" is a paradigm in publishing. Really, truly, a small press publisher that wants to take a run at retail distribution is better off with a solid non-fiction lineup than fiction. With ficiton the emerging Internet tech makes retail distribution a minor consideration for small press publishers. I have a book industry magazine right here with a dynamite article on this very topic.
For the record, I never said small press publishing wasn't profitable, I said small press publishing of *speculative fiction* sent through retail distributors without adequate minimum backing (a good rule of thumb for "minimum" is 1 dollar per every copy of a title that is printed) is the kiss of death. And it is. Even with minimal PR backing, you are likely to never see a substantial profit and are very likley to experience a LOSS nine times out of ten, no matter what the book is or who is publishing it. The reason big publishers take a shotgun approach to publishing losing money nine times out of ten is becuase they cannot be sure, there is no formula, for what may succeed in ficiton: it is a crapshoot. Throw it out and hope something sticks. You can influence sales by pouring more money into PR but you can't fabricate profit in publishing.
There are two major "must haves" IMHO for any small press publisher to succeed: your staff and contributors must overcome egos and vanity (a VERY important first step and harder than it sounds) and someone involved must be an EXPERT in sales, as in: they could sell water to a drowning man, etc.... These two things are ESSENTIAL in my opinion and much harder to attain than a solid roster of contributors or cool antho concepts 
Otherwise, your skills in acquisitions, packaging, and trend-spotting will be practically useless.
Remember, once you have retail distribution you are fighting for a market share, which IMHO is tantamount to trying to patent and market a product. It costs a lot of up-front money and there is a LONG wait to see if anything will come of your investment, you are very likely to lose money, and you are competing against monolithic corporations as soon as you start fighting for a mrket share on retail shelves. Unless you have millions in venture capital, you are going to eventually come up a croppers.
Daniel | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 3/6/2007 3:56 PM (GMT -5) | | | Add to this that many, many of the major big-selling novelists as of late have emerged from the small press, but have not made the Empryean until some big company snagged them up and you'll see why small press publishers ARE the robust, idea-generating new-blood, but they lack the apparatus to push things up to BLOCKBUSTER status most of the time, and this is for fiction specifically mind you: I don't think many small press publishers even ones with distributors could HANDLE a best-seller. Guess wrong just ONCE on whether you'll sell another 100,000 that month of your bestseller or 200,000 and you are done. R.I.P.
PB's distributor IPG made a big deal about a book they were distributing that sold 10,000 copies a month ( niche book an African American studies, I believe). I'm pretty sure they wouldn't know what to do with a big seller that was doing ten-times that and neither would most small press publishers. To print and distribute 100,000 copies of a trade-paperback is going to cost about half a million bucks, then PR and ADS, so you need a million dollars just to start.
I heard these stories all over NYC when I was there at a small press publishing convention and Book Expo America. So-and-so went under because they had a successful title, not even a blockbuster, just one that gets you overcommitted financially so as not to LOSE the opp.... It's a rough business.
Niche operators can count on a certain number of steady sales (especially non-fiction) and they can slowly increase their customer base with repeat sales and word-of-mouth, etc. Like I said, ancillary and *non-book* sales are HUGE in publishing, the bread and butter for most. If a publisher gets a "hot" title they can option it off to a big publisher who CAN handle it, maybe, and they sell merchandise and t-shirts, and posters, and do a thousand tie-ins to the one successful title or put out edition after edition with supplements to keep their title list profitable.
Daniel | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 3/6/2007 4:34 PM (GMT -5) | | It seems as if the issue of distrubution, not quality or talent is what holds the small press down. Small presses simply can't get their books out to the book chains, let alone to the Wal-Marts and Save-On book racks, thus they can't get that good, experimental or young writer or underdeveloped genre in front of enough people to make the effort result in more than a fore-the-love enterprise.
***
Nathan, the Iternet is quickly surpassing retail sales for effectiveness for independents. Lack of retail distribution as I noted above is not a death-blow to any small press publisher; talk to the successful ones and they will tell you the Internet is the most vital part of their marketing and sales apparatus these days, not brick and mortar stores.
The very fact that distributors *will* take on new publishers and put them inot retail stores so long as the physical quality and street cred of the book are viable indicates the rapidly diminishing prestige of retail sales. It is a stacked deck and everything is stacked against the publisher. In no other business does the distributor and retailer get to opt out of the risk in selling and return everything to the manufacturer!!!! If you adopted this practice to, say, prduce sales, then grocery stores could return all the rotten fruit that didn't sell to the fruit orchrds at cost.....
Until returns are eliminated from the business (which new paradigms in publishing have started to accomplish) there won't be any incentive for the retailers to actively push product and so the publisher retains all the hard tasks: acquisitions, manufacturing, marketing, and assumes all the financial risks for returns and PR costs. The only thing the distributor does is warhouse the books and ship them and they charge publishers a fee for this service. All the retailer does is rent out some storeshelf space for a couple of weeks, maybe. No risk to anyone but the publisher who in addition to footing the bills for storage and distribution and advertising, and taking a hit on the wholesale price, has to pay the author (s) and all the static costs of running a corporation: lights, phone, taxes, salaries, shipping, company equipment, plus fees for catalog listings, review mail outs ( a few hundred dolalrs a pop) and in these cases the publishers even have to write their own catalog copy!!!!
Then there are arc's, plus expenses to get into book-fairs for signings, travel expenses, food and lodging and the rest for the big author signings and convention sales, which I have never seen amount to anything much at all. Only with local well-publicized tie-ins can a profit be turned in this way at book-stalls in a fair or what have you.
Like I said, it's rough.
Daniel | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 3/6/2007 5:21 PM (GMT -5) | | All of my impulse buying is mmp.
***
Same for most impulse-buyers, those precious few that stalk the aisles And no small press publisher could afford to go mmp because it is far too expensive a proposition and the profit margin, belive it or not!, is actually much smaller than on tp's.
I impulse buy books myself all the time and have found many a fine treasure this way from independant and even small press publishers. I don't personally buy a lot of fiction, but I buy poetry which is an even smaller market than fiction. The rest is non-fiction and with this my interests range all over the place from physics to military history, to biography, philosophy, the occult, art, botany, history, politics and on and on and on....
However, even my impulse-buys usually turn out to be over-runs on a discount shelf somewhere or in a used book store and that's an indicator of the RIP danger I mentioned above, over-printing.
Bibliophiles and impulse buyers are good candidates for small press sales, but you don't reach so many of them *merely* by having your books in retail stores, and the ones who would impulse buy off the shelf are just as likely to impulse buy (or buy from repeated solicitation!) directly from the publisher, so the retailer is unecessary.
Daniel | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 3/6/2007 5:34 PM (GMT -5) | | Given that I myself have had a book put out by a small press this probably all comes across as hypocritical. But, honestly, I've found my experience with that to be mixed. I got awesome cover art, a couple nice blurbs, and great reviews (Thanks Nathan!), and did a fair little bit of self-promotion online. In the end I think I sold just under 90 copies, half of which were e-books from Fictionwise.com.
***
Sean, I think Silver Lake did a fine job with your book. It's one thing to *talk* about all this theory of what should be done and how, and who buys what, it is another thing altogether to DO it and until someone has had experience with small press publishing I don't think they can appreciate the huge committment that is made (or should be made) to each and every title. It is a long, hard, uphill battle to launch a new writer, particularly as a small press publisher, and particularly with a short fiction collection.
I bought Six with Flinteye (after listening to a podcast interview with you!) and enjoyed it very much. I think it is a professionally edited and produced book, so be happy!!! Stand proud!
And when you come out in hardcover and mmp remember us little guys who believed in you all along!
Daniel | | Back to Top | | |
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Kuroboshii
Shogun
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 549
| Posted 3/6/2007 6:33 PM (GMT -5) | | Daniel said...
Sean, I think Silver Lake did a fine job with your book.
I don't disagree...apologies if I came of as though I did  ! The point I was making is more that, even with a nicely-produced volume, some of the best cover art I've seen anywhere, and a nice rack of blurbs/reviews, and a publisher who was really behind the book, it wasn't exactly a blockbuster. Admittedly, though, with a less committed publisher and less work all around, those sales figures would have been much, much lower.
I'm more trying to get at my disillusionment with the whole small press process. The business is indeed rough--sufficiently rough that most places die relatively quickly. Even when they put a lot of effort and work into things, combined with authorial promotion, it by no means leads to an indie smash which makes all the agents cock their heads.
I really do wish the best of luck to all those who attempt a small press--I'm behind Ricasso all the way, Rob . I'm also doing a lot of writing for Ray Gun Revival because I support their mission and goals completely. But it's no fast-track to success ("success" defined as a contract w/ a major publisher and/or representation from a good agent).
I greatly value my experience with all, but the deaths of Deep Magic, Amazing Journeys, Pitch-Black, and (maybe) Silver Lake have had a significant effect on my thinking.
Sean T. M. Stiennon (AKA Suuran Songforge)
Check out my author page at www.sfreader.com/authors/seanstiennon | | Back to Top | | |
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