Locus, May 2013

by Locus Publications

  You often publish novellas. Why?

  Well, it’s a novel in a single sitting. That’s how I regard the novella. So many short stories disappoint me because they feel emasculated… and so many novels fail for me because they should have been trimmed by one third (or more!) before going to print – and that’s from the reader’s POV. From the writer’s standpoint, they make for a nice break from novels. I’ve been going on at my chum Ramsey Campbell for several years now to do me a new novella (his Needing Ghosts, which Deborah Beale bullied him into writing twenty-some years back, is superb) and he’s finally done it (just to shut me up, he says)… so watch out for The Last Revelation of Gla’aki, coming to a bookstore near you soon!

  What’s happening with your press now?

  Things are going well. We’re (that’s mainly Nick Gevers and me) being a little more cautious about what we buy – there’s a recession, Mike and Nicky tell me – but I still get a buzz about buying something by a relative newcomer. Just a few days back, Nick and I bought ‘‘Machinists’’, a second story from a newish writer called Andrew Jury. It’s just absolutely blown me away. It skirts awful close to being mainstream (like a collaboration between Vonnegut and Updike, for me) but it’s writing of that standard that gets my spidey senses a’tingling. Other stories and titles I’m excited about? Hey, come on…. I’m excited about every single one of them. Some will sell better than others but, so what?! Where is it written that everything good will earn out? No place. Same as saying everything that makes it to #1 in the hit parade is a great song. But I am looking forward to our new, fully illustrated slipcased line (anniversary editions of Aldiss’s The Malacia Tapestry and King’s Christine, Pet Sematary, Thinner, and Skeleton Crew; new collections from Stephen Baxter, Paul McAuley, Ian McDonald, and the great Brian Clemens; a truly stunning novella from Richard Christian Matheson; a book of correspondence between Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth (edited by S.T. Joshi); a bumper two-volume swan song of Danel Olson’s Exotic Gothic series; more collections of Lovecraftiana (huh?) from Joshi, Lois Gresh, Darrell Schweitzer… oh, and lots lots more.

  What’s next?

  More of the same, I guess. New things to excite me (and frustrate Nicky when I try to shoehorn them into an already full-to-busting schedule) include a book of cartoons by Pete Von Sholly. Pete and I have recently struck up a friendship and he’s working with us on several projects: Gla’aki, which I already mentioned, new editions of HPL’s The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath and Dreams in the Witch House, and an absolutely enormous volume of specially commissioned essays on key movers and shakers in the genre field: books, TV, movies and lots more.

  We’re not currently considering unsolicited material, but that will change one day. Just not yet. That doesn’t mean I won’t surprise someone who’s written just the one story and ask them to try me with a novella. If Nicky, Nick, or I like something that we’ve read then we’ll try to get something else from that writer.

  Thoughts or predictions about publishing?

  Well, there are some pundits who feel the move into e-publishing has plateaued – me, I just don’t know. Certainly, current trends indicate a large market remains for paper books… and in the specialty genre market this is doubly true. Devoted SF/F/H/crime readers and collectors value good books issued in aesthetically attractive and durable hardcopy editions. Compared with ephemeral e-books, these have real substance and a perceived value! We believe quality will continue to matter to discriminating people, and PS folks know quality when they see it… because that’s what they tell us, week after week. So I reckon the market for quality limited editions like ours will persist and, if big commercial publishers drop the ball, maybe even expand. Watch this space.

  –Peter Crowther

 

  EARTHLING PUBLICATIONS

  Who founded your press? When?

  Earthling Publications (www.earthlingpub.com/) was founded in 2000 by me (Paul Miller).

  Mission statement?

  No mission statement or particular niche – just exceptional stories (often dark fiction) and beautiful editions at fair prices.

  What works have you published recently and what are on the horizon?

  The last few books were Glen Hirshberg’s novel Motherless Child and an oversized, 25th-anniversary edition of Clive Barker’s Weaveworld, and up next are new novels by Mark Morris and Gary McMahon and a new short story collection by Michael Marshall Smith.

  Thoughts or predictions about publishing?

  In terms of specialy presses, I’m certain more presses will shift some of their focus to e-books, given this is where the market has headed. I’m not interested in e-books, personally or from a business perspective (noting that publishing isn’t my day job). I love the ‘‘real thing’’ and will continue producing well-made hardcovers and softcovers for as long as I can.

  –Paul Miller

 

  CHEEKY FRAWG BOOKS

  Who founded your press? When?

  Cheeky Frawg was founded in 2011 by Jeff VanderMeer.

  Mission statement?

  The original purpose of the press was to provide and promote works in e-book format. We were particularly interested in works that were under-represented and in international fiction in translation.

  You’ve published a number of books by foreign writers. What are the possibilities, advantages, and challenges of bringing such work to the attention of English-language readers?

  This is a very difficult task. The cost of translation can sometimes be even higher than the advance/royalty payment made to the author. In Finland, they offer translation grants to help promote Finnish writers to the wider world. I wish all countries supported their writers this way. In addition to the larger costs of a translation project, we also have the added task of promotion, since most in the English speaking world would not have heard of the author in question. This forces us be more creative in our approach to promotion. But overall, it is worth every penny, every hour we spend.

  What’s next?

  Right now we’re working on a short story collection by Jyrki Vainonen, a Finnish writer, as well as the novel Datura, by Leena Krohn, another Finnish writer. John Klima is the editor managing these two projects. Also planned for this year is the second volume of our anthology ODD? We plan to do the second volume in e-book format and then combine both volume 1 and 2 for a hardcopy book.

  –Ann VanderMeer

 

  FAIRWOOD PRESS

  When was your press founded, and who started it?

  I started Fairwood Press in a limited format in 1995, as an umbrella company for Talebones magazine. At that time, the few projects were chapbooks. In 2000, Fairwood incorporated to begin doing trade paperback publishing. The majority of our books are short story collections, but we also do a few novels and a few reprints.

  What’s happening with your press now?

  Fairwood publishes three-to-six titles a year (five titles in 2012 and five scheduled for 2013). Recent books include the new story collection by James Van Pelt, Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille and a reprint of Louise Marley’s novel The Terrorists of Irustan.

  What’s next?

  Forthcoming books include a reprint of Michael Bishop’s novel Ancient of Days, a collection by Richard Bowes (If Angels Fight), a collection by J.A. Pitts, entitled Bravado’s House of Blues, and an anthology: Beyond the Sun, featuring stories by Robert Silverberg, Nancy Kress, Mike Resnick, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Beyond that, I am somewhat in a holding pattern, as my own first novel (from Tor) will be forthcoming, and I’m uncertain about how everything will pan out, time-wise.

  Thoughts about publishing?

  We’ve been going back and doing e-book versions of our backlist (most of those titles happened before the proliferation of e-books, and Fairwood didn’t buy those rights so we’re working things out with each author). My gut tells me that we’ll see a glut of e-book and indi
e publishing, and then everything will start to even out as writers begin to realize that traditional publishing, in the long run, can make them the most money (in print or e-formats), give them the greatest exposure, and do a majority of the heavy lifting for them. We may already be seeing the start of this. I don’t think paper books are going away, and we might see a reverse of what happened when the chain stores started proliferating and forced many independent stores out of business. Now the chains are starting to vanish, and I think independent bookstores will make a comeback. And we’ll see more specialty stores.

  – Patrick Swenson

 

  CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS

  Who founded your press? When?

  ChiZine Publications was founded in 2008 by Sandra Kasturi and Brett Alexander Savory. It was an outgrowth (like a tumour) of The Chiaroscuro/ChiZine.com, the online magazine, which has been running since 1997.

  Mission statement?

  We do! Our niche is dark, literary speculative fiction (encompassing SF, fantasy, horror, magic realism, and occasionally noir).

  Our official mission statement: ChiZine Publications (CZP) is a two-time World Fantasy Award-nominated independent publisher of weird, subtle, and disturbing dark literary fiction hand-picked by Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi, Bram Stoker Award-winning editors of ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words. CZP has worldwide distribution for trade paperbacks and e-books through HarperCollins Canada and Diamond Book Distributors.

  What’s happening with your press now?

  We were going to do about 12 books a year, but we seem to keep taking on more. Last year we did 18, and we wanted to kind of scale back in 2013, so we scaled back to…17 books. Yeah. Actually, one of them is an e-book only – the Hexslinger Series Omnibus by Gemma Files, including all three books, plus some unpublished stories set in that ’verse, so, technically speaking, it’s 16 books, plus that. I guess we haven’t scaled back that much! We’re particularly excited about some of the short story collections we’re putting out this year: Christopher Golden’s Tell My Sorrows to the Stones, Steve Rasnic Tem’s Celestial Inventories, and Susie Moloney’s Things Withered. They’re high-profile authors, not to mention wonderful writers, and we’re so pleased they’re doing books with us. We were also really thrilled to be able to reprint Geoff Ryman’s seminal work, The Warrior Who Carried Life. It first came out in the ’80s, and we really hope it gets noticed by a whole new generation of readers.

  What’s next?

  We’re launching a young-adult imprint in 2014, called ChiTeen, and a graphic novel line (ChiGraphic) in 2015. Though we are doing both on a small scale, and very cautiously, given the current publishing climate, with only four books per year each to begin with. We’re also thrilled to be publishing Michael Rowe’s second book, Wild Fell, a classic haunted house novel in the fall, and Peter Roman’s gonzo noir/fantasy/thriller, The Mona Lisa Sacrifice. Who doesn’t want to read a book about a kind of detective wandering around in the undying body of Christ and killing angels?! We’ve also got the Ellen Datlow-edited anthology, Fearful Symmetries, funded by Kickstarter, coming out in 2014. Lots of projects happening it seems! We’re looking for YA and graphic novels, but we’ll be a tough sell on that (even more than for CZP proper), because we’re doing so few books in those lines to start. Hopefully we won’t get a crazy amount of slush to read. She said hopefully.

  Thoughts or predictions about publishing?

  I think it’s going to be some crazy, mutated sine wave of a rollercoaster. As per usual. Given what’s happened to Night Shade, which has been all over the trades recently, we’re always thinking: how do we make sure that doesn’t happen to us? I think cautious diversification and flexibility are the keys – and fiscal conservatism. In direct opposition to that, we’re also risk-takers… but we’re calculated risk takers. We’re still small enough that we can make decisions quickly and scrap what isn’t working. We embraced e-books from the get-go, and we’re ready to jump on any other new technologies that emerge, if we can make them work for us. But there’s a lot of noise out there; it’s hard to get your signal heard. We do the best we can with what we’ve got. It’s constant ducking and weaving in publishing these days. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! If you’re not careful, you end up floating like an anvil, stinging like a balloon.

  –Sandra Kasturi

 

  TWELFTH PLANET PRESS

  Mission statement?

  Twelfth Planet Press has several objectives:

  • to publish fresh, original, well-written work that seeks to interrogate, commentate, inspire, or provoke thought;

  • to provide opportunities for female writers by publishing and showcasing new work;

  • to advocate for fiction written for, by, and about women;

  • to raise the awareness of women’s voices in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and recently, crime; and

  • to showcase and demonstrate the depth and breadth of Australian fiction to a broader audience.

  There is a political element to almost all of the work we acquire. We’re interested in fiction that has something to say, to add to the conversation. We have also been actively advocating for publishing new fiction by women, and developing and mentoring new Australian writers to add to the diversity of voices in speculative fiction.

  What’s happening with your press now?

  We’re publishing between three and five titles a year but that’s set to scale up this year as I transition to full time at Twelfth Planet Press whilst working on my creative PhD in publishing, which will focus on the potential for politicised editing and publishing.

  Recent titles that I’m still excited about include the latest volumes of the Twelve Planets series – Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan, Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren, and Asymmetry by Thoraiya Dyer. The Twelve Planets project is a series of 12 short story collections, each containing four short stories written by an Australian woman. Writers for this series were selected to span the stages of a short story writing career, from award-winning to first collections, and in between. The series as a whole is evolving into a truly fascinating piece of work. Presenting 12 different female viewpoints, some with a very strong feminist voice, some completely outside feminism, it’s a spectrum of female voices and experiences, illustrating there is no one ‘‘female perspective’’ or ‘‘female voice.’’

  This year, we’ve branched out into crime with our new imprint Deadlines and our debut novel A Trifle Dead by fantasy writer Tansy Rayner Roberts (writing as Livia Day). A Trifle Dead was released in March and is the first book in the Café La Femme series. Marketed as culinary crime, it features a young female detective of sorts and showcases a vibrant, energetic, and cultural Hobart.

  What’s next?

  Twelfth Planet Press is currently expanding into novels. Trucksong by Andrew Macrae is slated for September 2013. It’s an Australian postapocalyptic novel of patricide, lost love, and artificially intelligent trucks. We also have the sequel to A Trifle Dead, Drowned Vanilla, to be released early in 2014. The Twelve Planets series is winding up with the final four collections to come from Kirstyn McDermott, Rosaleen Love, Cat Sparks, and Deborah Kalin. It’s been such an amazing journey producing these volumes, that we’re going to finish the series with a bang.

  We’re currently developing several novel manuscripts from some talented and well-loved Australian novelists and expect to make announcements about those toward the end of the year. We’re also working on exploring the idea of politicized editing with a few new projects to expand our advocacy for diversity of voice and perspective in speculative fiction.

  Thoughts or predictions about publishing?

  The publishing industry remains, as always, in flux. Right now, the concern in Australia – and it’s not only a local issue – is the closure of bookstores. Every month we hear about more closing down. And those that remain are struggling and are more cautious about the
stock they choose to carry. Hand in hand with this is the contraction in distributors operating.

  I’m not convinced, though, that this is solely as a result of the rise of e-books. Print books are expensive to produce in Australia and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to compete with the price and convenience of online outlets such as Amazon and Book Depository. It seems to me that the traditional publishing business model of distribution through brick-and-mortar bookstores as the main delivery system is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term.

  Twelfth Planet Press is responding to this by ensuring our books are readily available online in both print and e-book format. We’re looking into other printing models as well, such as combining print runs with POD, which would enable our books to be available through Amazon and Book Depository and reduce postage costs to overseas readers.