TNH: ‘‘There’s a huge amount of human intelligence that goes into developing a system that other humans will later look at and say, ‘Well, that wasn’t actually so complicated.’ As for what’s going to happen with e-publishing, there are no barriers to it. Back when, to have a publishing house, you had to hire people with serious experience, because book production and book publishing were very gnarly and technical. One of the things the e-book developments are really bringing into focus is how important gateways are. Readers will not wade through garbage looking for good stuff.’’
PNH: ‘‘I don’t know how it’s all going to work out, but I’ve always had a sense that the things I am actually good at, which is wading through a lot of stuff and saying, ‘Check this out, this is good’ – somebody’s going to be willing to pay for that because I’m pretty good at it. And it cannot be automated.’’
TNH: ‘‘Actually, there’s one way it can be. I find this very interesting. The fanfic universe is a very inventive place, and worth watching because there’s so much of it and they’re so good at teaching one another to write. The quality of top-level fanfic is now well into the publishable range.’’
PNH: ‘‘We’re talking about amateur fiction written in someone else’s universe. I clarify this only because the word ‘fanfic’ has meant so many different things historically.’’
TNH: ‘‘Go to somewhere like Archive Of Our Own, AO3, and what they’ve got are very sophisticated sorting mechanisms. People recommend and bookmark stories, and give each other kudos for good writing, and you can tell the database ‘search for this, this, and that characteristic, and give me the matching stuff with the most hits.’ Personal opinion is variable, but if you get enough people voting for something, the stuff that comes to the top will be good. And since commercial publishers can’t skim off the cream, there’s no limit on how good it can be.
‘‘There’s an astounding amount of energy and intellectual ferment going on in the fanfic universe. I experimentally came out of the closet on Making Light with a post called ‘Some reasons why I read fanfic.’ It’s just a bunch of recommendations and annotated links. It’s been really interesting watching the comment thread, with some longtime regulars popping up to say ‘Here’s where you can find all my fan fiction.’ People recommended stuff that they thought was great. The bubbles started rising.
‘‘We don’t know what’s going to happen with the legality of publishing stuff like that, but any time you have that many smart people and that much energy, and they love what they’re doing that much and want to do more with it – I don’t know what will come of it, but I am certain that something will.’’
PNH: ‘‘I’m not certain it will make anyone a living. One of the things we see with the Internet is that it has a tendency to generate fantastic and wonderful and useful objects that everyone wants to see continue, but nobody can figure out how to make money from. A perfect example of this is Twitter, which is a million miles away from figuring out how they’re ever going to make a dime, but it’s part of the plumbing of the human universe now. Both Teresa and I pay a lot of attention to this stuff, we talk a lot about it, because it’s the real competition.’’
TNH: ‘‘And because we like it.’’
PNH: ‘‘Our competition at Tor isn’t Ace or Del Rey or Simon & Schuster. They’re part of it, but the real competition is all the other things you can do with your time these days instead of reading books, many of which are really high-quality and terrific things to do. The task is staying interesting in the face of all that. Anybody who’s our age – I’m 53 and she’s 56 – we were kids and teenagers in the ’60s and ’70s, so we’re the last or second to last generation who can remember being bored kids with nothing to do.’’
TNH: ‘‘We remember running out of things to read. We remember conversations with the earlier generations that remembered a time when there wasn’t science fiction. I remember Gordy Dickson saying it would be a different world when the last of those died. We remember a universe where there was a paucity of entertainment. This is not that universe any more.’’
PNH: ‘‘I came into science fiction 24 years ago with a lot of the package of literary aspirations exemplified by the editorial work of Damon Knight and Terry Carr and David Hartwell, to at least get science fiction up to the level of middlebrow popular literature, to try to get the terrible writing out of the field. Many of those battles have been won, and the field is better for it. I’m not knocking any of these efforts – Judith Merril should also be mentioned, and Groff Conklin. But these days I’m actually less interested in finding the next Book of the New Sun, and more on the lookout for books like Old Man’s War or Little Brother, what John Scalzi calls entry-level science fiction. It’s comprehensible even if you haven’t been pickled in SF for the last 25 years. The Book of the New Sun is a great piece of work, it’s a masterpiece for people who have spent decades inhaling vast quantities of science fiction and fantasy. I’m at least as interested in books like Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, because it tore through a pile of readers inside Tor who almost never read SF. They all latched onto Spin and went, ‘Wow! This is science fiction that I actually like!’’’
TNH: ‘‘We need both kinds.
PNH: ‘‘Right.’’
–Teresa & Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Return to In This Issue listing.
Introduction • Small Beer Press • Lethe Press • PS Publishing • Earthling Publications • Cheeky Frawg Books • Fairwood Press • ChiZine Publications • Twelfth Planet Press • EDGE Books • Prime Books • Aqueduct Press • Tachyon Publications • Ticonderoga Publications • Subterranean Press • Night Shade Books
The small and independent press has long been an integral part of the SF publishing, with one of its greatest strengths lying in the ability recognize and work with writers and markets that are for the most part disregarded by the larger publishing houses. Since the number of units required to turn a profit can be much lower for a smaller house, they can specialize, fill the gaps, take chances, and reach farther – and they do, in a way that enriches the field and adds to the breadth and variety of genre publishing. Beyond the traditional limited editions, collections, volumes of complete works, and reprinting of classic or under-recognized or obscure genre works (see Peter Crowther’s comment, ‘‘I see dead writers.’’) that have long been the mainstay of smaller houses, there are also presses focusing on high quality production of novellas; literary, LGBT, or feminist works; horror; new authors; regional authors; and more. Some have full-time staff, others are run by a single person, but they all do their work with a great love for books.
We reached out to a handful of presses to ask them about their origins and what they do. We didn’t have room to cover everyone we would have liked to; others that have done great work include CD Publications, Centipede Press, Graff Publishing, Golden Gryphon, Haffner Press, ISFiC, and NESFA Press to name a few; look for them in upcoming Spotlights. The chart included here shows the total number of books that we saw at Locus for the last ten years, for each press we spoke to. You can see how steady the growth has been for these presses. Compared to the numbers of total titles of genre books seen, this set of imprints have gone from around 1.5% to over 7% of titles published between 2002 and 2012.
The landscape for the indie press is changing right now, and quite rapidly for some. We have wanted to do a feature on small and independent houses for a while, and when we started the run-up to the issue, none of the hubbub about Night Shade Books threatening bankruptcy and the prospective deal offloading assets to Skyhorse/Start Publishing had been made public (see our story, p. 10). Then there were the announcements, and the online flood of upset and nervous authors trying to sort out what to do, and others giving advice or just ranting about the whole thing. Then Skyhorse/Start picked up Underland, who had slowed down production significantly in the past couple of years because of the recession, and there was news that they are hoping to acquire a number of other imprint
s this year, which will bring even more changes. The wholesale hoovering up of the small houses feels like they are being rendered down for backlist rights. Since one of the great strengths of the smaller houses is the potential for personal attention given to each title, this could be a serious concern, though it is too early to judge.
–Liza Groen Trombi
SMALL BEER PRESS
When was your press founded, and who started it?
We (Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link) started Small Beer Press in 2000. We’d been publishing a ’zine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, since 1996, but in 2000 we published our first chapbooks and then our first books in 2001.
Does your press have a mission statement, or is there a particular niche you aim to fill?
We had to write a mission statement for our distributor: We started Small Beer Press in 2000, after putting out a do-it-yourself zine, and working for years in independent bookstores, in order to publish the kind of books we loved handselling. We publish literary fiction, innovative fantastic fiction, and classic authors whom you just may have missed the first time around. In our catalog, you’ll find first novels, collections both satisfying and surreal, critically acclaimed, award-winning writers, and exciting talents whose names you may never have heard, but whose work you’ll never be able to forget. Joan Aiken, John Crowley, Carol Emshwiller, Angelica Gorodischer, Naomi Mitchinson, Sean Stewart, and Kelly Link are among the names on our growing list of innovators.
A cold beer in summer, hot tea in winter, good books all year round.
But really, the press is all about publishing great, sometimes hard to describe short story collections and novels.
Tell us a little about your YA imprint, Big Mouth House. Why did you start it, and how is it doing?
We started it for the simple reason because we wanted to publish young-adult and middle-grade books. We both enjoy books for all ages and we didn’t want to miss out on seeing books we loved. We’ve only published half a dozen titles. All but one – Delia Sherman’s The Freedom Maze – have been selected for the Junior Library Guild, and while Delia’s book didn’t fit there, it did receive three awards, the audio book is up for an Audie, and paperback rights sold to Candlewick, so over all, Big Mouth House is doing very well.
How are things going now? How many books are you publishing each year, and what recent titles are you especially excited about?
We publish around ten titles a year and are usually excited about all of them. Since Small Beer is mostly Kelly and me, there’s no point in publishing a book we’re not excited about. We’ve been very excited about a couple of debuts we’re publishing this spring and summer: Sofia Samatar’s lush, lulling, and haunting novel A Stranger in Olondria and Nathan Ballingrud’s gritty and scary collection North American Lake Monsters. We are publishing both in simultaneous hardcover and paperback editions. While the publishing conversation still mostly revolves around e-books, we have recently published some very successful hardcovers.
What’s happening next? What works are on the horizon, and what kinds of material are you looking for in the future?
We’re always looking – slowly; we’re always overwhelmed with submissions, but we have to read everything, so I’m not sure how to change that – for fresh voices, odd angles, books that don’t quite fit, translations (even though they are hard to make work financially; after we published Trafalgar by Angélica Gorodischer, we’ve been approached by half a dozen translators about her other works!) of short story collections and novels. We have a few contracts still to be signed, so I shouldn’t talk about those books, but we do have collections from Delia Sherman, Alan DeNiro, and Eileen Gunn, which are all, in their own very different ways, fabulous. And, after these long years, Laurie J. Marks has promised us she is nearly finished a draft we can read of Air Logic. Can’t wait for that.
Here’s the obligatory big-picture question: what changes do you foresee in the publishing industry in the future, especially with the rise of e-books? How is your press responding to the changes in the publishing industry?
We’re still a cottage operation, still looking for books we love to read, love to talk about, and love to pass on to friends and strangers.
I’ve been impressed and inspired by how much independent bookstores are thriving and, given their knowledge of the marketplace and their customer connections, I expect they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. They are very important to us – not just because they sell our books – as independent voices in the public discourse, and of course because they provide great places to visit when traveling!
A couple of years ago, I founded an independent e-booksite
–Gavin Grant
LETHE PRESS
How did your press begin, and what’s your focus?
I founded Lethe Press in March of 2001. Our primary niche is LGBT speculative fiction. Originally, Lethe’s mission was to return out-of-print queer-themed books back into print, but for the past few years we have published more new books than reprints.
As a press devoted to LGBT writing, what are your thoughts on LGBT literature in the SF/F genre?
I would have to say that the speculative community is far more accepting of LGBT themes than the reverse. That might sound odd, but the LGBT community seems more focused on romantic and melodramatic fiction than anything truly fantastical or awe-inspiring. Paranormal romances seem to have flooded the queer marketplace; the quality LGBT spec fic is primarily written by authors who identify as fantasy/science-fiction/horror writers who happen to have penned a ‘‘gay story.’’ I don’t think the LGBT community has grown up with enough fairy tales that they can identify with (no pun intended), to develop the rich foundation of speculative fiction.
What’s happening with your press now?
On average we publish 30-35 books a year. 2012 was our second year with net sales over $100k, so I am pleased with the success we’ve had so far. We continue to stand out at the Lambda Literary Awards with our releases (this year we published four of the six finalists) and earn starred reviews in Publishers Weekly. I’m especially thrilled to be publishing Dust Devil on a Quiet Street, a new mosaic novel by award-winning author Richard Bowes, as well as Where The Dark Eye Glances, an anthology of queer-themed stories centered around Edgar Allan Poe (both in July) and the next volume in our acclaimed Heiresses of Russ series that showcases the prior year’s best lesbian spec fic.
What’s next?
We’re always hoping to see a great novel in our in-box. I would like to release more of the L and B and T end of the queer spectrum, which I feel is often ignored compared to the number of Gay releases. I also want to stoke the fires underneath some fresh voices like Sam J. Miller and Thai author Benjanun Sriduangkaew (would love to see a book from her).
Thoughts or predictions about publishing?
Well, half of our income is based on e-book sales. And, while I prefer print editions for personal reading – and we do our best to ensure that print version of our books look appealing – I have accepted the role of e-books in our field. My concern is that, with the ease of self-publishing and POD technology, both the spec fic and LGBT marketplaces are swamped with product. Word-of-mouth has replaced many of the old review venues. It’s difficult to get noticed. That is one reason why I hope Lethe never needs to abandon the traditional brick-and-mortar bookseller.
–Steve Berman
PS PUBLISHING
Who founded your press? When?
/> I started PS in the fall of 1998 with my good friend Simon Conway (hence PS… ‘‘P’’ and ‘‘S’’) and our first four novella-length books appeared in 1999, two at a time (James Lovegrove’s How The Other Half Lives and Graham Joyce’s Leningrad Nights in the spring, and Kim Newman’s Andy Warhol’s Dracula and Michael Marshall Smith’s The Vaccinator in the fall). The following year (after a good reaction to the first four titles), I decided to go for a quartet of SF…. Thus we published books by Stephen Baxter, Peter Hamilton, Paul McAuley, and Ian McDonald (with a straight horror novella from Tim Lebbon to ensure the spook fans didn’t feel abandoned).
Now, almost 15 years later, our annual output is almost one book every week (I’m including our poetry imprint (Stanza Press) and our paperback imprint (Drugstore Indian Press) in that… but not our comicbooks line (PS Artbooks) which is currently running at around three books every month all by itself).Sheesh… you should be asking when I sleep. But then, as my friend Stephen Jones and I often say, we’ll sleep when we’re dead… but hopefully not just yet for a little while.
Mission statement?
Mission statements so often tend to be trite… and having a bunch of folks sitting around like something out of Mad Men, coming up with a pithy phrase or saying when they could be publishing an extra book seems like a waste of time and energy. A particular niche? Well, I guess if I’m guilty of anything at all it would be emulating those who came before me and did such a bang-up job. I’m thinking here of August Derleth and Arkham House; Martin Greenberg and David Kyle for Gnome Press; Erle Melvin Korshak, T.E. Dikty, and Mark Reinsberg for Shasta Press; Ian and Betty Ballantine with Ballantine Books; Don Wolheim with DAW Books; Tom Doherty with Tor; Rich Chizmar with CD; and Bill Schafer with Subterranean Press. Where Arkham House focussed strictly on horror and Tartarus (and, to a degree, Ash Tree) on public domain writers and material (their slogan could be ‘‘I can see dead writers!’’), I guess that, if I had to pick one, it would be Ballantine… because they did it all: fantasy, SF, and horror. That’s my niche… all of them. I remember reading Ballantine paperbacks at the rate of three or four a week in the very late 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s – all those Pohl books, Zacherley, Clarke, Leiber, and then discovering (thanks to Lin Carter’s ‘‘Adult Fantasy’’ imprint) Lord Dunsany, A Voyage to Arcturus, Lud In The Mist, Hannes Bok, Cabell, etc…. Wow! Yep, if folks pointed to me and said, Ballantine or even the great Arkham House as it was is now alive and well and putting books out under the PS imprint, then I think I’d die a happy man. But, once again like I said, not yet.
Locus, May 2013 Page 4
