Dark Wisdom - The magazine of dark fiction

DW:	What are your thoughts on the small press industry and/or the major houses?	Mamatas :	The publishing industry always reminds me of Winston Churchill's comment about democracy. It's the worst way of doing things one can think of, except for all the others. The small press is a fine place to publish, as long as its business models recapitulate the large press. That means that the risk is centered on the publisher -- they spend money on their author (advance) and pour money into those things that will actually sell books (catalogs to bookstores, securing distribution), publish what they think will sell, and publish it well (copy editing it, using high-quality paper, etc.). The advantage of the small press is a personal touch that allows them to exploit a niche effectively to move 500-1000 copies of a title. If a large publisher cannot sell 5,000 hardcovers or 10,000 trade paperbacks or 20,000 mass market paperbacks within six months, then that large publisher doesn't want the book. However, a small publisher can make some cash on selling 1000 hardcovers. And given that one is often dealing with a publisher personally, rather than navigating some conglomerate's Accounts Payable department, one can often get paid a little faster by a small publisher. Sometimes fast money is more important than good money. The problem with the small press is that many of them begin with no intention of selling 1000 hardcovers, expending any risk capital, or doing anything other than calling themselves a publisher so that the "community" will take them seriously. Even worse, elements of the community do take them seriously! So we end up with lots of POD anthologies that nobody other than the authors buy (Free copies for a writer? Why, that would cost money! Fuck the writer!) and bullshit work put out by "Stoker Recommended Authors" (i.e., writers that ONE PERSON in HWA likes) whose stories read exactly like the bad grindhouse movies they grew up on. The icing on the cake is the hallelujah chorus of "community" hangers-on and penny ante players saying things like "Well, the publisher says he's going to fuck the writer right up front, so that house is a cool place to start off for a new writer" and "Wow, that's great! Everything's great! This $150 chapbook is awesome! Every story I've ever read is amazing, so make sure you all line up and buy whatever anyone puts out no matter how crappy it is, just to support the genre!"
DW:	What has your experience been publishing in the small press?	Mamatas :	Well, there are distinctions to be made in types of small presses. I've published with Soft Skull (Northern Gothic) and Disinformation Books (non-fiction anthologies) and these are small presses run by a couple of people out of an office, but they're larger than most any horror press. They orient toward the trade with trade paperback releases, and use "jobber" distributors (Publishers Group West and Consortium) to get in the major chain and independent bookstores. That increases the risk they take (the distro collects 25% or more of the net sales and charges other fees) but gives them a much wider potential audience. Of the small presses your readers may buy from, only Golden Gryphon and Four Walls Eight Windows (now part of Avalon) are distributed in this way. Whenever a friend says, excitedly, "I saw your book in Barnes & Noble!" they generally mean either Northern Gothic or one of the four Disinfo anthologies I've contributed to. Then there are the 1000-hardcover publishers I discussed above. Night Shade is an excellent example of this publisher; they pay a competitive advance (I got more for my first novel from Night Shade than my friend Jemiah Jefferson got for hers via paperback house Leisure) and work the phones to make sure that the major fulfillment distros, Ingram and Baker & Taylor, carry their titles, plus work with a network of genre-specialty stores and sites. I've also been working with Night Shade -- I got them in more independent stores (Elliot Bay, Northshire, Cody's, Bud Plant's specialty catalog) and did a catalog for their 2004 books -- to push a little harder into the trade. Publishers of this sort are dependent on reviews in trade journals like Publishers Weekly and Booklist. That gets them most of their non-specialty sales. Publishers of this sort also do expensive limited editions ($10 of extra effort increases the price by $40) that they sell for reduced discounts or direct for cover price. This allows these publishers to make, say, $25 or even $30 off a $40 title instead of $11.25 (that may end up having to be paid back in case of Ingram or B&T returns) off a $25 title. And that's why a collector's market has been cultivated so carefully since the decline of horror among trade publishers. You can sell 300 copies of virtually anything with a sig sheet. Then there's POD. I did two books with Prime, the best POD out there, and found the experience a bit wanting. I know a number of Prime/Wildside/Cosmos authors who, through lots of hustling and lots of luck, have sold more than 1000 copies of their books, but POD is too self-limiting. Risk equals reward, and in POD, risk is shifted. Instead of getting two crates of free books, like I did with Night Shade, I got all of five free copies from Prime. Instead of selling the first 500 copies of a 2000-unit print run based on advance orders from Ingram and B&T, Prime starts off with zero orders as all PODs do, and tries to get them through reviews and word-of-mouth. POD gets zero orders because it starts out with zero inventory. Saves the publisher money, but also reduces sales. My Prime books have only moved 150-200 copies each. They did pay royalties on time, and the extra $200 or so was cool, but I am glad I didn't give Prime an original novel. 3000 MPH in Every Direction at Once was a reprint collection and The Urban Bizarre a closed-market anthology I did with friends as a fun lark. I paid for the stories out of my own pocket, and broke even plus $10 on the royalties. There are easier ways to make ten bucks, that's for sure. All in all, I've had great luck in the small press. I had publishers who didn't vanish off the face of the Earth before my book came out, and who managed to get reviews and move some freight. I haven't yet been embarrassed by semiliteracy, fuckery, or glad-handing "Lookie me, I'm the Princess of The Horror Con!" publishers. I've been paid on time or almost on time. It's pretty cool.
DW:	Do you write full time or do you have another occupation?	Mamatas :	I do write full-time, but make my money by writing general interest feature articles for magazines that pay 50 cents to a dollar a word. Even with that money, I still live very humbly: no car, no health insurance, no shelves crowded with the latest DVDs and CDs, no expensive Mac, no iPod, nuthin'. I can make ends meet because I have a wide variety of interests -- I certainly wouldn't just write horror and expect a living. Last week was a good example; on the same day I got a check and program notes for an art exhibit in Rotterdam to which I contributed some interactive texts on the political situation in Cyprus, and a contributor's copy of Flesh for the Beast, a splatterpunk comic book I wrote a story for earlier this year. The comic paid more.