Things I Learned (and Gained) from Bundoran Press, 4th and last Part

Lots of good things happened during the eight years I was running Bundoran Press.

Let me talk for a minute about Mike Rimar. I had met Mike at a con or two in passing but I was surprised when he came up to me and asked if he could invest in Bundoran Press. I sort of laughed and said there were a lot better places to invest his money – in fact most places were better. He insisted, said it was something he really wanted to do and, then he repeated it when we were both sober. His persistence and humour both impressed me so I asked if he wanted to buy part of the company and be a partner. At least, that way, he’d get a title in exchange for his cash. Which is how Mike Rimar became a partner in The Press.

Mike did his share of the heavy lifting – literally when it came to moving boxes of books but in a lot of other ways, too. He manned the table and proved a surprisingly good salesman. He produced our book videos as well as a series of interviews as Bobby Bundoran. When I asked him to go outside his comfort zone and speak at book launches, he stepped up to the mike (or mostly just shouted since we usually didn’t have a sound system).

We eventually edited two anthologies together: Second Contacts and Lazarus Risen. It was an interesting process. We agreed on an evaluation system before we even saw a story using a rubric which measured both the quality of the writing and story-telling and the adherence to the anthology’s theme. We evaluated every story separately and then averaged the ratings (which were sometimes quite divergent). That made it pretty easy to identify the “must have” and the “no way” stories. As for the ones in the middle, we reduced conflict by giving each editor an “editor’s choice” option for one story per anthology. It must have worked – both anthologies were nominated for Auroras and Second Contacts won, so Mike got a title and an award for his money. Plus my undying friendship.

Mike wasn’t the only one who stepped up to help the Press. We had a number of people who gave money on a monthly basis through our Patreon account and many more who contributed to the four fund-raising campaigns we conducted for our anthologies through Indiegogo. I was never short of people who would volunteer to help us at conventions, whether it was working at the table or helping to set up launches or clean up after parties. I had several people take on small projects as interns in exchange for recognition and a modest honorarium. I tried to make sure that the latter matched the former and always refused offers of more substantial work if I couldn’t afford to pay.

Lessons learned: Work hard and with integrity and help will arrive in unexpected forms from unexpected places. Accept it graciously but never assume it is owed to you.

It is a common theme that you need to have book reviews and ratings on Amazon to sell books. I suspect this idea is mostly spread by book reviewers, book publications, Goodreads and of course Amazon itself. The evidence that either make a difference is scanty.

The best-selling book we published had exactly one rating on Amazon and it was 1-star. We had several books reviewed in places like Quill and Quire and Publisher’s Weekly as well as some moderately popular reviewing blogs. Some were positive, some less so but none seemed to increase or diminish sales in the weeks or months after they appeared. The one real study of reviews, done some years ago, suggest that the only thing that matters is if the review appears in a prestigious and widely read source like the New York Review of Books where even a negative review will generate book sales (so few books get reviewed there that the assumption is that the book must be noteworthy even if the reviewer didn’t like it).

Of course, we did promote any reviews we did get, at least we did if they were positive because it couldn’t hurt and even if we only sold a few more books as a result, it was a plus. And the good reviews made the authors happy – a bonus to make up for the limited money they got.

On a seemingly unrelated note, I was always gratified when a book or story I had rejected found a home with another publisher. Two of the fantasies for which I had reverted rights got published in new editions by others. Two books that had come close to being offered contracts before I decided they weren’t right for Bundoran wound up with other houses. I also know of 4 or 5 stories, rejected for our anthologies that subsequently sold to good markets.

Lessons learned: Not every book is for every person or every publisher. As long as you believe in your work, you’ll find your audience eventually.

It is important to know that a publishing house is not one person or even a team of three and a few volunteers. Virginia O’Dine, the original publisher of the press, remained under contract to design our books and provided excellent work at a reasonable price (I suspected a family and friend discount but never asked). Whenever I wanted a specific design option, she always found a way to accommodate my requests.

Dan O’Driscoll had been the artist for my three novels published under Virginia’s management and he became the house artist for all our books, demonstrating a range of styles and techniques. Dan always read the entire book before creating the cover art, bringing his own vision to bear while still being open to suggestions from me or the author. He was recognized by winning a number of Aurora Awards

Ryan McFadden maintained our website for years and produced our ebooks as well. I eventually learned how to do the former but he did the latter right until the end (which were his own two novels, The Venusian Job and the ironically titled Corona Burning, which went to the printers just before COVID was a thing).

All three remain my friends and I trust they always will.

But what about my third partner? You mean, my partner for life, my support and foundation? Well, Liz was there by my side for the entire journey, giving sage advice (which I sometimes took) and endless unconditional support. She worked at the tables, charmed everyone in sight, read slush and proofread manuscripts for publication, helped with my sometimes-crazy marketing schemes, calmed me down when I was doing the books and generally made it possible for me to keep Bundoran Press together for eight years. We survived, no thrived, during all that and COVID, too. We even managed to write a few stories together so it must be the real thing. Now, on to the next adventure.

Lessons learned: Follow your heart and do what you love. You may not get rich but you might well make memories and friends that will enrich your life.

One final note. Nothing will ever make you happier that the look on an author’s face when you hand them the first copy of their book.

Photo by Natalie Pedigo on Unsplash

What I Learned from Bundoran Press, Part 1

There have times in the last few years when I’ve asked myself the question: If I could do it all over again, would I have taken over Bundoran Press and run it for eight years?

My answer is a qualified yes. I’d do it again but I might not do it the same way.

It’s not about the money, though you may as well know that my partners and I lost roughly $60,000 during our run. We’d all love to have that money back, I’m sure, but none of us are at risk of starving because of it. But we knew going in that publishing—especially traditional publishing with a small press—was not a money-making venture. Still, we all thought it might do better than two (barely) profitable years out of eight.

But enough whining. We were adults and we knew that going into business always entails risk.

So, what would I have done differently and what do I suggest to anyone else thinking about venturing into the publishing trade?

I put together a business plan of what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. I budgeted for losses in the first three years, with an expectation of profit in year 4. But then I let sentiment cloud my judgement.

I knew I was only going to publish science fiction but much of the back catalogue was fantasy, which I did not read and was not going to consider for future books. But it would have meant orphaning the third book of Neil Godbout’s trilogy and disappointing a number of authors. I should have bit the bullet and stuck to my vision with a laser focus. A year later I reverted rights on all the fantasy books.

All I should have acquired were my three novels, Matthew Johnson’s Fall From Earth and two anthologies, one of which I edited. It would have felt a bit like a vanity press but since I got accused of that anyway in my first year, no big deal.

Lessons one and two: Refine your vision to a pin point and don’t let anything move you off it.

Of course, the best laid plans gang aft agley or if you prefer, they seldom survive contact with the enemy.

I had been too optimistic (emotions again) about the costs and too hopeful about potential sales. I should have doubled my estimates of expenses and pushed off my expectation of profitability to year five (the first year we made a miniscule profit). Maybe if I had done that, I wouldn’t have made the mistake of buying all the back catalogue. I would certainly have reduced the size of the print runs.

I might have also reconsidered the size of advances, which were not large except by small press standards, and royalty rates, but I don’t think so. The two parts of my vision that I did adhere to firmly was I wanted my press to be as author friendly as I could make it (both in terms of money and editing practices) and I wanted to attract a few writers with a track record. Don’t get me wrong, the previous publisher, Virginia O’Dine ran a very author friendly company; I just wanted to take it one step further.

Lessons three and four: Hope for the best but plan for the worst and always make the decisions that adhere to your original values and objectives. At least, I got the second one right without having to learn it from bitter experience.

The final thing I would change is I would have taken longer to make the decision and spent that time learning more about what was entailed with running the peculiar business called book publishing. But it was buy now or see the press fold so I guess I can’t beat myself up too much over that one. Still…

Lesson five: You can never be too prepared – though even if you are, circumstances always change, so be prepared to change with them.

Thus endeth the lesson for today.

P.S. There is a thing called a long tail which you can wag by buying some of the Bundoran books whose rights I still own here.

Photo by Sinziana Susa on Unsplash

I’mmmmm baaack!

Well, it’s been a while, for sure. Months, years, surely not decades?

In any case, I’m sure you missed me. Don’t expect to see me everyday. I’m a busy guy, after all. Between writing and editing, reading and studying Spanish, rediscovering the joy of poetry and the torment of serving on a condo board, the hours just fly by. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I’m told to stay at home, there just doesn’t seem like enough time to do it all.

But I’m here for a purpose. A couple of weeks ago I published the ebook (print copy to come) of my mystery novel, In the Shadow of Versailles, and I want to tell you all about it. Let’s start with the book blurb:

“The Great War has ended. From all over the world, politicians and diplomats gather in Paris to negotiate the Great Peace. But Max Anderson, former lieutenant in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, cares for none of that. With no home waiting back in Canada, he is determined to make a new life for himself in the City of Light. But soon he finds himself immersed in intrigue and the political turmoil of the treaty negotiations. The war may be over but the city is full of violent men pursuing violent causes, and when no one else seems willing to do the right thing, Max has no choice but to act.”

Of course, my most sincere wishes are that you rush out and buy the book, enjoy reading it as you’ve never enjoyed a book before and then write a rapturous review on multiple sites. But I’d be satisfied with the first one.

Of course, it’s not that simple. I need to persuade you that this might be a book for you. It’s not enough to tell you that my three SF detective novels were nominated for prizes because, like they say in the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future results. After all, it could have been the science fiction part that got me the nominations and there is definitely no SF in this one. Plenty of politics, intrigue, action, murder and mayhem but no SF. Romance, history, philosophy, food, music, yes, all of those, but no SF. Plenty of Paris, absolutely no cyborgs.

So over the next few weeks, I’ll explain how it was I came to fall in love with Paris and the journey I took to write the first (but not the last) of the Max Anderson Mysteries.

Stay tuned. Oh, yeah, and go here to find the book:

https://books2read.com/In-the-Shadow-of-Versailles

Regarding Taste

The Romans would say: De gustibus non est disputandum. The French might shrug and murmur: À chaque, son gout. In English, we might argue: To each their own or more cuttingly, there’s no accounting for taste.

These thoughts struck me yesterday when I was adding a couple of books to my Goodreads account. Some of them were new acquisitions and another was an older book I’ve just started to read because the author, whose other books I’ve admired, recently died. I thought it was time to explore one of his few novels that I hadn’t yet read. What I noticed was that the book had middling reviews on Goodreads – or rather it had wildly divergent reviews gaining almost as many one star ratings as five.

Was it a case of you either love it or you hate it or was there something else at play? Certainly, it has been shown that nothing more negatively affects a book’s rating on mass reading sites than for it to win a major award or otherwise be subject to public approval. A positive review in The New York Times might do the trick.

There are, after all, hordes of trolls who are never happy unless they are crapping on what other people do or love. Or perhaps it is the response of the high school student who comes to hate novels because too many teachers have told them they are ‘good for them.’ What more damning praise could an author ever ask for?

To me, taste is indeed as the Romans, French and English all agree: an unaccountable and individual thing. Our language is full of such expressions. One man’s meat is another’s poison. Your trash is my treasure. We acknowledge it and yet grow rancorous when someone disagrees with us about this being the best book ever written and that being the most incredible film of the year.

Taste is not a matter for elites – read it to make yourself a better person or, better yet, read it to see just how stupid and without perception you are – nor for democracy. Popular is not a measure of quality simply of, well, popularity. Some popular things are, of course, of the highest quality and some things are ignored because they deserve nothing better.

And who is to say which is which? History perhaps decides what has lasting value – or perhaps not. It is estimated that only 10% of every film ever made still exists today. Recently a cache of old silent movies were discovered frozen in Dawson City, Yukon. Of the hundreds recovered only a few existed in other prints. For many of the rest, there wasn’t even a list somewhere or a newspaper article archived in a dusty vault to record their existence.

Besides who has time to wait on history? I know what I like and need neither the experts nor the masses to tell me if I’m right or wrong. I guess what is really driving this blog is all the reading I’m doing as a publisher. Some of the things I like I realize others might not find to their taste; things I reject, many might love. But as the publisher who pays the tab, whose taste should I obey if not my own?

And that’s ten minutes.

 

A Final Pitch

There’s only twenty nine hours (and counting down at a regular pace) to fund our Bundoran Press Anthology, Lazarus Risen. You can find the Indiegogo page here.

Thanks to the generous support of a wide range of people — including some regular readers of 10 Minutes of Words — we’ve reached the point where we can pay writers 3.5 cents a word. For a five thousand word story, that’s about $175, not bad but I’d like to do better.

Writers struggle to make any kind of a living from their work. Even another $25 or $50 for a short story can make a real difference. So if you like science fiction, why not pop over and give us a look? Even a $10 donation gets you a copy of the e-book; $25 gets you the e-book and a print book.

Give a bit more and there are some other great perks — including some critiques by some well-published writers. Even if you don’t write yourself, you probably know people who do and those critques — solid writing advice — make great Christmas gifts.

So that’s less than ten minutes — why not use the remaining time to go make a donation? And you could share this blog and the Indiegogo page around while you’re at it.

Publishing

I’ve been attending When Words Collide, a literary festival in Calgary, Alberta. I’m here as both a writer and a publisher – selling books in the dealer’s room, participating on panels and meeting old friends and making new ones at social events in the evening.

I always find these things energizing. It helps me remember why I got into this business in the first place and why I stay. It certainly wasn’t for the money. Though I wouldn’t mind making a little more. If anyone wants to invest in publishing with no promise of return, let me know.

One of the really thrilling things I get to do is hold book launches for other people’s books. Last night, we (Bundoran Press) released Javenny by Al Onia. Al is an old friend but that’s not why I published him. He wrote a really interesting book filled with ideas I hadn’t seen put next to each other before. It was a pleasure working with him and with cover artist, Dan O’Driscoll, my designer and others to produce a fine looking book. But the real pleasure came from seeing how excited and pleased Al was.

This is why I do what I do. To be a key part in the creative process of others, a facilitator of their genius. For a small press publisher – and I suspect for many in much bigger publishing houses – this is our biggest reward. As editors and publishers we love books and we love the people who create them. I know how Al feels because I’ve had the good fortune to experience the same thing a few times myself. There is really nothing like holding your freshly printed book in your hand and to look out over a sea of eager faces (or even a small pond) who are there especially to hear you read from and talk about your book.

I’ve had plenty of other great experiences this week – even at 10 on a Sunday morning, I had the energy and passion (well after I got warmed up) to express both my optimism and fears about the future of publishing – with four other publishers from small and medium presses – and to encourage writers to take control of their destinies even as it seems the path forward is most murky. You can read more about that on my other blogs at www.haydentrenholm.com or on WordPress at BundoranSF.

 

But that’s ten minutes.