Exciting news: After nearly a year without a response (hopefully, people saw my submission guidelines & took my advice about going the self-publishing route for electronic publication), Modern Evil Press finally received its first submission, and it was a good one. A poetry collection. Within just a few minutes of reading the poems, I immediately thought to myself, “Hey, I think this person actually read my submission guidelines – this is just the sort of poetry I’d publish! This reminds me of my own depressing poetry!” (My guidelines include things like “read my books” and “know what I publish” before getting to anything like technical requirements.) I continued reading, and continued to appreciate what I saw, and have been going back and forth with the author for the last several days, and it looks like I’ll be publishing a new collection of poetry soon. The title is Unspecified, the author is Yoshira Marbel of South Africa, and the poetry cuts deep.
As you probably know if you’ve been following my work (or this blog) at all, my publishing model (to be sure books are, if not profitable, at least don’t lose money) has two parts: 1) Electronic publishing, which doesn’t cost me much money, and I’ll do for any book I publish (eBooks and audiobooks, for free and for sale), and 2) Print publishing, which costs a couple/few hundred dollars for setup & initial printing), and I’ll only initiate printing after I’ve raised sufficient capital to pay those up-front costs, usually through the sale of the original artwork I design for each book’s cover. The time and effort it takes to get the book ready for publication is roughly the same whether I’m only doing one or I do both, and since I only publish books I either love or wrote (preferably both), I don’t count the time & effort spent to publish a book against its profitability. (Yet. Perhaps someday I’ll sell enough books to be able to pay myself a salary. Heh.)
As it is with my own books, so it goes with the new one. Yoshira and I would really like to do a print version of the collection, so while we’re still selecting poems and crafting their order, polishing the front matter and end matter, designing the cover and writing the copy, I’m getting started on the fundraising. Immediately upon reading her poetry, which hews toward themes of heartbreak and sadness, I knew I could use my painting ‘without you’ to raise at least part of the funds.
If you haven’t seen it before, yes, those are real razor blades. They really cut into the canvas. I actually forced red paint (no, not blood) through the cut canvas to get the drips just right. I painted it specifically to capture an emotion I was sure razor blades were the only answer to. Alas, it was not really appropriate for the cover of this collection… Still, it matches well enough with the book that proceeds from its sale are definitely earmarked for covering the costs of printing this collection. Continue reading Preparing to publish a new book of poetry
