The Deixis Press Weekly - Issue #10
The Deixis Press Weekly - Issue #10
First, thank you to everyone who did get in touch after last week’s cover reveal. Working this intensively, and mostly on my own, can be really isolating; I don’t get a feel for who is really watching and cheering for the success of the press. It means a lot to hear from you. So thank you so, so much.
Aaaaand … are you ready for another cover reveal? Get an eyeful of Richard Gadz’s The Workshop of Filthy Creation later on down this issue. So lush, so menacing, so thrilling: this is going to be THE book you want to be seen with this Halloween.
Monday, 17 May
Hey, here’s a thing I have learned: I used a typesetting template that helped me design for a particular book size, and I thought I could use that size for both hardback and paperback. While technically I can, it turns out that Ingram Spark will not print the book size I have chosen for hardback if I also want a dust jacket. Obviously, I want a dust jacket. So, for the hardback editions of both books, I’m having to resize my pages and do some light re-typesetting, which means I don’t know how many pages the hardback will have, which means I can’t give Libby the template for the cover image (because the number of pages in your book impacts the width of the spine of your book, which of course impacts your template).
On the plus side, I now know better and so do you.
On a totally different note, I have been very kindly asked to do a spotlight interview with Alien Buddha Press, which should be out in July, so keep an eye out for that. (I’ll link to it at the time, if it is generally available.)
Tuesday, 18 May
So you want to typeset a book using gorgeous little flourishes? And your hardback and paperback copies are different sizes? Get ready to have three different sets of InDesign documents that you use to generate six different types of files (hardback, paperback, reflowable epub, fixed epub, PDF, and mobi). If you make sure your hardback and paperback can be printed at the same size, you can take it down to two sets. But it seems Kindle documents can’t handle any of that swooshy nonsense or any fancy fonts—so goodbye, beauty. And any last-minute textual changes need to be made in all three sets of docs before being regenerated all six times. So that’s fun.
In related news, Some Rise By Sin and The Workshop of Filthy Creation are now available as ARCs for reviewers. (Those are GoodReads links; please bear with me if the covers are not live over there by the time this newsletter drops—I am working on it!)
Incidentally, a lot of this has required my ISBNs to be registered, and the process of doing that takes LITERALLY MONTHS OMG. Please bear this in mind if you are going to be a publisher. ISBNs are controlled by a monopoly, and they are therefore inefficient and ruinously expensive for no reason at all. I found a blog post that laid this all out in detail a couple of years ago; would that I had had ears to hear at the time.
Wednesday, 19 May
Today, in addition to finishing off ARCs etc, I’m researching prizes. Now, prizes are not something I have any experience with, unfortunately. My wonderful publicist, Hannah, has come through again, though: she has sent me a list I can look into. There are a ton of them.
I really believe both of these books are prize-winning material. I mean, I wouldn’t have changed my entire life’s focus to become a publisher just to get these books into your hands if I didn’t believe strongly in their literary merit. But beyond that, they are both beautifully written and tell fantastic stories, and neither is quite like anything else that I can see out there right now. If people can hear about them and decide to read them, they will adore them. It is known.
I was thrilled today to find that The Bookseller put up a little news item about Deixis Press. I love the way the books and authors are highlighted so well in this note. I’m going to try to get hold of a print copy this week to see if this item appears there too.
Thursday, 20 May
Are you ready to see something insanely gorgeous?
Early on in the potential cover ideas discussion, author Richard Gadz sent me some screenshots from the opening credits of 1985’s Re-Animator. I wondered how I could use that sort of sinister color scheme and techy imagery to cover what is essentially a Victorian novel, but Libby’s damask background and flourished frame marries the 1870s to the 1980s, and what we’ve ended up with is this deliciously lurid (yet totally serious) artwork.
Again, I am so proud of everyone who was involved in putting this together; we had quite a different theme at first, but a serendipitous accident while Libby and I were working together caused us both to rethink the general approach. I feel like a lot of beautiful things happen by accident in life; this is definitely one of them.
Booksellers: with a cover as striking as this, The Workshop of Filthy Creation will fly off your shelves. You know you want to stock it for Halloween.
When I send this out on Friday, I’m going to put a big fancy version of the cover on Instagram (like I did with Some Rise By Sin), so you should all go look at it and admire it.
Friday, 21 May
My final bit of excitement for this week is that Tracy Chevalier (!!!) has given me permission to use her endorsement on the cover of Some Rise By Sin. I found out yesterday and couldn’t work out whether to cry, puke, or pass out with joy. Then again, who says I have to choose?
Now. I guess I’d better do some work that pays me money so that I can use that money to buy promotional activity at NetGalley. Smell ya later!
Yours,
Angel