The Deixis Press Weekly - Issue #13
This week: pre-ordering (including more info than you thought you would ever need about how it works behind the scenes); books are out in physical forms to some reviewers; I’m reading so many submissions that I only had time for a single obsessive moment about John Onely. Onward!:
Monday, 7 June
Books
You can pre-order both books in all kinds of formats now! For ease of use, I’ve thrown all the order links up on the books’ pages on my website. So please click both of the links below and find a link to the physical or e-book retailer of your choice (and if your fave isn’t linked, try searching for the book on their website–it may work). You are probably likely to be able to order from your local bookstore (worldwide) as well. I may go incognito into mine to see what they say.
Some Rise By Sin by Siôn Scott-Wilson (released 15 September)
The Workshop of Filthy Creation by Richard Gadz (released 25 October)
Simon/Richard and I have decided it makes sense to move Workshop’s release date up just a little bit to the Monday before Halloween, since Halloween has the gall to be on a Sunday this year; not the best day for a book launch.
Submissions
Reading continues apace, though I haven’t currently sent any feedback out. Having looked at the subs that have come in, I’m also now considering whether I should also operate a digital-only horror/thriller imprint; it would be cheaper and easier for me to create and manage digital-only books, and they provide a greater return to the author too, which might mean I could publish more things. Then again, I also have only a certain amount of time, energy, and money for marketing and publicity. Hmm, decisions, decisions.
The Onely/Gorsuch saga
I don’t think John Onely will be a regular feature of my newsletter, but I do seem to have developed an unhealthy obsession with his life and (in my opinion) suspicious death. Marcus seems to be with me on this, too:
Yeah, I bet he was! Did anyone autopsy John Onely’s body to see if he had been poisoned over a period of time? Oh, the local surgeon who would do the autopsy is Thomas Talbot Gorsuch, you say? The one who inherited Onely’s Warwickshire estate?
Also, that bit where I mentioned last week that the Gorsuch fortune might have ended up in the USA? Well, the people mentioned in that news clipping are direct ancestors of Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court justice, but they may not be related to Thomas Talbot Gorsuch at all:
Well, I suppose this scam can hardly be TT’s fault–but I want to know more about James Thomas now too … what exactly did he die of, eh? Did he happen to own a lot of land? Hmmmm?
Tuesday, 8 June
It’s a good thing I like reading because I have so. many. submissions. So many. I also need to give some reading notes to one of my existing (not yet announced) authors. No time!
In particularly excellent news, though, my publicist has received requests for Some Rise By Sin proofs from some pretty high-profile reviewers. If these reviews happen, I’m confident the book will be a real success.
I believe her focus this month will be on drumming up interest in The Workshop of Filthy Creation, which is possibly the more commercial book of the two. I look forward to seeing how her efforts pan out with it. So far I’ve been really impressed with her work; it’s hard to know whether paying for publicity is worth it, but certainly she’s got more eyes on my press and both books than I would have managed on my own (and, believe me, I have been trying).
Wednesday, 9 June
A treat today, as I got to work alongside a friend who had an engagement in my local area later on in the evening. He came around this morning and worked on stuff while I packed up review copies (including my new fancy bookmarks and logo stickers–I’m glad I sprung for those). Then we walked out to the post office, got lunch, and came back for more work.
Today, just because there are so many submissions to get through, I started sending out feedback. I sent out a few rejections (always dreadful; I hope authors understand that most rejections are more like “wrong place, wrong time” than “wrong work, not interested”) and a handful of requests for full manuscripts too.
Thursday, 10 June
Relief as several of my fledgling babies that I sent out in the post all by themselves yesterday have made it to their forever homes. Jackie Law did an especially photogenic tweet showing how I wrapped the books up, included bookmarks, used my press stickers, etc. (you can click through to see more than just the preview image here):
Very gratifying to see.
Friday, 11 June
Someone got in touch to ask me about pre-orders and whether they can order directly from Deixis Press. So, first, a note about pre-orders (this falls under the category of Things I Have Learned):
Amazon lets you “create” an ebook on their system (even without any art or manuscript) with a particular release date, and it allows customers to pre-order that ebook.
Amazon lets you “create” a physical book on their system (even without any art or manuscript) with a particular release date, but it does not allow customers to pre-order that physical book [see below].
My current printer/distributor, Ingram Spark, lets you create a physical book (and you can do that only when both the art and manuscript are complete), and at that point only does it give retailers worldwide the information they need to allow customers to pre-order that physical book. (They allow ebooks too, but I’m not using them for that just yet.)
The previous point is slightly complicated by the fact that some retailers, like Waterstones and Foyles, appear to scrape ISBN data and list every newly registered book, whether it exists yet or not, and allow customers to pre-order that physical book, as I mentioned last week re my quandary about hardbacks.
This state of affairs explains why
I have pre-orders for physical books available at some vendors for both Some Rise By Sin and The Workshop of Filthy Creation. [These are vendors that apparently scrape ISBN data.]
I have pre-orders for physical books available at some vendors (worldwide) for only Some Rise By Sin. [These are vendors that take distribution from Ingram Spark; I uploaded the finalized cover art this week. I have finalized cover art for Workshop now, so pre-orders will appear at these vendors in a couple of weeks.]
I have pre-orders for ebooks for both available at Amazon. [Some Rise By Sin exists as a completely uploaded book; Workshop will exist in that state shortly–but Amazon doesn’t care either way.]
There are no pre-orders available for either physical book at Amazon. [I’m sure I’ve pre-ordered physical books from Amazon before, but somehow I’m in the Berenstain world now so I’ll just take this reality and run with it.]
With regard to the question about whether you can order from the press: I’ve been back and forth about this so much in my mind. Some points that swirl around in my head:
I will buy a cache of hardbacks for the authors to have at events etc, which means I will have some on hand.
Because I am one individual person, I don’t want to become a distributor on a large scale–posting out 5 review copies at a time is fine, but posting out hundreds of hardbacks would be a different situation.
I’d be happy to mail out a few if people want to order from me; ideally I would need to know how many want to do that in order to buy an appropriate amount of stock, because every printed book cuts into my very fine margins.
Ordering the hardback from your local bookstore will probably be cheaper for you than buying it from me and having me post it, but if you buy it from me I can possibly give the author slightly more from each sale (though I really need to take the time to sit down and do the mathematicals on that).
So the short answer is: yes, you can order a hardback from the press. But if you’re intending to do that, it would be ideal if you could let me know sooner rather than later, so I know how many copies to buy when I do my bulk order for the authors.
Back to reading!
Yours,
Angel