Editing Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre (Dybbuk Press)
How I accidentally started a publishing company
I was an aspiring writer. I wanted to be a successful writer, a published writer, a paid writer, a working writer, anything but aspiring. I had written a novel, a screenplay, dozens of stories and countless blog posts. I was sending out stories through the postal service with self-addressed stamped envelopes (SASE). I hadn't sold a damn thing. Borderlands had been sitting on my story for a year and I thought that was a hopeful sign. It wasn't. I was writing. I was writing all the time.
LiveJournal allowed me to interact with actual working writers. I commented on Catherynne Valente's blog almost daily. I met Scott Lynch and Cherie Priest and other writers at early stages in their careers. I was excited when I found Poppy Z. Brite's LJ, not so much when I pissed him off the next month. Nick Mamatas was dispensing free writing advice – solid writing advice. Michael Hemmingson had been putting out 2-3 books a year for decades, mostly Blue Moon porn.
LiveJournal taught me a great deal about writing. It also amplified that horrible desperate question in every writer’s mind. What if you are no good? What if you will never get published? Will you spend your life talking about how you could have been a great writer if only you met the right people, put your manuscript in the right editor's hand, all the while knowing better?
The Inspiration
In the early 2000s, Ralan was the place to find writing markets. It listed everything from The New Yorker and Weird Tales to no-pay anthologies. As I read the Ralan listings, I dreamed of being on the other side of the slush pile. When I learned that my LJ friend M owned a small press, through which he self-published poetry and manifestos, I realized that I could covertly self-publish. If M and I edited an anthology together, his name could go on the cover and no one had to know that “Shivering at the Homecoming Dance” was also the editor's story.
When I pitched the idea, my ADHD hyper-fixation took over. This book would be important. I'd publish my struggling writer friends. I might even publish my not-so-struggling writer friends. We'd put out the greatest DIY punk anthology of the 2000s, break the big publishing monopoly, become the new beats or Bauhaus movement. I imagined posting a blog post that started “I never knew this anthology would be so popular. I just sold 10,000 copies.”
Amazing how big you can dream when you're clueless.
In my enthusiasm, I thought that M had fully agreed to the project. I thought he heard “let's edit and publish this anthology together. We'll make millions.” Turns out he heard “I want to use your publishing company. I'll do all the work and put up the money and include your girlfriend's awful vampire story. You can share the profits.” More on that later.
First step was brainstorming the title. I tried to get M to help but he ignored me. I rejected titles like This Book Sucks and Punk as Fuck until I thought Jeffrey Dahmer Picnic. One minor adjustment and Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre was ready for submissions.
Finding Stories
If you want to put out a short story anthology or literary magazine the most important advice I can give is OFFER MONEY! This is especially true if you want to put out a quality product that non-family members will actually buy. You might not have enough resources to pay professional rates (8 cents a word) but even $50 will improve your slush reading experience. Writers scrolling through Grinder or Duotrope aren't going to send you their best work for nothing. Most won't even send you their trunk stories. Spout your gibberish about revolutionizing literature or giving marginalized writers a platform. It won't matter. If you aren't paying for stories, the slush pile will hurt you.
I was offering royalties – only royalties. Later, I paid each writer a $10 advance. I accepted reprints, which mitigated the pain. Certainly M was not helping. I really thought he agreed to help read the slush pile, but month later, I was reading everything. I read the bad grammar and the cannibalism poetry. I rejected now famous writers' trunk stories. M's girlfriend sent her vampire story. I rejected it with feedback. Months later, M informed me that she hated me. I stopped giving feedback. I couldn't very well give my honest opinion, which was “please for the love of G-d, stop writing. Find another hobby.”
A, a friend who had agreed to give me advice, sent a killer teddy bear story. I initially accepted it but outright stated it needed editing. A hated my edits. We argued. A pulled his story and threatened legal action if I published it without permission. Sadly, that was the only killer teddy bear story, due to the submission guideline “do not send killer teddy bears. We already have one of those.”
Since I was reading all the slush, I decided to put my name on the cover. I pondered including my story. Hemmingson pointed out that many editors include their own stories in their anthologies. I decided against it, mostly because I was rejecting stories by authors who thought that their stories worthy. How could I know if my story was good enough to publish? I never did sell it. Maybe, one day, I'll rewrite it.
Paul Haines sent a reprint where The Big Bad Wolf finds out that the Three Little Pigs are fucking Little Red Riding Hood. I accepted two stories with imaginary friends. Another story felt like the first chapter in a zombie novel, where the protagonists spent their Sunday smoking pot and talking about decapitation. Another story felt like Philip K Dick in the nervous breakdown era.
Another friend, T, sent a story about rebirth in a cave. I rejected it. T asked to send it again after a revision. She sent me three revisions before I bought it. Even then, I still heavily edited. I met Jenifer Jourdanne through Livejournal. She didn't update often, but when she updated, it was an event. Her blog covered Los Angeles fashion, friends of friends who worked in softcore porn (dry humping for a living), raising chickens in her back yard, her JW family and the Rainforest Cafe. She had the funniest LJ. For years, I wanted to see her writings in print. I edited and published some of her best entries. She didn't even accept the advance.
Then there was J. I wanted to publish his story but I needed it edited. He didn't like my edits. I didn't like his edits. I tried to go over the story line by line over email. I didn't know about Track Changes. He sent a rude email. I tried to be diplomatic and called one sentence “hairball choking.” He publicly declared that he had to break with a “delusional friend.” Honestly, our friendship had ended long before then. When I was 19, he was very cool, fearless and artistic, openly bisexual and drawing everyone in. Years later, I saw J as a loser who manipulated people. I was also a judgmental asshole. Either way, J and I didn't stop being friends because of Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre. We had grown to hate each other long before then. The bad editing experience only made it obvious.
When J dropped out, I replaced his story with a cute dancing werewolf story.
Anxiety Sets In
Between the initial concept and the final acceptance, I stopped seeing Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre as an awesome DIY experiment. It became an actual book, a book with my name on the cover, a book that I was going to honestly ask people to buy – with actual money. Once they bought the book, they might even read it. Hopefully, recommend it, but only if they actually like it.
I was doing the whole thing on my own. M hadn't helped with the slush. M wasn't going to help with edits or even promote the book. After months of sending M book promotion ideas, M told me to stop bugging him. He didn't care. He was already letting me use his publishing company. I was almost finished editing the stories and my publisher was threatening to pull out.
It took me a day to reach out to other friends and start my own publishing company. One friend showed me a standard contract. Another friend suggest LLC. I wrote up a partnership contract to include M and my other friends. I looked up how to buy ISBNs and get my books in the Library of Congress. I named the company Dybbuk Press, after the Ansky play.
Shortly before I was finished sending out acceptance emails, M brought up his girlfriend's vampire story. He really wanted her story in the book. He even offered to be a buffer, because my rejection hurt her feelings. I agreed to read an edited version. I gave notes and she edited it again. I gave notes and she edited it a fourth time. I told M that I wouldn't work her indefinitely. M got mad. He told me that I was in breach of contrast. We had no contract. He told me I was a shitty writer and a failure.
We were no longer business partners.
I had to figure out how to print out this book without M's contacts. I had heard the term print-on-demand but I thought POD was code for vanity press. I reached out to Jay Lake, because he was editing a POD anthology. I hoped he could tell me what that meant. He didn't know me. He didn't have to answer, but he was very helpful. He told me about Lightning Source or LSI. Suddenly, I knew that I was going to publish this damn book.
Side Note: The 2000s Publishing Revolution
Twentieth century publishing had agents, gatekeepers, marketing divisions, and physical bookstores. Small and micro-presses existed, usually as non-profit local companies and passion projects. In order to survive, the small presses needed to invest thousands in marketing, sales and distribution. Authors needed agents to even get in the front door. Even the short story markets were difficult to crack. John W. Campbell famously hated minorities and rejected stories with black protagonists. Vanity Presses parted desperate and gullible writers from their money.
The internet changed publishing. Amazon not only sold everything, but allowed customers to review books. I wrote a particularly scathing review of Memnoch the Devil. Owned by Ingram, LSI allowed small presses to flourish. No longer did independent publishers have to warehouse books, beg for sales and travel from trade show to convention to bookstore to sell their books. With LSI, a publisher could upload files, pay Ingram's catalog fee and see their books selling online. By the end of the 2000s, Kindle would make self-publishing not only viable but easy. Goodbye Vanity Press charging $5000 (then $500) to publish a writer. Hello Kindle. No charge to publish. Kindle took money directly from sales.
Before the internet, self-publishing and small press success stories like Olympia Press and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were rare. With LSI and Kindle, anyone could publish. Yes, the large publishers rejected the derivative detective novels and crappy poetry books, but they also rejected unique and weird titles in favor of safe bets. Little, Brown and Company offered Elizabeth Kostova $2 million advance for The Historian, a painfully mediocre book, because they wanted to put out Twilight meets The Da Vinci Code. When the SFWA kicked out racist troll Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, many wondered how he had even qualified for membership. Turns out he wrote a Fascist Christian fantasy book when Penguin was hungry for the Left Behind audience.
Big publishers are great. They serve as gatekeepers and taste makers. They publish the classics. They publish Stephen King and Zora Neale Hurston and Isabel Allende. One day, one will publish Winds of Winter (I believe), but LSI and Kindle has given us new genres, new titles, bizarro books, dinosaur erotica, Milton J. Davis, Gina Ranelli, and Chuck Tingle. In the past 20 years, we've seen an independent publishing revolution and literature is better for it.
Physical Copies!!!!
More than a year after I first conceived of a multi-author anthology, I was ready to publish. I had chosen the stories, edited the stories, formatted the book, ran a spell check. I had also moved to New York, started graduate school, almost lost everything in an illegal sublet. Happily I moved everything out a day before the landlord changed the locks. I had lost friends, read terrible prose, gained some confidence, filed LLC paperwork, bought the ISBN's and paid Lightning Source.
Amanda Rehagen drew three teddy bears for $10 apiece. Please hire Amanda Rehagen. I've been using her teddy bear as a logo for years. I paid the writers $10 advances against royalties. I turned the formatted text and cover into PDF files. I sent them to LSI and when I got my test copy, I almost gave it to the first friend I met. I hit accept and I was ready to go.
What did I forget?
I didn't get blurbs. I never sent out review copies. I forgot to publicize the book in any venue besides LiveJournal. Instead of selling 2000 copies a day, I sold one copy every other month, usually to a friend taking pity on me. Thank G-d too because I also forgot to copy edit.
After editing for style, I ran a spell and grammar check and called it a day.
Don't do that.
The first edition had so many typos, it was painful. One story even repeats three lines in a copy and paste mishap. I took another month to copy edit, for real. Then I sent off that revision. And that version still had dozens of typos. So I edited it again. I had to pay for every revision. The third and final edition also has typos, but not enough to bother me.
I probably should have justified the margins. You know, make it look like a real book instead of a Freshman comp paper. That would have been nice.
Selling the Book
Finally, the book was in a decent shape and live on Amazon and the sales trickled in. I shared the link everywhere. I promoted friends' books. I put it on Amazon recommended lists. I paid Amazon to suggest it alongside The Great Gatsby for a month. That didn't work. I sent review copies to friends. Some even reviewed it. Amazon cross-promoted it with bizarro books like Baby Jesus Butt Plug and Meat Puppet Cabaret.
Eventually, it started to sell, mostly because of the title. Then Kindle came along and I could sell it for $2.99 and still make a profit. Of course, having e-books online made it easy for the pirates to copy and share. Long before Nina Paley became a TERF troll, I hated her for her YouTube song “Copying is not Theft,” arguing that internet piracy was just fine. Maybe those pirated copies floating around gave me free publicity, but publicity for what? It's not like anyone reading Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre from a pirate site was going to recommend that their friends actually buy it.
After a decade of promotion, cross-promotion, piracy and convention appearances, the book finally made a profit. I did pay royalties. By then I had other titles out in the world.
The second Dybbuk Press book came out of this one. Michael Stone, one of the authors in TCBM, emailed me. He was helping another editor with a similar DIY horror anthology titled BADASS HORROR. I asked to see three stories and loved them. So I agreed to publish it. I found more writers and paid $50 advances against royalties. I even sent out review copies.
If you’d like, you can buy a copy of Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre.
I also self-published three short stories as Sugarplum Zombie Motherfuckers.
It's been a joy to stumble across this piece as your experience with LJ (even down to the detail with Poppy Brite) spookily mirrors anecdotes my partner has told me over the years. I'm really looking forward to sharing this with him later as he's done work publishing work similar to yourself - it can be a really thankless task sometimes!