More Notes on Independent Publishing

Not Just a Promotion for Nothing in the Basement (Buy Nothing in the Basement)

Nothing in the Basement by Romie Stott is the first book from Dybbuk Press since 2014 and I'm very happy with it. Romie Stott is an amazing multi-disciplinary artist, musician, filmmaker and writer. She also edits poetry for Strange Horizons, one of the better fantasy and science fiction venues out today. In an ideal world, major publishers would have been fighting each other to publish this book with Paramount or Netflix optioning the film rights.

For now, it's an independently published novel that I helped put into the world. I started Dybbuk Press to put out unique and weird books that you can't get anywhere else. Sadly, I am still a small press, a micro-press, a guy with a laptop who is currently fighting eviction. There's also a business partner, but he's going through stuff. My resources are limited. Romie is currently recording the audiobook and even designed the cover (for a mere $500 donation to the Indiegogo campaign, you can receive the original artwork – a sound investment).

If you want to review the book, I can send you a copy.

As I prepare the Kindle for publication (long story), I realized that I haven't written about the business of independent publishing for a long time.

You Must Promote Promote Promote

And still, you probably won't make much money at it. According to my annual tax filing, Dybbuk Press is an LLC with its own EIN. As far as my friends are concerned, it's another weird hobby that I won't shut up about. They even think that I use it to self-publish. Repeatedly, I show someone a book that I've published and get asked if Michael Hemmingson or Romie Stott is my pseudonym instead of an actual writer who trusted me to put their fiction out into the world.

Of course, it doesn't help that life happens. I haven't published a Dybbuk Press book since 2014 because my mom got sick and lost the ability to take care of herself. It was a slow but painful decline where first, I had to throw out her stuff as she screamed at me (she was a hoarder). Finally I moved her to a nursing home near me in New York where she died of covid due to Andrew Cuomo's bill to protect nursing homes from lawsuits. Also, King David and the Spiders from Mars did not make a profit. In fact, I paid a great deal of money to see almost no return.

Even when you do promote, luck plays a part. She Nailed a Stake Through His Head made a profit because I asked Catherynne Valente for a story and she was generous enough to allow me to include one of her reprints just as her career was taking off with the Girl Who Circumnavigated series. King David and the Spiders from Mars taught me that audiences were not as hungry for Bible based horror anthologies as I had hoped.

You Have to Love What You Put Out in the World

Some independent publishers do follow trends, but I have no idea why. When Pride & Prejudice & Zombies came out, I saw more than one put out the [Classic Book] + {Monster] ripoffs, but that couldn't be very satisfying. At heart, an independent publisher needs to choose carefully because that publisher will be reading the same book dozens of times before it sees print.

In the major companies, there are divisions for editing, acquisition, copy-editing, formatting, promotion, etc. In a micro-press, it's a few people, or even just one guy and a laptop. In that context, you can't follow market trends or try to second guess the audiences. It will drive you insane and you will probably be wrong. The only deciding factor is whether or not you believe in the work. You have to believe in it so much that you enjoy reading it just as much the 200^th time as the first time, because it will definitely feel like you've read it that many times when you are sending out review copies.

This is a blessing and a curse. The curse is the fact that you might love a book that few will read, no matter how hard you promote it. The blessing is the fact that you will never have to play the marketing games of the large publishers. You will not have to be the poor bastard who gets stuck editing or selling The Historian, a mediocre slog which netted Kostova a huge advance because it was basically The Da Vinci Code meets Dracula. You won't be the guy who promotes the latest Left Behind clone or fiction by a youtuber or a Kardashian. Nor will you spend years mortgaging your office space, waiting for George R.R. Martin to stop dicking around and finish fucking Winds of Winter already.

There are Always Complications

Besides the business of publishing changing drastically over time, the actual work can get tedious and take longer than you think. Your business partner might screw up the Web site and turn it into an advertisement for a Florida Spa. You might get your formatting screwed up by the freeware Word program.

When I started out, publishing public domain books was an easy cash grab. One company put semi-naked women on the covers of classic novels like Pride and Prejudice to the disappointment of horny teenagers. As long as you published something that people wanted to read and didn't have a cheap Penguin or Dover edition, you could make money. Then all the public domain books ended up on Kindle for free. Kindle was huge in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Not as many publishers were using it, and you could stand out. That's not the case today.

Before Print on Demand technology came out, independent publishers would have to do small print runs of at least 1000 books and then beg every store to carry a few. Now the small bookstores are mostly dead and you can print as many books as you want. In fact, if you buy my books from Amazon, there's a good chance that they will get printed after you make your order.

Also, as an independent publisher you will join the proud tradition of hating the IRS. At one point, the accusation of a missing Schedule K-1 seemed like an annual tradition. I have never neglected to send in the K-1 form and yet year after year, I would get a letter telling me that I owed $2000 for not sending in the K-1 with a breakdown. One year, the IRS tried to charge me for a missing schedule M. That would have only been required if the business made over a million a year. It was an obvious mistake, but I couldn't tell that to the IRS worker who decided that it wasn't a mistake. Despite what the letter said, I was really being charged for not paying unemployment insurance.

I don't have employees.

Regardless, independent publishing has a low barrier to entry and as long as you have the time and the money, you can put out work that you are proud of reading decades later. That definitely makes it worth the headaches.

I am available for writing and editing work. Please email me at omanlieder@yahoo.com, donate to my gofundme or

Donate to the Indiegogo Campaign for Nothing in the Basement.

Buy Nothing in the Basement.

Buy Nothing in the Basement from Amazon.