No, I Don’t Know How to Do This
A couple of weeks ago I started a publisher.
I do not have time for this.
I also do not know how to run a publisher.
I barely know how to write coherent sentences.
Every business I’ve ever had has failed, usually after limping along for ages almost paying its bills. I’ve gotten in and out of debt so often I feel like I’m using a revolving door. It is arguable that I was well-qualified to run those businesses, and that I failed because I’m fundamentally incapable of running a business. I would probably be on the pro side of that argument.
This morning I had breakfast with an author. I extolled the virtues of Drabatic Press, one of which is not necessarily its brilliant website, and showed that we’re doing things that no other publisher will do, and some things they can’t do. We’re innovating in some ways that are going to be popular (the Intentional Reader Guide), and some ways that probably won’t (with publishers, anyway, including Amazon).
He loved all of that. But he knows me. So he asked a critical question — who is running the company?
He knows I’m a writer, because I can write and because I do write, and because writing lots and lots of stuff requires very little in the way of organizational capability. I can churn out content and let other people figure out what to do with it.
He knows I’m a teacher, because I connect with kids and get them to believe that someone cares about them. I am slow and inaccurate with grades, but my students perform wonders and that keeps administration off my back. And, again, there are people that can handle the details.
But he also knows that the things that make me a decent writer and a good teacher make me a crappy businessman.
So I told him about Lyz, and Quiana, and Sydni, and Jill. And Jeanette, who technically owns the company. Yes, right now I’m doing a lot of publishy stuff. I’m wrapping packages. I’m handling mailing lists. I’m getting a really good suit for my book launch. And I’m not writing very much, because those things (plus getting PO Boxes and designing covers and transparentizing logos, etc.) take time and creative energy that I do not have to spare.
He’s going to think about it.
I’m going to think about it, too.
Except I already did think about it, and I’m doing this because it needs to happen. Publishers — and here I include people that don’t normally get included in “publishers”, like record labels — have for a very long time fiscally raped their creative partners. I’d like to put a publisher together that doesn’t do that. I’d like to put one together that shares data with its authors, pays them most of the money the books earn, and doesn’t require an eight-year-old to tell it that someone has written a genre-defining nuclear classic.
Yeah. I don’t know how to do that, either. But I’m going to try to do it anyway.