I was someone

What happened?

In short, my current publisher is going out of business.

After prepping a query letter for my next book in my Night's Dream series, I sent a letter to them. After they put out Flies to Wanton Boys though Createspace, I would never give them another of my books. Still, I remained grateful for their believing in me a decade ago.

I wanted to know that they would be surviving and would stay a home for my first four books, even as I moved on. This was their reply (I've presented all excerpts from his letters as sent):

[...] The company is only making around $200 a month which isn't enough to pay for my labour. A couple of authors have paid for me to publish their work, basically covering my salary for the time I converted their work. But that's about it.

Being signed to a vanity publisher is worse by far than being self-published.

What does this mean for you?

Querying agents for To Save Her World: cancelled. (It was a longshot anyway.) My publisher going under gives me almost negative clout. No agent wants to represent the next entry in a series that lost its home.

After deliberation, the most practical thing for me is to get back my rights and self-publish them.

But that should be easy!

No, both because of practical concerns, such as that I do not own my covers, and personal ones. I was never the biggest cheerleader of my current publisher's computer-generated covers. I did not feel that they best represented my books, but I was not given much say. They ignored my suggestions for the publisher's aesthetic preference.

What is your plan?

As far as I have figured it out for now:

1. Reedit the entire series to date, which I estimate should take a few months. The last thing I want is to put out an imperfect product again, as the editor for We Shadows was lax.

   I may create my own publishing imprint for my books and see where that goes.

2. Get as much of the stock of old books as I can out of my hands. This amount to around 200 books. This is not an impossible amount to move, though I need to rethink how I am going to do this. Seven or so at every event is not going to cut it. I would like the first editions gone before their revised counterparts enter the world. (For most of the books, not much will change. You can consider them collector's items, especially if I have signed them.)
3. Spend at least an hour a weekend looking for reviewers and interviewers or other ways to improve my lot. I have been lax in doing this, in part because I did not feel supported by my publisher. I did not see the point in shelling out for advertising when they would make a dollar and I would make a nickel.

   I have no excuse now. I am going to be own publisher.

   I have already enlisted my father to help me with this, as he is apt to find things I might overlook. At the very least, he is less distracted than I am by the enormity of this all.

4. Make new covers. I know several talented artists. Amber is gently insistent she have some hand in this, though she is busy and doesn't want to hear deadlines from me.

How are you feeling?

Harried.

In a sense, this feels like failure. I failed myself, I failed my books. That isn't true. I tried, and for a while my series was traditionally published. It is not my fault the publisher who offered me a contract gave up the ghost a decade later. This is a thing that happens to publishers.

I'm disappointed that this is where I am in my career, but I am not surprised. I assumed it would come to this. My hope was that I could avoid the worst of it by attracting more attention toward my writing before it did. I bought ThommQuackenbush.com a year ago, where I have posted a new story every two weeks for a year. There has been little interest, though I know that these stories are worth your time.

once again there is a rumor out that I am closing the doors at DDP. And as I mentioned in May, NO... I am not closing the doors. What is happening is that I have closed submissions for 2019, and am not accepting any new titles or authors. [...]

This is where the confusion occurred I think.... The question was..."will I open submissions in 2020?" My answer "I don't know, let's see what happens next year"

This does not mean in any shape or form that I will be closing down, in fact it will not have an affect on any of the existing authors in any shape or form. I will still be able to run the day to day business, create statements on time, pay royalties as required, fill and create book orders as needed. In other words... exactly what I have done in the past 18 years. The only difference being I will not need to read submissions, create new contracts, edit and convert books, or create cover art.

Yes sales are low, yes there is a slump... but I can push through this if you can.

So... if we can please suppress the panic, DDP is not closing it's doors...

It was once an acclaimed publishing house, earning awards and plaudits. I suspect they signed me near the last years that it was worth the effort for him to invest himself in the business. I had one top-notch editor for Danse Macabre and Artificial Gods. The company employed a publicist for about a year, though that must not have resulted in more sales. She was fired, along with the editors. (He hired some of the latter back before I would send him Flies to Wanton Boys.) I should have bailed then but doing so was inconvenient and ego-damaging. I wanted to believe I would not have to undertake this step.

I do not have confidence (or I have justified suspicions) that there were genuine offers to buy the house. It was more likely something said to keep us placated.

He founded the company in 2000, according to Wikipedia. Twenty years in business is better than expected.

As he is making so little on us monthly, I cannot imagine he will care about voiding the one contract of my books that is still in effect. The contracts for the others have already lapsed. Those books are published by them still only because I haven't told them to stop. It would be nonsensical of DDP to insist I finish the five years of my last contract, which would be up in 2022 anyway.

I had hoped that my new book would be my leverage to jump to a new publisher. It seems that no company is interested in previously published work.

The head of the company told me early on that he wasn't important, the publisher wasn't important, only our personal brands and that of our books mattered. Now that I am breaking with them, I need to consider my brand going forward. In the literary world, this feels like a demotion.

He is right, though. No one is ever going to care about my books as much as I do. No one has come close to putting in the work and love I have to midwife these stories.

I don't have anything to lose by revising and republishing my books on my own.

Why do you look down on self-publishing?

I have self-published my anthologies and found it to be a gratifying experience. I make more from them than I have with my traditionally published books--except to the degree that publication has opened doors that would have been slammed shut if I were only self-published. I said that I would never want my novels self-published as this is often the mark of someone who is an amateur.

The industry doesn't care that I am a talented and prolific professional. They care only that I have not sold ten thousand copies of each of my novels. (In total, there are under 5000 of all my books in the world, most of which I have put there on my own.) The only way another publisher would want me is if, in 2010, I had not signed with a company that was now giving up.

Are you sure a publisher wouldn't pick you up? It seems like easy money if you have four finished books.

It isn't easy money to them. They are not wrong.

When I was researching query letters, several respectable venues stated that your query letter doesn't matter, your book doesn't matter, what matters is that you have paid to speak to an agent at a writing conference. Have you tried paying to sleep with an agent? I have known people who got their deals because they slithered out of or into the right laps.

If this industry wasn't broken and breaking further, fewer people would need to turn to self-publishing. I understand that agents and publishers are in this to make money, not perpetuate charity. It is not as though I am writing out of a sense of generosity, though I am unable to stop writing because the effort is not externally rewarded. At present, I do not have to depend on my writing as my sole source of income or my panic would be acute.

In my ten years as an author, I have earned what I do for a month and a half of work at my day job. As in, combining all the money I have made in the last decade, it amounts to enough to pay a few months of my rent.

Money isn't the sole metric of success, but it is not as though I am seeing many others. Maybe I am not putting myself out there enough and this spurs me to redouble my efforts.

What I can do with language is unique and disciplined. I can riff off a few words until it is a novella and not break a sweat. I am writing for fewer people than can fit in my living room but given them fifteen thousand words a month.

But I've seen you at conventions! You can't be that underappreciated if they invite you as a guest!

No Such Convention is cancelled for this year and many not reappear, which further erodes my ability to reach a wider audience. This removes one of the reliable sources of sales, attention, and an honorarium/free hotel.

I will be appearing at the Pine Bush UFO Fair again on June 13th.

My presence at conventions does not directly correlate to attention or success, simply that I introduced myself and didn't let go.

This could be the adversity you overcome to be famous, though!

Maybe there will come a time when I look back on this as the time just before people started caring. I can find at least ten similar things to this that I have written in years past.

It will be a busy beginning to the year. I hope, come December, all this change and effort will all have been worth it.

The day I learned my publisher is closed, I went to a write-in at The Enchanted Cafe in Red Hook. Afterward, I asked the owner, Joe, if he would carry any of my books. He said I should bring them by.

When I got home, I wrote him synopses and which I thought would more likely sell there. He wanted two copies of each.

Heartened by this, I wrote to a couple other independent and quirky bookstores in the area, neither of which got back to me.

I am going to keep trying.

Do you intend to keep self-publishing novels?

Not if I can help it, though it may end up being the fate of my series until something major changes.

After I have my series sorted out and headed toward republishing, I am going to finish a side project that I can submit to agents. In the best of all worlds, whoever picks up one of these side projects might also be interested in having a look at my series. It is not guarantee, but it is not an unrealistic hope.

It can't be all bad. What are you looking forward to?

• I will have covers in which I had more say and which will better represent my books.
• I will earn much more money and more consistently through self-publishing than from this publisher.
• I will better approve of the content of my books and they will be connected more than they presently do.

As much as I hate having to do this, I am choosing to look for silver linings and finding no lack of them. I don't love this, but it isn't as though I am going to let myself stop being published.

When will you cancel your contracts?

When I have the books revised and ready republishing. I assume this will occur over the summer.

When will you start republishing?

I am shooting for We Shadows (Author's Preferred Text) to be out by September, especially if I can find proofreaders. After that, I will release them every three to six months.

What can I do to help you?

1. Buy my series from me. If you buy them from my current publisher, it will not decrease my stock and I cannot guarantee I will see those royalties. It might make my sales rank increase slightly, but that's it.
2. Read the stories on ThommQuackenbush.com. If you like them, recommend them to your friends. What I am undertaking it going to be trying, but knowing there are readers out there will ease it. What I need more than anything right now is your attention.
3. If you want to offer yourself as a proofreader, I will be deeply grateful. Likewise, if you want to review one of my books on Goodreads or Amazon. (I am uncertain I will be able to keep my reviews on Amazon when I republish, so Goodreads is a better option.) I will happily send you a copy of any book in the Night's Dream series to review.
4. Interview me. I promise I will give clever answers.
5. Ask me to write an article or story for your publication.
6. Ask me to present at your library, club, or convention. I am eager. Don't let my panels get dusty.
7. If you have been through this and have advice, I would love to hear it.
8. Help me get my name out there. You could be saving my literary life by telling two friends about something I've written.

last watched: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
reading: American Cosmic