As usual the con stirred up quite a hell-storm of possibilities. RDSP could go in a lot of directions from here and it’s hard to know which way to turn. One thing that we’ve heard from some other publishers is that you need to release a lot of titles. Apparently we can even get a break on set up costs with the printer once we’ve released 50 titles. But I know of at least one publisher that tried to race to get out 50 titles and fell flat.
I wanted every RDSP title to be a shining gem, a carefully crafted jewel on a plush velvet pillow of promotional opportunities. But I think we’ve just about reached our limit for that. There are so many details involved in putting together and properly promoting a release that I don’t see how we could do more per year than the eight we’re doing (and Kevin does almost all of the work for Bare Bone). So if we wanted to release more books we’d have to cut back our efforts in some areas.
I’d like to get more partnerships going like the one we have with Kevin. In fact we’re working on an arrangement now that could produce some stunning results.
I’ve also been considering offering new writers a stripped down contract. Basically we would put together the book but not offer as many perks like review copies or quite so many author copies. The promotion would also be mostly up to the author. But it feels like we’d be treating them as second class citizens and I don’t want to do that. They’d be getting their work published and done professionally but they’d have to do a lot of the legwork for promo. But at this point the choice is either that or not being able to publish the new authors at all because there are only so many hours in the day. So any of you authors who have an opinion on this I’d like to hear it, whether you’re a new author or one who’s already had a release. I think this would definitely be a better for the authors than self-publishing.
current mood: cold