Jeff VanderMeer

Thanks, Jeff, for inviting me onto your blog…

About two years ago, when I was working at Dark Horse as a prose editor, I read Brian Evenson’s limited edition “The Brotherhood of Mutilation” while sitting on a wall in a sunny spot in the glorious Dark Horse parking lot (the building is particularly ugly…). I remember the moment exactly: I looked up from reading and thought, “I need to start a company so I can publish this book.” The books was that good.

At the time, I was doing some outline editing for the Aliens series that Dark Horse was publishing. I needed a writer for a Predator book, and Brian suggested Jeff VanderMeer. Two years later and here we are… I quit Dark Horse to start Underland, Brian expanded the novella to novel length, the book, called Last Days, is Underland’s launch title, I’m blogging on Jeff’s blog (a huge honor), and, on Saturday, the friendly FedEx man delivered 200 finished copies of Brian’s book to the doorstep.

It’s been quite a two years.

Jeff’s asked me to write about my experience as a start-up publisher, a story that has gotten much more interesting in the last few months what with everything happening in the economy and with the big publishers. He’s also asked me to write about Last Days–how it came to be and where it is now. I, in turn, have asked Brian Evenson for a post or two, so you can hear directly from the writer. And I’ve asked Matt Staggs, our publicist, to submit a post from his perspective.

I’ve been reading Jeff’s blog for the last two years or so, off and on. If you are regular readers of his blog, I’d think you have a pretty good sense of how a book goes from a manuscript to the thing you order online and is delivered in its nice cardboard envelope (which, how DO they make those?).

Still, I figured some visuals might help. A note before the pictures start: The Underland web site is selling books directly, at www.underlandpress.com. We have a bunch of freebies online, too. Free short stories, our wovel (more about that later), etc. Also, there’s an excerpt of the book online at here. Try it. You won’t be disappointed.

This is the Earthling limited. If you have one of these, or you see one of these, save it. Only 350 copies were printed.

Brian expanded it, and sent me the manuscript:

I save the proofed manuscript until about a year after the book comes out. I like to have a record of what we’ve done (and I suspect that my files get a little backed up…)

This is a picture of a style sheet, done on the back page of the manuscript by our proof reader:

The manuscript was pretty clean when it came from Brian. I always appreciate that, as a former proof reader myself. But whatever Brian does is golden. There were no major changes to the manuscript… My edits and final read through took about a month, the proof reader’s edits took two weeks, and the design process took about a month. In the end, we got a galley proof for advance reviews:

We printed about 250 — 300 of those, all told. They cost about $5 a piece, more once postage is included. That’s always chapped my hide… how expensive the galleys are. They’re more expensive per unit than the book itself. But we got some good reviews, and they’re still coming in. No, not just good. Great.

The galley turned into the final book, pictured here at its 6 X 9 trade paper size. Did I mention that Peter Straub (yes, that Peter Straub) did the intro?

This design also informed a series of posters and bookmarks we made for Brian’s various readings, mainly in Boston, New York, Seattle, and Portland. I can publish a full reading schedule if you’re interested…

And, finally, here’s a mock-up of the limited edition, without the foil stamp or the letterpressed jacket. This is just to make sure we have all our dimensions right… We’ll only be printing 75 of these, for $100 a piece. Brian will be handwriting a sentence or two from the book on the jacket of each book.

At first, we were going to go with this design:

But then I woke up with a vision, and it needed to be like this:

The white will be gold foil. Hot, no? The design is by John Coulthart, the genius behind Jeff’s Finch cover, previewed here recently.

I got an email today from our distributor, PGW, that the copies have been delivered to their Jackson, Mississippi warehouse. The books will go out to bookstores this week or next, and will be on the shelves in between two to three weeks.

It’s been a long, wonderful trip. But every book is. I love this business. I love my job…

For future posts, let me know what kinds of questions you have, what kinds of things you want to know. I’d be happy to talk about anything you want me to…