I LOVE a good commenting community. Thanks, guys, for giving me the thumbs up, and for telling me what you want to know about. This post is about the publishing industry in general. I’ll write subsequent posts about proof reading and about what I see happening online. I’ll also post Brian’s reading schedule.

Caveat: What follows is one person’s potentially skewed perspective. That person doesn’t live in New York (publishing central), and she isn’t an old white male. This is both a good and a bad thing. Good, because she has fresh eyes for what’s going on. Bad, because she isn’t dyed in the wool and doesn’t understand a lot about the street level dynamics and history of the NYC biz.

That said, the economic model is screwed. Anybody who looks at it knows that it is. Publishing was tootling along doing just fine thank you until the 1980′s, when the America started building strip malls and mall malls. Suddenly there was an explosion of shelf space. Demand grew, big box stores like B&N gained speed, and publishing houses stepped up. More books were being published, there was more competition for the highest selling authors. Advances went up for the top tier–millions, sometimes, just on speculation. If the books sold enough to justify the advance, okey dokey. If the book didn’t sell enough to justify the advance, the publishing house lost money. And a lot of money, too. Millions.  (more…)

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.

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(I leave you with: Riley rolling over the giant penguin Tessa sent us.)

As I’m finishing off Booklife and prepping for traveling to Australia to teach at Clarion South, I won’t be posting after this until the weekend after Clarion, when I might pop my head up between Victoria and Michael Phillips’ guest blog stints. Victoria starts tomorrow.

I’m going to take the final draft of Booklife with me and provide it in the common room for the students, along with some other stuff. They can be early adopters if they like, and test the heck out of it. Should be fun. Oddly, given my schedule leading up to this event, it’ll be stress-free next to the horrific multi-tasking I have been doing.

I hope you enjoy the guest bloggers, and I’ll be back with a vengeance after Feb. 21st.

Jeff

Jeff: You know, I think more people have viewed Cupcake dog on my blog than anything else this year.
Ann: That’s because it’s cupcake dog!
Jeff: Well, still…
Ann: You’ve got to give them what they want at least some of the time!
Jeff: What if I don’t want to give them what they want.
Ann: You need to read your own book.
Jeff: What book?
Ann: Booklife!
Jeff: Oh. Yeah.

Victoria Blake is the founder and publisher of Underland Press, an independent publishing house dedicated to weird, strange, odd, and unsettling fiction, in print and online. Formerly an editor on the prose side of Dark Horse Comics, Victoria came to books through a career in newspapers. Most recently, she worked as an art critic for the Oregonian. She is a graduate of Columbia University, Barnard College, and has just earned an MFA in fiction from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Victoria is my editor on Finch, and she’ll be blogging for two weeks while I’m away in Australia. She’ll be talking about Underland projects, the future of social media, and lots more. Please make her feel at home.

I’ll be reading at the Avid Reader in Brisbane, Australia, the evening of Feb. 12.

Teaching at Clarion South in Brisbane, Australia.