Guest Blogger: Barbara Friend Ish
Forget the connotation of the suffix that is Barbara’s last name, she is a friend to the Atlanta book community. There is no -ish about it. She had the gumption to start her own independent publishing company Mercury Retrograde Press, which is based in Sandy Springs. The press was established to publish books in the realms of “fantasy, science fiction, and the unclassifiable.”
MRP’s second book is Zachary Steele’s Anointed, which will be having a release party at Wordsmiths Books on Saturday night. Zach owns Wordsmiths, home of several BGB book events, and both Barbara and Zach are my friends on Facebook (and in the real world, too), so we’re throwing objectivity to the wind and having a love fest here at BGB. Yesterday, Russ Marshalek, hot new addition to the BGB team (Welcome, Russ!), interviewed Zach in the style that can only be classified as “Russ and Zach”. They need their own reality show.
I invited Barbara to guest post today to tell us about her love of independent publishing. Here’s Barbara Friend Ish:
I <3 Small Press
It’s a bit late for Valentine’s Day, but I wanted to write a little love note to small press publishing and share it with the world. I’m sure everyone here will understand.
Ah, Small Press Publishing, how do I love thee? I will give you all my time and money and sweat and blood and creative energy, until I run out of all of them, because I know you will give me the ride of a lifetime. We will be together forever, you and I, and every day I thank the gods of publishing for you.
No, really. Like most writers, I grew up with very murky ideas of what it was to actually write and publish books. I had naïve notions about writing exactly what I wanted to write (having no concept of market forces), making decisions about–if not designing–the covers for my books, and working in a welcoming environment with people who did what they did for the love of it. Later, I wrote my first novel and went out and learned about the Real World. I shall not bore you with the details. Suffice it to say the Real World of publishing is different than I imagined, books and authors are products, and publishing folk of this era are under tremendous pressure to make blockbuster margins in a business that is having a good day when it pays all its bills.
Small press publishing isn’t necessarily different from publishing in Big New York Houses; but it can be, because each small press gets to define its own identity, vision, and (within the realities of the marketplace) rule set. I love the uniqueness of small presses: each small press is someone’s dream, or if the founder is lucky the shared dream of a team; and just as no two novels will ever be the same, even if two writers start with the same topic, no two small presses will ever do the same thing the same way. We don’t compete; there’s no need for it. In fact quite a number of my friends run small presses, and we swap stories, advice, and even resources on a regular basis. And we all love what we do. It doesn’t get much better than that.
I founded Mercury Retrograde because the house I wanted to publish my books didn’t yet exist. Along the way I discovered running a small press was all the jobs I ever loved, rolled into one. As Mercury Retrograde’s editor-in-chief, I enjoy the privilege of coaching and editing for a variety of talented writers. It is my task and joy to designate what is and is not a Mercury Retrograde book, and to figure out (with the recently-added help of marketing virtuoso Russ Marshalek, who just seems to be everywhere these days) how to help each book Mercury Retrograde publishes find its audience. As the entertainment business shifts and technologies evolve, it is my task to come up with new ways to help readers enjoy the visions of the writers whose work I take on. And I get to mastermind the development of the published book in all its forms, including the cover. It’s a grown-up version of what I thought a writer’s life would be: in short, my dream job.
The best thing about small press publishing is freedom, particularly the freedom to take risks bigger houses can’t afford and the freedom to champion books and writers that bigger houses couldn’t figure out how to handle. Only a small press could have afforded to take on Zachary Steele’s Anointed, which we’re launching at Wordsmiths tomorrow night (Saturday). I am unbelievably proud of that book, which is not only hilarious but touching (and Publishers Weeklythought it was pretty cool, too). And I have spent each day of the project grateful for the wonderful team with which I got to work and the genuine creativity and collaborative spirit everyone brought to the process.
That’s what small press is about. I wouldn’t want any other job.
February 20, 2009 12:38 pm 3 Comments
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By RussComm, February 20, 2009 @ 6:48 pm
yay barbara! we love you. and your queso. i hear tell there’s queso.
By Barbara Friend Ish, February 21, 2009 @ 1:27 pm
It is love-offering queso, for you…
By maggie, February 22, 2009 @ 2:54 pm
when i find blogs all about books i get all flustered. wonderful, wonderful. and how great you work with small press.