Tuesday, August 28, 2007

RWA approval

So we're in the home stretch of being approved by RWA as a publisher! Yay! It will help our romantically inclined authors further their careers, and since that's our primary mandate, it's very exciting. Of course they wanted submission guidelines :) Well, I always wanted to do a chick lit, paranormal book... maybe we will get one.


We've been having weird weather and it's playing havoc with my head - so if I wander off topic, forgive me.

So Dragon*Con is this weekend. Way to go TEAM DMP! Jana has everything organized better than military precision - a combination of drill master and MOM. Wish I could be there. Scott had this cool idea of doing trading cards... and after a pile of problems, the team should have something resembling a TC at the con. Won't quite be the weight of a real card, but did the best we could in the time we had... but they are so very cool. I will have to pursue in greater depth as we move forward.

Had fun at ConVersion in Calgary. Small con this year, but good to hang out with some of you all... might even see a book or two come out of it. It's always fun to meet up with everyone. Though it scares me. I'm the behind-the-scenes, faceless person... and then Tee makes me do an interview with the World Fantasy Team. My very first experience recording for a podcast. Actually, it was fun. All of you and your special surprise. 3 weeks and it's out.

Did my duty as a PARSEC judge. That was interesting. It will be more interesting to see who the winners are!

Fall is almost wrapped up, and it's time to start working on spring. Funny eh? Or maybe not. Costco had Christmas stuff up. Yuck. I'm not ready for that yet but it seems to get earlier and earlier.

Yeah, that's about it for today or at least for now :)

Friday, August 17, 2007

Dragon Moon Press and EDGE Merge

Some of you have heard rumours, some I've had to tell flat out as a reason for what otherwise may have appeared as very strange behaviour on my part, and some are still totally in the dark... so here's the scoop.

Brian Hades announced Friday night, at the Con-Version 23 opening Ceremonies, the merger of Dragon Moon Press and EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy, in a move that makes us Canada's largest independent SF&F publisher. And while we are not bent on world domination (or at least not that we will ever admit too), this merger gives us a great opportunity to combine resources and develop and even stronger publishing platform.

My author's know the growth has been a struggle for me - mostly in terms of time and money, the two biggies. The rather drastic increase in titles over the last few years has created untold challenges. And publishing 9 titles this year has stretched me to the breaking point a number of times; having Brian there has made it possible to continue and not lose my mind (though I bet a few of you doubt that!)

It's also great that, as we move forward, we will have access to additional distribution options with Fitzhenry&Whiteside. I will let each of you individually know how it will impact your title(s) as we move forward. There will be growing pains as we do that, and some confusion, but we'll do like we always do and do it together.

It will not mean big operational changes. The DMP imprint will continue, and I will continue on as publisher of record, and we will have our own publishing platform, but you will start to notice advertising and stuff where we are all in there with the EDGE titles. I hope you will welcome EDGE authors as you've welcomed all the DMP authors. And there are strength in numbers!

Official press releases and whatnots will follow...when we've got time :) LOL, it's become my contstant refrain, now hasn't it?

August Updates

Well, August is half over and I don't know how the heck it happened.

This month alone, I've sent to the printer the following titles:
The Complete Guide to Science Fiction Volume One~First Contact (which somehow got lost in a shuffle of reps, and is now delayed until September 10th... that's when it's due to ship from the printer - I actually sent it to them at the end of June)

The Complete Guide to writing Fantasy Volume 3~The Author's Grimoire, with a very cool dragon on the cover... I've decided all the fantasy guides will have DRAGONS on the cover - why the heck not eh? I mean, the company has Dragon in the title... obviously I like dragons. So I'm indulging.

Small Magics
, which we are going to use as our first test case in giveaway land with a bookseller.

Daughter of Dragons... even after 10 years, I still do about a reprint a year :) Can't complain, it just trucks along.

Too Many Princes, poor Deby had to wait for print copies due to a budget crunch, but they are coming now.

The Longevity Thesis - off for an offset run and then to F&H for distribution (oh, hey I will do a separate post about that in a minute).

Alien Revelation - with the orangest cover, but it looks great next to Alien Deception and wraps up the duology nicely.

Plus ARC's for a whole pile of things. Don't think I want to see the credit card bills next month. Anyone know a rich relative/friend/coworker/alien with a few dollars to spare, send them my way!

The coolest things though?? I made trading cards for the Dragon*Con team. It's something we are testing, and if it works, we may do it for everything - it's soooo much fun!

Virtual Evil is done, and is a great sequel to Sojourn, so it's off to the printer next week. Last one to finish up is Darwin's Paradox, and boy will I be glad to see that one go! Of course, it won't mean any time off - it's straight to getting the spring list ready for the distributor - any of you actually read this, reminder... stuff is due in at the end of this month :)

Tomorrow I'm off to Con-Version in Calgary. Here's to hoping we sell a few books!

And before I sign off... Hats off to Karen Webb (The Chalice of Life) for breaking 50k on Amazon. She's tapping unusual markets for us, but it seems to be working! Way to go.

Ok, off to write the "big news" post :)