A Very Merry Holiday Season for All!

I would like to wish everyone a very merry holiday season.

A very heartfelt thanks goes out to all of you - for who you are, for all you do, for the friendships, the books, the trust and the laughs. For sticking through the bad times, and making good times. You are the reason DMP continues on.

I hope that 2008 brings with it the fulfillment to many dreams, wishes and resolutions. May the universe be generous in bringing joy, good health and happiness.

And may all your dragons be friendly.

Sword Masters Update

So, you may have noticed that I've changed my mind. After mucho debate, we've gone back to two words. So. Swordmasters is once again Sword Masters.

With the good news being... it should head to the printer very, very soon. Just tweaking and then we are ready to go. Look for it on sale in February.

Christmas Specials from Dragon Moon and EDGE

Did you know... Dragon Moon and EDGE now have four sales going on: the Christmas Sale, the Preorder Sale, Subscriptions, and the Gift Baskets. Each of the sales can be found on our Promotions page located here. Subscriptions DMP/EDGE is proud to present our Subscriptions. From now until January 31st 2008, you can make a one time purchase of $125.00 and receive all of our Spring 2008 releases as they come out. Gift Baskets DMP/EDGE's Gift Baskets are a great way to buy multiple books and save money! Located on our Promotions page, our Gift Baskets contain some of our great titles. Currently, we are offering five books for the only $75.00. You get to pick and choose from the list provided on the Promotions page. [Christmas Sale]

What Do I Do?

My very nice neighbours invited myself and my family over for Sunday dinner yesterday, and invariably the question comes up..."So, Gwen, what do you do?" Of course, it never stops there. Once you announce to the world that you are a book publisher, they want to know what kind of books (and have they read any of them), can they send their writer wanna-be friends my way (everyone on the planet seems to have a writer-wanna-be friend). Then comes the big question. "Ok, you're a publisher... but what do you do?"

Let's start first with what I don't do. I don't write books. Heck, I don't even know how my authors write books! It's a complete and utter mystery to me. I suspect it always will be. Oh, like everyone out there, I have ideas, but I can tell you this... the odds of me ever sitting down and learning how to write, of having the desire to jump to that side of the fence well, they are pretty darn slim. So... I don't write.

I don't edit. I did that once. Whoohoo. That was an experience I am not wanting to repeat. I suppose I could, but I don't want to. I am not a rereader. I like to read a book once, put it away until I've forgotten completely what happened (like 10 years maybe) and then reread it, because then it's like new. Editing means reading the same book over and over and over. Yeah, not a job for me.

Cover art? Nope. Can't draw a straight line, even with the computer helping! My artistic abilities end with the ability to choose art I like. And that's about as far as that goes.

So that's the biggies all done by others - writing, editing, art.

What do I do? Some days, I've no idea at all.

I answer email. Sometimes. Other times it piles up in my inbox. I get vast amounts of email.

I do book layouts. Actually, this is one of the parts I've discovered I like the most. I even freelance at it for a pay check now and again, because even publishers have to eat (ok, ok, truth be told, even publishers must have their daily Starbucks fix! Long live Lord Caffiene!)

I putz with covers, adding text etc, when necessary. Sometimes I do it well, sometimes not so much. Usually I spell the author's name wrong. It's becoming a very bad joke around here. And it's not even a funny joke.

I coordinate with my booksellers, without whom life as a publisher would truly suck! I coordinate with wholesalers, distributors and advertisers. All those lovely book people that make the business run. I seem to spend alot of time giving all of them the same information, in different formats. (we're working to become ONIX compliant in the new year to hopefully minimize that function!). I work with printers to get a good price on a great product, on time.

I spend part of my day as friend, confidante, coach and mentor to a very large group of wonderful authors. They've become my friends and my partners in this venture. Their trust and faith is, literally, what keeps me going most days. On the days when I want to hang up my hat and move on to something else, it's them that brings me back and keeps me here doing what I do... oh yeah, wait, we're still discussing what I do.

I do some networking. I admit to being a newbie at this. I fight vampires and zombies on Facebook (mostly because I love feeding my friends to my zombie - and if you don't know... I am a tad bit competitive, so I like being told "I laid down some zombie smack on Justyn's zombie"). I've become LinkedIn to network Business to Business (rather than social networking), I have this blog, I've got a MySpace page (though I'm there very rarely), a NING page... oh, I have piles of them. I don't do as much with them as I might, but then it takes time, which is usually in short supply around here.

I do the business stuff - pricing strategies, accounting stuff, pick-pack-and-ship, etc - the nitty-gritty stuff that keeps us running with the government and other folks. I forecast what next year will bring, I run numbers for profit and loss, I negotiate contracts and deals, I do some marketing, some grunt work, I pay the bills, do some "executive" work, some brainstorming in hopes of the next great idea... basically, I get to do a little bit of everything. One of the joys and stressors of being in business for yourself.

I problem solve, I try to keep everything running as smooth as possible - and some days I even succeed!

In general, I run a business with hundreds of "employees" and a pile of products. What I do on a daily basis varies depending on the day, the season, and my mood.

And all of that is really hard to explain in 30 seconds to the neighbours.

What I Like about the US Thanksgiving Holiday

If you didn't know, DMP is headquartered in Canada, so our Thanksgiving is celebrated in October. But I really like the US holiday... it means I get almost no email. Well, except from Jana and Nina who are both workaholics (which as their publisher, I am glad because it helps sell books, and Nina too is Canadian, so I suppose she can be forgiven :)).

It means no faxes, no calls asking for the price or ISBN of a book, it means little spam even! And that's nice. I've been so rushed lately that I decided to celebrate by taking it easy. Getting, almost, the last of my Christmas shopping done (I'll be hosting 20 or so family members, so now I need to focus on the visitors, and by having one less thing to do, well, as Martha would say "it's a good thing!")

It also means that we are getting closer and closer to the end of the year. Which naturally leads to a period of introspection and a chance to review all that has transpired over the course of the last year. And it has certainly been an interesting year. Between the merger, the jump in production and the general chaos of life, the year has gone by so quickly! The books (other than a few minor glitches, turned out really well this year - and I'm proud to be the one who published them ... the glitches are all mine!... and I hope they sell lots and lots of copies!) turned out well and seem to be selling. I will tell you this. My family and I took a whirlwind trip to Calgary yesterday to pick up some hardwood flooring, as it turns out we're going to be a bit short - yes, we over estimated, but because it's "tavern" style our wastage was higher than anticipated - anyway, we stopped briefly at a local Chapters - and I saw Darwin's Paradox on the shelves. Four copies! I knew it was going to happen, but I was so excited! Other than the damn spelling error on the cover which annoys the heck out of me, it was thrilling! My books, in the bookstores - if we weren't so short on time, I probably would have gotten myself tossed trying to sell those copies because of course placement is only half the battle!

I am one less likely to look back, as usually so I'm busy looking forward. What do I see for 2008? OH MAN. Now that's a loaded question. And one I think I will save for another day. But for now let's say I see good things, great books, and new friends.

Swordmasters

First up in the new year is Swordmasters... and a funny thing happened on the way to publication :)

You may look at the title and think "Shouldn't it be Sword Masters?" and you know, you might be right. Then again, maybe not. We had this problem you see - there were enough of us working on the project, that we got a little confused.

There's Selina... writer extraordinaire. Lynn, her editor extraordiare, the cover dude-extraordiare, John, myself and the marketing team. And what we discovered was that all over the place we had it both ways. So I am standing up (well, actually, that makes it hard to type, so really, I'm sitting - but it just doesn't have the same ring, you know?) and taking responsibility for the single word title. When the marketing materials came along, it was all two... oh my, oh my. In what I think is the final art it was a single word, so I opened the manuscript and it seemed to be one word throughout, and after a quick debate with the whole team, we decided to stick with the possibly incorrect, but most often used, single word version.

So stand up and shout with me... Swordmasters is ONE word! (and then please, put in a preorder and enjoy!)