We talk about Ali’s definition of self-publishing versus independent publishing, how Indigo is working to improve the book world, and the exciting process of learning how to produce audiobooks.

Guest Bio

Ali (McCart) Shaw (she/her) thinks her love for the written word might have something to do with the pungent odor of ink from her parents’ printing press, which permeated her senses before she even knew how to read. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from Willamette University and a master’s degree in book publishing from Portland State University, where she now teaches Entrepreneurship in Publishing. She also spent two years as a bookseller and sometimes still itches to create front-of-store displays.

Ali founded Indigo in 2006 and has edited a diverse range of nonfiction authors. She began editing audiobooks in 2018 and launched audiobook production as an Indigo service in 2020. Her book, Write Book (Check). Now What?, came out in 2021.

About Indigo

Indigo: Editing, Design, and More, has a mission to improve the book world. To do this, they not only provide expert services to authors, small presses, and large publishers, but they also advocate for thriving independent bookstore commerce and greater inclusion and diversity in the publishing industry. Indigo started as a firm of freelance editors in 2006 and has now grown to offer design, ebook conversion, audiobook production, and publication management services in addition to editing. Indigo is dedicated to sustainability in all its various forms and dedicates time and money to give back to the publishing, writing, and literacy communities, most notably through scholarships for publishing students and authors from marginalized communities.

Relevant Links

• Episode 77 Transcript
• Indigo Editing’s website
• Buy Write Book (Check). Now What?: Publishing Need-to-Knows for New Authors
• Indigo on Instagram @indigobookediting 

The post Episode 77: Ali Shaw, Founder of Indigo Editing, Design, and More first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post Episode 77: Ali Shaw, Founder of Indigo Editing, Design, and More appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.

Today we continue Maple Leaf May by interviewing Erin Klassen. She’s a writer, founder, and Editor in Chief of With/out Pretend.

(What, you think we’d just leave Canada without lingering?)

With/out Pretend is an independent Toronto-based publisher focused on producing, promoting and distributing works by women and non-binary writers and artists. They also host storytelling events and run a digital and print magazine called The Vault.

Erin Klassen is the founder of With/out Pretend. She’s also an editor, collaborator, community-builder, and fiction writer. Her work has appeared in a number of print and online publications, including Studio Magazine, The CBC, Ephemera Magazine, and You Care Too Much. She enjoys Nina Simone, Italian food, and talking about the future.

Erin shares how she curates a diverse collection of women and non-binary creators, revealing how her collaborative zine examines a range of human emotions that many literary journals overlook. Erin shows us how With/out Pretend and The Vault make the creation process transparent from the seed of an idea through its full-grown splendor. Plus, Erin gets real about the financial side of independent publishing.

We also explore the subject of genuine (non-Goopified) self-care, and we all agree on our favorite Kid in the Hall.

Find Erin Klassen, With/out Pretend, and the Vault On Social Media

• Erin’s website: erinklassen.com
• Erin’s Instagram: @erin.klassen
• With/Out Pretend’s Instagram: @with.outpretend
• With/Out Pretend’s Twitter: @WithoutPretend
• The Vault’s Instagram: @vaultzine

Get books and zines from With/out Pretend

• Join The Vault
• You Care too Much, a zine on the subject of what self-care truly means
• Visit the With/out Pretend online store

Check out On Pleasure and throw your hat in for the giveaway)

On Pleasure includes writing from Alicia Bunyan-Sampson, Mollie Coles Tonn, Colleen Conroy, Lizzie Derksen, Jaime Eisen, Margeaux Feldman, Ruchika Gothosar, Carvela Lee, Brooke Manning, Maria Isabel Martinez, Kyisha Williams, and Kristen Zimmer. It’s Illustrated by Violeta Noy, and features photography by Alison Maxwell.

Then at 36:55 Emily and Corinne air some grievances

To maintain the inspirational glow of our interview with Erin, stop the podcast at 36:55. After that, Emily and Corinne gripe about (more) careless disregard for the people who make traditional publishing possible. Specifically, we talk about the recent layoffs at Portland’s own Oni Press in the wake of its merger with Lion Forge. We also lament the withdrawal of Baker & Taylor from the retail and wholesale business. Long story short? Monopolies should GTFO.

MAPLE LEAF MAY ZINE GIVEAWAY

Get in on our giveaway of two physical zines from our sisters to the north. We’re giving away one copy of You Care Too Much from the Vault and a copy of Return Trip, created by Episode 21’s interviewee, Erin Pehlivan.

The post Episode 22: Erin Klassen, Editor in Chief of With/Out Pretend first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post Episode 22: Erin Klassen, Editor in Chief of With/Out Pretend appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.

“In order to really have traveled, I think we have to come full circle and come back to ourselves, back to our homes, and really reflect on what we’ve been through.”

Erin Pehlivan is the founding editor of Return Trip, a zine that explores how travel makes us feel. She is a freelance writer and editor who’s been published in Maisonneuve, The Globe and Mail, enRoute magazine and more. She is also an associate editor at The Vault, a literary zine focusing on the work of women writers. Her home base is Toronto, but she’s also lived in Copenhagen, Ho Chi Minh City and Montreal.

Erin shares her inspiration and process for creating Return Trip, how it incorporates unique cultural and personal perspectives on travel, and the value of engaging with other creators and publishing peeps in your community. Corinne also dispenses marketing advice and gets to the bottom of whether Rush, Nickelback, or Justin Bieber would be Erin’s desert island pick. And no, we will not be linking them.

Find Return trip at:

returntrip.ca
@returntripmag on Instagram
And buy a copy here.

In this episode…

• Here’s a taste of Art Brut. You’re welcome.
• Flights by Olga Tokarczuk: an award-winning novel full of reflections on travel
• The Art of Travel by Alain de Button: another recommended book exploring travel’s emotional ups and downs
• Living Hyphen Magazine: a magazine that boosts the voices of “hyphenated” Canadians through stories, poetry, photography, and illustrations
• Normal People by Sally Rooney, an author whose work has fully infiltrated Erin’s consciousness
• HBO show My Brilliant Friend, based on the series by Elena Ferrante
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• #FashionVictim by Amina Ahktar
• Let’s Start a Riot by Bruce McCullough: a memoir by the Kids in the Hall member
• Alissa Nutting and her upsetting books

The post Episode 21: Interview with Erin Pehlivan, Founding Editor of Return Trip first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post Episode 21: Interview with Erin Pehlivan, Founding Editor of Return Trip appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.

We’ve talked to ghostwriters, publishers, self-published authors, editors, project managers, print managers, and this time we’re talking with someone who’s done all the above for quite a while. Joe Biel founded Microcosm Publishing when he was just a teenager, hauling zines in milk crates and getting bombarded by echoey punk music in a concrete bunker. From there, he spent 23 years building a robust indie publishing company, now based in Portland, OR, that knows its audience inside out.

Fortunately for us, he’s written a book called A People’s Guide to Publishing, which goes into the nitty gritty of what it takes to build a publishing company. And we’re talking EVERYTHING. That might sound daunting, but he’s got some pretty fun stories from his own and other publishers’ experience to keep us hyped.

Joe was nice enough to invite us to Microcosm’s office for an interview about his experiences running a publishing company that stays true to its audience. We kept a pretty good balance of fun and informative, addressing questions of book and list development, and publicity in its wackiest forms (i.e., a very cranky Henry Rollins…but then, when isn’t he cranky?). Plus, if you want to know what it looks like when a publishing company decides to divest itself of the Amazon behemoth, read on.

4:33 —

Joe provides his origin story, from growing up in the bleak setting of 1970s Cleveland. Surrounded by massive unemployment, a sky alternating between orange and grey, and parents and adults that preferred him to go off and do his own thing, he felt as if he could get out there and do what was meaningful to him.

8:20 —

The year is 1991 and the cool kids are putting together concerts in a concrete bunker on the beach. Years later, people he knew back then claimed he had been drunkenly babbling about what would later become Microcosm as early as these teenage years.

10:58 —

Joe elucidates what a zine is for people who might not remember the 90s.

12:59 —

Sometimes writers are advised to “write the book you needed when you were younger.” Publishers can do the same thing.

14:00 —

Shape editorial strategy and find books in a unique niche by putting fans and readers first. Joe explains different methods of acquiring, and explains why it’s a bad idea for authors to do “blanket pitches” to a bunch of different companies.

18:28 —

Did you know that “no one has done this before” isn’t actually that good of a pitch? That’s because comp titles are a must. Here’s how to do your research.

23:38 —

As per Corinne’s request, we talk about Henry and Glenn Forever, a parody by Tom Neely about an imagined romantic partnership between Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins. The idea of “all publicity is good publicity” applies. And Hall & Oates might actually be Satanists?

37:03 —

Joe talks about alternative ways of funding a book. He goes into detail about Kickstarter being a way to get a book off the ground and a way to learn about demand in a particular demographic of reader who doesn’t frequent bookstores. (Speaking of reader demographics…black women over 50 buy the most books of any demographic. Take note, big 5.)

47:30 —

A bestseller doesn’t always depend on how big an author’s platform. In fact, that attitude can be a trap.

58:18 —

How a small press—not just an author—can create loyal fans, and then in turn be loyal to them.

1:03:28 —

A cautionary case study of a book endorsed by a big name author flopping due to a wrong fit. A book can still fail even if its foreword is written by a world famous naturalist and is about a young boy who brings a large bird to live in his house.

1:10:24 —

Biel talks about Microcosm’s big move to disconnect from Amazon completely. And guess what? It’s going great. More people should try it.

1:21:31 —

Biel gives his main piece of advice for people who want to start a publishing company: find your perfect niche. And keep that ground game strong—selling books is about much more than just SEO. (Also we talk about the bizarro fiction press, Eraserhead, who gets it just right. What is bizarro fiction you ask? Well…just go check them out.)

If you’re ever in the magical vagina that is Portland, OR, be sure to visit Microcosm at:

2752 N Williams Ave
Portland, OR 97227

They’re also online at:

microcosm.pub and on
twitter and facebook

You can enter here to win a copy of A People’s Guide to Publishing until February 28th or go buy it from them yourself here.

The post Interview with Joe Biel, Founder and Manager of Microcosm Publishing first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post Interview with Joe Biel, Founder and Manager of Microcosm Publishing appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.