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What is Little Fiction's mandate?
I
never really thought of us having a mandate, but our reason for being is to give
indie / up-and-coming writers another vehicle for their work and to introduce
our readers (who are also mostly writers) to some new works and new talents.
Since we started, we've seen a handful of our authors land book deals and
release debut collections that their LF stories have been a part of, and that's
really the end goal for now. I don't know if that constitutes a mandate, but
it's something we're damn proud of.
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How/why did you decide to be a publisher?
I
was trying to get some work published years ago (surprise, I'm also a writer)
and the best advice I received was to do it myself. So I started an indie label
called Instrumental Press. I published one title (mine) but struggled to get
good distribution. And money. Many years later, technology allowed me to try
again and Little Fiction is the result.
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When was Little Fiction established?
As
an idea, it was mid-2010, but the official launch was October
2011.
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Share some of Little Fiction's challenges and victories…
Every
new title is a victory. Every new author, every returning author. Every twitter
follower, every retweet and every download / read of a story. Those are the
victories and they'll never stop being the victories. It’s amazing that we have
a few thousand people keeping up with the site regularly, but it’s just as
amazing that even one person cares about what we’re doing. That’s something I
think every writer, publisher, blogger — anyone looking for an audience, really
— should never lose sight of.
On
a more specific note, getting stories from Shawn
Syms,
Andrew
F. Sullivan
and Leesa
Cross-Smith
very early on was huge. All three have since landed deals for debut collections.
As
for the challenges, keeping up with submissions is tough, trying to establish
ourselves enough so that our writers can start to win awards for their LF
stories has been a little challenging. Finding a model that allows us to pay
writers is an ongoing exploration / challenge.
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This is a challenging time to be a publisher. How is Little Fiction uniquely equipped to meet these challenges?
Being
digital only helps. It keeps overhead low. Not relying on grants that could
disappear one year after the next helps. Likewise not worrying about investors /
outside sources for funding. We're just kind of doing our own thing, but I don't
think that makes us uniquely equipped — there are plenty of awesome indie
journals and publishers who can claim the same
thing.
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What do you see as the benefits of being a publisher?
It's
a labour of love, so you have to be into what you're doing, and that's the
benefit for me — getting to do something that I love to
do.
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What genres do you publish?
We
don't really get into genre — it's just literary fiction, for lack of a better
term. And literary non-fiction, I guess, for our essay / memoir / creative
non-fiction label, Big Truths.
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I understand that Little Fiction is solely an epublisher. Do you have future plans of establishing a print imprint? Why or why not?
No
concrete plans at the moment, but we would at least love to do a print
anthology. The bigger idea is to find the right model that would allow us to
maintain a print component, and not just do it once in a while.
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Who pays the publishing costs--the author or Little Fiction?
We
do.
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Do you work with literary agents?
We
haven't yet, but we're not completely against it. What I like about what we have
going so far is the opportunity to build relationships with so many talented and
awesome writers.
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Does Little Fiction pay royalties and advances?
No,
we don't. But we don't charge for our stories either — everything is available
for free. If that ever changes we will definitely be sharing any
profits.
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Please lead us through Little Fiction's author submission process…
It's
an open / rolling submission, so writers are free to send stuff whenever (but
only one story at a time, please). When we accept a piece, we'll work with the
author on edits and a cover design leading up to the pub
date.
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How do you choose the authors you publish?
Just
from reading submissions. We haven't done much soliciting of work yet — because
we don't pay it doesn't feel totally right to ask someone for work. But we have
reached out to a few writers we love — we did that when we launched Big Truths
last year with stories from Angela Palm, Liz Windhorst Harmer, Jessica Nelson
and Ayelet Tsabari.
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Please walk us through the process of publishing a book…
It's
pretty simple. We like to work closely with our writers on edits and we seek
their input on cover ideas (within our design aesthetic). We format the ePub
files and then send some digital proofs for the authors to check out. After that
we're good to go.
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How do you market your books?
Social
media. Twitter is the biggest one for us, but we also have Facebook, tumblr and Pinterest.
accounts. We have a newsletter
that goes out monthly when new stories are released, and we've been fortunate to
have some of our stories recorded
(which you can find on SoundCloud)
by the amazing Xe
Sands,
so there are plenty of channels being used right now for marketing our stuff.
We're looking into doing some merch as well (currently we have desktop
wallpapers available on the site — people seem to dig
them).
Website: Little Fiction
