Interview: Grumpy Dragon

Today we have an interview with Spring Lea Henry, cofounder of Grumpy Dragon, a small publishing company based in Colorado. Ever wondered what it was like to run a publishing company? Want advice on how to get started? Read on!


GLW: How did you decide to start a publishing company? What challenges did you
face in the beginning? What education/experience did you have to prepare
you for this venture?


SLH: As an author, I found myself dissatisfied with several aspects of
publishing that seem to be industry standard. I've never really thought
the usual 10-15% of the coverprice of a book was a fair cut of the profits
for an author, and I really didn't like the fact that authors rarely have
a say in the coverart that goes on their books. I basically got the
impression that most publishing houses were coming at it from a pure
profit point of view, and I just thought there needed to be a different
model, one that is based on helping authors feel their dreams are coming
true. My husband and business partner agreed with me on this, so we
started the Grumpy Dragon as a way of putting these beliefs into practice.
The creators of our books get a full 50% of the markup for their books,
and they also have input into the book design and coverart. We work hard
to make our books ones that that authors can feel proud of 100% so that
they will do their share of the marketing. I've met too many other
authors who just shake their heads about the coverart or some other part
of their contract, and that little head shake makes me feel like they
aren't happy with the book. As a reader, I don't want to read some thing
that even the author doesn't fully endorse!

It's funny you should ask about challenges in the beginning because I feel
like we still are in the beginning! We're only 3 years old, and we're
still working hard to get our company to a state of self-sufficiency.
It's especially difficult because neither of us believes in taking out a
business loan to fund this venture. Debt is something that kills so many
small businesses. So honestly, the challenge is to time our success
just-so. We can't grow too slow, or all the money we've invested won't be
enough to keep us afloat, but we can't grow too fast, or we'll have more
work on our table than we can handle. It's been a process of little
successes, one at a time that keeps us moving forward. We've also had
quite the learning curve as far as technology goes. In our first two
years, we went through three printers before we found one that meets our
needs.

I didn't plan to be a publisher when I was in college, but as it turned
out, the skillset I acquired turned out to be the perfect formula, as did
my husband's. I do all the editing work for our company, and my
preparations included a double-major of psychology and English. The
psychology actually comes in very useful for discerning character
motivations and being able to explain to an author when those motivations
are unrealistic. I also worked as the copy editor for the newspaper,
which was very good for my grammar and punctuation. I was the editor of
the school's literary magazine, which has taught me a fair bit about the
approval/rejection process and how to layout a publication. My masters in
library science helped to sharpen my writing skills and learn how to work
with people one-on-one. My husband brings business education and computer
science to the table. He's the one who handles sales-tax licenses,
royalties statments, contracts, graphic design, and getting our books
ready for the printer. Even with all that, we could stand to have someone
in the mix with some marketing experience!

A Moment of Gratitude for your Raditude

As you already know, our book drive for Operation TBD was an enormous success, sending over 700 books total to Ojo Encino Day School in New Mexico and Alchesay High School in Arizona. We were a sellout, thanks to all of you who donated and helped spread the word--and thanks in no small part to Mr. Neil "Himself" Gaiman, who tweeted multiple times and brought even more traffic to our little corner of cyberspace (a fortuitous occurrence that made us squeal like fanboys and -girls).

We were, frankly, floored by everyone's generosity. By way of thanks, we want to feature some of the comments and notes that really made this process worthwhile for us. We may have set up the donation process, but all of you--you are the stars of the show. You sent the books. Thanks to you, these kids have amazingly well-stocked libraries, and in this day and age when school libraries are suffering funding cuts and (in some sad cases) closing down entirely, a good library is a blessing.

--insert comments from school librarians here--

Here's what some of you had to say about the book drive:

Fangs and Fear

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold:
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

- "The Destruction of Sennacherib," by George Gordon, Lord Byron

Sydney-born author Judith Clarke is my favorite of the YA Oz novelists, and she's not as well-known or squeal-inducing as some. This is a real shame as her literary talent transcends trend to reveal a real skill with words, whether in comedic stories, as in her Al Capsella series, or in more serious work. Her writing has a resonance that leaves the stories echoing in your ears for months and years after you've read them.

Judith Clarke's Wolf on the Fold is a collection of six interconnected short stories opening in 1935, and ending in 2002. The title suggests an outside threat to a defenseless group, and indeed, the novel chronicles generations of a family's struggle, beginning in the Great Depression in the 30's, continuing with various wars, divorces, deaths and financial woes. Through it all is woven a theme of survival.

The tautly written title narrative tells the story of fourteen year old Kenny Sinclair, who, in the middle of a desolate, cold winter after the death of his father, goes out to find a job to prevent his family from being divided, and he and his brothers ending up in a Home. Grieving, depressed yet finding himself needing to be the man of the family, Kenny sees his mother starving herself in order to provide for the kids, sees the baby wordlessly studying the faces of the older children, and knows he can't let it go on. He leaves school (which he hates anyway), squares his shoulders and sets out, knowing that there are dangerous drifters on the road of the isolated town where they live; knowing that he might find nothing. He goes out in hope and in hopeless terror.

The Gardener by S.A. Bodeen

The Gardener by S.A. Bodeen
"Mason has never known his father, but longs to. All he has of him is a DVD of a man whose face is never seen, reading a children’s book. One day, on a whim, he plays the DVD for a group of comatose teens at the nursing home where his mother works. One of them, a beautiful girl, responds. Mason learns she is part of a horrible experiment intended to render teenagers into autotrophs—genetically engineered, self-sustaining life-forms who don’t need food or water to survive. And before he knows it, Mason is on the run with the girl, and wanted, dead or alive, by the mysterious mastermind of this gruesome plan, who is simply called the Gardener.

Will Mason be forced to destroy the thing he’s longed for most?"- summary from Amazon

This was an intriguing novel and had me turning pages very quickly. The premise is interesting and pretty original and I enjoyed reading a bit about the science behind it. Bodeen spends quite a bit of time explaining the process of taking the autotroph aspect and applying it to humans.

The book got a bit slow at times because the chase starts fairly early on, so there are parts where it's boring and not much happens. The mystery is unraveled slowly throughout most of the book, then a lot of things happen at the climax. But I really enjoyed the moral issues and arguments it brought up for both sides of this, and it makes for some interesting discussion.

The ending was a bit too tied up nicely for me (I know I said before I like things tied up nicely, but it depends on the book!) and seemed a bit out of place considering the rest of the novel.


The Gardener will be out in stores everywhere in hardcover on May 25!

Cory Doctorow's iPad (and Comic Book) Thesis

BoingBoing creator, author and agent provocateur Cory Doctorow has posted a lengthy missive on Boing Boing pointing out all of the reasons he (and by extension, you) will not buy an iPad. Some of the reasons I agree with and some I don’t, but since this is a book blog I thought I would take Doctorow to task regarding his stance on the Marvel Comics iPad app from Comixology, an app that aims to finally bring digital comics and digital distribution to the masses.

One of Doctorow’s major points is that the Marvel app has locked down content so that a user cannot freely share comics with friends. This is of course true, but the problem is that I don’t see a sustainable model for digital comics that doesn’t impose SOME restrictions on user sharing – at least not until the notion of buying comics online has become as ubiquitous as, say, iTunes. Every digital distribution method I’ve seen for comics thus far (and this includes several iPhone apps such as Comixology’s, Longbox and others) involves some measure of DRM. I don’t like it, but I can see the necessity of it until digital comics become the mainstream. Yes, this does mean that kids won't (for the time being) be able to share comics like they used to in the old days, but I'm not so sure it's still kids buying comics anymore anyway.

Doctorow also waxes nostalgic about the mom and pop comic book stores that have been the mainstay of many comic book geeks (myself included) over the years. Yet there are many details left out of this fond remembrance. Ever seen how much a direct market comics store marks up books just a week or two after they have been released? Ever seen a speculator clear the shelves of books before anyone else can get their hands on a single copy? Ever walked into a comics store to buy an issue, only to find out that you have to have a subscription with the store to get a copy of what you want? At my local store, the shelves are clear of most new issues by the time they arrive. The stores can’t afford to hang onto back stock, so there’s no room for issues that might attract a casual or even a new comics fan. These so-called mom and pop shops have been mistreating and alienating customers for decades. Is it any wonder, then, that more and more fans are looking to purchase digital comics – where prices aren’t arbitrary (and generally are lower than the skyrocketing prices of print comics) and where issues are available when they want them? Isn't this just the sort of distribution channel that might encourage new readers to try out comics? Isn't it time for comics to exist outside of the "bag it, board it, box it" subculture that has kept its audience limited for years?

Like Cory Doctorow, I’ve been reading comics for a long, long time (going on close to 30 years now) and I’m more excited about the future of comics than the past. Maybe he likes musty, ramshackle stores with rude and often dismissive (if not strangely elitist) employees, but I don’t. I don’t have room for that kind of business in my life any more than I have room for dozens of comics-filled longboxes in my house.

Bring on the digital age!

Guys Lit Wire Bonus Book Review: Check Out Alex!

Pssssst. C'mere. Shh—see that guy Alex Bledsoe? Did you know he's not just any old GLW contributor (not that ANY of our contributors are "any old" contributor) but an actual published author?

Yep, he sure is. And since Colleen just posted about a new noir graphic novel, I thought it would be a good time to let you know that Alex writes noir, too…noir FANTASY novels.

You heard me. I never would have thought a fantasy setting and noir detective fiction would make such a good blend, but they do. As someone who used to read a huge amount of fantasy series fiction (Piers Anthony and David Eddings, anyone? Don't laugh, this was a long time ago), I enjoyed seeing the classic tropes put to new and humorous use. Just listen: when your detective wields a sword and lives above a disreputable inn; when your dangerous dame has illicit magical secrets; when your bad guys are part of a mysterious criminal underworld of gamblers and hired killers; you've got all the elements of both a noir mystery AND a sword-and-sorcery fantasy. That's The Sword-Edged Blonde.

Writing while Young

This is a blog for readers. But out of any group of readers, you will find a few--or more than a few--who aren’t content to just read, who want to try out the craft themselves and become writers.

Writers burn slowly. Writing takes a long time to master and very few writers get off to a quick start when they are very young. More often they are heavy chunks of coal at the center of the fire, the ones that took forever to light but then crackled on through the night and were still glowing just a little the next morning. Why writers are so slow to mature compared to, say, musicians or mathematicians or chess players (fields in which prodigy is virtually a requirement) is an area for speculation. Where sheer passion and brilliance can fuel a musician or chess genius, good writing, it seems, requires more emotional experience behind it.

Which isn't to say a writer can't write a lot of great stuff while young, and some have launched careers even in their teens. Just be forewarned. These writers are the exception rather than the rule. If you are a young writer looking to make a mark in the world, look to these examples as inspiration, but not as a goal to mark your progress against.

Fatherhood, Spenser style: Early Autumn

Since the death of Robert B. Parker in January 2010, I've been re-reading his Spenser novels. The earliest ones, written in the 1970s and 80s, staked out his moral as well as physical territory, revolving around classical ideas of masculinity coming into conflict with the more modern world. And in 1981's Early Autumn, Spenser demonstrates how his code is built and applied in the life of a clueless teenage boy. It's a book of its time in the particulars of setting, plot and society, but it touches on universal ideas that may be more applicable than ever.

Twitter: 1906 - Novels in Three Lines

Short is in these days. Letter writing fell by the wayside long ago, but today’s teens have moved on even from phone calls and email.  For staying in touch with friends, the text is king.  According to a new study from the Pew Research Center “fully two-thirds of teen texters say they are more likely to use their cell phones to text friends than to talk to them by cell phone” and “half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day.”  Though teens haven’t taken to Twitter as widely as adults, roughly 10% of high schoolers are tweeting their lives.

In this landscape of 140-character limits, a French writer from the early 1900s has unexpectedly regained relevance.  Throughout 1906, Félix Fénéon anonymously contributed short blurbs of reportage to the Parisian newspaper Le Matin, filling in space in the paper’s layout.  No more than a sentence or two apiece, these micro-stories offered glimpses into the curiosities and excitement of day-to-day life; murders, celebrations, and romantic misadventure were all common themes.  In the 1940s, after Fénéon's death, some thousand of these items were published as Novels in Three Lines (Nouvelles en Trois Lignes - in translation the title loses its pun; the French nouvelles signifies both novels and news).  (Also discussed from a different angle here!) Read in collection, they offer up a surprisingly comprehensive panorama of turn-of-the-century life.

Reading Jeeves

Reading a book about a butler named Jeeves may strike you as a bit dull.
Don't butlers just stand around and open doors?
Well, there's a lot more to it, of course, including -- rich uncles, angry aunts, lovesick pals, crooks, cronies, choir boys, newts, nuts and wildly preposterous schemes cooked up by Jeeves himself.
But, yes, there are doors to be opened and Jeeves has a way of making even this dramatic, funny or both.
Or perhaps I should say the author, P. G. Wodehouse (pronounced Woodhouse) has a way. But that would be an understatement.