August Update - Words & Links!

I accidentally sent this through my personal Substack first. Oops

August 13, 2023

New Releases / Pre-orders / New in Audio

Aug 14

DON’T PUT US IN A FISHBOWL!

Here we are again trying to get the hang of this new forum, and this new way of providing our newsletter. I’ve included links below for new releases, preorders, and the newest audiobooks. If you are a reviewer, or a bookstore owner, and would like to contact us about our titles, you can reach us at [email protected] – IF you know someone you think would be interested in what we offer, send them to this SubStack. Please! Bookstore owners – our terms on paperbacks are 45% off cover plus shipping. You will get that discount if you order direct. Except in special circumstances, we are no longer going to allow Lightning Source to force our paperback prices through the moon for the hope of possibly getting into a brick-and-mortar store. I will likely do an entire newsletter about this one day soon.  The same goes for libraries. If you order direct, we’ll give you a better discount than you get from Ingram.

But I have something else I want to mention, a couple of somethings, really. The first is, though you can read our story over at our website, I’m afraid that it’s become somewhat dated. When we first began, most of my connections, and those of my business partner, David Dodd, were in the horror community. Our early catalog was very horror heavy, and we have continued (though you wouldn’t know it from the lack of response from the greater horror community) to grow into one of the largest publishers of horror fiction in business. We have the entire catalogues of many classic horror masters, like Charles L. Grant and Rick Hautala, Tom Piccirilli, the audiobooks for most of Clive Barker’s early books, and as a lover of dark fiction, I don’t see that changing any time soon.

But from the very beginning, we have been a lot more than that. We have mysteries, thrillers, science fiction and fantasy, biographies and true crime, children’s books and young adult fantasy. We have books in nearly every genre, and we have thousands of them.

Despite this, people (including some authors we already publish) only seem to believe we do backlist titles by horror writers.  We have quietly built one of the biggest independent publishing companies while paying what I’m fairly certain are the best royalties to our authors. It’s frustrating because… we publish EVERYTHING (I take that back, we don’t publish hate, in any form, and we don’t publish books supporting organized religion. The latter of those two I believe is well covered enough by religious publishers. There is even one called Crossroad(s) press (we don’t have the s). You can imagine the mixed-up e-mails we’ve received over time).

So – my point is – take a look at all of our titles. If horror isn’t your thing, we probably have something for you. We will be holding our first (ever) open reading period from 1-15 October and there is no one genre we are hoping to see. We are hoping to see new voices, exciting books – we’ll be looking at the synopsis and first three chapters during that period. Please, no trunk stories. All three of us who will be reading have been writing, reading, editing, or publishing for a very long time. We can’t take on a huge number of titles, so send us your best. If you have something you’ve been told isn’t commercial or doesn’t fit (whatever) this might be the place.

Just don’t put us in a box (or a fishbowl). We are growing, and we are growing in a lot of different directions. We need the support of readers, authors, and the various writing communities to make that happen… stay tuned. We intend to be more active and vocal - as always it’s a matter of available time, and commitments. Now for the important stuff…

New Releases – some brand new – some back in print:

Pre-orders – preorders can make or break a release day. There is something here for everyone!

New in Audio: