How and Why I Started a Publishing Company

Part 1: Humble beginnings, great visions

Honest Publishing has been around since 2010, and it’s become relatively well known in the independent publishing circles. We were responsible for publishing The Vorrh, as recommended by Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair before it was subsequently sold the rights to Vintage. I even had a riotous conversation with a Hollywood producer about The Vorrh — but I’ll save that story for later.

I want to get a few things out of the way. Firstly, I’m not looking to dish the dirt on my former colleagues. That’s not my style. Secondly, I don’t want to get even or expose the publishing world. What I want is to show how anybody can set up a business and run with it. Even with extremely limited knowledge and funds.

I’m looking to go beyond the mystique associated with the world of publishing — sales and distribution, authors, agents, and editors are not magicians from space — and highlight that publishing is just like any other business.

Prologue

In 2008, I got screwed over by a small press in the US called Subculture Books. They had agreed to publish my collection of short stories, The Wooden Tongue Speaks, but they stopped responding as soon as the book was out. No royalties. No updates. No communication. I even tried to contact some of their other writers, but they weren’t giving anything away.

I’d been taken for a ride. I couldn’t even afford lawyers to take them down, so I left it ($400 for a letter is beyond the means of an up-and-coming writer). I could see my book on Amazon — there it was — my baby, stolen from me.

At the same time, I realised that I had done all the editing for Subculture Books as they didn’t have a clue what they were doing. I did everything for them, including the promotion. They just got the book printed.

This led me to believe that I could do a better job as a publisher.

I was working for a soul-crushing e-commerce company. Let’s call them… WorldStores, because that’s what they were called. It was like living under a dictatorship (and I can attest to that because I lived in 1980s Romania). Under the boot of modern consumerism, and the hunger for profit above humanity, I developed close friendships with fellow workers, sharing in the freedom of lunch, or a rebellious glance across the office. The first such friend, Dan, left when he had his opportunity to work from home for a company I can’t remember the name of.

We had already started chatting about publishing and writing and had written a couple of sitcoms together. One was called The School of Bastards — a special school for managers where they learned all the tricks required to crush the workforce. We had discussed publishing with another inmate, Patrick, but Patrick wasn’t that keen. So we put the publishing dream on hold.

Then Chris started work at WorldStores (I’d helped to hire him). Chris and I became good mates, and I asked him if he wanted in. He did. So one fateful day, in January 2010, we all met up in a pub in Putney, and set out our plans for world domination over a couple of bevies.

The big plan

Our company would be the home of edgy, non-mainstream writers. We would always live up to our word to publish groundbreaking work and not sell out. We don’t care what your name is, who your best mate is, or how many times you’ve been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (I know, you’re already tearing this dream to pieces because you know about The Vorrh and Alan Moore). If your work is original and you’re taking risks, we’d publish and promote you.

We’d be up front about everything — tell you what we’re doing to promote your work, how your book is actually performing, what you need to do to help out, and what your contract entitles you to.

Sounds ridiculous, right?

We knew nothing about business. Nothing about contracts, finances, very little about marketing, or website creation. We knew how to use SEOMoz and how to write SEO copy. And we liked to think we were pretty good writers. That’s about it.

We decided to nail the name first. How about something that represents what we stand for? How about… Honest Publishing?

Setting up a slick e-commerce website

We needed an attractive e-commerce site to showcase our books and a blog. We’d research and target certain keywords and write SEO-driven articles around those. That way, we’d drive traffic to the site and ultimately get more people interested in our books.

I knew a web designer who had designed my personal website — Alexandra Muresan — so we contacted her to get a quote and soon accepted. However, beyond wanting to have a cool-looking, functional site, we didn’t have a defined list of requirements. I now cringe at how many times we asked Alexandra to change things for us. Alexandra was very accommodating, though, and we went back and forth on design changes for a good few months.

The site was built on WordPress and it looked like an old manuscript. We wanted a book preview functionality created and a way for people to buy the books directly from us. That way we’d cut out the middleman — Amazon. We didn’t skimp on details. Everything from the logo to buttons and the book preview were custom-built.

That’s the good thing with having three guys running a business. You bounce ideas off each other and this can lead to inspirational work. A bit like The Beatles, except they were four and much more talented than us.

We then used our experience in SEO to optimise the site. First, we did some research using SEOMoz, to find relevant keywords. Then we wrote our landing page copy around those keywords. At the time, the copy was high up on the page, because we had no books to sell, but it moved further down the page as we started publishing. No one wants to read your SEO filler.

We also knew that writing articles around key phrases, like independent publishers and alternative publishers, would be key in ensuring Honest Publishing would be found. Of course, we knew that we had to be subtle, and insert keywords only when appropriate, or Google would penalise us.

We were also very aware of the value of inbound links and we were, in time, to look more closely at getting ranked sites to link to us. Google PageRank was a pretty big deal in those days, so as content marketers we were kind of obsessed with it.

The boring basics

It was only after we had a proper website in place that we decided to take the plunge and register with Companies House as a limited business. That seemed like a pretty big step and taking it away from being a hobby to being an actual business that people could contact, and writers could count on.

We also needed to set up a business bank account for expenses, royalties, and everything else required. I remember being in the sterile waiting area of the bank with my friend and business partner, Dan, and feeling like we were in school detention. The suited bank manager was there, behind his grey desk, blankly staring at us — two scruffy young idiots. We finished with a firm handshake — remember that?

Book printing and eBooks

I’d used Print On Demand (or POD) back in the year 2000 when I wanted to get my first collections of work out there, so I was familiar with the advantages and disadvantages. Yes, POD is pricy compared to traditional printing because you’re publishing each book individually. And yes, some people are snooty about POD, because they associate it with vanity publishing, but this is publishing we’re talking about — snooty is the default mode.

We signed up with Lightning Source and found their system straightforward for setting up new titles, but their cover templates were painful. Especially if you have a dark cover. We learned that lesson the hard way.

Ebooks were taking off at the time, so we wanted our books to have ebook versions. At first, we attempted to do this ourselves but soon discovered that conversion wasn’t easy and formatting was lost, especially as we used InDesign to format our books. So we used a competent third party to convert our titles into Kindle-friendly versions.

Submissions

Once the site was good enough to launch, and we had our first book on the board (my book, The Wooden Tongue Speaks) we opened for submissions. We got listed on Duotrope and our inbox immediately flooded with everything from vampire fiction to sci-fi, Bukowski-lite short stories, and poetry. Lots and lots of poetry.

The problem wasn’t necessarily the quantity (let’s be honest, you can tell whether a piece of work is any good after the first paragraph) it was that we set ourselves up as being these helpful do-gooders. Which meant that we had to give considered feedback to everyone, forcing ourselves to read the most awful stuff imaginable through gritted teeth. To live up to our name, and our promises.

It didn’t take long for our feedback to become less detailed as some writers took offense at our detailed responses. Who were we to suggest anything? So we cut back on the explanations and became like everyone else. Did we go back on our word? Yes, and no. We never specifically said that every submission would receive detailed feedback, but at the same time, it’s clear that we could not maintain the lofty goals we’d set out with.

Looking back, we were naïve, with a youthful need to set the world to rights. But we didn’t have the know-how or the insights. We hadn’t spoken to any publishers, for instance. We simply plowed on ahead in the dark. Maybe that level of naivety is a good thing.

If you knew what you were really up against, would you even try?

Go and support indies

I want to sum up each part of this series by imploring you to widen your scope. So whether it’s Honest Publishing or another indie, go and support them by purchasing their products.

I promise you, spend some time away from Amazon and you’ll find a wonderful world of creative ambition. Like Dzanc Books — check out those guys. Or Strange Attractor. Do some digging and don’t be afraid to spend. Why is it so easy to put cash into the enormous pockets of Bezos but so hard to throw a few dollars at a poor indie? It’s time to shift our mindset away from the easy.