Goldfish Press FAQ

The answer to most of your frequently asked questions is "NO" unless the answer is actually "YES."

~Later

(BTW isn't our banner photograph stunning! Here is the info if you're interested, otherwise the answer is still "NO."

(Photograph; Weeki Wachee, 1947 ~ Toni Frissell) ~ Toni Frissell Collections Rights & Restrictions Information from the Library of Congress can be found here: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/070_fris.html

For terrific information about Toni Frissel and her photography as well as where and when this photo has been used in the past check her out in Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoinette_Frissell

What! No advance? No Book Tour?

In our ‘status’ on facebook not so long ago I posted “Even if we do publish your goddamn book (and it’s successful) you will not become wealthy and we will probably not even cover our printing costs but we will have put your voice out there and the world will be better for it.” This post received something like twenty-seven ‘Likes’ as well as a comment from one of our ‘friends’ essentially questioning why she should go with a publisher who couldn’t offer her an advance or pay for a book tour? Well, she suggested indignantly, she may as well self-publish rather than go with a small publishing house because after all she already had the education, had some writing credits and something like thirty years of writing experience behind her! I commented back that a writing career is no different than other careers, by that I meant that you have to start somewhere and a small publishing house or e-zine or lit magazine can be that ‘somewhere’ for a writer. Writing credits look good on a bio when submitting your work for publication and they’re no different than submitting your resume to any employer, this documents your experience and possibly your commercial worth to a publishing house deciding first if they love your work but then also whether you work has any sort of following. Of course our ‘friend’ did not like this response and proceeded again to comment about how she felt she deserved XYZ…yadda, yadda. In the end we exercised restraint in suggesting that given all of her experience AND writing credits perhaps she could self publish, although we did not recommend that route, or find herself an agent who could present her work to the big publishing houses and that they were the only ones who could afford advances and book tours.

All this to say that small publishing houses absolutely are in it for the love of the craft and not for the money, duh! Oh the untold and unpaid hours of sifting through shite submissions not to mention editing once we’ve finally accepted a manuscript! After all of that there are covers to create and original art is not cheap (nor should it be) but small publishing houses if they’re smart develop relationships with emerging artists in order to make it affordable, they also learn how to put together their own covers forgoing the need to hire that bit out (which is also expensive). Now then let’s talk about printing costs and the fact that the unit price to print a book is only reduced by the numbers printed and no small publisher can afford print runs of 500+ books without knowing for sure if they can sell them let alone have the upfront funds available to order thousands. Forget about promotional dollars, there aren’t any, instead small houses spend an inordinate amount of time on-line promoting their authors (especially unknown authors) on social sites, writing sites, review sites etc.

When all is said and done small publishing houses take risks, absorb costs and publish works the big guys would not even consider, but considering the considerations and the fact that some truly amazing literature would never see or have seen the light of day if we didn’t, thank goodness we do although; “Even if we do publish your goddamn book (and it’s successful) you will not become wealthy and we will probably not even cover our printing costs but we will have put your voice out there and the world will be better for it.”

~cio

2011 Kota Poetry Award

Dakota Cierra Christina Moler

I want to talk about the 2011 Kota Poetry Award and how it came into being. It really ties into the beginning of our publishing house in 2009 and all the craziness of putting together two poetry anthologies to raise funds for 'Heifer International'. Remember I had recruited some online writers friends, set up a website and put out the call for submissions. Oh my God, we had no idea we would receive over 800 submissions!! Not to mention how in the hell were we going to read them all, rate them, etc. when it had to be done entirely through e-mails to each other?! Rob lived in Canada, Rachel in New York, Michael in the UK and yours truly in sunny Florida for Christs sake! I have to admit the prospect was daunting. Until...I created a private forum through our website where we were the only ones who could view it and/or post in it! Wa lah~~! I could even insert tables in the forum where I listed each poem we'd received and assigned a number to it and as the poems came in I e-mailed them to everyone with their assigned number. This created a listing of all the poems and as we each got around to reading them we would post a rating for each poem. I think we ended up with twelve or thirteen tables of rated poems and then began the process of whittling them down to our favorites...everyone was terrific when it came to trying to keep up (although I did have to prod them now and again that we were running behind. I tried to remind myself that these were unpaid volunteers who were generously donating their time in this effort but I'm sure I came off at times acting like the Wicked Bitch of All Directions!)

Long story short, we managed to get it done and in between we received a submission by Melissa Moler-Beery entitled "It Wasn't Like In The Movies" and it was about her fourteen year-old niece's drowning. I have to say that this poem broke my heart. I remember e-mailing my condolences to Ms. Beery and in her response she mentioned that not only had Dakota drowned but she had done so while saving a younger child (who survived) and that even at her young age "Kota" had written poetry and loved to draw. I asked Ms. Beery to send me one of Kota's poems and we printed it along with a beautiful photo of her alongside the poem by her aunt in one of the anthologies. Kota's mother, aunt, other family members and friends were thrilled that we had honored her memory and it was then that I decided to try and do just that on an annual basis by offering an award in Kota's name.

Fast-foward past 2010 (when we took a one year hiatus after publishing the anthologies and another book of poetry "Essendo Morti- Being Dead" by Jeanpaul Ferro. All three publications had been largely successful however the stress of getting them out took its toll on our group of online writers and we all began to lose track of each other during the process. I tried to understand it, we had busy lives, differing tastes in literature, some were more committed than others etc..I can't say that it didn't piss me off because certainly at times it did. I felt probably wrongly that I had taken on the lions share of the work while their contributions although seriously generous hadn't held a candle to my own efforts...I blame these sort of feelings on my mother (why not? there is no Internet in her final resting place).

Anyway, we're baaaaaaack! Not all of us, but most of us and although I still do most of the work and make most of the decisions, this is by choice and a feeling of entitlement I suppose for having started this circus act to begin with. Either way they that is to say my two editors let me lead but are always there to help pick up the slack should I need them and for that I will always be grateful.

As for our first and I hope one of many the "Kota Poetry Award" for 2011 submissions are being accepted beginning on April 15th, ending on August 31, 2011 (the anniversary of the day she drowned), there is always a method to my madness no matter how mad I may become!

Introduction...

'yes, goldfish..' Clever huh? Welcome to the Official Goldfish Press Blogsite. This being our (mine actually) first post would be a great time to explain how I came up with the name for our publishing house back in 2009 and also the reason why we even formed one to begin with. First the name came from a Truman Capote ("In Cold Blood", "Breakfast at Tiffany's, and "Other Voices, Other Rooms ") quote “There were hints of sunrise on the rim of the sky, yet it was still dark, and the traces of morning color were like goldfish swimming in ink.” I love this quote but then there are many other Capote quotes that I adore, I toyed with different names  before I settled on this one and decided to name our publishing house "Goldfish Press." In hindsight there were other names that might have been even better - I had considered at the time;

"The wind is us-- it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields." - (Gathering Wind Publications)

 "Lively, too. Talky as a jaybird. With something smart to say on every subject: better than the radio."- (Jaybird Publishing)

"Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act." (Third Act Publishing)

“You know the days when you get the mean reds? - (Mean Red Publishing)

Ack! Those were just a few that I remember -AND- (again in hindsight) some days "Goldfish Press" does seem a bit bland not to mention it can be limiting when it comes to establishing a theme for a website or in this case a blog! Who wants to see images of effing goldfish all over the place? LOL...Until I decided to resist that very inclination. Currently you may find a few "Goldfish" references scattered here and there on our website but you will NOT find them splattered all over the place. (One thing - I do however bore very easily and have been known to change the entire site theme three times in a given month! It makes me laugh at the thought that repeat visitors may be thinking to themselves, WTF?!)

Anyway, that's how the name was created and there were two distinct reasons why I started a publishing house to begin with; One- I had been active on a few writing sites (I'll kiss your butt if you'll kiss mine, but that's another post altogether) and gotten to know several writers whose work was spectacular but who were not having much success when it came to submitting work to publishers. I felt these voices needed to be heard. Second- I wanted to do a fundraiser for 'Heifer International' so I recruited some of those online writer friends and we put out a request for submissions in order to publish a poetry anthology to donate the funds raised. The response was overwhelming and eventually we had to create two volumes of poetry entitled; The World According to Goldfish, Vol I & II. The poems of eighty contributors from all over the world were featured and both volumes sold out! We donated two cows to Heifer International and I personally could not have been more ecstatic! (Though it was a ton of work wading through an avalanche of submissions in order to select the very best, learning about getting a publishers SAN number and ISBN's then finding and purchasing (not to mention figuring out how to use) the software to create our own covers, (hell finding original artwork that didn't cost a fortune for the covers was a feat all by its self!)

That's all for now, future posts will be confined to the 'perils' of running a small, very small publishing house. There will be posts about handling submissions, the good, bad and the ugly as well as the art of creating covers, the ins-and-outs of promotions, getting reviews etc. Stay tuned, or not...