Screenshot of forthcoming Kickstarter:

In a few hours, Ghostwoods Books will launch a Kickstarter to fund our 2014/2015 list.

Since we're all friends here, can I tell you about my vision for this project?

Secretly, or maybe not so secretly, Tim has been letting me do most of the running of Ghostwoods. I don't want to do it all on my own. I need his experience. But I'm learning very quickly and trying to move ahead, to discover new ways of doing things.

I want us to make a great small publishing house that supports the writers it publishes in various ways, including paying them fairly, of course. Protecting their rights to their own work as much as possible. I'd like us to provide all the benefits of any good publisher, like helping our writers network with other writers, with editors, with other publishers, with agents. Also many writers who come to us don't have much experience in publishing. So they don't know basic nuts and bolts stuff. This stops them from looking professional when they put themselves and their work out there to bigger publishers and agents. One of our hopes is that we can provide information and training to help writers reach their potential, something a big publisher just doesn't have time to do.

I also want to figure out things like emergency loans or even grants to writers in crisis eventually. I'm sure we'll come up with some other ideas as we go.


Screenshot:

We do care about being good. I personally actually love this work. I love helping other writers transform their drafts into publishable quality work. I love the collaboration. I put myself on the line with every book.

We can dedicate ourselves to this, but we still need money to get it up to its potential. Large and medium publishers have deep back lists that continue to make money for them. We need to build up to that. We have a great team and we're ready to move forward.

Feels like jumping into the deep end of the pool. Exciting but scary.

I've been feeling lately like I've ignored my online friends, and in fact, my IRL friends, to a level where I need to explain myself. I don't know if everyone feels this way when they get busy, but I struggle with my imagination. Perhaps everyone I know thinks I'm ignoring them now. Maybe they think I fancy myself some sort of ... I don't know. Success?

The truth is, I'm swamped. Utterly swamped. Imagine me in a flooded room with just enough air at the top, up by the ceiling, to breathe. But to get it, I have to keep swimming. I don't know if you've noticed, but this swimming for air thing makes it kind of hard to Tweet. Come in with me. Let me show you.

So here's how it is. (Keep paddling. I'll talk.) My partner, Tim Dedopulos started a small press almost five years ago. In the past couple of years, I've been working with him on it. After some meetings and discussions with a business person, we decided to do what we had to to make it grow. I took on, voluntarily, the role of project manager. After a steep learning curve, which has since leveled just a bit, I've been working my behind off to do everything that was assigned to me (by me) and to oversee the entirety of several book projects.

This sounded like no big deal when I first started it. Nothing that my whole life working for other people, my two graduate degrees in writing, and several years of editing other people's work hadn't prepared me for. But it turns out that this is the hardest job I've ever had. It's also insanely rewarding. I get to help people make their books better. I get to help them get the books out into the world. I get to discover (in a Christoper Columbus like way) new books fresh off the mental presses of wonderfully creative people.

I also get to try to figure out (with the help of a small collection of other people) who will read them, who will like them, where and when to showcase them, what to say about them, what work they need, what their covers should look like, what will make their authors happy.

Luckily I'm working with a great team of people. There's no way I could do all this without them. But even so, I'm working ten or sometimes fourteen hours a day, six or seven days a week.  I wake up tired and go to bed barely able to move. This is obviously not sustainable long term, for me personally. And it's not meant to be.

Once this next set of book is birthed, we hope to hire more staff. But now is the critical time.

Sometimes I tell myself I'm forgetting to enjoy my life. But I love this work, and I feel this is what's required of me now in order to make this project a success for everyone involved. This is what I have to give right now. A lot is riding on this, and I'm determined to help it flourish.

So if you think I forgot you, please stop right now. I think about you, probably, every day. But someday you're all going to be proud of me. And right now, I'm having the weirdest kind of non-monetary success I can imagine. I'm learning to how to work hard and smart.

Love, Salome