AMA: Why launch an indie press?

[duckprintspress]

https://www.tiktok.com/@duckprintspress/video/7619369329506684190?_r=1&_t=ZP-94qnI54ltjq

(video ID: a white person with short reddish hair and gold-rimmed glasses speaks while sitting in front of a bookcase. /end ID)

Transcript: Question today is – why did you (me) get into doing this specifically? Which is to say, running an indie press focused on publishing the original work of fanfiction authors?

So, when I started doing my own original fiction writing and publishing, I had to learn a huge number of skills to self publish. And it seemed really wasteful and counterproductive to learn all of those skills only for myself and to note share. It’s like every single self-published author has to reinvent the wheel in a lot of ways and that seemed really silly to me.

And the same time, I was getting into writing fanfiction as a sort of tension release and I was meeting all these really awesome, amazing people who, for various reasons, wanted to publish their original fiction, but found that the barriers to doing so were too high. Either they weren’t enough of a jack-of-all-trades to learn the skills, or didn’t want to learn the skills involved in self publishing, or they didn’t want to market, often because of privacy concerns. You know, there’s the idea that, you know, you have to be your own marketing department to publish a book. Well, there’s a lot of reasons people can’t do that, quite aside from not wanting to do it. There are reasons they can’t do it, especially when we’re talking about queer authors and queer fiction.

A lot of people have challenges that make it difficult to stick with a specific schedule and meet deadlines – including me, I have a lot of those challenges. Such as physical disabilities (which I don’t have, but many of the authors I work with do – and artists). Mental disabilities, mental neurodivergence, mental illnesses, like, for me, I have depression. And of course, also, life commitments. Many people are caring for elderly family members, or caring for disabled family members, or caring for children, or doing multiple of those. I know I have two children, and I also – my father also lives with us. So, there’s – you know, the more complicated someone’s life is, it harder it can be to go in a traditional publishing, but that doesn’t mean that our life dreams of publishing original work have gone away. And so I wanted to make this because I’ve met all these amazing, really skilled people, and I wanted to help us all accomplish our dreams. Including my own, which has also always been to be a published author. And, you know – we’re – we’re doing it, and that’s really really exciting.

So if you have any questions for the owner of an indie press, I own Duck Prints Press, queer fiction, queer creators. Everybody was originally a fan creator. Feel free to hit me up with questions! Bye.