AMA: What Do You…Do?
Mar. 27th, 2026 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
duckprintspress(Video ID: A white person with short reddish hair and gold-rimmed glasses sits before a bookcase and speaks.)
Transcription: Another question I got is, what – let me see – what does an indie publisher do? Is it, like, an editor role, where you work directly with authors, or is it more like the sales and distribution side?
So, obviously there are levels here. Some businesses are bigger than others. Duck Prints Press is owned by and operated by one person. That’s me. I’m the one person. I’m the only employee. I do get help from contractors, especially with editing and marketing. But the answer to “what do I do” is everything. I wear every hat. I am our accountant. I write our contracts – obviously after having had the initial one reviewed by a lawyer, but once that was done, it’s all pretty much been me. I run our social media accounts. I’m our lead editor, which means nothing gets published unless I have it through at least once. I handle our advertising. I run all our Kickstarter campaigns. I generally think of myself as the lead editor and project manager. So, when something needs to get pushed forward, I’m the one who does that. When something needs to get edited, I’m the one who does that.
I am working on delegating more, but it’s, you know – labor costs money. People working costs money. And we don’t have that much money because we’re still a small business. So, yeah. What does an indie publisher do? Well, at my scale, what that means is I do some of everything. Jack of all trades. In larger organizations, obviously I’m on the very smallest end of being an indie press. There may be more differentiation of roles in other presses. But, yeah. A lot of the tiniest presses are one-person operations and we do everything.
Feel free to drop me questions in the comments! Bye!
