Thursday, March 24, 2011

Growth, Expansion, and Change

As we release our third book and begin planning the fourth, Casey Shay Press is definitely expanding in new directions. The movement to ebooks and the shift in attitude toward independent publishing is helping this.

The big six publishers are in trouble, and they are well aware how authors are ready to take their futures in their own hands. We feel there will be a rush to self-publish for a while, and then authors will realize--it's hard work creating a good cover and formatting books correctly for digital devices.

At that point, many will be ready to get back to just writing. Not every sort of book is easy to e-publish, and it's no fun to spend a year writing a book only to see it sell a few copies to friends.

Small presses like mine will be there and ready for them. I have a wonderful team of copy editors and book designers, as well as photographers and artists. We love what we do.

The Mary Ballard Chapbook Series is our next new direction. We'll be publishing a chapbook each year in March. Once the winner is announced, the cover art will also be a contest. This will include cash prizes as well as hard copies and ebook versions--money flows toward the writers and artists here. Even if the rewards are not quite the six-figure-advance gambles the Big Six take, we recognize that all of us have invested time and talent in our work.

Lots of great articles on the shift of publishing from the legacy model to independents have come out in the past week. Take in a few:

The original conversation: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/03/ebooks-and-self-publishing-dialog.html
An agent's view: http://kidlitapps.com/2011/03/22/independent-publishing/
Another author's view: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=3640
A publishing consultant: http://www.idealog.com/blog/eislers-decision-is-a-key-benchmark-on-the-road-to-wherever-it-is-were-going

Monday, March 14, 2011

Kids Show Kids How to Make Balloon Animals in Japan

Japan has picked up Kids Show Kids How to Make Balloon Animals and wow! It skyrocketed to number #791 in overall ranking on Amazon Japan.