The Sound of Patriarchy and other stories by L .F Roth

 

How we came to publish this one

We have published several of L F Roth’s stories in our anthologies and we know he works well with our editorial team. His stories in fact need little editing.  

The title

This is another example of where the title of the book comes from the title of one of the stories. This particular story perhaps epitomises the style of the whole collection.  

Some notes about the process

As ever, this collection went through our three stages of editing and three proof reads. One of our freelance editors worked on this.   

The cover

The five balloons are crucial to the story. Then we worked on getting the colours to blend well. Always a little tricky but every satisfying when it comes right.   

Some notes about style

L F Roth has a very distinctive style – one that we like. It tends towards the literary..   

Who we think the reader is

The reader of this book like to be invited to think. On might read each story in isolation. The stories are a little understated and to some extent leave the reader to make up their one mind about what has actually happened.       

What else

We are pleased to have this within our collection.

Review copies

It’s always great if you can buy the book and give us a review. Just click on the link to be taken to Amazon. If you would like to review and you are strapped for cash, just get in touch for a free PDF or mobi-file.       

Find your copy here.

Print-on-demand does not necessarily mean self-published

 

And what’s wrong with self-published anyway?

 

“We don’t stock self-published books”.

I was chatting to one of our authors at our celebration event in December and she told me of some difficulty she was having getting libraries interested in her book, a highly illustrated book suitable for very early readers / infant school children.

 

The librarians reaction had been “We don’t stock self-published books”.

 

Why we’re not self-publishers

We are a small press and we put our books through:

• Three stages of editing
• Two proof reads by humans
• One IA proof read  
• Professional book design
• Professional cover design
• World-wide distribution
• Registration with the legal deposit libraries
• A basic marketing plan

And we do all of the above rather well – even the machine proof-read.

 

Why we should cheer print-on-demand

The basic premise with POD is that you only print the books that are wanted – usually already sold. This offers several advantages:

·         Financial security for the publisher – you don’t pay for printing until the sot is recouped or paid in advance and you lose very little money if a title bombs.   

·         Care for the environment

·         Customers get pristine new copies

·         You can make slight alterations to the text without having to wait for the end of a print run = e.g. if a typos has got through the net despite the rigour described above.

·         Amazon KDP offer the further advantage of getting books available on every Amazon store without us having to worry about exports.

·         Ingrams waive shipping for their distributed titles and will print locally when they can.   

There are precedents

Academic and educational boos have always been printed on demand even before the technology for doing so was advanced. These types of book were not printed until they were sold.

 

Many small presses are now using this technology. It’s extremely useful and cost effective for niche titles.

 

More enlightened libraries

I’m pleased to say that my on local library hosts indie authors as well as those published by the small press.

 

And some libraries have stocked books similar to the one that was rejected above.

 

I reiterate: our books are NOT self-published. Not even those of my own that are published by one of the imprints that we manage. They still go through all of the stages mentioned above and I’m usually only involved in one of the proof-reads.   

 

Our Annual Celebration Event 3 December 2022

 

Despite all the concerns we’d had about trains being cancelled or problems with Transport for London everyone arrived on time and we spent a pleasant afternoon together. 

 

 The Theodore Bullfrog again did us proud. I just love this venue. It is very close to Charing Cross Station and also quite close to Embankment. It’s furnished in a cosy homely sort of way and the winter light creates a nice atmosphere: There are windows on two sides and really nice light fittings. Actually as well, being so close to The Strand seems so appropriate for a book event.    

We eat and drink, we sell books, we chat. We swap marketing tips and business cards. 

 

 

 

People read from their work.

 

One of the nicest aspects about all of this is putting faces to names and getting to know our authors a little bit more closely.   

 

 

And next year? We’ll be here 1 December .

And the next anthology has the theme “Gifted”. Details here.             

Fair Submissions

You are probably all familiar with the site we run about fair submissions: https://www.fairsubmissions.co.uk/ The site is fully searchable and browsable. Currently there are over 800 opportunities on there – and that is after the 30 November cull:  twenty-two opportunities ran out on 30 November.

We define “fair” as:

·         Being a reasonable price or free to enter

·         That there is the opportunity of publication with royalties or a fee, of prize money, of excellent exposure or of just great fun. Note that there are only a very few of the latter two. Most of the time it’s about earning.

We’re taking less notice of how long response time is and whether they allow simultaneous submissions.

A publisher’s perspective

I can understand why some publishers are not too keen on simultaneous submissions. It can be very annoying when I’ve taken quite a while to read several submissions to CafeLit and    scheduled one for publication only to be told by the writer that they’ve had the piece accepted elsewhere.  We reckon to reply about a CafeLit submission in under a month but sometimes we take a little bit longer and often a lot less time. In any case, we expect you to let us know if your work gets taken up by another publisher before we get back to you.  

A writer’s perspective

Many publishers say how long they will take. If I’ve not heard back from them within that period of time, I assume I’m not going to and I submit elsewhere. I feel a little miffed that some publishers are telling me I can’t submit to someone else if I’ve submitted to them. I feel it’s my work and I should be able to do what I like with it. However for the sake of my own sanity and a little out of regard for other publishers I tend to only submit to one place at once.

If they don’t say how long they’re going to take, I assume three months. This all seems to work and so far there have been no problems. 

Serial publication, inspired by Charles Dickens

 

Most of Dickens’ novels were published first of all in serial form in the magazine he edited.  Once the serial had finished, the works were republished as a book.

Naturally before the work went into the magazine it would be edited. As the episodes came out he would receive some feedback from his readership.  Before the book was published he would respond to that feedback perhaps revising chunks of the novel.     

We would like to replicate this with our Sunday Serial. This can be for a collection of short stories or flash fiction, a novel for our Feisty Women or Red Telephone imprints.  It could be for one of our non-fiction Feisty Women books. Once we’ve cleared our backlog, we’ll consider other novels.  We’re not extending this to children’s novels, though of course we have included young adult. 

If this was agreeable to you, we would:

 

Publish your work chapter by chapter or story by story each Sunday, giving it a light copy edit before publication. 

Put the whole story / collection back together and collate all reader comments

Give you two months to respond to any feedback

Re copy-edit the new version (one month)

Get two proof reads completed (two months) 

Publish the book

Take down the serial from our site

Use the book for a Saturday Sample once it is out

Go through all of our normal marketing routines   

 

Don’t forget that CafeLit site is now monetized.  Any payments for submissions or any payments made through Kofi , minus the fee for Duotrope submissions, are shared 50 /50 between us and our writers.  Your excerpt will still also qualify for being included in the appropriate year’s The Best of CafeLit book.