HOPPING INTO SPARTANBURG

            Writing for publication is a tough business with major hurdles, especially in the genre fiction market.  It takes months, and sometimes years, to get a good piece of fiction in front of an editor.  The problem lies in the risk factor.  Discovering what the general public likes to read, finding the writer with the right words (pun intended), and putting those words in an acceptable format is a daunting task.

Funds are rarely unlimited, thus editors have to be picky.  Their job is to find the best stories for their particular publication, so money is not wasted.  Thus, the slush pile and File 13 have become legendary in the industry.  Manuscripts tend to end up in one or the other more often than not.  It is a matter of numbers—too many submissions and not enough space.  Rather than allowing that to happen, five local authors have taken matters into their own hands.

            Gail McAbee, Jim Johnson, Diane and Steve Thompson, and I, have formed Mystic Toad Press, LLC, Spartanburg’s new local genre fiction publisher.  In Gail’s words, “We’ve got the biggest little publishing house in Pacolet, S.C.”  We work nights and weekends self-publishing and self-promoting our work, while doing the day job.  Well, in Steve’s case, that’s backwards – he works nights and writes during the day.  Only Gail amongst us is able to devote her time fully to writing and publishing; therefore, she is our leader and contact person (864-948-1263).

            Since we first met last November, we’ve already produced from scratch two collaborative books, The Thing in the Tub, children’s poetry with some neat artwork, Port Nowhere, tales from the edge of the galaxy, and two individual works.  You will find all of them at Pic-A-Book, Hillcrest Specialty Row, and The Tangled Web across from Westgate Mall.  These books are officially listed with ISBN codes in Books in Print, Booksurge.com, and Independent Publisher’s Bookstore.

            MTP has signed books at over a dozen events, including the Heroes Convention in Charlotte, N.C., June 11^th – 13^th.  Several thousand people browsed the floor to be wowed by our own character actresses Kristy (U’rika) Meehan and Lydia (Sha’kika) Anthony, dressed as purple Halsan females from the Rock (Port Nowhere).  These young ladies handed out literature and posed for hundreds of photographs!  Their efforts drew crowds to our booth.

            Steve and Diane are the marketing agents for MTP.  As a team, they make contacts all across the country to book stores large and small.  Our books can now be found in California and London, although you might have to search real hard.  The point is, it takes a lot of time and effort to spread the word, but eventually we will have an established distributorship.

            There is an old adage that says, “The cover sells the book.”  Fortunately, Jim is not just a writer, but a quality artist too.  His work is eye-catching.  Don’t take my word for it – get one of our books and see for yourself (shameless plug.)  Unfortunately, we have taxed him heavily for his art, so now he only wants to write.

            For my part, I act as the smiling face, the sales specialist, the huckster extraordinaire.  I work with local folks to promote our books, send out press releases when we have a debut, and serve as webmaster for www.mystictoadpress.com.  Science fiction is my favorite genre. 

            While the book industry is teeming with wannabees, the biggest hurdle they all must conquer is self-promotion.  It is a tough job, but with continual lip service, books will sell.  An author waiting on a big publishing house to snap up his or her best seller will just grow older.  Selling books without a major publisher to do the actual promotion requires unconventional methods, however.  A few of our ideas that have worked thus far are providing our books to local fundraising events, visiting classrooms to talk about writing, setting up television, radio and newspaper interviews (we are extremely grateful to this publication), running booths at conventions, autographing books in local stores and libraries, hosting seminars for writers, running a booth at Spring Fling, sending correspondence to hundreds of independent booksellers across the nation, and the list goes on.

For “the Toadsters”– we’ve jumped right in and the water’s fine.  Before 2005, we’ll have more books to offer.  These will include sequels called The Thing in the Pool (Nov. 2005), a mixture of children’s poetry and short stories, and Port Nowhere II:  Still Rocking (Dec. 2005,) a shared-world science fiction novel.  In addition, each of us has our own personal work coming out too.  Soon, we hope to open MTP to outside submissions as well (check the website periodically to find out when.)

Self-promotion and self-publishing are the new waves for authors to catch if they want to surf into the reader’s lap before they die.  Toads are built for this kind of wet work, so we’ll be hopping into a bookstore near you, if we aren’t there already!