Good day. I’m Angelia Sparrow, author, trucker, mom, Underlord, chief cook and bottle washer and now publisher.
An Underlord is one of the members of the Literary Underworld (http://www.literaryunderworld.com ), an author consortium. Our fearless leader has a sense of humor.
Why, may you ask, did I choose to step into the dynamic world of small press publishing? With thousands of small presses out there, what can Inkstained Succubus (http://www.inkstainedsuccubus.com ) offer that others can’t?
My short answer is “It seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, four hours of sleep a night is all the law REQUIRES me to have, right? I mean, it’s not like I don’t already run a household, work a 60 hour week, and write for four publishers.”
The second is tougher. Inkstained Succubus started out as Succubus Productions, my fannish vidding name, which expanded to encompass my family when everyone started vidding. Then I decided to put some out-of-contract short stories out as a collection. And INTO DARK WATERS led to a second, HOWL AT THE MISTLETOE, and a third collection, ADVENTURESSES. (ADVENTURESSES is unique in that half the stories are original for the collection)
Now that NIKOLAI and NIKO-CHAN have reverted to me, I have a print edition of NIKOLAI out and am doing massive content edits to NIKO-CHAN. Then a friend sent me his manuscript. I read it, liked it and offered him a contract.
Now, I have a near stranger who has sent me hers, and I’m about to offer her a contract. We have a cookbook, a game source book and an audio book under contract as well for release next year.
The old joke goes “The best way to make a small fortune in publishing is to start with a large one.” I’m doing my best to keep front-end costs low. The authors, voice-actors and editors get paid back-end money, aka royalties. Only the artists get paid up front.
My focus for the press is building a diverse base of books, fiction, non-fiction across many genres. My five year goal is to quit touring under my own name and tour on the press’ dime, under its name, and pay a minion. We’ll read almost anything, but we are picky about what we contract.
Eight years of experience in the e-book and small press has given me a feel for the workflow of a manuscript and how to market. By putting books out as both e-book and print-on-demand paperback, we capture both market segments.
And our paperbacks can be found at the Literary Underworld. Without this group, I would still be hiding in my room, typing and doing one local convention a year. Elizabeth encouraged me to go to more, to get my name and face out a bit.
Worked too well. This year, I overlapped with the Underworld at one convention. I’ll do six before the end of the year. Then again, I am prolific and tend to take up more than my fair share of the book racks. If all of us wrote 10 novels in 8 years, Elizabeth would need a much bigger car.
But as it stands, I have three new novels coming out before the next time I’ll see the Underworld. HARD REBOOT comes out Sept 30. It’s a tale of one man’s love and determination to have his wife back from the powerful men who have taken her mind away from her. SPELLBOUND DESIRE will be out October 26, a hard-drinking PI in an urban fantasy Memphis falls for a combat mage on one last mission. And BARBAROSSA’S BITCH comes out in January, a post-apocalyptic tale of biker gangs rebuilding the world.
These will all be available through my website: http://www.brooksandsparrow.com and through the Literary Underworld http://www.literaryunderworld.com
As a special bonus to the readers, the Underworld is offering a 15% coupon code LUBLOGTOUR good until Oct 15.
HARD REBOOT (available Sept 30)
SPELLBOUND DESIRE (available Oct 26)
