This essay about life on the road is provided by Jaret Ferratusco. Jaret is the founder of Patient, Folded Hands Publishing, and author of the novellas I Grew Up In Amaltherey Hill and Please Don’t Leave Me. Jaret was recently featured on W + K Entertainment’s Story Time program, where he read from one of his short stories. Upcoming releases include a revised edition of Please Don’t Leave Me for rerelease through Patient, Folded Hands, and a new short-story collection titled To Make This Easier, which focuses on very lonely instances of personal horror and hopelessness in the summits of love and loss.
In early 2009 the groundwork was laid for a new Portland publishing company called Patient, Folded Hands. I started this venture in an attic, basically while drinking large amounts of energy drinks (the kind with high alcohol content), quietly getting myself prepared and excited about starting something all my own, with the only rules I would have to follow being those of finance. It took a bit of time to get the first publication off the floor, and that work is a story called I Grew Up In Amaltherey Hill, now available through my website. Although this book is the first breath for P, FH as a company, it was my second published book as an author, so I considered that I had a marginally accurate view of how it would probably go, moneywise. Which meant I’d better save up, because it takes much more money to do it than what you’re apt to make doing it.
What I figured is that I would probably (hopefully) end up getting out a good amount of books at first, then I could reasonably expect sales to slow a month or so after the release after initial promotions had been done. That was pretty accurate. I wasn’t able to save any of that money from the first month of sales for building the company up any little higher, because all of everything I made that first month went to paying off my investor.
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Earlier this month while we were all distracted by Holiday sales and flashing lights, Portland publisher Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts started a blog. You should go check it out, and then add it to your reader. Oh, and they are also on Twitter and Facebook too.
This recap is authored by contributor Karen Munro. The Head of the UO Portland Library and a recipient of an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, Karen discusses books, reading, and writing on her wonderful blog Munrovian.
If you missed Sunday’s inaugural Publication Fair at the Ace Cleaners, I’m sorry to say I can’t really recap it for you. Put me in a room with that much printed matter and I’m just agog. But here are a few things worth checking out while you mark your calendar for next year’s fair…
- Add Tiger Food Press’s blog to your RSS reader, and delight in their beautiful letterpress work. I’m a big fan of their small-dog cards, as well as the broadside of what looks like a ‘67 Impala poised to cruise into the sunset, alongside this text: “‘She takes it slow,’ she purred to the skinny gas station attendant. She saw his knees buckle just a little.” Bitchin’.
- Octopus Books (also the home of Octopus Magazine) creates gorgeous poetry books and chapbooks. You can subscribe to everything they produce in a year…intelligent, ink-oriented, and arranged cleverly around ideas of eight. You might also want to submit your full-length poetry MS to them next April.
- You probably already know about Plazm Magazine, but did you know they’re the geniuses behind the New Oregon Interview Series? I didn’t. But I’m definitely heading to their next panel sessions. On January 27 they’ll be talking fashion, and the February bill lists Randy Gragg, Brad Cloepfil, and Mayor Sam Adams for a conversation about urban planning. Yowza.
- If you’re in more of a stay-at-home mood, you may be intrigued by artist Zach Rose’s home lending library, where you can borrow some of his favorite books over email and the post. Zach’s brother Josh just started library school, and this is a collaborative venture incorporating the best of the traditional lending library and the wide-open plains of the Internet.
- Container Corps, which just opened a new storefront on Killingsworth at Montana, has beautiful, sturdy handcrafted xylobooks for sale. What’s a xylobook? It’s “durable information storage,” according to their website. And it’s good-lookin’.
- And of course, Matthew Stadler and Patricia No’s Publication Studio offered a wide array of manila-bound books printed on Stadler’s print-on-demand machine. Great books by Sarah Meadows, Matt Briggs, Stacey Levine, and a slew of others. The Publication Studio blog also has great pictures of the fair, where you can actually see the books leaving the shelves.
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I received a note in my inbox the other day from Melody Stromquist of Small Business Affinity asking if I could help find a Portland based editor for a client of hers. Here are the details and contact information for anyone interested:
Looking for local editor in Portland Metro area. New self publishing house has novel and trilogy that needs editor support. Urban culture/gangsta lifestyle/anti-society topics and tone. Must be able to balance traditional writing with Ebonics (dialogue in book). If you are the right match, this could be a very regular job. Most books out of this house will be in this subject frame. Please contact business consultant, Melody Stromquist, for more information and a sample of the novel. melody@smallbizaffinity.com, 503-702-5541.
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As reported in The Oregonian, “coffee table book” publisher Graphic Arts Center Publishing Co. filed for liquidation in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Portland this past Friday:
“They’re having a hard time like everyone else,” said Michael Powell, owner of Powells Books, who sat on Graphic Arts’ board until early this year. “They did every cost cutting thing they could do.”
Powell blamed its demise on declining book sales, the difficult economy and fewer independent bookstores, which was “the bread and butter for them.” The company reported $10.3 million in revenues in 2008 but grossed only $5.1 million through the first eight months of 2009, according to the filing.
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Yesterday on Neighborhood Notes, Liz Hummer posted a fantastic piece (great pics included!) about the newly opened Publication Studio. Here is a small taste:
But since September, Matthew Stadler and Patricia No have been bringing the corner to life every morning, rolling the presses of their industry-changing venture, Publication Studio, from dawn to midday. Stadler likens the business to a neighborhood bakery, opening at six a.m. to create their wares and having them ready to sell by later that morning. But, in this case, they’re printing and binding books, not baking scones.
Sometimes it’s an assembly line, pumping out copies of books that have already been ordered online. Other days may be spent trying to figure out just one tough bind on a slim edition. Many times, friends and colleagues are sharing the space, discussing vague ideas or concrete plans for a book they’d like to create.
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Several presses have established themselves in Portland, with a wide variety of genres represented by each. The newest on the block is Patient, Folded Hands, a small press started by Jaret Ferratusco the “quiet little proprietor of Corpse On Pumpkin Photography.” Jaret plans to release dark fiction that gets at the “underbelly of civilization,” stories that tell the truth in a way most publishers aren’t willing to. In doing so he hopes that Patient, Folded Hands will cultivate a readership that gravitates towards these stories, and appreciates that through this press they have a chance to be told. My guess is that he will be successful in these efforts, and I’m sure after seeing the determination and passion offered in the words below, you will feel the same.
1) For those of us who are uninitiated but nonetheless interested, what’s it take to get a press up an running?
So far as I can tell (I’m new at this, and new responsibilities are still unfolding), one simple thing and two not so simple things to get it started. Desire is the simple one, I suppose, if you can describe it so effortlessly. Desire to do it and wanting to make it work. The bigger ones are money and time, with more emphasis obviously on acquiring the financing but no little amount of time within which to pour yourself into. I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time, but money was always the biggest obstacle telling me no; this has definitely involved borrowing money and so I still haven’t beaten that. Even before I got somebody to help me out with it, the first step (for me), was finding a printer. I couldn’t have a company unless I could print a lot of books. So once I found one with prices I could afford and a bulk plan that made sense, that’s when I decided to do it, and looked into what it takes to get that book from the printer to the reader. And the internet is so far my best friend in this. Having websites, promoting, networking, gaining interest, making the books easily available through the web. Getting the book into stores will have to be something I’ll experience along the way. I’m hoping that sooner or later I can say exactly what it takes to do that part. I think maybe it might involve standing outside of a bookstore and asking repeatedly every couple of minutes with almost no change in vocal inflection until it becomes a matter of putting the books into their inventory just so I’ll leave. Only I think that might start Patient, Folded Hands off on the wrong foot.
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This post is authored by contributor Nicole Krueger. You can keep track of what Nicole is up to on her wonderful blog Books and Bards.
DISCLAIMER: Nicole Krueger is professionally affiliated with Inkwater Press.
Imagine a plateful of hamburgers and hot dogs springing to life, dancing and cavorting to the tunes of a live “oom-pa-pa” band.
The creators of a new Brooklyn arts organization did.
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Microcosm Publishing has begun releasing new “Superpacks of zines and books and things for your reading pleasure” designed to give readers “a great sampling of the many different subjects and topics that [they] carry.”
Four Superpacks have been released so far, three of which are dedicated to Nate Powell’s work, in honor of his recent Eisner Award. A fourth entitled “Make Something, Do Something,” provides a “great sampling of the many DIY zines and books out there.” This sampling consists of:
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Put Your Head In My Lap, a new collection of stories from Claudia Smith is now available for pre-order on the Future Tense website. Featuring cover art from local artist Hayley Barker, Put Your Head In My Lap is described as “a new collection full of emotionally taut and sweetly melancholic stories that evoke the pain of lost love and broken families.” The book will be shipped in mid-September.
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Underland Press‘ new release from Jeff Vandermeer entitled Finch is also available for pre-order. Finch is available in three separate editions. The first being the standard trade paperback, and the other two are limited editions that come stocked with extras.
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The Summer 2009 Issue of the Orlo publication Bear Deluxe is out and ready for your enjoyment. You can find them in the Orlo “art boxes” placed in and around the Alphabet and Pearl districts (I picked up a copy at the Northwest Library). This issue features an interview with Livability author Jon Raymond. Here is a little taste:
CB In the last issue [of Plazm] in 2007, the editors had an introduction about Collective Memory. So in reading your short stories and your novel I see some impulse on your part to contribute to the collective memory, not just the 1820s or the wagon train novel but the setting for Livability and the modern part of The Half-Life have all these references to, I don’t know, is it the Reagan administration? I could see you writing this stuff in 2002 and saying, well, things are bad now but, hey man, 1985 was just one year after 1984, and it wasn’t a good year.
JR Well, right. I think you’re uncovering some sort of secret autobiography in there. My family moved to Oregon in 1979, and interestingly enough, we moved up here because my dad got a job with a solar energy company that then immediately ceased to exist when Reagan come into office. It depended on Carter-era funds, and so then we moved up here.
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Underland Press‘ new wovel “Exit Vector” by Simon Drax is now in it’s fourth installment, and the direction installment five takes will be dictated by you the reader. Just in case you have no idea what a “wovel” is, here is the description from the Underland Press website:
A WOVEL is a web novel
It is the first of its kind. The author writes it. The readers vote on it. Here’s how it works:
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