With CCLaP's fourth anniversary rapidly approaching the center is receiving all sorts of well-deserved attention and adulation. In general, we couldn't be more excited about this, but we are especially excited because so much of the attention is coming from venues we quite dig, the first of which is an interview recently posted on the Karen the Small Press Librarian blog run by TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Karen Lillis. Now, how about some excerpt? Word.
How has the reception been for the e-books you’ve published so far? I’m not trying to single out your authors, but more to ask how you reached out and found an audience, and what you learned about how to find your readers in between Book #1 and Book #4.
When I talk to my friends who run more traditional basement presses about this subject, it looks pretty certain that in general terms, CCLaP is generating the same amount of paying customers from the ebooks as they are from their paper books, which as most people know is nothing to sneeze at but no great shakes either. The nice thing, though, is that since the ebooks are released under a "pay what you want" scheme, it means that our paying customers only make up around 25 percent of the book's total readership; and so if you're talking just about how many eyeballs the center's books are getting in front of, you can think of it in general terms of about three to four times the amount of a typical basement press. The biggest lesson I've learned so far about gathering an audience is that this stuff really does fall along traditional age lines to a great extent; so that is, whenever I publish a middle-aged author with a middle-aged audience, downloads of the electronic version are always smaller than a title by a twentysomething with a college-aged audience, even when that book will often generate the same amount of press and interest away from the internet. The adoption of ebooks is truly a generational issue, I'm slowly learning.
As previously noted here, the Karen Lillis asked us for three holiday small press recommendations and asked that we limit these books to releases from the last two years. We stuck to releases from the last two years, but we did not stick to just three, we should have, and could have, but we did not and are happy to report that we were not admonished for doing so, which is always nice.
For a more detailed commentary on our part please do hit the Karen the Small Press Librarian post containing our recommendations, but for those of you who just cannot wait, here's our list, with apologies to many, many others.
(1) Big World - Mary Miller
(2) Hush Up and Listen Stinky Pooh Butt - Ken Sparling
(3) Grease Stains, Wisdom, and Maternal Wisdom - Mel Bosworth
Also, and, somewhat collectively:
(1) Stories II - Scott McClanahan
(2) The National Virginity Pledge - Barry Graham
(3) Songs of Insurgency - Spencer Dew
And finally, because this book just has not gotten enough attention:
(1) The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli - Ginetta Correli
The always awesome Karen Lillis has a way cool project going on at her blog Karen the Small Press Librarian where she is inviting indie writers to list their three favorite indie releases of the last two years. We have been working on our submission and were quite, quite geeked to see Repetition Patterns make an appearance on today's dual posting by long-time TBWCYL, Inc. favorites Ken Wohlrob and Tim Hall. Big thanks all-around some excerpt below, and look for our list soon, so, so soon.
"In many ways, Ben's writing reminds me of Mike's (Faloon) in how unforced it all is. There seems no effort behind it. And the stories are always great. This e-only collection was a nice step up for Ben. He took it to a whole different level compared to his previous work. And I always like that he writes good female characters, something too many male writers can't do very well. I also liked that CCLaP was experimenting with a different publishing model for this release and doing it as a digital- only release."
