These folks at 40k Books hit me up on my Twitter account and are now following me. I’m guessing they found me through Smashwords. So I checked them out. One typo on the front page aside, what I’ve discovered looks pretty good. They publish only novelettes and novellas. With that model they have published some Hugo Award and Nebula Award winning auhors, as they specialize in speculative fiction (sans fantasy). They are an international organization.
There is an interview over at Writer’s Digest: 40k Books is An E-Publisher That Specializes in Original Short Works
I like this quote from one of 40k Books’ essays: “Ever-tougher competition for eyeballs, coupled with drastic structural changes in the publishing industry – such as the rise of ebooks and the decline of traditional bookshops – means that today’s authors must adopt an entrepreneurial attitude. They need to take a leaf from the book that’s being written in the music business, where bands are building brands without the aid of record labels and similar intermediaries.”
“Writers, regrettably, are reluctant to take this responsibility. There is a widespread perception that culture and commerce are incompatible. Marketing is still erroneously associated with Yeats’s ‘greasy till’ and Orwell’s egregious ‘swill bucket’.”
Yet I am unaware of any advantage 40k Books would have over simply going rogue (i.e. the independent route) with Smashwords, but if you’re looking to push yourself beyond the short story form and go digital, you may as well explore all your options.
Of course, if you’re completely against the digtial revolution in publishing and loathe the idea of people reading your words on some silly electronic device, then completely disregard this information. 🙂
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