Jul 19, 2022Member-onlyThe Small Press Publishing Handbook, Part 2 — FoundationsWelcome back to this continuing series aimed at those looking to start, and successfully run, a small publishing house. In part one, I defined the term small press publishing, offered some thoughts on why it may be a worthwhile pursuit, and explained my background/why I was writing this series. …Publishing8 min readPublishing8 min read
Jul 18, 2022The Small Press Publishing Handbook, Part 1 — IntroductionHi folks. I’m back, with a new series of insights, ideas, best practices, “how-tos” and business plans, all intended to help with the seemingly-impossible task of successfully running a small publishing house in this crazy decade. For starters, let’s look at the “big picture” and then zoom back in. What is small press publishing? For…Publishing5 min readPublishing5 min read
May 28, 2018Small Press Publishing: A Model Workflow for 2018or, ‘what Jamie thinks you should do, and in what order, to make books happen in this crazy modern world’ Those familiar with my output on the subject of small press publishing will be bracing themselves for a lot of financial talk in this article, at least one graph, and…Writing7 min readWriting7 min read
Jan 10, 2018Member-onlyOne-Page, One-Person: The Follow-upLast week I posted ‘A One-Page Business Plan for a One-Person Publishing Company’, and since then there’s been the usual deluge of comments, queries and requests in my inbox. Rather than answering everyone individually, I thought I’d collate all the extra information into a new post — so here we…Writing6 min readWriting6 min read
Jan 2, 2018A One-Page Business Plan for a One-Person Publishing CompanyOr, how you can make £24k a year from small press publishing, ethically and sensibly, with minimal headaches and a 20-hour working week. No, really. Though it’s been a few years since I ran Valley Press entirely on my own, for some reason I find myself coming back to the…Business5 min readBusiness5 min read
Oct 5, 2017Small Press Publishing: How to Price, How to DiscountIndie publishing has always delivered its fair share of horror stories; sadly, most of them involve booksellers and percentage points, rather than spooky clowns, sexy werewolves and so on. …Publishing5 min readPublishing5 min read
Jul 11, 2017The Fifteen-Person Publishing HouseIn this sequel to the now-legendary series ‘Small Press Publishing for Profit’, Valley Press founder Jamie McGarry shares his answer to a rarely-asked question: if your publishing house had fifteen full-time staff, what would they all do? Last year, when I wrote ‘Small Press Publishing for Profit’ (see parts 1…Publishing7 min readPublishing7 min read
Sep 15, 2016A Time Management Plan for the Self-EmployedThe ideas in this post, written in September 2016, served me well for a couple of years, and got me to the point of being able to take on some permanent staff and turn my business into a Limited Company. I hope you find them useful. I’ve heard the following…Productivity4 min readProductivity4 min read
Aug 4, 2016Small Press, Big Data — your questionsA follow-up to this recent post, which examined the performance of thirty-one small press publications, looking at units sold vs. profit for each. Below, I answer some questions that have arisen since the original article. Can I ask where the *other* genres, besides single-author poetry collections, appeared on your graph? …Publishing4 min readPublishing4 min read
Aug 1, 2016Small Press, Big Data — or, ‘Bookonomics’A post in which Valley Press founder Jamie McGarry attempts to apply some of the thinking behind ‘big data’ — and data analysis in general — to the world of small-press publishing, using only four charts (we promise). Mention ‘big data’ to a high-flying publishing CEO and they will rub…Business8 min readBusiness8 min read
