Posts Tagged ‘FlatmanCrooked’

The crack team of publishers at Sacramento-based Flatmancrooked pushed wry and moving new works like James Kaelan’s zero-emission book We’re Getting On. Taking a page from Kickstarter’s playbook, emerging authors were sponsored by their audiences before publication through the “LAUNCH” model. In a world of stale, behemoth publishing houses, Flatmancrooked’s innovative approach offered a glimmer of evolutionary hope. Then, they too closed. Is there really no future at all for indie publishing houses?

Turns out they took what worked (the LAUNCH concept), narrowed their focus (no more full-length novels or poetry), and started a new outfit called Nouvella. From their website:

Nouvella is an independent publisher dedicated to novellas by emerging authors. Established in 2011 after the closure of Flatmancrooked, Nouvella utilizes the LAUNCH program, wherein the reading community can invest in the career of an emerging author by purchasing a share in the author during a designated one-week period. For every share purchased, the patron will receive a limited edition, hand-signed copy of the novella and a letter from the author.

When in doubt, straighten things out, and specialize.

(as told by Seth Godin)

I just listened to an astute speech from a proven guru delivered to a convention of indie book publishers.  You can hear the whole recording here.  It’s a bit long, so I’ve transcribed my favorite points:

Godin breaks the traditional publishing business model into five components: Curation, Venture Capital investment, Production, Distribution, and Promotion.

He says four of five of those components are now dead.  Curation is the only role for publishers in the years to come.  So what does that really mean?

According to Godin, it means four things:

(1)  Curate: collect relevant content.

(2)  Lead: earn the right to talk to your audience by delivering honest, relevant information, then tell your followers what content (movie/book/blog etc.) is worth their time.

(3)  Connect:  Serve as a hub for like-minded individuals to meet and connect.

(4)  Create a movement:  Rally your audience.

We can already see this happening.  TwelvePublishers puts out a book a month, and “seeks to establish communities of conversation surrounding our books.”  FlatmanCrooked is “deeply dedicated to the cultivation of our authors’ careers,” and creates cult followings around books through limited releases, imaginative book tours, and contests.  Soft Skull Press has been called “The literary version of a punk rock label.”

These are just three examples of small presses embracing the new world of publishing.  They curate, connect fans, and create a movement about their releases.

I already wrote a bit about the book in an earlier post.  Author James Kaelon and videographer Miles Kittredge are mid-tour, by bicycle, promoting Kaelon’s “We’re Getting On.” They just left San Francisco this morning and are heading north.  Abandonment of technology is a central theme of Kaelon’s stories, and now he and Kittredge are living the dream.  The tour and the book are 100% carbon neutral.

The novel has garnered exceptional reviews and landed Kaelon on the cover of Poets & Writers.  I got to see Kaelon read at Green Apple Books on Friday and was not disappointed.  If you have the opportunity to see these guys somewhere along their journey, seize it!

I just read James Kaelon’s new novella, “We’re Getting On.”  The story is remarkable and Evan Karp wrote a great essay about it, but I want to consider the book itself, as an object.

Wrapped in a 100% recycled cover, which actually sprouts into birch trees when planted (detailed instructions are on the back cover), the book is the result of FlatmanCrooked’s Zero Emission Book Project.

With alternatives to print like the Kindle, the iPad, and now even Nintendo DS, and free online publishing gaining serious traction, we’re on the brink of an age when a physical, paper book might have to justify its own printing.

I kept feeling the texture of the pulpy cover, admiring the embedded seeds, and thinking about the book decomposing and then flourishing as a tree, all while reading Kaelon’s tale of human devolution and nihilism.  The book as an object added to my experience of the story.  This is a high achievement, and one that makes this book-as-object more than just a medium for the printed word.