As a small business owner, it’s often a dance of two steps forward and one step back, coupled with the occasional misstep.
So, from time to time, when editing manuscripts and coordinating the bits of the book-making process and developing marketing plans that sometimes derail before implemented, you have to take inventory, clean your desk, and organize your paperwork.
Parisian Phoenix recently survived its one-year anniversary and has sold books in multiple countries in North America and Europe. That is exciting. We’ve received submissions from around the world, and hope to bring more of those to light soon.
All of our proceeds have been reinvested into the business or used to buy cat litter ($1 from the sale of every print copy of Manipulations has been pledged to Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab).
Yesterday, I camped at a local Panera and finished the edits on Larry Sceurman’s The Death of Big Butch. I had received copyedits on the manuscript in preparation of sending it to Art Director Gayle Hendricks for book design. Both Gayle and our photographer Joan Zachary stopped by, and Larry even gave me a call. We’re definitely on the same page, even if the final word count on the draft is 23,666 I consider this all good.
We print and distribute our books through IngramSpark, and they have updated their report system to provide the type of information about book sales available through just about every other avenue. Kudos for the update!
Now that Big Butch has transferred into the design department, Joan and I will work out some scheduling for the cover shoot at Steve’s Café in Phillipsburg, whose owner, Maryann Ignatz, provided an essay for our anthology, Not an Able-Bodied White Man with Money. Click here to order from Bookshop.org.
Today I hope to read, the kind for fun. I recently finished J.F. Penn’s Day of The Vikings and you can find my review on Goodreads. J.F. Penn is Joanna Penn of the “The Creative Penn Podcast for Writers,” which is one of the podcasts which appears frequently on Parisian Phoenix’s curated lists of podcasts for writers of all kinds. Find them on Spotify, under user Angel R. Ackerman (profile photo with a cat, of course).
Joanna uses this book as a reader magnet for her mailing list, using Book Funnel to distribute. Parisian Phoenix might have a special reader magnet from the Fashion and Fiends series. If you’re familiar with the series, you may remember the cat, Zut. The new story features the cat’s perspective on the goings-on.
Joan had lent us her copy of The Rebel Bookseller by Andy Laties, who spearheads the Easton Book Festival. A few pages in, I knew I had to purchase my own copy, so I may put that book on hold and return to Leather and Lace by Magen Cubed. As a publisher, I invest in other small presses and independent authors and participate as a reviewer on Goodreads and I hope, someday, others might afford the same courtesy and support to Parisian Phoenix.
Authors and publishers know the book industry can be a daunting place, but I also have seen too many entities in the business who don’t read, and if we don’t read and support each other, how can we expect others to?
Parisian Phoenix Publishing 