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@CBSSunday
Would love to talk to representatives from this museum about publishing a book about this. Just need about $84,000 up front to buy ink and paper. DMs are open!
Reasons to support us on patreon:
•helps us pay writers and artists
•makes us feel special
•takes money from Jeff Bezos
•makes Mitch Albom mad
•gets you into heaven
As big publishers consolidate and rely on celeb authors, the future of literature is indie, diy, small-scale, disjointed, messy. There will be typos and that’s fine baby.
You get to where you’re like why are we even doing this, what’s the point, then the boss guy of Penguin is like we’re gonna let AI write books so we dont have to pay writers and so that’s basically why.
@FortuneMagazine
All our books are shipped to us UPS but a strike wouldn’t hurt us anywhere close to as much as execs refusing to put air conditioning in the back of trucks hurts UPS workers. We support these drivers.
So what are you gonna do with your stimulus money? Us we’re gonna pay $1,000 for first time publishing rights to someone out there’s novel. Get your manuscripts ready cuz this opens on March 31.
Listen we love you but it’s not sustainable for a small press to have a customer base that’s almost entirely writers. We also need your parents to buy books. We need your friends and partners and family and neighbors to buy books.
Always uncomfortable describing malarkey as an indie publisher and the reason is these old money publishers are out here calling themselves indie and people eat it up. Anyway. DIY press or something like that, just a little shoestring press run out of some dumbass’s living room.
BREAKING: Indie press on verge of collapse after editor restarts computer and can’t log back in because there’s a G in the password and that key doesn’t work.
Okay while everyone is talking about the sordid, sorry state of the publishing industry, this is the perfect time to shoehorn in whatever weird grievance you have as the ultimate cause. People are already doing it! Go wild!!
Say what you will about fly by night indie presses run mostly by one deranged person but the Malarkey website is filled with free-to-read stories and poetry with no ads, pop-ups, or motherfucking paywalls.
Fuck Prime Day. Fuck Amazon. Order any book from our website today, for the rest of this week actually, and we’ll add a free book to your order along with a hand-written thank you note.
If you’re a small/indie/diy press and not evil, or at least completely evil, we want to be your friend. We want to pool resources, share knowledge, and plot to destroy our enemies together.
Oh my gosh a librarian emailed and asked if we were really based in a place called Armpit, Missouri, and I was so embarrassed I went all in and now I have to incorporate some land as a town called Armpit.
Success means different things to different people, and we always wonder what kind of numbers people do at AWP, so for the record it looks like we sold 146 books across three days at the book fair and two offsite events. Not including online orders that rolled in. We’ll take it!
Anyone can help small presses without spending money, simply by requesting their books from their local library! In our experience libraries are more likely to order if cardholders request books, vs being pitched by a press or even a local author.
Alan makes the point we've hammering into the wall all gosh damn year. This is where we are people. If you aren't buying books, telling your friends about small presses, requesting library purchases, then we go down.
Hi we’re having a bonus reading period open to black writers. Pay will be at least $50. No restrictions on form, genre, or length. We’ll publish at least ten people on our website. Let’s go!
We will publish 6 issues of King Ludd’s Rag next year. That’s 12 stories, minimum 4,000 words. Paying $100 per story. We’ll consider stories until Dec. 31 and then the window closes. Will post a link below.
Okay in honor of $10K of student debt being canceled everything on our site is 20% off for the rest of the month. If you’re against debt forgiveness you’re going to Hell but in the meantime you’re welcome to pay full price. Code is CANCELITALL.
If you’re one of these people who thinks there are too many books being published it might interest you to know we are all going to die. Even you. Perhaps especially you.
Not trying to dunk on anyone but if you order a book from us yeah we have your address and instead of selling to data harvesters we just send your book to you.
This small press stuff can be draining, both financially and emotionally, but we have been shown nothing but love and kindness from so many writers and readers from all over, it’s very nice.
We pretty much only care about fiction so if we publish, for example, an essay collection by
@SusanTriemert
, or, say, a poetry collection by
@LeighChadwick5
, you can be certain it’s because it kicks ass.
No better feeling than buying a small press book that was published not to satisfy imaginary marketing demands but because a volunteer editor was like yeah this rules I’d like to devote an insane amount of time to publishing and promoting it!
Doesn’t have to be Malarkey but, writers, if you want small presses and litmags to last, pick one or two, not as dream mags to publish in but as outlets you’ll commit to supporting in the ways you can. I give $5 a month to
@bcgazette
. Not much but it’s what I can do right now.
I don’t know man, if a writer who’s signed with one of the big four publishers can’t make a living off their books is that because the internet archive bought a copy and scanned it to lend out to patrons for two weeks at a time, or does it have anything to do with the publisher?
If you’re an indie writer or small press it seems the whole-ass publishing industry exists solely to take money out of your pocket. But then you connect with a few bookstores that will not only order your books but display them, so people can actually see them, and that is nice!
We are giving away copies of King Ludd’s Rag at our table. Each issue has two stories. We pay $100 for each story. They’re yours to read for free. That’s value!
If you ever have the fucking gall to submit a story to us that’s maybe not quite ready, like maybe you jumped the gun, I swear to god we will happily work with you on edits if it’s something we like and see potential in.
We have a disadvantage in that we’re not one of the Cool Presses. We have a disadvantage in that we’re not one of the Rich Presses. We have an advantage though in that people have sent us incredible books to publish.
With great regret we are saying no to a lot of really good long stories. Litmag editors, there’s a lot of great stuff out there that’s maybe over your standard word count but is nevertheless pretty awesome.
Had a great experience at AWP, and it was so nice to meet so many wonderful writers, editors, and readers, and our success this weekend was 100% due to the presence of
@ossvary
,
@spencerfleury
,
@ljabouttown
,
@smitchelmay
, Alex Miller, Patrick Nevins, and our pals at
@TBQuarterly
!
Okay we will publish your poetry chapbook but the catch is it’s going to be in a two-chapbook collection and you’ll be paired with your most hated poetry enemy.
Since we’re finally open for manuscripts, people probably wonder what sort of book we are looking for. It’s simple: we are looking for a book that makes us want to publish it.
If you live in nyc and ride the subway somewhat regularly we will send you a free book if you promise to read it on the subway and basically radiate enthusiasm for the book. Free to first taker. If this works we will do more.
Introducing the $1 MFA. Just as a note we are currently “unaccredited” whatever the fuck that means and also this is a gag we’re doing to help us pay for our website and stuff.
The problem with being a low-drama operation is no one ever writes articles about us. Everyone at Malarkey works hard and is pretty nice. Not great article material. So we will soon be starting nasty rumors about each of our authors and editors to gin up attention.
litmags and small presses, we’re not limited to submittable anymore.
@chillsubs
is building a submission manager. We use Oleada, a manager built by
@sublunaryeds
. There’s just a million better things we could all spend our money on instead of submittable. Let’s do that.
Let’s make our own best of 2022 list. Reply with your favorite books from small presses that don’t have trust fund budgets and where no one on staff is a millionaire.
Will be publishing new fiction somewhat regularly on our website this year. If you want to send a story in for consideration (3500 words or less; we’ll pay $20 for accepted pieces) here’s a handy link:
Malarkey will never have submission fees or contest fees but we do charge bad tweet fees where if we see a writer or editor or publisher do a bad tweet you get a bill from us and that’s how we pay for our very nice website so keep em coming!
One of our goals is to be able to pay a guaranteed $500 on signing a new book. That only works if we have over 100 book club subscribers. We’re not here to shake up or save or destroy (although if we have to pick, destroy) the publishing world, we just want to make books.
Wouldn’t undo it but publishing 13 books last year was sort of stupid. The anthologies put us in a financial hole we just barely recovered from, and the volume of books was unsustainable. But here we are, a small press making books, still going. Buy our books!
We are publishing a short story by Alex Miller on Monday. Not that short really; it’s 4,500 words. Will people read a 4,500-word story on their screens? I think yes, I think they’ll think 4,500 words is too long but will forget they thought that once they start reading.
The risk here at Malarkey is not so much burnout as simply not having enough money to carry on. This is why we are asking you to steal from the rich and buy from the Malarkey Books online store.
We'll be announcing some open meetings for small presses next week who want to join and ask questions. In the meantime the skinny:
- We handle bookstore, library, and direct-to-consumer sales (including international!)
- We take 24% of the sale price
- No fees
You get what you want by asking. Ask your fave writer for a blurb. Ask bookstores to carry your book. Ask people to request your book at libraries. Ask your local paper to cover your book. Ask an eccentric millionaire to name a 💰 writing award after themself and give it to you.
Dropped off a ton of books at the post office, had my kids with me, and the lady at the counter said now who’s making the money on all this, you or the kids, and I had to tell her the truth: no one is making any money here.
Want to pivot from small indie press that sells a few hundred copies of most titles to small indie press that sells a few thousand copies of most titles. That’s good enough for us, more than that seems like a lot of work.
Indie/small presses run by rich people have a built-in advantage on top of the money: people who come from Money have connections and know how to shmooze. It is our bad luck to be largely run by a fucking dumbass from Missouri who had to google how to even spell shmooze.