Normal service has been resumed

On returning to your inboxes, after an obligation apocalypse

Hello everyone, and apologies for the unintended break in the output of this blog – I’ve been well and (mostly) happy, but my publishing obligations reached critical mass shortly after the previous post, back in November. Each day since then, I made a list of the things I absolutely must do that day, and another of things that I probably should do, and writing the next blog was always on the latter list. It was always about to be done (so seemingly no need to announce a formal hiatus), but never actually got done.

I believe there’s a valuable lesson here, though I don’t quite have enough distance yet to spell it out for you, or advise how to avoid it (we’ll see how I get on in 2024!) It would be something about the dangers of overcommitting, or “overtrading”; older and wiser businesspeople have warned me about the latter many times over the years, but I don’t think I ever properly understood what they meant until this very moment. When I’ve internalised this lesson and adjusted my process, you can look forward to a post on it… “how to schedule your time as a small press publisher” or some such.

I actually still can’t spend too much time blogging today; I need to catch up on the rest of my neglected “shoulds”, but there are two areas I’m keen to update you on.

Submissions

It’s my belief that all 400ish writers who submitted work during our September window have now received a reply. If you haven’t, please get in touch – you must have slipped into the wrong folder at some point.

Dealing with the submissions was a big part of my scheduling problem; I had originally planned for everyone to hear back by the end of October, but there were a couple of technical hiccups, and my 2024 plans also had to change, as I explained in the last-blog-but-one. Since that post, my experience of submissions became significantly more miserable; I had enjoyed the actual reading, and breaking good news to the handful of “winners” (who wouldn’t!), but then there was the small matter of replying to hundreds of great, passionate writers with utterly impersonal bad news. It felt like such a waste, when I’d had the great privilege of engaging with their work. In fact I would go so far as to say it was heartbreaking, each time I had to “let go” of a particular book and apply a Gmail label such as “fantastic but no”.

At some point during the reply process, I vowed never to run a submissions window like this again. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any more opportunities for writers at Valley Press, of course – we’ll just need to tweak the format a bit. One wise voice has suggested the windows could be genre-specific in future, so I don’t end up trying to judge a lyrical poetry pamphlet against a thrilling mystery novel (for example). This seems very wise, and in retrospect, obvious, though it doesn’t address the emotional strain…

I think I’m getting more sensitive as I get older. Still, I’ve got through it, and my prize is a handful of books with literary merit that have the potential to be blockbusters. I say “handful” rather than a specific number because I’m still figuring out how many can be sensibly published in 2024; I need to take this lesson I’ve just learned about overtrading and take a critical look at next year’s schedule. Before that, though, there’s the small matter of…

Ordering for Christmas

This is the time of year when most books are sold worldwide, and on a smaller scale, the same applies to our Valley Press online shop. Thank you to everyone who has placed their orders already. I’ve decided to set a deadline of 4pm on Monday 18th for shipping in 2023; I’ll set out through the cold to the post office just after that, and then not touch another eco-friendly Jiffy bag until January 2nd.

Our last book of the year, Norah Hanson’s The End of an Era, has only just left the printers – that’s another project that has dominated the “must” list since my last post, but the work paid off and it is looking absolutely fantastic. Copies will arrive just in time for us to get your pre-orders wrapped before the deadline, so if you were inspired by the story behind the book I shared last month, get your orders in now; for time reasons, this one is only available directly from Valley Press, so you have exactly one chance to get this book in its year of publication!

I didn’t share a poem in that last post, because I hadn’t yet gone through them for my close edit – so I will now. Norah’s work alternates between wise, warm, witty and profound, but having spent the last few weeks hunched over a keyboard in the winter dark, the following seems the most appropriate choice:

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Unbidden

It came unbidden, that moment,
when the breeze paused and summer’s
light held my body warm.
Flowers in my garden exhaled
to give away perfumes swallowed
on an intake of breath.

Sound stilled in a silence echoing
in eternity, fleeting, permanent;
mystery, wonder, benediction.
A presence of expectant strings
waiting for the conductor’s
hand to move.

I knelt, trowel in hand,
caught in truth’s moment,
kneeling beside the white wall
bordering my flower bed.

The moment I recognised its
presence, and sighing,
gave my breath to it,
it left me.

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I’ll be back soon, I promise – I have a great interview with Susan Furber I want to share before the year is out, and those who’ve stuck with me during the break are long overdue a post with some serious in-depth publishing knowledge. I’m not sure which will come first, but watch this space!