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| Conservatarian Press Launches as a Publisher for Cancelled Authors Posted: 01 Jan 2022 09:18 AM PST
If you aren't willing to promote the Democratic Party agenda, you might as well forget about breaking into the legacy fiction-publishing industry. Progressives have tight control over it. And chances are, they'll do everything they can to see that your work never sees the light of day. The people who have launched Conservatarian Press are keenly aware of this. And it's why CP will specialize in publishing first-rate authors and novels (along with some nonfiction) that progressive cancel culture would otherwise crush. CP Executive Editor Jamie Wilson spoke exclusively with The Loftus Party about the goals of Conservatarian Press and some new titles the publisher has already acquired.
The Loftus Party: Why create Conservatarian Press and why right now? Who all is involved? Jamie Wilson: About a decade ago, I was involved in launching Liberty Island Media, which was, I believe, the first small publisher focused specifically on developing and bringing to the market fiction books by conservative writers. Adam Bellow, who was instrumental in bringing a lot of nonfiction conservative books to publication and the bestseller lists, believed—wisely—that conservatives want to read fiction. Executives in the publishing industry disagreed, many of them outright stating that conservatives don't read. Liberty Island proved them wrong, but due to split focus among the principals and editorial disagreements, it is preparing to shut down. I created Conservatarian Press from the ashes left by Liberty Island, and I plan to bring the same ethos to publishing. We are starting small, focusing primarily on epublishing in the early days, and plan to ramp up quickly as we gain resources. Our timing, I think, is crucial. We have reached a turning point in the culture wars, a place where logic and science seem to have no place in the mainstream zeitgeist, and more and more conservative voices are being shut out from both nonfiction and fiction markets. Worse, the mainstream has grown more strident and open about shutting us down, partly in response to our own counterattacks but largely because those shutting us out seem to think there is no drawback to doing so. I believe we need as many outlets for our voices as possible. None of us should be voices alone, crying in the wilderness—we should be able to find community, and we should be able to find writers that speak to us, and writers should be able to find and influence readers as well as make a decent living telling stories. Conservatarian Press will be doing everything we can to move toward this goal. My husband Clark Wilson is deeply committed to marketing Conservatarian Press and each individual book. David Swindle is starting his own nonprofit publishing company, tentatively titled PZAP, and he will be working to develop special projects that bridge the gap between his company and our more commercial titles. We have a number of editors who worked for Liberty Island who are staying with us as we move forward as well, and we are trying to use as many artists who share our political points of view as possible with the belief that a) every penny spent there amplifies our voices and b) conservative and libertarian artists are more likely to understand our overall vision.
TLP: What kind of books will you be publishing and do you have any titles lined up for publication right now? JW: Conservatarian Press will be publishing commercial fiction of all genres; the main requirement, after telling a good story, is that the book be relatively unpublishable by the mainstream press because of the conservative or libertarian slant of the story or because the author is in danger of being "canceled" due to his or her politics. That being said, I have noticed that thrillers, action/adventure novels, and mysteries compose the majority of what we are sent—but those books are easier than most genres to publish with mainstream publishers even when there's a conservative angle in the book. For that reason, I am particularly interested in science fiction, fantasy, YA, children's, and women's fiction (including romance) novels. Our goal is not to ghettoize ourselves so that only people who already have conservatarian beliefs are interested in reading our books. Rather, it is to tell good stories that, because of the current political climate, are difficult to publish, and to have those stories appeal to all readers who like good stories. Our first round of publishing includes a Southern Gothic women's fiction novel; a nonfiction book that is essentially a drive through the South; a slightly cyberpunky thriller; and in conjunction with Deep Reef Books an ocean-themed action-adventure novel. I purposely chose a wide variety of genres, and our second publishing round will be similarly diverse (a Roman historical, an insightful post-apocalyptic novel, a science fiction novel, and a romance). My Life as a Dixie Darling, by Mark Goldblatt, is about a young wife and mother whose ne'er-do-well but charming husband convinces her to take nude pictures for a website similar to Only Fans, and the unexpected fallout in her life secondary to this. Neon Crosses, by Chris Queen, is a tour through the South along the route from roughly Atlanta to Disneyworld. It focuses on the real South as seen through the eyes of a native son. Kill Sequence, by Steve Griffiths, follows the story of a grieving husband avenging the death of his wife and discovering the startling powers of the artificial intelligence-linked cybernetic implant she invented. Razormouth, by Howard Butcher, will launch in January, slightly earlier than the other books because we are publishing it in conjunction with Howard's publishing imprint. It is about a pair of engaged grad students completing doctoral dissertations on an idyllic tropical island who become accidentally entangled with a drug cartel.
TLP: Will CP simply publish through Amazon (which any author can do) or is it a full publisher—ISBNs, paperback and hardcover options (as well as digital), available through other online and brick and mortar outlets, and so forth? JW: CP will publish through Amazon and Smashwords (which distributes to Barnes & Noble) as well as offer print-on-demand hardbacks and paperbacks with our own ISBNs. While we will not have the capacity for physical distribution at the outset, as we grow we plan to integrate the same superstructure as traditional publishers. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that conservative-leaning literature winds up on the same bookshelves as mainstream books, and we can't accomplish that if we are limited to epublishing and POD. However, we are starting with limited resources, and we must recognize the reality of that. We have unique value for writers. Our editors are skilled writers themselves who share right-wing points of view and will not dismiss a story because the politics are "problematic." (Again, we are looking for good stories first, with the understanding that the theme and politics will naturally arise from the writer's worldview.) We will also have dedicated marketing services, and over time we hope to remove most of the marketing burden from the writer. We will be promoting the company, genre imprints, and individual books using both traditional and social media marketing strategies with a special focus on the long tail. Since the center-right segment of the population has been ignored by the traditional major fiction publishers, but has myriad nonfiction outlets targeting them, there is a ready-made market waiting for the stories we will be publishing. Unlike traditional publishers, we know that conservatives do indeed like to read fiction. Though we will be marketing through primarily right-wing and center-right media, we will not neglect more traditional outlets. Our focus is on good stories, and we want everyone to read them. Our readers will enjoy the books we publish, regardless of their personal politics.
TLP: Are you accepting manuscripts right now and if so, how can people submit them to CP? JW: We are actively accepting manuscripts, and I would love to get my hands on a good fantasy series as well as some good YA and tween books. You can submit at submissions@conservatarianpress.com, or directly to me at j.wilson@conservatarianpress.com.
TLP: What else would you like to add and where can people follow CP online? JW: [Our social media accounts and website are as follows.]
We will also have an emailed newsletter, which you can sign up for at the website. We have some pretty exciting plans for the future.
Because the mainstream writing community has shut conservatives and right-leaning libertarians out of EVERY stage of storytelling, many of the writers who come to us have not had formal or even informal training in how to write. I am developing a program to address this for writers who are not quite ready to publish, but who show real promise and talent. Right now, I'm working directly with two writers, one of whom I expect to publish in October 2022. I want to build a virtual workshop that can handle six to ten writers at a time to develop their skills and prepare them for publication. You can expect to see that launch sometime in 2022.
The conservative storytelling community has little or no outlet for short-form fiction. We will be launching a magazine to address that in July 2022. Alongside fiction, you can expect to see book reviews for independently published books (not our own—that would be cheating!), essays, cultural criticism, comics similar to those run by Dragon Magazine back in the day, and whatever other fun things we can come up with. The magazine will encourage themes with every issue, but we will not reject stories that do not follow the theme. (Our first theme will be family.) While we will probably pay very little for the first few issues, the goal here is to create a print subscription magazine that pays professional rates. I like the idea of our writers being able to join professional organizations on the strength of publishing with us!
You can start looking for us next year at conventions as well, both mainstream and the small conventions that are springing up around our own writers. When I started the little email list over a decade ago that ultimately grew into the [Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance], my goal was to find those voices who thought they were all alone. This goal has not changed. I am hoping that by our attendance at conventions as an openly conservative publisher, some of these voices will find their way home.
Originally published here. The post Conservatarian Press Launches as a Publisher for Cancelled Authors appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
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