Samhain Publishing

When I first started editing for Samhain, I was doing it because I enjoy to read and edit, and I thought it’d be a great way to earn some extra spending cash. That was all fine and dandy until I started to learn more and more about Samhain and digital publishing.

And then I realized that having Samhain as a side job was simply no good for me.

Why, you ask? Because I want more. I want to be completely immersed in digital publishing and Samhain and books and authors… get the picture? =) I really didn’t know anything about digital publishing when I started this gig, but now that I’ve become a lot more knowledgeable on the subject, I’m a huge supporter and advocate of the the digital publishing industry.

Here are some of the reasons why.

1. Green is the thing right now. Everyone wants to save the world, save energy, save the whales, save the polar bears…you get it. Well, one of the top things on that list is saving trees. And ebooks do a great job of that. Try this on for size… Did you know that 40% of printed books are pulped? Yeah, you heard that right. Next time you walk into Barnes & Noble or Borders, take a lot around and imagine almost half of the books in there being trashed/recycled. Yeah, that’s pretty staggering.

2. In the majority of cases, digital books are cheaper than paper books. Now, I don’t know about you, but the amount of money I’ve spent, and continue to spend, on books is pretty high. I think I could probably pay off the mortgage on our house. =P With digital, there are less production costs, so the cost of the book doesn’t have to be as high to make up for those costs.

3. Ah, the space-saving abilities. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had to buy bookshelf after bookshelf in order to have space for the ton of books I buy. And trust me, it’s a ton. They’re overflowing everywhere, and thank God I have a husband who is understanding and doesn’t mind it. Because to be honest, if I had to choose one of the other, it’d be a pretty tight race between the hubby and the books. =) But with digital books, it’s not an issue at all. And if you don’t want to buy an external hard drive to keep them on so they don’t take up space on your computer, Google Documents works great for storing them, so long as they are a compatible format. I tend to go with PDFs, so Google Docs works great for me.

4. Digital publishers can take more chances with what they contract. In the case of the New York publishing houses, they have to be very careful with what they pick up. They have to choose stories they think really have a chance at selling very well. With us, we can take more chances. We don’t have to choose stories that we know will make us a ton of money. We can choose a really good story with a non-traditional storyline that may not be as widely accepted as most. We can choose something because we love it, and hope that everyone else loves it as much as we do. A perfect example of this is Butterfly Tattoo by Deidre Knight. Traditional publishing houses didn’t want it, but it’s become a well-known, much-loved story. All because an editor took a chance on a story she loved.