A REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE

Our goal at the Hudson Press is to give writers a way to take charge of their lives by using the new tools of electronic publishing.

Electronic publishing allows us to do three revolutionary things for authors others do not do:

1. 1. Because of our electronic publishing model we pay authors a much higher percentage on the book’s retail price than traditional publishing houses offer.  Ebooks offer major savings, and we pass those along.
   

2. 2. The author retains the right to withdraw the book and resell it to a conventional publisher, as long as our costs on the book are covered. 
   

3. 3. The writer decides the retail price.
   

         It is imperative that authors understand the full ramifications of the right to withdraw and sell their book to a more conventional mainstream publisher, because they are very large. No one else does this.  

         At the moment it is our ambition that every single one of our authors graduate to greater and higher prospects.   We want to be like Cape Canaveral, and launch our authors into publishing orbit, and have the reputation as the place to go and do that.  We want to be the proving ground where authors establish their worth and sales worthiness.

        Someday, in the future, The Hudson Press may grow to such an extent that being published by us would be all that anyone  would need, and there would be no reason to move on, so that the above concept would become irrelevant.  That would be great.  But that day, if it ever comes, is far down and road.  We are happy now to be our author’s launch pad, their proving ground where they demonstrate their work’s value.

THE NECESSITIES

      However, this right comes at what we think is a small cost.  We have to cover our overhead if we are to give someone the right to resell.   Otherwise we would be out of business overnight. 

        In effect, we are inviting the author to join us as a publishing partner, and share the power of publishing with you.   In exchange, there is a reading fee proportionate to the length of the manuscript, i.e. $150 for 200 pages.  Every page after that would be $50 for every hundred pages.

        If we accept your work, there are other additional costs, all depending on what we need to do:  set your work up in the required epub format, get an ISBN number, design a cover, place it in the online stores, and one our website, and so forth.

        In addition, we have formed an association with the famous Northshire Bookstore of Manchester, Vermont, one of America’s greatest independent booksellers, and a cherished Vermont institution.  (For those not familiar with it, the Northshire Bookstore was awarded Bookseller of the Year by Publishers Weekly, and the Best Bookstore in New New England by Yankee Magazine.)  Northshire will be making print on demand versions of all our ebooks for those who want them, and make them available in both its Manchester store and a special The Hudson Press page on its website, www.northshire.com .  Northshire will charge authors some reasonable fees as well for the initial production of their printed work as part of its long established print-on-demand service. 

SOME PERSPECTIVE

        To put this in perspective, if you consider your own labor cost in creating your work, that is, if you went to work everyday and someone else paid you to write, that cost in creating a book is invariably very large.

        By comparison, these charges are in fact quite trivial.  It’s our experience– because we have been there ourselves– that few writers have any notion of what their cost structure is as small business people (if they even know what a cost structure is!).  Put simply, your labor is a cost.   You have invested tens of thousands of dollars (or Pounds or Euros) in labor charges in your book.  (It’s wise to think of it as if you were paying someone else.)  An investment of a few hundred to potentially prevent losing that great investment is in fact a very wise one, similar to buying insurance.

    In addition, because we pay the author a much higher percentage of the retail price, the investment the author makes can be recouped very quickly.   At a retail price of $9.99, with half going to the author,  a hypothetical reading fee of $150 would be recouped by a  mere thirty sales.  

    EDITING

Editing is a different issue, and a complicated one.  Some works need no editing.  Other books do need editing to bring out the work’s potential.  Unfortunately, conventional publishing houses today spend less and less time doing real editing.  Writers who, under the tutelage of a good editor, once would have expanded their horizons and produced books of lasting value, are bypassed.  Books that need time to gather an audience, some of which would have once turned out to have been by the best writers of their times, fall between the cracks.

        We want to do better than that.  If we accept your book, and it needs editing, we will work with you on organization and line editing if it is necessary, within reason, and for a fee, which cannot be determined in advance, the needs of different books being different.  We would determine this in co-operation with you. Or, on our recommendation, you can hire an editor yourself. 

Because the Hudson Press is a quality press, we reserve the right to reject manuscripts, and no warranties or guarantees are implied or inferred at any point because any fee of any kind is paid.  This is actually in the best interest of the authors we carry, to maintain the standards and credibility of our brand.  It is important for you as an author to be able to honestly say that someone else has selected you, and not that you have selected yourself, which is the inherent problem of all self-publishing. 

        We will also help you to market your book.  Part of our concept is that we also ask  for your co-operation in joining a group of people who come together in a communal effort of all our authors working together.  The Hudson Press authors are expected to purchase each other’s work through the various online services we will be using, for the purpose of going online to comment on them and rate them, being aware that other authors at The Hudson Press will be doing the very same thing for you.  Online book ratings today have become very important, and we intend to be very serious about this responsibility each author has to their fellows. 

THE POWER OF COOPERATION

        We do not have the financing of a big Manhattan conglomerate, but we do have each other.  As always, there is strength in numbers.  We will be using social networking, including sites like Facebook and others, to promote and publicize books.  Some of our editors are experienced former political grassroots organizers,  and we intend to apply what they have learned about the incredible power of social networking that has been used in modern, 21st century political campaigns like the revolutionary Dean For America campaign or its direct offspring, the 2008 Obama campaign.

        There is actually an extremely powerful mathematical logic to this kind of social networking.  Think of the six degree of separation game– how many people do you have to know and go through to reach any other person in the world, say, the Dali Lama?  You likely know your local city councilmember, who knows your mayor, who knows the governor, who knows the President, who knows the Dali Lama.  That is actually only five steps away.  This demonstrates the basis of viral or word of mouth marketing.  One person reads something, likes it and tells their friends.  They tell their friends, who tell more friends, and so on.  

        Now, when you start counting, the circle gets larger and larger as it branches out.  Starting with one or two people sharing a cup of coffee, thousands can eventually hear the words “I have a friend who said that was really great.”  That’s more powerful than any advertising campaign.  This is how big fads and hit movies get started, and we intend to bring this approach to the book world, however tardily. 

        This, incidentally, is yet another reason why publishers will always exist and self-publishing electronically has little future, whatever may be temporarily happening with ebooks at the moment.   An isolated author by him or herself has no power to promote their work.   Unless you are already rich and famous, this will never change. We all need each other, and we can all succeed by sticking together and helping one another.

A FEW OTHER NOTES

We do not publish poetry–there are many fine small poetry presses.  We also do not handle screenplays since they are a rather technical form.  If you want to be the next Barbara Cartland, we are not for you.   Or Jackie Collins. 

We do not handle books that are religion driven.  We also will reject all work that is racist, sexist, or demeaning or defamatory to any group, creed, religious or spiritual affiliation, ethnicity, sexual or gender orientation. 

We encourage writers to suggest cover and book jacket design, but to uphold the quality of The Hudson Press brand, we hold the final decisions on cover design and copy.

ADVICE AND REQUESTS

        If you are interested in The Hudson Press, you must send us an email first, not a manuscript.  May we suggest ignoring the conventional advice on query letters?  We know how stifling and stilted formulas are.  Speak to us from the heart, let us know why you care and why we should, too.   But it is also critically important to tell us how your book is different, what sets it apart, from what has been done before.  As always, no one can expect success by doing what has been done before, but by doing something new. 

        Remember, we are a small institution run by people who are writers themselves.  It’s sad, but we know we will have to not only decline to look at things, but decline what we know are good, deserving books because we simply do not have the time or resources to do more.  Nonetheless, this is a time of great opportunity in publishing, one we all should be excited about.