Honestly, I'd say a publisher using wordpress.com for their official website is a red flag in itself. Web hosting is relatively cheap.
I work for Bedazzled Ink so I can speak for them <g>.
Bedazzled Ink owns bedazzledink.com and dragonfeatherbooks.com but these domains names re-direct to Wordpress for now. We switched from a real Web site a couple of years ago when we discovered we could keep the site more up-to-date in a blog atmosphere. And we were small enough then that it seemed to fit.
We have two things on our to do list -- getting a "real" Web site now that we've really out-grown the blog.
And replacing those early very dire (good word, Victoria) covers from several years ago--most of which seem to be Mindancer Press titles. We've graduated to what we like to call "unique" for our covers, rather than embarrassing.
As far as who we are--we began publishing Khimairal Ink, a zine devoted to lesbian fiction, in 2005, and have slowly grown a publishing company around authors we've cultivated through the zine, a little children's imprint, a sports imprint, and an imprint for nonfiction books.
Most of our books fit into a niche of avid readers and several of our authors are well-known within this niche, so we've been able to grow at a nice rate. We're also tuned into the world of women's sports and are dedicated to filling a need for fiction about girls and women in sports.
Our weirdest fact? Our best selling book is Racewalking! Fun? for kids -- we sold 3000 copies as pre-orders, and it's been a steady seller ever since. Who knew?
We're also proud that Khimairal Ink has attracted authors like Brenda Cooper, Amy Sisson, Tyree Campbell, and Barbara Davies. We're proud that a story by Nebula winner Mary Turzillo will be in our upcoming
Year's Best Lesbian Fiction 2008. But we're equally proud of all our authors because each have unique voices and stories to tell.
We've yet to accept an unsolicited manuscript. A fact that surprises us sometimes when we think about it. We're very small and are very selective and tend to get to know an author and his or her work before we sign a book.
We are taking tentative steps outside our niches--primarily in nonfiction, and hope to have a more mainstream distributor by the end of summer. Which means we may be of more interest to some of the writers who frequent this forum.
Unlike other publishers who may shout "bring it on," we'll say approach us only if you really want to. We have plenty on our plate for quite a while and, frankly, what we'd really like to see right now are Nuance Books (
http://nuancebooks.wordpress.com/submission-guidelines/). If you can write funny light stories with a lesbian protagonist, we want you <g>.
Thanks,
C.A. Casey