Bedazzled Ink Publishing Co. / Mindancer Press

It would be nice to know the professional background on the CEO and editor listed on the website. Quick google search isn't pulling up anything for me.

I have to say the covers are pretty dire.

- Victoria

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'm not sure I'd agree. Wordpress has been touted in some webdesign circles as a viable webhosting source because it's easy enough for the business owner to update and manage on their own even if they have someone design a custom template for them. Or save the money and use a premade, if they so choose.

Wordpress as a CMS is one thing, Wordpress as a host is a totally different animal.

herdon said:

Honestly, I'd say a publisher using wordpress.com for their official website is a red flag in itself. Web hosting is relatively cheap.

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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

Hi C.A.,

Could you perhaps elaborate on the professional experience of the people who work at Bedazzled Ink?

M.R.J. Le Blanc said:

Hi C.A.,

Could you perhaps elaborate on the professional experience of the people who work at Bedazzled Ink?

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We have two full-time (basically 12-14 hours a day with maybe Sunday off and the odd few hours during the week off) staff members and we take on editors, proofreaders, artists, etc. as needed.

I came to the company with a mish-mash of experiences with books, editing, publishing, computers, and art. I was a technical services and acquisitions librarian at several universities and also worked for the book distributor, Blackwell's, so I've been on both sides of the distributor-buyer experience <g>. I held several positions at Renaissance Alliance Publishing--director of a couple imprints, editor, submissions editor--where I picked up the basics of publishing and editing, etc. I was also the assistant music editor at Strange Horizons and I currently typeset the books for Wolfsinger Publications just to expand my experience. Through the years I've taken many classes in drawing and painting and writing and I had to learn Photoshop, Quark, InDesign, HTML, etc. as a part of my job as a librarian. And of course, the learning experience never ends.

Carrie Tierney was also an academic librarian in technical services and has an English literature background. Her contribution to the mix is an invaluable knowledge of literature and storycraft and a lifetime of editing--working with college students and adults interested in creative writing as a part of her job as a librarian. She may not have had true "professional" experience before joining Bedazzled Ink but she has about five years of relevant experience now <g>.

We also take on artists, editors, proofreaders, as needed. The artists generally have an art or design background and the editors have either worked for publishers or are freelancers.

We've been at this for a while and have left most of the early mistakes that were a part of the learning process far behind, we hope <g>. What we didn't know, we learned, and continue to learn as the knowledge changes. So whether we're considered "professional" or not is up to you, but we kind of feel like old pros after five years on the job.

Thanks,
Casey

DavidBrookes said:

If anyone's interested, Mindancer are planning a pretty fun-sounding anthology based on pirates - female ones, if you didn't pick up on the vibe. Definately entering, but I'm not going to go down the LGB route. A male writer guessing how two lady pirates felt about each other 400 years ago is bound to get it wrong...!

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Hi David,

The definition of pirate goes way beyond what we traditionally think of as a pirate. She can be a space pirate, a land pirate, live any time, any place, in fact we want writers to use their imaginations with their female pirates. Also, a pirate can be a lesbian without any reference to romance or even feelings toward other women. It's been an up hill battle with Khimairal Ink to get writers to write about lesbians in other situations besides romance.

Submitting a story to one of our anthologies or to Khimairal Ink is a good way to get to know us and how we work. It's the way most of our authors came to us.

Would still love to hear from some authors, if there are any out there. The big names sound promising, I imagine they would expect high standards.

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I doubt most of them hang around here, except out of curiosity, because they get their information from the niche market they hang out in from other sources.

Andi Marquette, the editor of the pirate anthology is one of our authors. She started with a story in Khimairal Ink, then pitched us a trilogy based on those characters, then she pitched us the pirate anthology idea. We like to think that she pitched the anthology to us because she enjoys working with us <g>. She used to be an editor for the University of New Mexico Press, so she's had some experience in this sort of thing.

Thanks,
Casey

DavidBrookes said:

Actually Cacasey, I've already written my story for the anthology It's not about traditional pirates, nor does it have any strong LBG vibe - some very strong emotions, some very strong and flawed female characters, and hopefully in a setting you won't get too many of. We'll see!

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Sounds interesting enough.

Hopefully when I submit the novel I have planned for you my status as a straight male won't show through too much .

Many thanks!

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I don't know if your book features just a strong female protagonist or one who is actually a lesbian (it really doesn't matter), but our favorite writer of lesbian fiction (and strong female protagonists) is Tyree Campbell--a middle-aged straight male who is the managing editor of Sam's Dot Publishing. We've published several of his stories in Khimairal Ink and also published a collection of his stories. We only care about the words on the page. We either like them or we don't

Casey

FYI cacasey - I tried to get to the bedazzled standard MS formatting page from the Mindancer imprint page and got a dead link.

Tburger said:

FYI cacasey - I tried to get to the bedazzled standard MS formatting page from the Mindancer imprint page and got a dead link.

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Thank you. We got socked by the porno hacker that caused Google to put up those nasty warnings and we had to move off all our files from bedazzledink.com and of course, some files didn't get returned in the chaos.

It's just an explanation of the Standard Manuscript Format. Unfortunately, it has to be explained to many of the writers within our niche and even then, most don't bother to look at the explanation and we get submissions in all kinds of formats.

The link is working now

Casey