Hi everyone!
My name is Colin and I’m the founder / publisher of Parvus Press. I’m sorry I didn’t pop in sooner; we’ve been VERY busy.
Some great questions here and I want to take a moment to answer. I will also say that we always open for a soft submission period (not really advertised and for a short window) during and after the Nebula Conference. So if you have work to submit, you will have another chance in May.
Thanks to everyone who shared kind words about us and the work we do. Im going to try and hit each of the recent questions, but forgive any goofs as I’m on mobile at the moment.
1) Why only five books so far?
When I started Parvus, it was with a conservative growth plan. I talk about it on an episode of the Ditch Diggers podcast and again on the Hybrid Author Podcast last year. Sorry that I don’t have links at the ready.
The basic idea was 1 Book in year 1, 2 in 2, 4 in year 3, and then go to what I call “full time Parvus” with the company releasing two seasonal calendars of books.
This plan was designed to give us time to learn from our mistakes and to make sure we weren’t accruing costs faster than we could recover them via sales. At times, this measured growth has been frustrating, but it’s also given us very tight control over finances and that’s a very good thing.
We deviated form the plan last year and only released one novel because we moved from being a digital press to a nationally distributed publisher with Baker & Taylor Publisher Services. This meant putting our entire catalog on hold for a year. But it means we are releasing SIX books in the next eleven months.
So, we are growing and it’s awesome.
2) Secual content - We aren’t interested in explicit sexual content that approaches erotica. We’ve got nothing against sexual content. It’s fun! We’re all mature adults! But it isn’t right for our catalog.
3) How do we maintain a team with so few releases?
Parvus is a business and businesses often have to staff ahead of growth. This is NOT a hobby for any of our four owners. It is a long-term investment. Most of the funding for the first three years of operations came from Eric and myself, as we’ve been fortunate to have success in our primary careers. However, we do have outside investors and our Kickstarter for our anthology, If This Goes On, definitely brought in some funds as well.
It also doesn’t hard that our books sell well!
We have a very active ownership team who puts in the lion’s share of the effort at Parvus. But we also have one part-time employee, a marketing and PR consultant, and a whole ecosystem of independent contractors that work on our titles.
We are a very big small press.
4) Questions in the future?
Email me!
[email protected]. I try to be as open and accessible as possible. Our success relies solely on trust and the writing community is also our readers. If I can answer any questions down the road, don’t hesitate to ask!
I don’t check AW as often as I should, but I live in my email and will gladly come back to answer any questions on the forum if you ping me.
Also, I just did an appearance on the hybrid author podcast which you may find of interest:
http://hybridauthorpodcast.com/episode-74-parvus-evolution/
Thanks!
- Colin