Celebrating Two Years as an Independent Press!
On Sunday, March 22, 2020, Iaconagraphy Press celebrated its Two Year Anniversary as an operating independent press, as it’s first “book baby”, Norse Witch: Reclaiming the Heidhrinn Heart by Connla Freyjason, officially crossed the threshold into its third year in print. To celebrate, we decided to do something a little bit different, so I (Connla Freyjason) sat down for an interview with the Founder and Publishing Editor of Iaconagraphy Press, Michelle Iacona:
Connla: So, out the gate, Happy Anniversary to you, and to the Press, and to my “book baby”!
Michelle: Thank you, and Happy Bookiversary back! Technically, that should be book babies, because you very quickly followed up Norse Witch with Blessings of Fire and Ice: A Norse Witch Devotional that summer.
Connla: True, but Norse Witch was technically how the Press “happened”.
Michelle: (nodding) Having my own independent press had been a long-time dream of mine, and, as usual, you were the guy who lit the necessary fire under my ass to make that dream a reality.
Connla: Let’s talk about that: why had you always dreamed of having your own independent press?
Michelle: Well, I go into that a little on the Press Main Page, but I guess what it really breaks down to is a desire to maintain control. I’m an author, too, you know? Coming up in the industry in the early nineties, it was made very transparent to young would-be authors that once the words were out of your head and onto the page, that was the end of control for you. First, you were going to need an agent, who was going to get a cut of your royalties: some dude or dudette who was going to “shop” you around to the Big Five, while you sat around and prayed you got lucky. Then, if you got picked up by a publisher at all, there was a fantastic chance that most of the copies of your book were going to wind up in an incinerator somewhere. Meanwhile, as the initial “birther” of the “book baby”, the author could look forward to making a few cents per book, after the printer and the publisher and the “necessary” agent took their cut of the royalties. I never thought that was right or fair; I never liked that paradigm. I didn’t want that for me or my “book babies”, and I didn’t want it for the “book babies” of the authors that I know, whom I have come to love. So I decided very early on that I was going to break that paradigm. The only way to do that is to establish one’s own independent press.
Connla: And has the dream lived up to your expectations?
Michelle: Well, yes and no. I mean, I knew going in that this was a “man’s industry”, and I’m a woman, so you can do the math on that. And I’ve definitely butted my head against that particular brick wall consistently over the past two years. When I first had the dream, back in the early nineties, that was before the self-publishing industry took off, so I don’t think I expected the backlash from that, either. It was also before the digital age–before ebooks–so I think I underestimated that backlash as well.
Connla: What do you mean by that? “Backlash”?
Michelle: I mean I didn’t expect to have to constantly need to defend my authors as not self-published. I didn’t expect to have to constantly make a case for us being a Press in the first place. At the same time, I didn’t expect to have to constantly defend the fact that we focus on print editions. I mean, it’s in the name: that’s what a Press does!
Connla: Is that why you recently expanded the Press to include a digital subsidiary?
Michelle: Truthfully? No. I’m a Southern Woman, from a long line of strong Southern Women, so I don’t do “giving in to pressure” very well. I’ve tagged myself “The Wicked Witch of the South” for a reason. (She giggles.) The digital component of the Press exists to meet the demands of our audience for a constant stream of more material. Look: you, in particular, are probably the most prolific author I’ve ever met. And people crave your material. There is no way in Helheim I could afford to buy that many damn ISBNs. (We share a good laugh over this.) Much less pay the printer’s set-up fees, and all of that. So that’s the real reason for Iaconagraphy Digital: when your customers want something, you break your ass to find a way to give it to them. When you’ve got an author in your “stable” that has a tremendous voice, you find a way to get that voice consistently into the world without breaking the bank at the same time you are breaking your ass.
Connla: I get the impression that most people who read books don’t know what goes into actually making a book….
Michelle: They so don’t! That has become sort of a “side mission”, with all of this: to get people to understand that books don’t “just happen”. There are way more nuts and bolts to the process than just “somebody writes something, and BAM!, it’s a book”. And that goes for self-published authors, too. The good ones, I mean.
Connla: Maybe you should clarify what you mean by “good ones”?
Michelle: I mean the self-published authors who actually take the time to edit their books or have their books edited; who painstakingly work on layout to make sure they wind up with a polished end-product. (An excellent example would be Daniel E. Ulfsson.) The creation of a book isn’t just “one and done”; it’s a process. The writer writes, and then someone has to make sure that puppy isn’t rife with typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors. And then the layout process begins: that’s how you wind up with a book that doesn’t look like a monkey put it together. You have to make sure there isn’t text in the gutters–the part of the book where the binding meets the page–and that the book is formatted according to normal print standards. That is, it has front matter (the right number of title pages; a copyright and credits page; a table of contents, all that jazz); chapters begin on the facing pages (odd-numbered pages); chapter heads are spaced correctly; there isn’t double-spacing between paragraphs (because that’s a tell-tale sign that someone just copy-pasted their entire book from social media and/or a blog). After that, there is cover layout, which means there needs to be an artist involved, and back matter (all that nifty stuff on the back of a book that lets you know if you even want to read it or not). Then it goes to the printer, which is most often also the distributor, and that requires the composition of all the meta data which helps bookstores find the book in the first place: you have to be very careful with the creation of meta data; if you aren’t selling books, crappy meta data is probably why! And you have to purchase an ISBN: I cannot stress that enough to self-publishers! If you don’t own your ISBN, that means someone else does, which defeats the entire purpose of being self-published in the first place. And ISBNs are not cheap! Depending on your printer (we work through Ingram, the largest printing company in the world; if you own any books, whether from the Big Five or what I like to call the “Little Three” in the Pagan community–Llewellyn, Weiser, and Inner Traditions–ninety percent of those books were printed and distributed by Ingram), there may be set-up fees at said printer (there definitely are at Ingram). So, my point: a book is a process, and there is a lot of overhead in that process, whether you are talking about running an independent press, as I do, or whether you are, in fact, self-published, but working very hard to do that right.
Connla: Talking about “overhead”, this Anniversary comes at a time when our entire world feels like it has a specter hanging over it’s head: the Coronavirus, Covid-19. Has that dampened this celebration a bit, or only served to further fuel the Press’ fire?
Michelle: It’s an interesting time to be alive, that’s for sure. If anything, I think the specter of Covid-19 has given me a renewed perspective on what this Press and its publications actually mean to people.
Connla: How so?
Michelle: Well, we’re a Pagan-centered Press. (I nod.) And I am profoundly aware of a need to serve that community. This whole thing has served to make me even more profoundly aware of that need to serve. As you know better than perhaps anyone, because this is also your baby, we dropped our first issue of the new ezine of Heidhr Craft, Taufr, more or less at the exact same time the Gods (or whoever) dropped Covid-19 on our global society. With all the urgency on social media to use our time “stranded” at home to bone up on our reading, one would think that was fantastic timing, right? (I crack a grin, because I know where this is going….) Except it hasn’t been. In the weeks leading up to the release, people went nuts over every ad you posted, yet in the wake of the release coupled with Covid, we haven’t sold a single copy. But you and I both know that this isn’t a statement on how “worthwhile”, or whatever, people think this product is; that’s readily apparent from the initial responses to pre-release marketing. (I nod in agreement.) It’s a statement that these people that we seek to serve, by creating things like Taufr, are in a position right now where they are literally afraid to spend money on “non-necessities”, like a book or an ezine. Meanwhile, sure, we are literally death’s-door-broke, as the Press is our only source of income. But that’s not what matters: what matters is that the community that we serve is still out there, and they still need us to actually do that! Thus, I am profoundly aware that we need to find new ways to serve that community in its time of greatest need.
Connla: So what’s the plan, going forward, Madame Editor?
Michelle: I don’t want to say too much, because I don’t want to lock us into a breakneck deadline schedule (we both know that doesn’t end well for either of us!), but there are some very cool things coming down the pipeline that will be offered for free, at least until people are back on their feet. I saw a meme over your shoulder yesterday that said “We are a society, not an economy”. At face value, my response to that was “you’re damn skippy!”, but then I found myself really rolling those words around in my brain. With our shared background in Anthropology and Archaeology–though, admittedly, your background has grown far deeper than mine–we both know that in a complex society, which is what the majority of our global society has necessarily become, economy is a part of what makes a society a society. It’s a necessary component; not a dichotomous thing. Now, we can either continue to treat economy as though it is, in fact, a dichotomous thing–even an enemy of society–or we can learn a lesson from this whole CF, and come to embrace economy as a necessary component of society, and develop a sort of “compassionate economics”. That is for certain the lesson I am presently trying to learn, and it’s a lesson that I’m trying to teach as well, via how I go forward in the business of running this Press.
Connla: What does “compassionate economics” look like?
Michelle: Well, for starters, it isn’t hypocritical, that’s for sure. I’ve made it my business to stay off of social media through this whole thing because, unlike you, I suck at keeping my mouth shut. See aforementioned “Wicked Witch of the South” self-tagging. But I’ve seen a lot, over your shoulder. And what I’ve seen has boggled my mind: three weeks ago, there were tons of people basically maintaining an “eat the rich” and “shut up, old people” attitude, with the whole “Okay, Boomer” BS, and now I’m seeing those same people making posts begging for an economic bailout (which we probably won’t be getting, by the way; micro-businesses like ours are being completely ignored by this) and deriding all those people who are openly proclaiming that the elderly are expendable (which they aren’t, by the way, and we do need the bailout, but keep up….). My point is: suddenly, it’s a reality check, and it’s a really ugly reality check, and you can’t have it both ways; you have to pick one, and then stick to it. It can’t be “Okay, Boomer” one week, and then “how dare you say that about old people?” the next. Either your principles are your principles, or they aren’t. This whole fiasco is forcing us all to wholeheartedly review our principles. And my principles are, first and foremost, to serve this community which has been so great to us over the past two years. “Compassionate economics” means sticking to those principles; it means being there, in whatever ways you can be there, to lift somebody up, instead of crushing them under your heel. Real life shouldn’t be The Devil Wears Prada or Wall Street; it should be symbiotic. Everybody’s out there posting a million memes about washing your hands for the required amount of time, but in our society, when it comes to economics and the person-to-person exchange that is implied in that, how often does one hand really wash the other? That’s what “compassionate economics” ultimately looks like: it’s “I’ll help you now, while I can; you help me later, when you can”, not because of what anybody is ultimately going to get out of that scenario, but because at its most crucial base, Economics is based on the concept of Reciprocity, and that’s how True Reciprocity works.
Connla: You’re an incredibly passionate woman, and it’s clear that you love what you do. What has been your favorite part of this whole experience, and what are you looking the most forward to in the future?
Michelle: I got into all of this because I wanted to help people shine. At the end of the day, when I’ve been up to my eyeballs in editing and layout and meta data and all the rest, it’s seeing those authors that I publish shine which makes it all worthwhile. It has been an absolute privilege to sit back and watch you shine; to watch Suzanne go from “I’m not so sure I can write a whole book, I’m just a ‘baby witch'” to being a powerhouse of a Kitchen Witch who is now contemplating her second book. That’s my favorite part of what I do; that’s why I do what I do. I’m looking forward to continuing to do that. I can’t wait for you to finish Heidhr Craft, and I can’t wait to see what Suzanne cooks up with “Book Two”. And I am finally in a place where I am looking forward to finishing Raising Hel and releasing it into the wild. Most of all, I’m looking forward to all of us continuing to be here for this community; to uplifting people and upholding people and bringing people together in hearts as well as minds. It’s exciting to be in a position, as a Publishing Editor and Press-Owner, where your job every day is to help compassionate, inclusive authors equip people to be more compassionate and inclusive. This world so desperately needs that, perhaps now more than ever. And I’m proud to get to be the lady driving this ship manned by this particular ragtag crew of rebels. I hope that next year, when we are three years into this adventure, we can look back on 2020 and say “we did that!” with smiles in our hearts, and not just on our faces.
