A New Year…

First off, I would like to say Happy New Year to the people who read my blog. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

The beginning of a new year is a time for both reflection and excitement. It’s a time to look back at the things you’ve been doing, as well as a time to look forward to the things you would like to do. In looking back, one tries to determine what has been working and what needs improvement. In looking forward, one tries to determine how to do those “cool” things you haven’t done yet. So without further ado, here is Divertir Publishing’s list of “resolutions” for the coming year:

• People who have discussed publishing with me know how important I think short stories are. For writers, short stories are a way to hone one’s skill and explore new styles and genres without the investment of time a full novel requires. For publishers, short stories can be an effective way to introduce up-and-coming writers to an audience (although very few publishers use them in this way anymore). But while I’m committed to publishing short stories, the truth is short stories collections do not sell very well. I recently heard from the editor of a prestigious academic anthology that they only sell 2,000-2,500 copies of each issue. For short stories to be useful for developing a fan base for authors they must reach a much wider audience. After much thought, I’ve decided the way to do this is to create a free literary magazine that will publish, among other things, short stories. Thus, this year will see the birth of Divertir Magazine, which will be available online as well as in the various eBook formats.
• Divertir Magazine will be a mixture of short stories, poetry, author interviews, and excerpts from our books. The hope is that a free magazine will be one way to introduce our authors to a wider audience who might not discover their work otherwise. While this will surely be a large undertaking, I feel it is a worthwhile investment that will benefit both Divertir Publishing and our authors.
• Currently, our website is “functional,” meaning you can find all of the information you need to do everything from buying books to submitting manuscripts. But our website isn’t “cool,” so this year our website will receive a much needed makeover. This will be done in conjunction with introduction of the literary magazine.
• I also believe that social networking has been proven to be the way to market books in the future. Recent studies have shown that people are most likely to buy books based on recommendations, and social networking sites are the best way to make these recommendations known. This year Divertir Publishing will become much more involved in using social networking as a way to assist our authors to market their books.
• All of these new efforts will mean that I need to step away from the editing and review duties I currently perform. Thus, this year we will be looking to add 2-6 new editors to our staff. I will be updating the website shortly with a careers page that will explain what we are looking for. Please feel free to contact me with any questions about the positions.

I’m looking forward to an exciting year and hope you will all join us for the next stage of this adventure.