Newsflash: Feeling of Power

I didn't think I'd do it this soon, but yesterday I published my first book on kindle!

We are talking here about my book Keter Malchut that I've published in Hebrew in 2007.

It contains five science fiction and fantasy stories in an Israeli setting.

This book is my first effort in publishing, so there are many things that I'd do differently today, but hey it's only 2.99$!

Mainly I wanted to see how this whole 'Publishing to kindle, and selling electrons to (potentially) the entire world' works.

I guess I will find out pretty soon.

Here is the link to the Kindle book.

Here is the link to my Author page.

I also made a Createspace Print on Demand book today - Wow, busy day!

Feel free to share this information, of course!

Newsflash: Winning the Amichai Prize

Sometime in 2008 my friend Pavel from Ashan Hazman (Note, link in Hebrew, it's a really cool bookshop + Pub + Bar + Rock concert place in Beer Sheva), told me that the poet Mois Benarroch was trying for years to publish a poetry book, but no publisher wanted to take it.

I said I'd be glad to do it. I like the guy's poetry, and I thought that it was turned down by other publishers for spurious reasons.

Like anything else in publishing, it took a longer time than we thought, and it ended up costing more money (though compared to the two books I published just before that, it was relatively cheap).

We ended up publishing it in late 2010, the cover designed by yours truly (I did not do the painting, and I think the cover design is pretty awful...)

We never sold too many copies, but never mind, the guy deserved to be published.

Then earlier this week it was announced officially that the book won the Yehuda Amichai prize for poetry in 2012. I was ecstatic. this one will go down in history. Though I have to wander if that also means it's going to sell better...

Why I Decided to Focus On Ebooks From Now On

As you can see from the previous post, I have printed two books on April 2009.
These books had significantly larger printings than my previous two books.
I printed 700 copies for the first book (200 that I more or less sold, and then 500, that I more or less didn't). And 200 for the second one (starting to run out of copies just about now, four years later).
The third and fourth books were different:

• They were not Science Fiction or Fantasy.
• I had a wholesale guy who was willing to work with me on them, which meant they would be sold at the stores (they still are, the first two books are still not at the stores).
• They were going to be PRed (now I know this does not mean much, but back then...)

So I thought I had all the reasons to be optimistic

... and printed 2,000 copies of each.

I got tons of PR. People said the books were good all over the papers, National TV, and National Radio.

So far, two and a half years later, I sold something like 200 copies of each.

About a year ago I got a phone call from my wholesaler, who is a REALLY nice guy. He  said something along the lines of: "we are moving to a smaller warehouse, and I've got thousands of your books here. Do you want to take them, or shall we destroy them?"

I'm just a regular guy living in a not very large apartment, so I said: "looks like I have no choice. Destroy them."

So never mind the monetary loss (something like 20K$), but how can I possibly justify such damage to the environment?

So when I found the Mendele website (Warning: the site contains mainly Hebrew characters), a few months later, I was delighted. I started selling my books as Ebooks there, and so far I've sold only a few, but I'm happy as punch!

The Books We Have in Print

OK.
Starting to make this orderly, just about now.
Here is a list of the six print books we have published in Hebrew so far.
In the next few posts I will talk about Ebooks, and why we are mostly going to go with only Ebooks from now on.
Maybe at some future point in time, I will have more to say about the publication process of the print books, other than what I have written so far. 


So here are our print books according to publishing order:


Book Name                            Author                                Publication Date        What Kind of Book is it?


Keter Malchut                         Uri Meir (me)                      June 2007                  5 fantasy short stories.


Days Are Coming                   Ido Gendel                         October 2007             8 SF short stories.


Three Penguins in the City    Mariella Chenu Melchior      April 2009                  Illustrated Children's Book.                                             
Taliya.Date.Com                    Taliya Finkel                       April 2009                  Documentary Poetry.


Not Going Anywhere              Mois Bennaroch                  April 2010                  Poetic Anthology.


Empire                                    Shlomit Guy                       November 2010          One Year of English Football.


Sorry this came out so crooked, it's the best I could do without tables!

                            

In all honesty

I just looked back at a couple of the last posts in this blog, and I must tell you I'm confused!
I mean when people say Resis Nehera Press, and they don't say it very often, they mean me.
But looking at this blog, even I cannot find my head or tail in it.
So...
From now on I promise to blog here fairly regularly, and the next few posts will be devoted to the books we already have in print, the ebooks we already have, our future plans, and in particular our English publishing plans.
Long story short:

• We have so far published six Hebrew books.
• We have so far published two of them in ebook format, and a third one should be published in the next few weeks.
• We have some interesting plans for the near future, but nothing we can share right now.
• We have no plans to publish anything in English till 2013 (or 2014), and our first few English books will in all probability be ebooks.

Stay tuned for more details on all of the above...

Resis Nehara Proudly Announces

From now on we have our own Internet store.

You can order books, and they will be sent to you by mail

So far it only works in Hebrew, and only in Israel, but we expect bigger and better things in the near future...

You can see the Hebrew store on the blogs list

More new posts

So I've had a few months, I've run a few blogs, And now I decided I'm going back to writing in this blog, occasionally.

This is because I'm thinking of selling Keter Malchut, and hopefully other books in English.

I hopw this is all going to work out.

Meanwhile I think that just like in hebrew, the press blog (this blog), will not be the main blog.

Rather, I'm starting a 'Thoughts' blog.

It will not be Parallel to this blog, Or to the Hebrew "MachashavotBeerSheva"

This is all work in progress, I hope it will stabilize...

No more new posts

Hi,

So I think it fits better, as a Hebrw publisher to have a hebrew blog:

http://resisnehara.blogspot.com

come to visit!

New blog

Ok. so Squidoo made me think a lot, and I decided to open a new Hebrew blo9g, and write in it much more often than here.

This is the address:

http://machashavotbeersheva.blogspot.com/

Israeli Politics

While politics is not the subjec of this blog, I think that literature and politics were always tied.

Here is the link to my squidoo lens about Israeli politics:

http://www.squidoo.com/israelipolitics

My book in the stores

So this is really it.

finding a distributor really works.

I saw My book "Keter Malchut" a few times in the storees in the past wek.

I am very happy, this has been a stumbling block for our budding press for a while now...

All that remains is seeing how to sell it.

Any ideas?

Squidoo

I like squidoo!

I really do!

You might like it too!

I think I'm starting to get this whole web thing. At last.

Here is my squidoo adress:

http://www.squidoo.com/israeli-fiction

Good News

If you have been reading this blog for a very long time, you may know that i have been looking for a distributor.

I look no longer. I have found someone perfect for my tastes.

A fair and Hard-working fellow, who is also another publisher.

Also there would be more books real soon now, and there would be more interesting links soon too!

Stay tuned.

Getting There

Hi,
I am now going to put here the fourth story out of five found in the Keter Malchut collection. I hope you all enjoy it, feel free to comment. The fifth is already in editing, so soon we shall have the entire short story collection online, say, isn't that swell?

Too Much Stuff

The reason I have not been writing for such a long time is not that there is nothing new to say, but rather, that there is so much to say!
I will just give you a few headlines, and hopefully clarify things in the near future.

• We have a new distributor - Opus books
• The penguins book was postponed
• 'New York Visions" should be ready in about three months
• Our fifth book is also coming along nicely
• We should keep the English stories coming
  
• There are more book ideas, but they are a bit hazy right now
• So much PR work to do!

There, that just about covers it. I hope to explain all of this and more in the not too distant future.

Thoughts for the End of the Year

Hi,
So this was the year I decided to become a publisher. The year started out very badly, with bad personal news, but it ends in a very nice way.
I am a publisher, three books are ready and the fourth one is being edited, the first book is slowly being translated to English just so that you, dear blogger readers can read it, and many new and exciting ventures... will just have to wait because books are too important right now.
We did have a deal with 'Sifrut Achshav" but it never materialized, it was a bad deal, so never mind.
We are looking for a new distributor, and in the mean time we decided that we would sell our books directly.
Feel free to mail me at:
alicelidd@gmail.com
That is if you want to order our Hebrew books, or for any other publishing related discussion.

Been Busy

Yes, I know dear blog I have been busy. have been neglecting you lately, but I have something for you. You may call it a third day of Christmas present, if you so wish. I have, at last, a second story out of the Keter Malchut book.
Happy?
This story is called 'Maybe Not', and it's the second story in this five story collection. I hope more are coming, and with shorter intervals, but I cannot promise you anything, I am still busy busy busy...
Sorry.

It has been a while

I have done some serious thinking in the past few weeks, about publishing and marketing, and expanses. Mostly boring stuff, but I'll try to find the interesting bits and tell you about them later.
For now, it looks as though we shall publish six books by March or April, and then focus on marketing and sales etc. and not publish anything new in Hebrew till the fall.
As I have promised I will tell you in detail about all of the six coming book, and I promise to write more often from now on. So stay tuned for more details...
Also, we have now found a wondeful editor for our English translations. I intend to translate all the short stories from 'Keter Malchut' in the near future, and publish them here in the edited version. This means you can expect a new and much better version of the 'Smoke of Time' very soon.

A Publisher's Dilemma

I have started taking private lessons in the operation of this press. These are from a hardened business man, who helps me get the business side together.
You see book publishers are forever between two opposite sides, each pulling in a different direction. On the one hand there is literature - the will to publish good books, books that explore new ways of story telling, and do it well. On the other hand there is business, the will to publish books that sell.
The thing is: if the books you publish do not sell, you cannot make other books, and cannot do good literature. On the other hand if you only care about the money, what's the point of this whole exercise, there are enough trashy books out there even before drop of light published anything. So it really is a dilemma.
In the next few posts I will tell you about all the books that we have published, or intend to publish in the near future, and how with each one, we are faced with this constant dilemma, and how we might solve it with some careful business planning. Feel free to comment on any of this, It might help me pull my thoughts together.

New Addition

A new addition was recruited a few days ago – I. Yes, the press is growing, ever so slowly, yet in a determined manner.
I hope to contribute as much as possible to the wondrous world of Israeli fiction press. More to come in the very near future, so stay tuned.