Blog | Swan River Press

Thoughts on Small Press #5—Don’t Cut Corners

6 April 2020

My involvements with small presses have so far been only as a customer, and I’ve yet to have a really bad experience in dealing with any of them—just the occasional delay in shipment, usually for production reasons. Maybe I’ve been lucky, or I just have good taste in small presses. 🙂 The most annoying issue I’ve had with some small presses (not SRP) is poor proofreading and typography. I’ve seen books where the text was obviously scanned and OCR’d but never proofread at all, with errors on nearly every page, sometimes making it difficult to be sure what the author …

Our Numbered Editions

5 April 2020

One of the things newcomers to Swan River Press might overlook are our numbered editions—and how they might go about getting one of them. The first one-hundred copies of each new book is issued with an embossed stamp, hand-numbered by yours truly. Often the numbered edition comes with a similarly numbered postcard (or postcards; also usually signed by the author if that’s something I can manage, and also only while supplies last). I believe the first book we did this for was Helen Grant’s The Sea Change & Other Stories (2013). By that point, I was casting around for ideas …

Greetings from Plagueland

26 March 2020

Update 8 May 2020: Hi Folks, I hope you’re all keeping well–or at least enjoying the good weather sensibly. I’m writing to update everyone on where I’m at with shipping Lucifer and the Child. The book tips the scales at the post office (it’s quite a jump in price too), so I’d been waiting on […]

Merely the Natural Plus: Lucifer and the Child

22 March 2020

This is the story of Jenny Flower, London slum child, who one day, on an outing to the country, meets a Dark Stranger with horns on his head. It is the first day of August — Lammas — a witches’ sabbath. Jenny was born on Hallowe’en, and possibly descended from witches herself . . . Once banned in Ireland by the Censorship of Publications Board, Lucifer and the Child is now available worldwide in this splendid new edition from Swan River Press featuring an introduction by Rosanne Rabinowitz and cover by Lorena Carrington. Ethel Mannin (1900-1984) was a best-selling author …

Thoughts on Uncertainties 4

21 March 2020

Uncertainties is an anthology series — featuring authors from Britain, America, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines — each exploring the concept of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as “winter’s tales”. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . . Over the last year or so, I’ve been …

Thoughts on Small Press #4—Author and Artist Payments

14 February 2020

Occasionally on social media I see threads bemoaning the fact that authors and artists frequently are expected to work for free (and often do). There are similar threads concerning vanity publishing—publishers who charge authors to be published—as well as agents who charge up-front fees. All of this is summarily decided to be unfair with the consensus being that workers should be paid for their work. Here’s an example of the former issue, and a sample of the latter. A quick scan of these two threads will give you a pretty good idea of the complaints. Payment of authors was also …

Thoughts on Small Press #3—How Did You Start?

19 January 2020

1. What was the itch you couldn’t scratch that made you start Swan River Press? 2. How did you start? Was it one book that turned into a line, or was it always a plan to be a full press? 3. Did you know what was involved before you started out; did you do lots of research first, or did you just dive in and learn as you go? Would you recommend this approach to others interested in starting? – Angie McKeown Hi Angie—Thank you for sending me your questions. In reading over them, it looks as though they can …

Thoughts on Small Press #2—What to Publish?

31 December 2019

Brian, here’s a question for the small press discussion; What recurring characteristics and factors do you find yourself weighing up when considering whether to publish a collection/ text? What leads up to that decisive moment? Cheers, Stephen J. Clark Hi Stephen—At first I thought your question might be a relatively easy one to answer, and on some levels it is: I tend to know what I want to publish, generally. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that there was quite a bit of unconscious thought and a few more overt goals that influence my decision-making. …

Our Haunted Year: 2019

21 December 2019

It looks as though 2019 was our most ambitious year to date. I had a suspicion this time last year that it might be and I wasn’t wrong. I had originally planned nine publications for 2019—alas, we only managed seven. But they’re seven of the best books we’ve done and results of which all involved can be proud. So let’s have a look at what we got up to these past twelve months. The first book was a long time in coming: Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women edited by Maria Giakaniki and Brian J. Showers. The anthology …

The Far Tower: Stories for W. B. Yeats

8 December 2019

Stories of magic and myth, folklore and fairy traditions, the occult and the outré, inspired by the rich mystical world of Ireland’s greatest poet, W. B. Yeats. We invited ten contemporary writers to celebrate Yeats’s contributions to the history of the fantastic and supernatural in literature, drawing on his work for their own new and original tales. Each has chosen a phrase from his poems, plays, stories, or essays to herald their own explorations in the esoteric. Alongside their own powerful qualities, the pieces here testify to the continuing resonance of Yeats’s vision in our own time, that deep understanding …

“Number Ninety” & Other Ghost Stories by B. M. Croker

8 December 2019

An Extract from the Introduction by Richard Dalby. Many years ago, while collecting the first editions of Bram Stoker, my heart would often leap when apparently spotting his rarely encountered name in dimly lit alcoves of second-hand bookshops, only to find that I had actually misread the similar gilt lettering of “B. M. Croker”. Having no special taste for this other writer’s Indian or Irish romances, I usually disregarded them. At that time B. M. Croker was only remembered (by a shrinking number of admirers) as a once-popular bestselling novelist. Her supernatural tales had sunk into total neglect, and none …

Thoughts on Small Press #1

8 December 2019

Over the recent weeks there has been a lot of talk about the small press, so much of it negative: its failings with regard to paying authors, unfair/ridiculous contracts and terms, and all around dodgy business practices. Small press publishing, done correctly and honestly, is never easy. This is not an excuse. It’s also true that substandard practices flourish in this arena, and unfortunate that all too often these shortcomings burst to the fore. The indictments, and the frustrations they beget, are not without merit. However, it is also lamentable when the small press—which has a lot to offer—undergoes so …