Today I am doing research about funding possibilities in the form of grants for my Limber Pine Press (my publishing house) as well as myself as an author and my books, as books.
The good news is, there are many, many grants out there for young and enterprising people… and I will work hard until some of that sweet moolah is mine.
The bad news is, much of the available funding for authors and publishing houses comes from the Canada Council for the Arts, an antiquated institution whose policies about eligibility make sense… if the year is 1995.
I believe that self-publishing is the way of the future. If you publish ‘the traditional way’, you are literally signing away 90% of your rights to your book: intellectual AND financial.
Sounds smart, right?
Then there is the fact that publishing books and sending them to book stores – the traditional way – is terribly, soul-crushingly wasteful. There is this thing called RETURNS. Returns are what happens to the majority of books ever printed. Here is how it works:
Chapters orders 200 copies of a book. That way the store will have lots of copies in case it sells well, and they wont’ have to worry about lost potential business.
People buy 50 copies.
The other 150 copies are destroyed, and the book store is given a full refund.
Yes. This really happens. It is industry standard.
It is also why small, independent publishing houses are so poorly represented in book stores. How many small businesses can afford to give a refund on 75% of their products sold… while still paying for production costs?!
Thus, self-publishing, using print on demand technology, individualized order fulfillment and ebooks, is the way of the future.
The Canada Council for the Arts will not fund you if you are self-published.
Period.
There is a way around this: build your own publishing house, have it publish at least some titles by people other than you (ie do not sleep because you will have so much work to do), and then your house will qualify as ‘professional’ according to their arbitrary standard, and therefore your book will count as a book.
Then, you and your publishing house are eligible for promotional grants for your writing!
Unless you actually wrote your books! In that case, while you are eligible for some piddly grants to cover your living expenses while you write NEW books, you are certainly NOT eligible for grants to cover promotion of your EXISTING books.
So, you’re allowed to write them, but they won’t sell.
Sounds like a smart investment, Canada Council.
