Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stephen and Heather Ventura-Vassallo. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Stephen and Heather, appreciate you joining us today. Some of the most interesting parts of our journey emerge from areas where we believe something that most people in our industry do not – do you have something like that?
When we started out, we were warned against publishing books that cross genres, or what is known as mashups. We were told booksellers would have a difficult time selling these books because they would be difficult to categorize and shelf. We love those kinds of stories, and we believe readers do as well. They open possibilities in storytelling that wouldn’t be there if constrained by the rules and tropes of a single genre.
Look at the growth in what’s now called romantasy. We think in the future, we’ll see a continued growth in the market for romantic horror and other mashups.
Stephen and Heather, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Brigids Gate Press, an indie press established in 2021 by Heather, Clyde, and S.D. Ventura-Vassallo, believes in the power of STORY. Currently, our focus is on horror, dark fantasy, poetry, and romance. We aren’t afraid of mash-ups of more than one genre and will go the extra mile to market those books in a way that gets into the right readers’ hands. Underrepresented and unagented authors are welcome.
We’re proud to publish marginalized voices and people who have a difficult time getting their foot in traditional publishing, especially at first. We love to explore unusual printing techniques, such as the horror in verse novella, ‘the patient routine’ by luna rey hall.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
We had to unlearn that the market is the most important thing to watch. If you let the market set your trends, you miss the wealth of authors and stories that are waiting to be discovered and printed. We can still sometimes fall prey to worrying about what is hot in the industry, or lose sleep over a book that isn’t reviewing well, but we remind ourselves that readers and authors are the heart of this process.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
We think the most important part of any community is remembering that the table is big enough for all of us. We built and continue to build our social media presence by supporting and sharing posts by other publishing companies, authors that don’t have contracts with us, podcasts, reviews, and articles. We’re all in this together.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://brigidsgatepress.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brigidsgatepress/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrigidsGatePress/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrigidsGate