We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Catherine Lundoff. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Catherine below.
Catherine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?
I started writing and getting published in my midthirties, right after I had to close my small indie bookstore because I ran out of cash. I’ve always loved books and the idea of helping people discover books was entrancing so closing up shop was a difficult decision. But, having done that, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at writing. I started writing short stories and submitting them, did some freelance journalism and started working on on longer pieces. My work was published by a number of different publishers, in genres ranging from fantasy to romance, mystery to literary fiction, and I had experiences both good and bad along the way. I also learned a fair amount about book publishing, book distribution and bookselling. I’d already tried bookselling and decided that retail was not for me, but when I and my main publisher parted ways, I thought ‘Why not become a publisher?” I love books, writing, discovering authors and getting books into the hands of people who love them so it seemed like a natural fit. From that point to actually launching Queen of Swords Press took about two years of planning and prep work. The first year was pretty rough and I had to learn a lot on the fly. But we’re celebrating Year 5 this year and I’m feeling pretty good about all we’ve accomplished!
Catherine, 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?
I own and operate Queen of Swords Press, a small book publishing company based in Minneapolis. We have 15 titles out so far and are working on the 16th, 17th and 18th books right now. Our books are all some form of science fiction, fantasy or horror and currently, all of them have at least protagonist who is LGBTQ+. I identify as bi/queer and having those voices and stories out there in the genre is very important to me. I also love having the opportunity to get new and different stories out into the world – our authors do amazing work and I’m very proud of all of them.
The press has been around for 5.5 years now, but I have been involved in both writing and science fiction for much longer than that. My first published short story appeared in 1997 and I’ve been writing ever since – novels, media tie-in and gaming writing, short stories, nonfiction articles and essays, I do it all, or so it seems some days. I also teach writing classes and have taught at such venues as the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, the Novel in Progress Book Camp in Wisconsin and Clarion West Online.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.
from the start, I opted to go “wide” with our books. This refers to Amazon’s KDP program where indie authors and publishers can sign up to give a Amazon an exclusive option on distribution with or without a time limit. I’m not a big fan of monopolies and Amazon is prone to changing its terms, generally to the detriment of authors and publishers, so I didn’t want them to be our only purchasing option for our readers. Instead, I went with Smashwords (now Drive2Digital) for basic ebook distributions, with a separate account for Amazon and Google Play and a couple of smaller platforms. Smashwords distributes our ebooks to iTunes, Kobo, Overdrive (for Libraries) and other platforms. We also sell ebooks (and print) directly from our website. Pros: our books are available everywhere, all over the world, in all kinds of platforms.
Cons: it can be fiddly to maintain. I have a program for formatting our books so I can tailor it to each platform’s requirements, but it’s still a few hours at a stretch to get everything set up and loaded up.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
Queen of Swords Press was self-funded from my savings initially. Book publishing does not have a very high profit margin so taking out business loans would have been stressful and scary. Not that potentially burning through my savings wasn’t scary, mind you. My business plan was to get the press self-sustaining on book sales as soon as possible so we launched with a lot of different events and outreach geared toward selling books. We also have a Patreon, which is a platform where artists can fundraise through monthly pledges in return for art. In this case, our patrons get a novel in progress from me, first view of author reading videos, copies of our new books and other fun things. As of 2021, book sales are covering all of our basic expenses (website, legal, book orders, artwork, author royalties, etc.), which currently cost about $5-6000 year, depending on how many books we put out, how many events we do, etc., plus a bit extra for new projects, promotions, paying my part-time assistant and so forth. Our Patreon covers additional expenditures, paying me a small salary, taking out ads and related costs. Book sales tend to go up and down over the course of the year so the periods of time between promotions, events and holidays can get pretty slow so the extra money helps keep us on track.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.queenofswordspress.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/qospress/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/queenofswordspress/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/queen-of-swords-press
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/qospress
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgs2GPj1cvDtlu0pVvS0i_Q
- Other: TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@queenofswordspress
Image Credits
Publicity photo of Catherine Lundoff: Ben Zvan Photography. Last Car to Annwn Station graphic: Kanaxa Designs Queen of Swords Press logo: S.L. Johnson Images The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones cover : T.M. Roy All other images created in house.