We caught up with the brilliant and insightful David Pischke a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

David, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

My publishing partner, Heather Lang-Cassera, and I were working for another press. We were working two projects that we thought were special, and we decided that we wanted to to have full control of getting those books into the world. We asked the press we were working for if we could have the titles for a new press, and they graciously agreed. Heather and I, and very quickly Risa Pappas and Brandi Fairbanks, thought there was a space for high-energy, strange, and risky work in the small press world. We also wanted to create books that were beautiful on the outside as well as the inside. Creating a unique work of art by partnering artists with authors and our press became a a tenant of our business. The collaboration we’ve encountered between artists is inspired. Because we all had (and still have) full-time “regular” jobs, we also decided that we couldn’t publish novels, so the idea of “parts that make a whole”–collections of poetry, short stories, essays, hybrids–was born. From that idea came our jackalope mascot–he truly is a whole made from parts.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

A good amount of my childhood was spent in a community theater called Theater Works that was in Glendale, Arizona, now Peoria. I was surrounded by artistic people who acted, directed, sang, danced, painted sets, and wrote scripts. My mom designed costumes for many of the productions. (She even built the four puppets–two of them large enough for a full-grown human to be inside–for the musical Little Shop of Horrors.) I was writing little scripts with my friends and drawing constantly at home. In high school, I was in a ska band. I wrote all the song lyrics and with the bass player, designed the album covers and flyers for our shows. I got serious about writing in college and I was fortunate to teach Creative Writing when I worked as a high school teacher. I founded a literary magazine for the students to run. This all led to me applying for MFA programs for Creative Writing. I met my business partners in the MFA program at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Tolsun Books makes books that are high-energy, books that engage the reader immediately. We are very interested in stories we haven’t heard before from people with diverse backgrounds. I’d say we’ve collected a wonderfully eclectic group of compassionate weirdos. I’m so proud of the community of authors and artists we’ve formed. That really takes me back to the feelings I had for the people I grew up around at Theater Works. It’s truly amazing to watch our authors support each other to a degree I don’t see in other presses.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

We are constantly shifting our business/organizational model. There have been some huge learning curves, mostly in how our team–all of whom are extraordinary human beings–works together toward one goal. There are approximately a million steps in making a word processed manuscript into a physical book, and then a million more steps in marketing, submitting for review and awards, and actually selling the book to readers. We’ve tried many approaches, but we’ve found that having clearly-defined roles for each step of the process helps move things along smoothly. I’m really fortunate to have partners that are willing to adapt to the changing processes.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We use several channels for selling our books. The most profitable for us, by far, is directly through our website. The fees associated with selling directly to our customers are very low. We do use a distributor, Small Press Distribution, that gets our books to book stores, libraries, and larger booksellers like Amazon and Baker & Taylor. They, of course, also need to make a profit on the books, so our cut of the sales is much lower. It is nice to have a distributor, though, because our books find many more homes than they would have otherwise. My favorite way to sell our books is in person at bookfairs. I love talking to our customers about our books and telling them the story of the jackalope and our bold covers.

Contact Info:

• Website: tolsunbooks.com
• Instagram: @tolsunbooks
• Facebook: facebook.com/tolsunbooks
• Twitter: @tolsunbooks