We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tina Moss. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tina below.

Tina, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

With the number of new books published per year estimated in the hundreds of thousands to millions depending on the source, the biggest challenge in the publishing industry to profitability is visibility. When you’re an independent press, such as City Owl Press, you’re competing against the advertising dollars of major corporations in the form of trade publishers as well as the vast number of independent authors and their individual marketing budgets.

From a community standpoint, we always want authors to do well, whether they publish with us or not. We do not see other authors as competitors, rather they are our colleagues. But when you’re discussing advertising space, only so many spots can be on the front page of a retail site, only so much shelf space exists in a bookstore, etc. So, the biggest hurdle is landing enough visibility in the market to have your books seen by readers, while at the same time supporting your fellow authors.

To take a debut author’s first book to the level of making those advertising dollars stretch in a packed market is very challenging. Readers are less willing to take a risk on an author whom they don’t know, and so they need to see the book several times before they’re likely to purchase. This is true of most markets, but in publishing, it is particularly tricky as we discuss “organic reach” and “social media influencers.” In many cases, “organic” is actually manufactured by the marketing dollars behind it. Thus, you’re also working between actual organic reach vs. targeted campaigns/sponsorships.

The best efforts often come from a combination of a book hitting the market at the right time (a phenomena we call “trending”), capturing reader attention via recommendation and word of mouth, and a solid budget and plan behind it. Also, sometimes, it’s just luck. In the case of our recent spring books, A Kingdom of Souls and Shadows by Leslie O’Sullivan, and The Other Side of the Mirror by Dana Evyn, we’re seeing this combination. The books are both in a hot and trending genre, fantasy romance, dubbed “romantasy” by readers. They are capturing that audience with excellent reviews as well as social media influence. Finally, the budgets and plans behind them have allowed for more out of the box and creative ideas than typical advertising and marketing plans. It’s sometimes this alternative thinking beyond traditional methods that can be the catalyst to better visibility, and ultimately, profitability.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of City Owl Press, which is an independent publisher of books in romance, fantasy, sci-fi, and a limited number of horror and thriller titles. My role includes managing the daily operations of the business, fiscal planning with our accounting team, contract negotiation with our legal team, and a ton of other little things that keep the business running.

I originally got into full-time publishing via the author route. In 2007, my co-founder, Yelena Casale, and I were co-writers on a book in the urban fantasy genre. We had each worked in publishing in various roles, but our passion was in writing. We went the traditional route of querying agents and pitching editors. We landed an agent and went to the highest level of acquisitions at two trade houses, but ultimately, we were turned down at that stage.

The rejections led to writing more books and traveling the road of independent publishing. Our agent at the time decided to open a small press and offered us a publishing contract for our original book. While we loved the time with our agents, the experience of the small press was lackluster. By 2012, we both realized that with our knowledge, experience, and connections in the industry, we might do better by opening our own company. We wanted to start an independent publishing house that would be “by authors, for authors, bringing the best books to readers” and that’s been our motto ever since.

It took an additional eighteen months of research after our initial decision to open the company, but by 2014, we were ready. We started out with our own book as a test run, and then, published books by querying authors thereafter. We’ve been growing ever since.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Hire the right people and put your trust in them. That’s been my number one guiding principle when it comes to team management. Inevitably, you’ll hire someone that doesn’t fit within the company dynamic. To avoid the pressure that can come from having the wrong person in a role, I’d also recommend hiring slow and firing fast. It may seem harsh, but the longer you have someone in a role who doesn’t fit, the harder it is for the rest of the team.

Maintaining high morale can be a challenge during lean years. However, small acts of kindness can help bolster a team. The simple act of saying “thank you” and letting them know they’ve done a great job can turn around a down team. Showing appreciation for what your team does, giving bonuses when you can, and generally praising their successes can be the best maintenance of morale.

When you have to point out issues or address mistakes, they’ll know you have their best interest in mind because you’re giving praise and positive feedback too. If it’s always a negative criticism, you can’t expect your team to have a positive experience.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

In the beginning of 2024, we had a massive shift in our company culture. A group of authors brought up issues they had, and we believed we had addressed their concerns. However, we did not recognize the ongoing hostility that had been brewing and the divide they felt in an “us” vs. “them” mentality. We thought the issues could be easily addressed and resolved, but we did not understand the emotions behind them. As our goal has always been about partnership and uplifting our authors, this came as a major shock to our team.

It forced us to look at every policy, standard operating procedure, and hiring outside help to comb through our business model. The results baffled us even more. As the third-party professionals determined that we were: too transparent in our business, provided too much information, and ultimately, overwhelmed our authors by giving them too much of the business side. Authors, who aren’t self-publishing, are not running a business; they are writing books. By bringing them too much into the business side, we were giving them the false expectation that they had to be business people and adding unintentional pressure onto them.

The lesson to unlearn was that we could not expect our authors to be partners in the sense that they would understand everything about the business of publishing. In fact, by doing so, we hurt their ability to produce books and their sense of trust in us. Instead, we had to look at them more like clients who share in the production and profits of the product i.e. books. That was a major lesson to unlearn as we have always approached the business as a shared-model. But that idea led to our authors feeling like they had to be both the publisher and the author, which we had to change.

This process was a hard lesson. But now, our communications are more streamlined and relevant to the author side of the business. Over the past few months, we’ve changed our procedures to have the authors access information which is appropriate and worked hard to address all concerns. We’re continually growing in this area.

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