Episode 11: Launching an e-zine

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Hello, my beautiful Cinnabar Moths or any kind of moth you want to be welcome to this week’s episode. I am so so so excited. So if you listen to The Writers Triangle regularly, you know that we interviewed our writer in residence for the e-zine. And you know, our surprise, we’ve been telling everyone that it is launching in January of 2022, when in fact, it is launching tomorrow, I am so excited. I can’t believe we did it. It was so beyond stressful. I was sweating it. I was sweating it y’all. You don’t even hear me, though. So much went into making this happen. And I got to give it to OutKast press again, they were so helpful and super supportive throughout the monitoring process. And it was so nice to have someone to talk to you about it. Because as you all know, if you follow us on Twitter, I really really can’t keep a secret. I just like if something exciting is happening. I want to talk about it. I want to blab, I want to be like, Yay, this thing is happening. And it’s good. I’m excited. It’s, you know, we thought but you have to one of the things I’ve learned in publication. And this process of launching podcasts and launching an E zine and launching the press and launching books is that you have to give everybody room to breathe, right? So I always wanted to do an easing. And I want to give a little bit of a backstory about it. I’ve been wanting to do an E zine for like 10 years, but Chad would never sign off on it. He was like, I think it’s a bad idea. I think it’s a bad idea. But the easy things that I wanted were bizarre, he seems that he was like, I don’t see how you’re gonna continue to create content. You hate writing your blog. I was like, okay, that’s Ouch, painfully true. I am a terrible blog writer. But I am fabulous at an easing. But it has to be the right easing. And here’s the cool thing about this easing. I’m not responsible for the content. And that makes it easy. That makes it possible. And so the easy, and the website are launching together. And they’re sort of sister projects. So I’m going to talk about them together. Because in my shorthand for E zine is the cinnabar moth literary collections website and electronic magazine that is on the internet. So the first part of it was figuring out where the content was going to come from, to be honest, and also figuring out a budget. Because launching an E zine and website is not cheap. We’re very fortunate to have a website team in house that does website maintenance and such. But they’re not a website creation team. So we had to outsource that, which is not about website creation, creating a website template is a very particular thing. And you have to know how you want that template to be able to grow. So we could make the template but we could not make it grow. And I was like, You know what, y’all, let’s just let’s outsource this because it’s just eating up way too many hours. And we have books to focus on. And our own cinnabar moth, press website focus on, and I didn’t want that to get lost. And we also have a YouTube channel. So each one of these things has to be launched in a way that gives it its own time to shine, but also creates momentum that builds. So we did the press. And then we did the YouTube channel. And then we did the podcast. And now we’re doing the E theme. And we’re launching tomorrow and you met a lovely writer, our first writer in residence last week and interview.

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And we’re so happy to have a shower. And we also have some of we also have a short story of hers in the winter anthology, which is just amazing. The black tree is just a stunning, stunning story. heartbreaking, but absolutely beautiful. I’m a huge fan of her writing both her fiction and nonfiction writing. And we think that she’s a rising star here. I’m completely honest, and I feel so lucky to have landed her for our first author and in residence for 2021. I know it’s a short residency with that being two months. In the future, I residencies are going to be between three and four months. But for 2021 We wanted to have, I wanted to have the author and residents locked in for a year, I wanted it to be someone I knew and trusted. And I also wanted it to be the person who inspired doing the E zine in the way that we’re doing it. And that’s Cynthia. So Cynthia came to us, I want to say about four months ago, after writing, maybe six or seven months ago. I’m bad with time y’all nine by the time I know what year it is. I don’t even know what year the press was on Twitter. They tease me a lot because I say we launched in October of 2021, when we launched, launched in October of 2020. So Cynthia came to us after I can’t remember when she wrote the short story for the anthology, because it was shortly after that, and I didn’t research it before this episode, which if y’all listen to the music’s in Japan, or other podcasts, you know, we don’t Google. We beat the royal we me. Anyway, Cynthia came to us and she was like, I’m, I have a bunch of stories. And I’m thinking about writing an anthology. And as like, that’s great. But we don’t have any space for the anthology. And Cynthia’s like, I really don’t want to go with another press I really want to go with with y’all. So wait. And I was like, I really don’t want Cynthia to have to wait. She’s been so supportive of the press. And I really want to make this happen for her. I really want to make this anthology happen for her in some kind of way. And I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. And I was looking at the timing and trying to rearrange the schedule, and looking at what books we had coming out. And then I was pursuing this other author for our November spot for a book release. And that deal fell through and I thought, You know what, this gives me a six month lead on launching a project that I know we want to launch that we were going to launch in 2022. Let’s see if we can make it happen and get it out. And we did. So I the first step was I reached out to Cynthia and I said hey, would you mind being our 2022 author and residents and send us 12 short stories, and which is more than we had asked for if it was going to be an anthology. So thank you so much for that Cynthia really, really appreciate it. And so being an author in residence is an interview on the writers triangle about diversity, and writing to help educate the publishing world and readers and listeners out the cast about the lack of diversity that’s in publishing, and why diversity matters to them. And from their perspective. And where in the diversity matrix do they fit. And talking about that experience, I’m talking about writing diverse characters. In addition to that they’re featured on

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cinnabar moth literary collections website as the author in residence, and the bio, and their their picture is on our landing page. And then you can click away to a full read about all of their accomplishments as writers, in and outside of the domain of fighting, goes a little bit beyond that. And their story becomes the story from which the themes are built. And so Cynthia’s stories, and the sell stories provide the backbone for each month issue of the E zine. And they’re, they’re featured as the featured artist in the easynet says, author in residence, and it has their story. And for us to get to such phenomenal writers with such clear visions and such distinct voices in their writing really was what made it possible was the first step and making it possible for the November December, I reached out because the November and December Well, actually, the holiday launches on Halloween is horror. And then the December one is death. And I reached out to 10 Different authors and divided them in half that we have a relationship with they published in the anthology that we have coming up, reached out and asked them, Hey, would you write a story, either a horror story or a death depending on which issue and being invited author. And what that does is for the, the to premiere issues is that we know exactly what the quality is going to be. The authors are familiar with us, there’s a comfort there on a film familiarity there. And on. In addition to being in the first two issues, they get the title of invited guest author, and that’s a little bit higher up the wrong if you say you have a cold submission, where there’s a submission call, and you just submit, and then you have invited Vitor, which is a step up from that, where you’re guaranteed to have your story published, because you’re being invited to produce something. And then you have fighter and residents, where multiple works are requested. And you’re the face and the representation of the evening. And we’re really lucky that both of ours are such just phenomenal human beings and talented, talented authors, I’m just really glad that we were able to get them both, I think they’re both stars on the rise, I think they’re authors to watch. And that’s usually what an author in residence pays. And invited authors, I think every author that we invited are authors to watch. And I really am interested in in their trajectory. And it’s going to be so cool to be like, I don’t know if you guys can hear but there’s a thunderstorm today. So if you hear any rumbling, it’s not my stomach, the thunderstorm outside. So with these literary collections that we have, for the evening, we have great quality of writing for the first two, we have great quality of writing for the January and February issues, you already had the works. And we’ve already announced the accepted authors. All of those are very exceptional authors.

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So an author, I want to circle back a little bit to an author in residence and author and residence as a star on the rise. Or someone who has a best seller. And for us because we’re an indie press, what we want to do is highlight indie authors that we feel are stars on the rise, and it may change over time, as our authors become bestsellers, knock on wood fingers crossed, hoping it happens, that would be so awesome. Or if an author that we know becomes a best selling author. And of course, we would want to extend an invitation to them has to be that everyone who’s supporting us, everyone who’s been supporting us since our inception, we have a loyalty to those authors. And those are the authors that we’re looking at and rooting for. And we’re rooting for all authors. But you know, your first group write that when didn’t really have anything to prove that you’re as amazing as you think you’re going to be. Those people always hold a special place in my heart. And the easing allows us a place to put these short stories and give these stories authors a home and another place to publish. And a place that pays, we don’t pay a lot. We pay $75 A story. And I know that’s not a lot of money. It’s not going to pay anyone’s bills, but think it might still get your tank of gas in the US. I’m not sure I know how to get you a tank of gas in Japan. More than a tank of gas in Japan, I think couple of tanks of gas. I know if it’s in the springtime. It’ll definitely pay your electricity for several months in the spring. Maybe one month in the summer. I didn’t know what that digression was about. I’m just so excited and all over the place today. So that’s the easy part of it. And we’re also super excited because we’re selling advertising in the evening. And the advertising is already sold out for November and December and we’re super stoked about that to have advertising sell out my thank you I think our advertising has stalled out till February, if memory serves, I have to double check my notes, I don’t have them in front of me. So that’s really exciting because it’s another revenue source to keep easing going and having it be self sufficient so that it’s at least breaking even. And that we’re able to pay authors. And of course, we’d like to increase the money that we’re able to pay authors per story. And that’s down to ad revenue. That’s what’s going to allow us to do that, because a lot goes into the easing, because we have to have someone who does who just does the easy thing for us, and puts it together. So their salary is factored into all of that. Right along with the E zine, we launched the cinnabar moth literary collections website. And the website really grew out of conversations with that we had with Outcast press, and the outcast press team. And being able to, to kind of go back and forth and talk to someone and say, Hey, I think I’m doing I’m thinking of doing this, I’m thinking of doing that. And they’re super supportive. And they’re like, that sounds awesome. That sounds great. And once I figured out all of the parts and pieces that I wanted, then it was time to build the website. For the parts and pieces that I wanted, I know that I like to have the flip book on the cover, I know that I want to have the author and residents on the cover. I know that I wanted ad space on the website, I know that I want to have the monthly, think there’s five different reviews that we’re doing, we’re doing authentically indie reviews. So I’m really humbled and honored by all of the indie authors who offered up their books, when we did a call for books to review.

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We’re giving honest reviews, but we’re not giving stars because I don’t believe in the star system, I just believe is I just want to tell my experience with the book. And I don’t want stars attached to it. Because I feel that that’s misleading. And it might turn someone off, I’d rather have them read the review, and then make a decision about reading the book. Plus, I want all of the reviews to be honest. But I want it to be something that the author gets a value added from and that the author will be happy to share. And I think stars kind of puts a lot of pressure on it. Even if you get four stars. It’s like why did I get that fifth star. So I don’t want to deal with that. I just want to say, these are my impressions of the book. This was my lived experience with the book, this is what I’d like this is what I think could improve. Just have it be that way. And then I have that I like that bestseller. And it’s me knocking about bestsellers. And they do get star systems because they’re already bestsellers. And my little one star or five star review of their book is not going to affect them or the author or anything. The reason why I started doing it is because so many of the books that are bestsellers, I just don’t get it. I don’t get a wire their bestseller. I don’t understand it. So some books. I’m like, Yeah, I love that book. But other books. I’m like what, but really, though, why? Well, I found that that was I thought that would be an interesting thing to have on the website. But there’s not room in the magazine for it. But there Israel on the website and that makes the website have something unique and different and value added beyond the ECM. So we have authentically nd daylight that does our and we also have poetry, because I am a huge poetry fan. I absolutely love, love, love poetry. So I reached out to I actually didn’t tell Cassandra that I was going to reveal her book until after I bought it. And I read it and I loved it so much that I just have to review it. tide tables and tea with God, tea with God. That’s the first review that I did in the poetry. And then I did a collection of five poems. And then I did another collection of five poems. And so I have like the first four or five months, poetry reviews already out there and ready to publish. And then after that, we have guest reviews. And this is where the team of outcasts again just really came through and swung for the fences and knocked out the park. For us, as well as our authors and other reviewers, we had the next four or five months of guest reviewers done. And I’ll be honest, the guest reviews or reviews of cinnabar, moth publishing books, and their honest reviews of just what do you think of this book. And it’s a way to have our book reviewed, but also give an outside perspective outside of the press, and just make it fully rounded. And it, it’s always going to be one of our books, I think, we might switch it up and have them, review some other books as well. We’ll have to see as it develops. And then there’s also going to be on the sidebar, all of the authors who contributed to the easing that month, and their socials and the author’s page, to promote the authors so that you can know where to find them and their other works, because we think the authors are absolutely amazing and deserve your time, and attention. And we really wanted that to be on the website and have them featured. Of course, there’s also information on how to submit to the E zine. And there’s also information on how to apply to be a guest reviewer. On the website, and anyone he reviews a book that comes from our press, he received a coupon, so you get the book for free, but we don’t pay for reviews. If you have a review website, we do give you the cross promotion, and the link, we will link to your blogger website. And if you’re an author, and you have an author’s website, we will link to your author’s website so that you get that good past promotion. In addition to that, we have

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a way to subscribe to the website so that you get notifications when new things hit the website, because each of the reviews go up once a week. And so for the launch, we had all four reviews up. And then we’ll be adding to them weekly in their normal schedule, which required us to have an extra month of reviews in the bag before we launched. So that was something that we had to take into consideration as that we needed to reviews done for every category of reviews, so that we could launch with the website fully realized and everything filled out so that everyone got the full experience from the date of launch, which will be tomorrow. So everything is filled out. In addition to that we have a spot on the website for books. And that’s each month we have a book coming out. And we will put the book in that spot where you can click on it and you can read the blurb and have order links and such. And then the month of January, we don’t publish books, we’ll be putting a guestbook. When we run out of our own books to put on, I think because we’re starting with already having four books published that it’ll be quite some time before we get to the place where we’re having guest books. But when we run out of our books to do, we’ll have that spot open for guest books. In addition to guest books on the site. We also have, the pastor launched our catalog, we put our catalog together, which I’m super excited about. And so you can link and click our catalog and we have a space to subscribe. And you can also find our catalog and subscribe to our catalog. So you get notification of when new books come out. Over on cinnabar moth pub. And then of course, you can subscribe to just the E zine. If you don’t want to subscribe to the website so that all you’re getting is the E zine and you don’t have to visit the website to get it and the easing is free. All of this stuff is free to read. There’s nothing behind any paywalls and we thought that was important to improve accessibility and also to improve readership. Just keeping it real 100 We absolutely love, love, love all of the horror collection anything. It is absolutely perfect for a Halloween launch and all of the authors. All of our guest authors that were invited just really knocked it out of the park and we’re so happy and so excited with the quality of of work that they turned in. And we feel like all of the stories really flowed together. So to put the easing together from start to finish, so about seven to eight months, and I’m finding that that’s my lead time for just about everything to get anything done, to launch a book, to launch the podcasts to launch the evening to launch the website. It takes me about eight to eight months is really comfortable. I can do it and six. But that’s a little bit challenging for me and the way my mind works. As I like to do everything far enough in advance that life can happen. And we’ll still be able to put out the product. So I had to have all of the stories before I felt comfortable announcing, which is why it’s surprised because everyone had until September to get their stories to us. And then of course, we had to get them edited and formatted. And that really gave us and then put into the flipbook with the art and all of that. Not a lot of lead time. But I felt comfortable with having that short amount of lead time. In terms of the stories a lot, most of the authors got the stories to us well, and it bounce, which was really exciting, and really helpful. Thank you all so much. I’m not listing

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all of the authors, because I’m trying to encourage you to go visit the website when it comes live tomorrow to read all of the authors and to read the E zine. And we’re just super, super grateful to everyone who contributed and to the cinnabar moth team behind the scenes, who really in the beginning, because we were doing podcast, and easy simultaneously, there was a lot of overtime work. So I really want to thank everybody on the team who put in those long hours and dealt with my mood swings, I’ll admit that there were some days I was a little bit more pointed than I wanted to be, which I’m not proud of. So I’m publicly apologizing for those pointed moments. I just really, really believe in all of this. And I’m just really, really passionate about all of this. And I know people who act like Adric authorise often say it was my passion. So that’s why I’m apologizing because I feel like there were some, some jerky moments, not with authors, I’m never jerky with authors. But with the team. I felt like I sometimes I can be a little short with the team. And for that, I apologize. But I’m super excited. And I’m super happy. And for the most part, it’s been a really positive experience. And I think the reason that it was such a positive experience is down to the authors. And the fact that every author that we sent an invitation to came back with a yes. That was so gratifying. So our author for author and residence came back with a yes. All of the people we reached out to for reviews came back with the yes, this is a team effort when it comes to the content. And I absolutely couldn’t do it without everyone’s collaboration and feedback. And a special thank you to everyone outcasts press who just listen to drone on and on about all of my ideas. My order of ideas sort of happiness, I have an idea. I tell my husband, then if my husband can be convinced that it’s a good idea, which sometimes is a struggle, and the struggle is real. Once I get past, my hardest credit, a lot of people say that they’re their harshest critic, but I think when it comes to ideas, my husband is my harshest critic, which is good because Chad makes sure that I got my eyes and Cross my T’s and that everything is professional and ready to go and add a standard that I’ll be proud to have my name associated with. If you want to check out who the easy team is. And like cinnabar moth, that team stays anonymous, but the easy team, they were like, yes, please put me on a team page. And I think because it was just so much of work. They’re like I would like some credit for this. This is above and beyond. And a lot of them are also cinnabar moth team members. So there’s a little bit of lots of anonymity for that. But it just says their name and position because not everyone wanted a picture of themselves and I wanted there to be symmetry and all of the listings so If one doesn’t want their picture, no one gets their picture kind of thing. And does say their their first and last name and it does say their position for those of you that are curious who your team is, but that was not enough information to find any of them. So we did do our due diligence on now. I want to thank all of our beautiful cinnabar moss or any kind of mark you want to be or even if you’re a butterfly, but I’m not Mariah Carey, so I’m not trying to still arrive for tuning in this week. And I’m so excited for all of you to check out the easing when it when it lands tomorrow. And check out the website, the cinnabar moth, it’s not that cinnabar moth literary collection, and I deliberately left off the because whole grammar thing that I went through with with Chad, my beautiful husband. So thank you so much for your time and attention and I’ll talk to you in two weeks. Bye