Surprise! A Saturday post! This one just couldn’t wait until Monday. Today we have another special interview. This time with Scott Roche of Flying Island Press; a brand new publishing house with a unique twist on helping fiction writers to tell their stories.

Through the mediums of e-publication (e-pub as we call it in the biz) and podcasting, the FIP team joins the ranks of pioneers marketing storytelling in the digital age. And what better time to launch such a groundbreaking project than on the same day our own nation was born? As Scott said, there’s something auspicious about it.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy the interview.

***

Sirius Graphix: This new venture of yours sounds pretty exciting, why don’t we start by telling our audience exactly what Flying Island Press is and what it’s all about?

Scott Roche: Well Flying Island Press is our effort to start up a publishing company that is going to address some needs that we see in the overall market. We’ve started off with Flagship, our speculative fiction e-pub, but it’s the first of what we hope are many different imprints.

Sirius Graphix: What exactly are “imprints”?

Scott Roche: Think of them as different brands. Random House has several different sub-brands that address different genres/markets. We as FIP hope to have a horror imprint, a literary fiction imprint, and perhaps some non-fiction as well.

Sirius Graphix: Very nice, I like it. I saw on your site that you’ve also started a fantasy imprint too?

Scott Roche: Well at this point Flagship, our first effort, will include both science fiction and fantasy. There is a possibility that down the road we may start a dedicated Fantasy line.

Sirius Graphix: How did you come up with this idea? You mentioned some needs in the industry you wanted to address, what were those?

Scott Roche: Well the team that makes up FIP are either all podcasters or folks who have written for podcasts. We noticed that there is a disconnect between people who write fiction for print venues and people who write fiction for podcasts. There also seems to be a decline in paying markets in print and paying markets for audio fiction is scarce as well. We wanted to develop a product that could perhaps bridge that gap and bring the two mediums together. So all of our imprints will be available both in e-pub and audio form.

Sirius Graphix: Damn, wish I’d thought of that! It’s a very good idea and I like the way you’re doing it digitally. Definitely a wide open market there.

Scott Roche: There is, for sure. The whole thing really started when we were talking about the valley we perceived that we were in as podcasters. We want the rest of the world to know how much talent there is in our community. There are a few other people who are doing this, but I have yet to see one that’s doing precisely what we are.

Sirius Graphix: Podcasting is still trying to gain a foothold, isn’t it?

Scott Roche: It is and I think part of that is because so much of it is still free that there’s a lack of respect for it in some arenas. That’s changing thanks to some success by a few authors and we want to be part of that change. We’re taking a risk because we’re charging for our content and people are so used to getting internet content for free.

Sirius Graphix: Ain’t that the truth. There’s a lot of debate going around these days about free content and whether even “traditional” bloggers should start charging for folks to read on their blogs.

Scott Roche: I did some asking around and it seems that when it comes to fiction at least people perceive that anything that isn’t “vetted” by a publisher/editors isn’t as valuable. I can’t say that I blame folks entirely. Self publishing has such a low barrier to entry these days that you can’t be sure how good something is.

Sirius Graphix: Oh yes, the old “if you’re not in print you must not be that good”. We understand that very well as we’re going through our own publishing process. But with innovative and talented people like yourself out there, I can see that changing.

Scott Roche: I appreciate that.

Sirius Graphix: So tell me a bit about your team. Who are they? What do they do?

Scott Roche: Well our managing editor is Zach Ricks. He’s a podcaster and a lawyer. FIP was his brainchild.

Philip Carroll is a very talented writer. He’s really our hawk eyed editor.

JP Losier is our layout and design guy. He’s the one whose making the e-pub version of Flagship really pop. He’s incorporating social media widgets into it so that the audience can easily and immediately provide feedback to us and the authors.

And Jeff Hite is our web master. He’s also a writer and podcaster. He’s been doing an audio/text anthology for years at Great Hites. It was his experience in providing a product that was both text and audio that was a big driver in our decision to do that. He noticed that there were some people who wanted text, some who wanted audio, and some who wanted both.

Then there’s me, podcaster, writer, opinionated SOB, and now marketer. I’m learning the last one as I go.

Sirius Graphix: * chuckles* You opinionated? No, not Scott!

Scott Roche: So I’ve been told. I’m the house contrarian.

Sirius Graphix: Every house should have one. Keeps people on their toes. How did all of you guys meet?

Scott Roche: Well really through podcasting/Twitter. Phil, JP, Zach and I have all written for Jeff’s site. But really there’s a pretty broad podcasting community that we’re all a part of. Our friendships grew out of that.

Sirius Graphix: Now, with the e-pub products, what format do those take? Are they downloadable ebooks for Kindle or PDF documents?

Scott Roche: That’s where we’re being a little experimental. We’re building our first issue in the EPUB format which allows for a little more flexibility. We’re also building it in a form that will be readable by the Kindle. Ultimately we want to be listed on Amazon and in the iTunes store.

Sirius Graphix: Where do you find your authors? Or do they find you?

Scott Roche: For our first issue we reached out to the community we had on Twitter. We got about 15 submissions. Once we had a site and had things put together we registered with Duotrope (a GREAT resource) and we got 10 submissions in the first few days we were with them. So now the hope is that they will come to us. We’re also a paying market so that helps. We hope to be paying SFWA rates this time next year.

Sirius Graphix: I’m sure you will. There’s a lot of “starving writers” out there who want to get their stories told. What’s your criteria for accepting authors?

Scott Roche: One thing that we really want to do is to develop new talent, people who haven’t been published yet. To that end, provided you follow our submission guidelines, if we reject your story we’ll do so with editorial guidelines, not just a form letter.

As far as acceptance goes, it’s about quality. The nice thing is with such a diverse group, and since at this point most of us are reading most of the stories, you have to get two thumbs up from the slush readers and then you get sent to Zach.

Sirius Graphix: So you give them a bit of a critique to help them see where they could improve? Do you allow people to resubmit after they’ve polished up the writing?

Scott Roche: We do indeed. We accepted a few folks this go ’round provisionally. We told them we’d accept their submission if they could turn it around quickly enough with changes. [To] A few others we said, “your story as it stands right now doesn’t meet our standards. Do XYZ and maybe next time.”

Sirius Graphix: That’s definitely much better than a generic form letter – and the beauty of being a small pub-house. You can give the authors personal attention, especially since it’s about giving the smaller guys a chance to break through.

Scott Roche: Exactly. We give the kind of attention we want as writers. The “bigger” we get the harder that may be, but that would be a good problem to have.

Sirius Graphix: Amen to that! But then again, by that point your team will have grown too, so you still may be able to provide that personal touch.

Scott Roche: Our hope is, down the road, we can do the same thing with longer form fiction. We’d like to serialize novels in both audio and e-pub formats.

Sirius Graphix: You know, you’ve got my brain going here, we’re definitely going to have to talk more about the novels to audio.

Scott Roche: I happen to know a thing or two about that.

Sirius Graphix: Ha! I’m sure you do!

Scott Roche: That’s really like a five year plan though for us.

Sirius Graphix: Long term plans are great and it looks like you’re taking all the required steps to get there.

Scott Roche: Once we get Flagship on rails so that the process is streamlined we’ll apply the same tech/approach to other things. And of course it needs to be self sustaining. We’ve also got our heads down on how to handle advertising too.

Sirius Graphix: Marketing is an author’s best friend, so many people don’t realize that.

Scott Roche: Yup. That’s one area that we’re brainstorming hard on. Traditional forms of marketing don’t seem to work as well with this sort of project, at least based on what I’ve heard form podcasters who have more skills in that area. That’s where we’re hoping that cross pollination of the audio community and the e-print/traditional print community may be helpful.

Sirius Graphix: Casting a wide net, huh?

Scott Roche: As wide as possible.

Sirius Graphix: When is all of this due to launch?

Scott Roche: Issue one drops on July Fourth. We thought that was an auspicious date. The theme of that issue will be “origins/beginnings”. Most of our issues won’t have themes, but it seemed appropriate to have this one for launch. We’ll also be making one story available for free in both audio and e-pub form for those who want a taste.
There will be six stories in the first issue. We’ll be charging $1.99 for the e-pub and the same for audio. If you want both that will set you back a whopping $2.99

Sirius Graphix: That’s a bargain for sure! Where can folks go to sign up/subscribe/purchase?

Scott Roche: Our site for Flagship is www.flyingislandpress.com/flagship.

Right now you can buy on an issue by issue basis. Once we have a few under our belt we plan on having an annual subscription rate.

Sirius Graphix: Is there anything else you’d like to tell our audience?

Scott Roche: Well, since I don’t think we touched on it, Flagship is where you should go if you want the kind of fiction that is positive and takes you to places you want to escape to. So much out there right now is dark, post apocalyptic stuff and there’s a place for that. We want the kind of stories that you can enjoy with your kids or maybe just your inner kid. We were really inspired by the pulps and Tolkien and Indiana Jones and four color comics. So if that sounds good to you then come check us out.

Sirius Graphix: It certainly does and we here at Blue Sun definitely wish you and your team the best of luck with it. And even though I’m more the “dark side” writer, I’ll still come by and check you out anyway.

Scott Roche: Hey, you know me, I like to visit the dark side. And thanks! I appreciate your and your readers’ time.

Sirius Graphix: You’re welcome here anytime, thank you for stopping by!

For more information and submission guidelines contact Scott Roche at Flying Island Press or visit their website here.

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