Did you see me talking on social media about the panels we’d be participating in at Albacon and think “oh wow, I wish I could hear that, but I’m not able to attend the con so I guess there’s no hope”? Well, there IS hope – all FIFTY Albacon panels and readings are now available online for anyone who registers to attend the con as a hybrid attendee – and you can still register as a hybrid attendee, for only $15, for the next month (you can register, and watch, until October 11th).
I personally participated in two panels and did one reading – Starting a Small Press, a reading from my story in Add Magic to Taste, and Crowdfunding for Print.
We had great discussions at all three – Starting a Small Press also feature Bianca D’arc, Ian Randal Strock (owner of Fantastic Books), and Inanna Arthen (panel moderator, owner of By Light Unseen Media). We had a great chat with a lot of specifics and details related to owning and operating small presses. Crowdfunding for Print included me, Bianca, and Ian again, with Tris Lawrence (whose work with Duck Prints Press can be found here) and Alex Shvartsman contributing their expertise as well.
And, if you register, you can access all the other awesome panels and readings as well, including those featuring the guests of honor Walter Hunt and Linda Addison, the special guests Allen Steele and Dan Kimmel, and all the other con panelists!
You can register HERE if you want to check out all the awesome!
March was National Small Press Month, and Duck Prints Press celebrated by collecting 12 questions from press contributors, recording the answers, and posting them on Tiktok and Instagram! Curious about the Q&A? This post includes a link to all the videos, and transcripts of each one for those who aren’t inclined to watch a mess of recordings. Read on, and learn the answers to…
Transcription: Howdy everyone, I’m Claire. I go by Nina Waters and unforth, and I’m the owner of Duck Prints Press, and I am very very very very much not accustomed to being a talking head in a Tiktok video, so I hope that this will be okay and that everything is awesome. So we are here at Duck Prints Press celebrating Small Press Month, and for that we had a bunch of our folks suggest questions that they might like me to answer and so over the next couple weeks (I expect) we’ll be answering those. So now you know what the basic idea is, and I hope you enjoy the answers.
Transcription: Hey folks, it’s unforth again from Duck Prints Press and here answering some questions about the press for Small Press Month. The first question that we got was “what inspired you to start your own press?” There were definitely a lot of factors that went into it, but I would say that the sort of most immediate big one is that when I started writing fanfiction I found that I was surrounded by all these really really amazingly skilled writers and many of them dreamed of being involved in publishing and didn’t really know where to start, how to get involved, who to talk to, blah blah blah, all that stuff, and I had just enough connections in publishing to think I had some idea of what I was doing and some qualifications for filling that space. And then it took 7 years to actually do it, so yeah it was a pretty big job. But here we are!
What distinguishes Duck Prints Press from other small presses?
Transcription: Hello again, here’s unforth/Claire/Nina, depends on what you want to call me I guess. Unforth is online, Claire is my actual name, Nina is my pen name. Once again here to talk about Duck Prints Press as part of our feature for Small Press Month, and our second question is “what distinguishes Duck Prints Press from other small presses?” Answering this well would require knowing a lot more about other small presses than I actually do, but I would say a lot of it’s different because of – well, for several reasons. We are much less top-down, in that we have a much more collaborative process for basically everything we do. We’re also much less of a black box, which is to say that it’s not like “send in submission, get answer back, that’s all you ever really know.” We try to be really really transparent and open about our process, what we’re doing, our timelines, our reasons for picking some people and not others, all of that jazz. We also are different in that we focus very strongly on LGBTQIA+ and queer stories and characters. I try not to say writers and creators and authors also because I’m not here to out anybody, but many of us are queer. I’m queer, hi! Yeah, that’s just a few of the ways, there’s way more, but I’m trying not to turn this into video essays. Have a good one, guys.
What is the best thing and what is the hardest thing about running a small press?
Transcription: Hi! Unforth here again for Small Press Week – Month – with Duck Prints Press, and we are answering questions we got from our contributors about the Press, and I am the owner/founder/manager/almost everything. “What is the best thing and what is the hardest thing about running a small press?” The best thing is the people. That one is really easy. I have met so many amazing creators who I would never have gotten to know otherwise, and everybody is just brilliant, talented, skilled, wonderful, y’all are amazing. I do this for you, and I do it for all of us, and I want to see us all succeed and be awesome and show everybody that a press modeled like this can work. You guys make it worth it every single day. The hardest thing is all of the not-fun parts. You know, everybody’s going to enjoy different parts of running a business. I find fiscal stuff to be challenging and a drag and it takes forever. I spent 3 hours doing our taxes last week. Don’t even get me started on collecting sales tax. It would bore you to tears, and it bores me to tears and I have to do it anyway. And marketing. Marketing takes so much time and so much work for so little reward that’s visible immediately. Like, the reward’s coming. It goes – little by little we get there, but it’s – man, it feels like you take baby steps for months to get, like, 5 feet closer to where you want to be. So I would say, the parts I find hardest are the actually “being a business” parts.
A word of advice to people wanting to start their own press.
Transcription: Hi hi, unforth here again from Duck Prints Press, filming some questions – sorry, filming some answers to questions we got from people involved in the press about how Duck Prints Press came to be as part of our features for Small Press Month. And our next question is, oh – it’s, well. “A word of advice to people wanting to start their own press.” One word: don’t. No, I’m kidding. It’s way more work than I ever thought it would be, but perhaps more importantly, you’ve got to be ready to be a jack of all trades. You’ve got to be ready to think that you can learn anything you need to learn, because you’re gonna have to. I know more about tax law than I ever would have imagined myself capable of learning because there’s never enough money to hire all the professionals you need who are experts and there’s never enough resources to recruit the people who have that information so you need to figure it out yourself, or at least that’s what my situation has been. Maybe if you have a lot more starting capital than I do you’ll be in a better position in that regard. Just, don’t be afraid of it, but be ready to learn all kinds of things you thought you’d never learn. And also if you think you’re gonna have time for your own writing, haha good luck with that. I hope you have a better time of it than I’ve had.
What is the best way for people to support small presses?
Transcription: Hi! It’s unforth/Claire/Nina Waters here again. I’m the owner and founder of Duck Prints Press, a small press that focuses on working with fanfiction authors to publish their original work, and we are answering questions we got from our contributors about things about the press as part of Small Press Week. And the next question is – “what is the best way for people to support small presses like Duck Prints Press?” Money. The answer is money. I can’t imagine this is a surprise. I mean – this is best way, mind you, I’m not saying only way. But I mean – there is never enough sales. It would be, you know, back our Patreon, support us on ko-fi, buy our books, review our books on Storygraph, Goodreads, our website, any place else you can think of. Your personal blogs. I don’t know – anywhere. Instagram. Tiktok, hi! But I know money is in short supply for basically everybody. If you’re looking at this and going “well, duh, money, but how can I do that?” That’s fine. Signal boost us. Talking about us. I mean, even just literally, just hitting a reblog/retweet/share button really, really, really helps. Because even if you don’t have money, when the posts spread through social media if they find – if they spread through 100 people and one of those people has money, then we make a sale. And that helps us, because in the end, this can only be a passion project for us, and we need to make money if we’re really going to succeed and show people that we can do this. And I think and know and believe that we can. And so help us out!
Transcription: Hi, it’s unforth/Claire again, here for another Small Press Month update from Duck Prints Press, and I just realized – I decided to do all of these on a day I’m wearing a ducky shirt. I didn’t plan that or anything, just worked out. I only own one ducky shirt – it’s not even like there’s a lot of them. And our next questions is, “In your opinion, why do small presses matter?” Small presses matter because traditional publication – trad pub – is really obsessed with marketing and success and corporation stuff and making huge profits, and they don’t have time for small voices and taking risks and margin – you know – marginalized people and publishing stories stories that they don’t think will succeed. And they’re wrong. I think those stories absolutely can succeed, but also, you know, there needs to be somebody out there taking those chances and that’s what small presses do. And a lot of small press don’t succeed, but even when we fail, stories have still been published, they’ve still been out there, the stories have still gotten told. So even when we fail fiscally, we’ve still succeeded in the core goal, which is to tell these stories to as wide an audience as possible. And that’s why small presses matter.
What are the common misconceptions about small presses, either internal or external?
Transcription: Hey hey, unforth here again with another of Duck Prints Press’s Q and A session answers to questions from our contributors that we’re doing for Small Press Month. And the next one is the first one that I’m sort of like “I don’t have any idea what I’m gonna say.” “What are common misconceptions about small presses, either internal or external?” I can answer internal I guess. I think people have a – well, maybe external too – I think people have a much inflated idea of our earnings and sales. They’re – they’re very low. Hi, I’m the owner. I’ve been running this for over 2 years and I have never taken a paycheck. One of these days I need to get paid. That would be nice. But I think there’s this idea that “if you build it they will come,” which is to say that if you write the book and put it out there, then people are going to magically appear to buy it. And that’s really, really not the case. It is so much work to get books into people’s hands or onto their devices as the case may be. In terms of other misconceptions from an external standpoint, I have no idea. You know, everybody comes to a job from a direction when they start a business. There’s gonna be things that they knew ahead of time and things that they didn’t. I came to this with a lot of experience in writing and editing and things like running web pages and organizing fandom events and things like that. I have no press experience. I haven’t worked for other presses. I am not traditionally published. I know some people in the industry, that’s about the closest that I get. And so what their point of view might be, I could not begin to tell you. But you know, we manage.
Transcription: Unforth from Duck Prints Press here again answering questions we got from our contributors about Small Press Month and what running a small press is like. So our next question is, “what are your biggest non-monetary victories?” I guess it sort of depends what you consider a victory. I really appreciate the buy-in we’ve gotten from fandoms that know about us. Every time we get a lot of reblogs and a lot of boosts, it feels good because these are our people. We are fans. That’s the whole point is that we’re fans doing this in the hopes that we can get other fans involved as readers and writers and artists and graphic designers and website people and like every single person is a fan. The only person involved who isn’t a fan is my – is the lawyer I hire. And for all I know he is a fan, I haven’t asked. It’s really none of my business. It’s also – it always feels good when somebody big notices us, so, you know, the owner of another small press backed our first Kickstarter. I don’t care about the money – it’s cool that this person noticed, that’s what I was excited about. Cecilia Tan reblogged – sorry, retweeted us. A few other, you know, people who you’re like “hey, I know that name! I know who they are!” saw that we existed, and that feels good. I also feel like it’s essential. So yeah, I would say that most of our biggest non-monetary ones have been, like, “senpai noticed me” moments, haha. But you know, we’re getting there. I feel like I keep ending them with things like that so let me trying tying this off a little bit more intelligently. I think that in order to succeed ultimately, we need that kind of attention on us, and so every time it happens, it feels like a small victory because I figure – I think I read somewhere, and this might be total nonsense, that you need to, like, see a word at least 20 times before you actually know it. Like, before you can remember it, spell it, use it correctly in context, blah blah blah. And so I tend to perhaps inappropriately use that as my metric for, like, what it takes to succeed. Which is to say that, any given person is going to need to see Duck Prints Press and know we exist at least 20 times before that actually means something to them and they maybe think of us when they go, “Hey what am I going to read next? What book should I buy?” So, you know, that those – when those big people see us, that’s a lot of people’s one time finding out that we exist, so that means a lot. And somehow this has ended up the longest video. Funny how that works out.
Transcription: Hey hey! Unforth here yet again with another of our Q&A questions from Small Press Month. We asked people on our Discord if they had questions about running a small press that would work well for videos during Small Press Month and these were the results. And I’m sorry I keep swiveling my chair, I’m trying to find an angle where the snow falling outside doesn’t reflect horribly off of my glasses. That’s why this keeps happening. Anyway, the next question is: “What are the core ideas behind Duck Prints Press?” The core idea behind Duck Prints Press is to work with people in fandom communities – fan authors, fan artists, etc. – to help them to bring their original work from concept to fruition. You know – we love it when those people publish with us, but we do actually offer consulting, so if those people don’t want to publish with us, they can just have us edit and then publish it someplace else, and that would be fine too. The core of it is helping people create, encouraging people to create, and helping all – helping individuals succeed by helping all of us succeed. Because many of us have individual followings for our fan works, and I think that if we – I really believe, and it’s one of the core tenants of the press – that if we pool all of that together, we can help all of us to get to where we want to be in terms of – as writers, as artists, as creators, you know, as published people. So, yeah, that’s the core idea. That comes with a heavy queer/LGBTQIA+ flavor. Nobody has to be queer, no story has to be queer, but the general gist is all very, very not straight or cis, or you know any combination thereof. We’re not that picky. We’re not outing anybody “own voices” style here. Helping fan creators to get more attention for their original work and lifting all – lifting each other up to do it. That’s our core idea.
What would you do differently if you had to start over?
Transcription: Unforth from Duck Prints Press here again answering questions for Small Press Week – Small Press Month. I keep making that mistake. Small Press Month about Duck Prints Press, the fan-oriented small press that works to help fan creators publish their original works. And our next question is: “What would you do differently if you had to start all over?” That is a really good question. Because if I’m honest, I don’t think we screwed anything up all that bad. And the things that got most messed up were kind of outside of our control to some extent. Like a lot of our year-2 plans just got delayed and put on hiatus because I ended up needing back surgery. I would do that differently. I would not try to run a business that was only 7 or 8 months old while suffering from increasingly severe spinal stenosis. That sucked. Don’t do that. In terms of things that I could control… I don’t know if it would have gone better because it’s really impossible to say, but doing a model where we had a lot more starting capital would have been very different and potentially could have gone a lot better. I think of Big Bang Press, which tried to do something very similar to us. They launched with a Kickstarter that raised $55,000, and what happened after that is best left to various fan wank webpages. But when I think about, sort of, what I could have done differently if we had started with $55,000, that would have been really different and I think potentially really helpful. We could have gotten a lot more input from professional than we’ve been able to really afford so far – like, by that I mean a CPA, a lawyer. Like, obviously we’ve spoken to those people, but I have to always try to keep it brief and do as much myself as possible because there’s just not enough money to go around. But if I’d had – if we’d gone a direction where instead of , sort of, shoestringing it from the beginning and trying to build from small to big, if we’d instead gone a “let’s collect investors and make this work from the – you know – build everything at once with a big starting investment” – I wonder how sustainable that would have been once the initial investment ran out? But it certainly would have made a lot of things different early on, and a lot of those things could have been easier. So, yeah, I know the reasons I didn’t do it that way, so I can’t actually say for sure I would do it differently or do it that way if I had to start over. But I do think that it’s a very different approach that could have had a very different outcome and might be interesting if we had a multiverse that we could test hypotheses in.
Transcription: Unforth here! I also go by Claire, which is my real name, and Nina, which is my pen name – Nina Waters. And I am the owner of Duck Prints Press, and I am here answering questions from our Discord…Discord members, that’s a good word…Discord members about the press as part of a celebration for Small Press Month. And our next question is, “Where do you see Duck Prints Press in 5 years?” And I’ll own, I actually usually don’t project out quite that far. By the time I go to 5 years, it feels a little too pipe-dreamy and I tend to look at more like one to two years as more like my goal. Like, I’m in planning for 2024 right now in March of 2023. But I would say, 5 years, I’d love to see us breaking even consistently and making enough of a profit. I’d love to see our Patreon bringing in about a thousand dollars a month, which would be a bit – a little over double what we’ve got now, we’re about $400. And when I say Patreon, and I mean Patreon and ko-fi combined, I always short-hand it. I’d love to us having a really steady stream of novels coming out, like, maybe 10 novels a year, as well as 4 anthologies and all the short stories, novellas, and novelettes. I would definitely like to see our books on some bookshelves. I think that that’s achievable and probably – I mean, honestly, I think all of this is achievable, or most of this is achievable in a shorter time frame than five years. Like, I think I can probably have books on bookshelves sometime in 2024 – bookstore bookshelves, I mean. And I also – I think I’d love to see a pretty solid cadre of artists and authors who are working with us consistently. I’d love to be doing several major art projects a year, so like – tarot decks, art books, card books – I feel like there’s a lot of other really obviously stuff and my brain is just totally blank right now. But you get the idea. So not just author projects, but also projects that are sort of the artist equivalent of a novel as it were. And…yeah. I’d just really like to see us keep growing and keep doing what we’re doing. I think we’re on a good track.
How do small presses in general (and Duck Prints Press specifically) differ from tradpub?
Transcription: Unforth here again from Duck Prints Press, answering questions about the press for Small Press Month. I’m going to try filming this one with my right hand holding the camera, which for some reason seems much harder. And this is our last question for small press – Small Press Month. How is one 3-word phrase something bumbling in so many of these videos? The world will never know. “How do small presses in general, or Duck Prints Press in particular, differ from traditional public – tradpub – traditional publication presses?” I mean, certainly size. I mean, those places that have entire departments to do things that I do all of myself or do all of, do most of with the support or 2 or 3 other people. I mean, we’re almost up to having an editing department. We’ve got 12 or 13 people now helping with editing. But, I mean, we still only have on lead editor, like for things like anthologies, it’s still – I’m still the last say. Nobody else has yet been able to step up and be a lead editor, though I’m looking forward to that as something we might do maybe next year. Things like, I mean, selection process, transparency, I mean obviously we’re not a public company, we’re not traded. We don’t have investors. We don’t have stockholders. Things like that. So, yeah, I mean, it’s honestly it’s so different that it’s hard to say how different all of it is. I would say this is not about presses in general, I think we’re pretty atypical in how we handle these things even among presses – small presses, I should say. I’m not trying to exceptionalize us, like, I’m sure there are other places doing things similar to what we’re doing. But I certainly don’t know what they are, so I can’t like shout them out like “hey that place does what we’re doing!” Yeah, it’s sort of different on every level. In ways, like, we don’t work through agents at all. We don’t take unsolicited manuscripts ever. Our recruitment strategies are totally different. Our marketing strategies are totally different. You know, we’re – we really came at this as fans, first, and we looked at kind of what – what makes a fan thing succeed, whether that this is a new fanwork, or a zine, or a pay-for-production campaign, whatever it is. What are the things we’ve seen and been involved in that have worked that have done that. We tried to emulate that because we’re fans and we expect our audience to be fans, so we decided to take an approach using methods that are tried-and-true in fandom, and applying them to our original work. And, yeah, from bottom to top, that is just totally different than what trad pub does.
Transcription: Hey hey, so one last time here with unforth. That’s me. My real name is Claire, my pen name is Nina Waters. I am the owner and founder of Duck Prints Press, which is a small press that works with fan authors and fan artists and fan creators to publish and share our original work. We’ve been celebrating Small Press Month all through March, answering a whole mess of questions that we got from our Discord members. We hope that you’ve found these interviews interesting. I’ve honestly never done anything like this before. I have no idea if I’m doing a good job. But I hope you’ve enjoyed them. They’ve been interesting questions to think about and to answer, and I look forward to sort of opening up dialogues about any of these topics. If you’ve seen anything, heard anything, read anything in any of our posts on this topic that got you thinking, we would love to hear more about that. So, probably you know – I expect I’m gonna use this last video in a master post that links to all the others, check them out! We answered a bunch of questions about why we exists, what we do, who we work with, how we’re different, and we’d love you to get more involved. So don’t be a stranger, okay? And yeah, that’s again, I’m Claire/unforth, this has been all about Duck Prints Press, duckprintspress.com, in case that wasn’t really obvious, and um. Yeah. I hope you have a great day. And in conclusion, you guys – you guys want to see the snow? It’s been snowing the whole time I did this. It’s really pretty outside, take a look. Hopefully you’re not just seeing, like, tons of bug wire right now cause I can’t really see how good a view you’re getting, but yeah it’s really snowy outside of my office right now. Hopefully that wasn’t just, like, 10 seconds of just like glaring white light. If it was, I’m really sorry. Have a good one, everyone. Bye!
Thanks for joining us for Small Press Month, y’all, and if you’ve got any questions we didn’t answer, we encourage you to check out our FAQ, comment on this post, or drop us an ask on Tumblr!
The crowdfunding campaign for our anthologies She Wears the Midnight Crown and He Bears the Cape of Stars has ended, and we’re funded!
A huge, HUGE thank you to everyone who helped spread the word, all the authors and other contributors, and of course to everyone who backed!! We couldn’t have done it without you.
Wondering what comes next? Well…
…we finish editing!
…we order merch!
…we fulfill all our orders!
…we publish the e-book versions on our website!
…and we keep working on publishing more queer books, queer anthologies, queer art, and more!!
(Missed the chance to back the campaign? Well, the books will be available on our website as e-books in – probably – November or December. And, you can always support us monthly – and get lots of awesome perks for doing so! – by backing us on Patreon or ko-fi! Backers get sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes access, exclusive stories, a say in determining themes for future anthologies, and more.)
All monthly backers on our Patreon and our Ko-fi get access to one free short-story per month (fluff, rated gen or teen, up to 2,500 words). We’re actually playing catch-up right now – we fell behind on fulfilling this reward while I was dealing with health issues, but all the stories are now written and in various stages of being editing for posting to our account, and we’ll be sharing them over the next few weeks! So, if you want to read a whole bunch of wonderful short stories, full of fluff and good feels and queerness, and all written by authors transitioning from writing fanfiction to original fiction, why not back us and check them out? Backers can also access all the past backer-stories – that’s ten short stories you can read right now, just by backing us!
This month’s story is:
Title: Not So Trivial Matters
Author: Nickel J. Keep
Genre: Modern
Rating: General Audiences
Relationship: enlm
Character Features: non-binary character
Tags: anxiety, coming out, emotional hurt/comfort (mild), fluff (domestic), internalized transphobia, past tense, pov third person limited, slice of life
“Sky? Are you almost done in there?” Matthew’s calm, reassuring voice rang from the other side of the door, not settling Sky’s nerves in the least bit. “We need to get going.”
“Yeah,” Sky replied after a moment. They took a look in the mirror. Matt had told them it would be okay, that they could dress how they felt most comfortable. Standing in the bathroom and regarding their reflection in the mirror, the knots in their stomach drew tighter. Where there had once been long brown hair now rested a short mop of green, styled into a quiff. Their lack of chest, hidden by the binder that had arrived that morning, was startling. But it felt right. Paired with a slightly baggy T-shirt and boot-leg jeans, they almost didn’t recognize their body.
It was perfect.
Want to read more? Become a monthly Duck Prints Press supporter on Patreon or Ko-fi and this and lots of other great stuff can be yours!
Get your mental engines in gear and your keyboards ready, because Duck Prints Press will be hosting our second annual May Trope Mayhem starting on May 1st, 2022!
May Trope Mayhem is a multi-fandom/original creation event open to writers, artists, and content creators of all kinds! We’ve put together a list of 31 of our favorite tropes, one per day through the month of May, and we encourage creators to join us for this month of fun tropey mayhem.
Our goal is to promote motivation and help with habit building, so we’re encouraging people to keep their ficlets under 1,000 words, or if you make art or a gif or some such, to stick to a sketch or a single image.
This event is primarily held on Tumblr, but you’re welcome to participate on anywhere Duck Prints Press has an account (you can see all our current platforms here) and we’ll keep our eyes on our tag everywhere!
How can you participate? It’s easy! There’s just a few simple rules:
to participate, write a ficlet, a poem, create art, make a gif, or create any other content that you want, aligned with the prompt for the day!
post your correctly tagged fills to Tumblr, and we’ll reblog them!
you must tag warnings such as gore, MCD, sexual content, etc., so that people can avoid triggering material!
please also tag fandom and ship, so people can find what interests them!
we ask that you put the tags at the top of your post, so they’re easy to find.
if you write more than 1k words, please use a read more,
if you write something with NSFW content or potentially triggering material, please put the entire story under a read more.
Ping us (@duckprintspress) or tag your creations “#may trope mayhem” and so we can find them! We’ll reblog all fills that follow the above rules and are posted between May 1st and June 8th, 2022.
You don’t have to sign up, just post your fills. You don’t have to be a member of the Press, or following us. You don’t have to be part of a specific fandom. We’re open to all ships, genres, formats, etc.! You don’t have to post fills on the corresponding day, though we ask that if you’re creating for a day that hasn’t happened yet, please wait for that day to post.
This is a low-pressure event, held all in good fun, and we look forward to seeing what you create! You can see last year’s list here, and read fills from 2021 by going to #may trope mayhem or by visiting our AO3 collection.
The official 2022 May Trope Mayhem List will be released on May 1st, 2022!
(though, Patreon and ko-fi backers get a sneak peek today…)
Did you know that our Patreon backers get a lot of exclusive blog content? We post multiple times a week to our Patreon blog, sharing teasers, art previews, behind-the-scenes glimpses, extra information on our financials and expenses, opportunities to participate in votes that determine the types of content we create, exclusive fluffy short stories, exclusive slightly-longer erotica stories, 24/7 “AMA” for the DPP management team, and more! Further, to make sure that we’re always transparent about how much work we’re doing and how we spend our working time, we also post a Weekly Business Update every Friday, giving a synopsis of all the progress we’ve made in the previous week.
We know that not everyone uses Patreon, and often people don’t want to have accounts on multiple websites, especially when those websites involve spending money monthly. We never want anyone to feel they have to join Patreon just to get access, so now we’ll be cross-posting all our exclusive backer content to both Patreon and ko-fi! For features such as surveys, which Patreon offers through internal functionality but ko-fi doesn’t, we’ll now list the surveys through a third-party website (probably Google Forms, for now) to make sure that all our supporters, regardless of platform, get a say!
What does backing us get you?
I’m so glad you asked! We offer 4 backer levels, each building on the previous.
Mallard Duck Backers: $3/month on Patreon or ko-fi
access to our backer-exclusive blog, featuring business updates, teasers, works-in-progress, art sneak peeks, and more
one free short story per month, up to 2,500 words, written by one of our authors, rated gen or teen (usually, these stories are fluff).
voting rights on polls that determine anthology themes
Muscovy Duck Backers: $5/month on Patreon or ko-fi
everything that Mallard Ducks get, plus…
ask us anything! leave us a comment or send us a message with a question about what makes Duck Prints Press tick, and get the inside scoop written just for you (and our other backers…)
complimentary copies of any works of fiction under 1,000 words long that Duck Prints Press publishes
nominate themes for blog posts, prompt lists, short stories, and more
voting rights on surveys to determine the monthly 2,500 short story, themes for blog posts, etc.
Canvasback Duck Backers: $10/month on Patreon or ko-fi
everything that Muscovy Ducks get, plus…
a backer-exclusive extra reward for backers who also support our crowdfunding campaigns
one free erotica story per month, up to 5,000 words, written by our authors, rated M or E
one free e-book from our catalog each month
voting rights to determine the theme of the erotica story
Mandarin Duck Backers: $25/month on Patreon or ko-fi
everything, yes everything, that Canvasback Ducks get, plus…
a complimentary copy of all “flat” merchandise produced during our crowd-funding campaigns (for example, art prints, bookmarks, stickers, enamel pins, magnets, keychains) even if you do not back the campaign (if you DO back the campaign, and you choose a level that includes this merch, you’ll get 2 of everything!)
a Duck Prints Press T-shirt (3 months backing required)
two die-cut stickers per year, produced in June and November each year (1 month backing required)
one merchandise item per year, distributed annually in August (last year it was two art prints!) (3 months backing required)
optional inclusion on our Premium Support List, which is included in all our e-books and published in all our print books!
As you can see, we have a whole lot to offer! And, supporting Duck Prints Press monthly helps us maximize the amount we can pay our creators – our monthly crowdfunding supports our software expenses, consulting costs, professional/legal services as need needed, supplies and hardware, and more. Our goal is to have our Patreon + ko-fi support total enough that it covers all our overhead each month! This would enable us to pay authors 90% royalties (we’re currently paying 75%), and we’d be able to afford to pay the authors who do the backer short stories (they get edited for free and the story rights revert to them in six months, so they don’t get nothing, but we’d love to offer cash-in-hand), and produce more merchandise, and raise the hourly pay for our staff, and I (the owner) might be able to take a paycheck someday, and, and, and. There’s so much we’ll be adding as we grow, and we’d love you to contribute to making that happen!
So.
Do you love queer creators? Do you love queer stories and art? Do you want to support fanfiction authors pursuing their dreams of publishing their original stories?
This is your moment!
Support Duck Prints Press monthly on Patreon or ko-fi, and help us grow!
(want to support us with money, but not monthly? You can always buy us a one-time ko-fi, or check out our shop, featuring our currently available book titles and our merch!)
Duck Prints Press LLC is thrilled to share that our second crowdfunding campaign, aimed at raising $12,000 to enable us to publish And Seek (Not) to Alter Me: Queer Fanworks Inspired by William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” has come to a successful conclusion! Over 30 days, 242 backers contributed to support us for a total of $14,914 US.
Backing the campaign was the only way to get a print copy of this gorgeous anthology, but it’s not your only purchase opportunity! We expect that the e-book version (in ePub, Mobi, and PDF formats) will go up for sale on our website sometime in July; if we have any extra merchandise, we’ll likely offer that for sale at that time, too. So keep your eyes peeled (and make sure you follow us on social media!) and you can be among the first to hear!
Whether you backed this campaign or not, always remember that you can support us, and the fan-creators-transitioning-to-original-creation with whom we work, by backing us on Patreon. Alternatively, if you prefer Ko-fi, we don’t yet offer a subscription model on Ko-fi but we will soon (we expect to set it up in the next week or two! We’ll likely also open a merchandise store there) so consider following us there, and you’ll get a notification when we open up monthly subscription options there! And, of course, you can buy our books and merchandise anytime through our webstore!
Wondering what’s next for Duck Prints Press?
We’re so glad you asked, because the answer is: a lot!
Our next two anthology, She Wears the Midnight Crown and He Bears the Cape of Stars, are in-process. These two anthologies feature stories involving masquerades – in all kinds of settings, and with a very loose definition of what counts as a masquerade! She Wears the Midnight Crown focuses on wlw stories. He Bears the Cape of Stars focuses on mlm stories. Both include a huge variety of settings, types of characters, relationship models; we’ve got lots of genderqueerness and poly, too. Authors’ final check in is today; based on the editors’ reviews of work submitted at Check In 1 and Check In 2, trust us, you are not gonna want to miss these two books! We’ve also recently (technically, today!) contracted an artist for the two front covers – more on that in the coming days!
The crowdfunding campaign for these two anthologies has a planned June 15th launch date, but! As promised in January when we were recruiting authors, we will not be continuing our relationship with Kickstarter. Instead, we will be working with Seed & Spark, an independent crowdfunding platform that focuses on projects that tell stories; they primarily work with film media, but we’ve had a lovely e-mail chat with the folks there – they’re happy to have us, and we’re delighted to be an early (but not the first!) book publishing project launching there. We’ve got a member profile there already set up – so, if you have an account there, we encourage you to give us a “follow,” and if you don’t have one yet, now might be a great time to make one! We’ll also share a followable version of our project at least a couple weeks before launch – we’ll make an announcement when the time comes, so be on the look out.
With the help of our Patrons, we’ve officially decided on the theme for our fifth anthology! The project is still in its early planning phases – we have a theme but no title or schedule – but at our management meeting this week, we’ll be discussing a tentative timeline for production which amounts to, “hopefully formally announced/opened for recruitment in June, with an anticipated crowdfunding campaign in the fall or early winter.” Expect an announcement sometime in late spring or early summer.
We’re also in the very early planning stages of an erotica anthology and our next “Queer Fanworks Inspired By…” anthology. Both would have 2023 crowdfunding releases.
Now that we’re almost caught up, work-wise, on the backlog of editing that resulted from my health issues, we’re also looking to other “next projects,” especially working on publishing more novels. We expect to build on our existing relationships with A. L. Heard and Tris Lawrence, by publishing a re-edit of Hockey Bois and editing and helping crowdfund further books in Lawrence’s “Welcome to PHU” ‘verse. We’re hoping to have Hockey Bois our sometime this summer and a crowdfunding launch for “Missed Fortunes” and “Into the Split” (books 2 and 3 of the “Twinned” trilogy) sometime in Quarter 4. In addition to these known projects, we’ll be opening the floor to authors who’ve previously worked with us, likely in late summer or early fall, to discuss projects they may have in mind or in progress that they’d be interested in pursuing and potentially publishing with us. We’re tentatively hoping to publish 3 – 4 anthologies in 2023 and up to 4 novels. And, as always, you bet your bottom dollar everything is gonna be hella queer!
As you may be aware, Patrons at the $10 and $25 level on our Patreon get access to one erotica story per month, written just for them – but, what you may not realize is that after 6 months, the rights for those stories revert to our authors in full, and they can do what they wish with those stories – including publishing them with us! One of our authors has opted to do so, and we’re hoping to have the story published on our website by the end of April (more information on this soon)! We’ve been hard at work tweaking our website and shop configuration in preparation for this, and Alessa Riel has developed an awesome variation on our standard Dux logo, for all your citrus-scale needs…
We’ll share more on the erotica label soon!
And none of this includes our ongoing projects – our regular blogging on writing, publishing, and prompting (we’ve been expanding our stable of blog post authors!); events like #drabbledaysaturday on Twitter and May Trope Mayhem (coming in 2 weeks!); our monthly Patreon short stories and erotica stories; and more!
As you can see, there’s a lot in the pipeline, and there’ll continue to be more to come. The success of both of our first crowdfunding campaigns has been a huge boost for us, helping us build a profile, grow our relationships, develop more reliable streams, and more. Thank you all for your support, your reads, your signal boosts, your backing, and your interest. There’s loads more work to do, of course…but the result of that work is going to be a growing catalog of amazing queer works by queer authors and artists, and honestly? We couldn’t be more excited about what tomorrow will bring!
Well, technically there are twenty-five hours left in our Kickstarter, but! TIME IS ALMOST UP!
We’ve reached our first stretch goal, and we’ll be able to commission art for our back cover! Every single e-book will come with the graphic for the front and back cover, every print book will have full-color illustrations on the front and back, and backers at Levels 3, 4, 5, and 6 will get an extra art print featuring the back cover art! Gio Guimarães (Facebook (giovannabcg) | Facebook (giosdoodlesandartworks) | Instagram | Tumblr | Twitter) is the artist. Gio and DPP have already signed a contract, and once we have sketches to share we’ll give y’all an update!
We’d love to reach our next stretch goal, at $16,500, so we can give our authors and artists a raise which doubles how much they earn for their contributions to the anthology. You can help! Check out our merch, help spread the word about the campaign on social media, and – if you want a copy – make sure you buy your own!! This is your only chance to get And Seek (Not) to Alter Me: Queer Fanworks Inspired by William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” in print, and we’ve got a host of amazing merchandise for our backers too, so don’t miss out!!
Well, well, well, look at this amazing, thrilling e-mail we received last night! As of yesterday, “And Seek (Not) to Alter Me: Queer Fanworks Inspired by William Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing'” has met it’s initial/base funding goal, and will definitely be produced as a print book! We are over the moon; there was much celebration and rejoicing in the Duck Prints Press Discord chat. 😀
But! The campaign isn’t over yet. We have 3 more days – our official end time is Thursday, April 14th at 11:30 a.m. Eastern – and we’d love to hit our first two stretch goals! What are those?
Well, we’re at $12,150 right now.
If we can hit $12,500, we’ll be able to print the books (and include in the e-book!) art for the back cover by front cover artist Gio Guimarães! Backers at Levels 3, 4, 5, and 6 will also receive a second art print (at no additional cost to the backers!). To be honest, we’re pretty certain we’ll hit this goal – so confident, in fact, that we already have commission Gio, contract signed and everything.
More ambitious – if we can hit $16,500, we can give all our authors and artists a raise from 1 cent per word/$50 per page to 2 cents per word/$100 per page – doubling how much we pay them! We’d love to be able to do this, and we think it can be done, but we need your help!
Do you love this project? Do you want to support our authors and artists? If you haven’t backed yet, consider doing so – just $15 will get you the e-book in PDF, ePub, and Mobi format, or you can take advantage of this one-and-only time to get the book in print format, for $40!
If you can’t afford it (we get it! times are tough!) or if you already have backed – help us spread the word! Reblog, retweet, share, and boost our posts on one or more of our social media accounts!
We wanted to remind everyone: our second Kickstarter is running for 6 more days. If you want to secure your own copy of And Seek (Not) to Alter Me: Queer Fanworks Inspired By William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” this is your moment – the print book will only be available during the Kickstarter! We’re at 90% of our funding goal as of about an hour ago, and looking forward to the moment when we cross the threshold! (Not “if,” definitely “when” – we’re sure it’ll fund, we’re just eager to start the official “WE DID IT!” celebration!)
Second, we are in the planning stages for our fifth, as-yet-untitled anthology – and you can get a say! Here’s what we know:
Stories will all feature at least one main character who identifies as a gender identity outside/beyond the binary (genderqueer, genderfluid, non-binary, agender, bigender, omnigender, polygender, etc.)
Stories will be optimistic/fluffy, and will have guaranteed happy endings!
Stories will focus on positive family relationships – taking a loose definition of “family.” Found family? Yes. Platonic relationships? Yes. Extended family? Yes. Fostering? Adoption? Biological family? Family-of-choice? Marriage? Yes, yes, yessity yes. We want all the happy family feels.
What we don’t yet know is setting. That’s where you come in!
You likely know that we have a Patreon that supports our overhead; essentially, Kickstarters/crowdfunding campaigns fund specific projects, while the Patreon keeps the lights on. The funds we get through Patreon enable us to keep our project costs down by covering the cost of software, hardware, supplies, staffing, and other core business functions.
Our Patrons get a lot of exclusive benefits – several of which apply to our crowdfunding campaigns!!
* all Patrons at our $25 level get a free copy of all “flat” merchandise from our crowdfunding campaigns, even if they don’t back the campaign!
* Patrons at the $10 and $25 levels can choose one free e-book from our catalog per month, which includes our crowdfunded works (once they’re officially published) – so, a $25 Patron could get all the flat merchandise AND the e-book from a campaign without even backing!
* Patrons at the $10 and $25 levels who DO choose to back the campaign also get bonus merch! For Add Magic to Taste, they got an exclusive magnet. For And Seek (Not) to Alter Me, they’re getting a sticker just for them! Which sticker? This one! Isn’t it cute? You know you want one…
* and lastly – finally coming back around to our fifth upcoming anthology! Right now, all our backers have the opportunity to have a voice in picking the setting! We’ve given them a choice between aetherpunk settings, solarpunk settings, or tidalpunk settings for our fluffy genderqueer found family stories. Did you love Add Magic to Taste? Well, we think this new project will be right up your alley – and now through tomorrow morning is your last chance to have a major impact on the anthology theme!
So, take a look at everything we have to offer on Patreon and consider helping Duck Prints Press grow!
