We’ve now vended at our first two cons, and we wanted to take a few minutes to blog about it!
I (press owner Claire Houck/unforth) attended Fandom Fest in Schenectady, NY, and Albacon in Clifton Park, NY, and vended on behalf of the Press. Authors Nova Mason, Shea Sullivan, Catherine E. Green, and Tris Lawrence helped me out with manning the booth, handling transactions, participating in our first DPP panel, and more, so huge THANKS to them. (Also to Prof. Robert Heverly from Albany Law School, for contributing his expertise on copyright law to our Fandom Fest panel). I wrote about our Fandom Fest panel here, and about our events at Albacon here and here.
To be honest, we really had no idea how things would go, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that we far exceeded our expectations. Going into this, I’ll own I was very afraid – would people be interested in our Press? Would we make money? Or would we be that sad, lonely table that everyone walks quickly by? But things couldn’t have gone better – they went so well we’re already looking at more events to attend in the future.
From a fiscal standpoint, we made almost double what I anticipated and completely made up the expense of buying the supplies and equipment necessary for us to vend at these events and going forward. From a panel perspective, our events were nicely attended. From a “growing the business” standpoint, we added many names to our mailing lists and gained social media platforms. And, from a networking standpoint, we had a fantastic time and met a lot of awesome people – and that’s primarily what this post is about!
You already know about us; we’re here to shout-out some other folks we’re now very happy to know!
The amazing Syrrenand I bonded instantly over our shared love of the men of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu books and Stardew Valley romance options. I miiiight have ended up with some merch (though the Genshin Impact ones are gifts for a friend).
According to the Fandom Fest organizers, it was 100% a coincidence that we ended up next to Duck and Cover, but we couldn’t have had a cooler or more appropriate neighbor. A con attendee felt it was so on-brand for Duck Prints Press that they actually bought us this one-of-a-kind hand-painted James Bond duckie! We also talked with Duck and Cover about maybe offering some of their custom ducks as campaign add-ons in the future, so be on the lookout…
The owner of The Cogitation Zone, Lisa, is a long-time friend of Tris Lawrence, who commissioned us this custom Duck Prints Press business card holder that’ll be accompanying us to all our future cons! Lisa also had made a large number of adorable creatures, and I miiiight have traded a copy of one of our anthologies for an axolotl. Because. Axolotl.
The Consol Collection, sadly, has no website that I can find, but they had a lot of things such as this adorable Totoro sticker I got for my kids. And when the owner of Eclectic Arts approached me in an absolutely fabulous Hawaiian shirt featuring Pride-flag-colored twenty-sided dice, I instantly agreed to a sticker trade. On the right, jiadoesart had many lovely things, and I picked out some stickers for my Ghibli-loving kids.
Some Other Neat Folks We Met:
Pastel Prince Shop: lots of gorgeous queer art and merch; I’m hoping to get one of their asexual pride bracelets in the future (it got sold before I could grab it, sadly).
Bear and Bird Boutique: a local business that was vending at Fandom Fest, too, they have a lot of amazing bits and baubles, both fandom-related and original. We’ve bought everything from the Hilda graphic novel to a dragon puzzle at their store.
Picnocline: the only reason I didn’t buy things from Picnocline’s shop is that there were so many cute things that I literally couldn’t pick.
It’s Getting Dicey: dice, one of my true weaknesses! They have metal pride-flag dice sets, and lots of queer dice trays. I wish I could get them all…
Two-Penny Nerdlesque: a local burlesque troupe; they were very enthusiastic about And Seek (Not) to Alter Me and our queerifying of Much Ado About Nothing, and delighted told me about their own very queer versions of Shakespeare and other plays – I’m definitely going to have to check them out in the future.
(There are others too, but I didn’t grab everyone’s information, and I think this is plenty for one post. 😀 )
If any of you all are seeing this post, it was an absolute delight to meet you, and please don’t be a stranger!
Going forward, we’re looking forward to participating in more events and making more connections with other creators, especially other queer creators! Just today, we’ve applied to vend at A Big Gay Market, taking place in Washington Park in Albany on October 29th, 2023. We’ve also got a tentative schedule for 2024, and we’ll post more about where you’ll be able to find us as the dates grow closer and we find out if the juried shows have accepted our applications. We’re going to do our best to continue the success we’ve enjoyed at our first two conventions by pursuing vending as a way to meet potential readers and customers, grow relationships with other queer creators, and get the Duck Prints Press names out there for the benefit of all the authors, artists, and others we work with!
Got a con in New York State or Massachusetts that you love and think we should try to attend in 2024? Let us know in the comments or by dropping us an e-mail at info@duckprintspress.com!
Our Pride Bundle sale has concluded, and (enough of) the funds earned have cleared, and so today is donation day!
First, for accountability, here’s the sales data from our webpage:
We ended up selling the same number of each bundle – 23 General Imprint bundles, 23 Erotica Imprint Bundles.
The Press is donating the same percentage of our earnings across the board – about 40% of our “share”, which is itself about 25% of the net (post-processing fee) value of the sales. Several authors also opted to donate part or all of their shares to the charities. I’m not getting specific here because I don’t want our authors to feel pressured to donate more than they’re able to, so I apologize that this isn’t quite as explicit, but the way things worked out, after fees and everything, 35.71% of the GROSS proceeds from the General Imprint Bundle and 40.56% of the GROSS proceeds from the Erotica Imprint Bundle are to be donated. This includes the Press share and the shares for the volunteer authors. The breakdown works out as follows (all amounts are USD):
Gross sales: $907.51 Processing Fees: $39.05
Net Sales: $868.46 Press Share (pre-donation): $217.11 Collective Share to Split Among the Authors (Including to-be-donated shares): $651.34
As such,
Total Amount Collected for Charity: $346.08
We decided to round this up to $350, since that’s a nice, even number, and so we’ve donated $175 to each of the charities!
THANK YOU to everyone who helped make this event such a success for Duck Prints Press, our authors, and our chosen charities!
We’re already planning to do Pride Bundles for Charity again next year, so if you haven’t already followed us on social media, signed up for our newsletter, or backed us on Patreon, this would be a great moment to do so, to ensure that you don’t miss out on your next opportunity to get yourself some amazing stories and help us help others!
Duck Prints Press’s next anthology, slated for crowdfunding during the fall of 2023, is Aether Beyond the Binary. This innovative and unique collection includes 20 stories featuring characters outside the binary exploring modern-ish Earth aetherpunk settings where the technology is fueled by magical aether. Stories range from fluffy to dark (but we guarantee happy endings!), in settings where aether was just discovered and those where it’s been known about for centuries.
What is aetherpunk? Imagine a world where there’s technology not unlike what we have in the modern world, except that instead of that technology operating using the principals that we, now, would call “science,” that technology operates using magic! That’s aetherpunk—the awesome union of technology and complex magical systems in magic-suffused worlds to produce unique settings that resemble modern-day Earth but are also very, very different. With aetherpunk stories, the impossible becomes possible, and new solutions to the world’s problems become available!
We’ve been hard at work on this anthology since February, and currently the stories are being edited to polish them up.
For this collection, we recruited 20 authors – 9 who’ve written for Duck Prints Press before and 11 who haven’t. We’re thrilled to have some folks returning from our earliest anthology Add Magic to Taste, and we also have some work-with-the-Press-but-this-is-their-first-anthology contributors. It’s a really wonderful group of people, and getting to know them all has been a lovely part of working on this collection. And – the stories are g.r.e.a.t. You’re not gonna want to miss this one.
And now for the fun part…
MEET THE CONTRIBUTORS!
boneturtle
boneturtle (they/them) comes from the other side of the portal and is still looking for their home in this world. in the meantime they write softhearted villains and dangerous heroes making breakfast, saving the world, falling in love, and everything in between. boneturtle is not, contrary to previous assertions, an archelon.
Ellen has been a dreamer and designer of worlds all her life. She has been involved in many fandom environments over the years but most recently jumped with two feet into Supernatural, and never surfaced. She has shared many stories online (as Ellenofoz), but she’s grateful to be able to take the leap into published works with the Aether Beyond the Binary anthology.
Ellen lives in Brisbane, Australia, and spends her days writing code. By night, she reads and writes stories, watches shows, and plays games involving magic, science, historical adventures or romance—sometimes all at the same time. She co-hosts a podcast about Supernatural fanfiction, but can also be found enjoying Star Wars, Marvel, Doctor Who and other assorted fandoms.
Scarlett Gale is the author of His Secret Illuminations and His Sacred Incantations. Long ago, under another name, she was the co-author of Needles and Artifice (Cooperative Press; 2012), featuring a rollicking romantic steampunk adventure novella and associated knitting patterns, of which she also designed several. She writes and produces fringe theatre plays based on B-movies, such as Bodacious Barbarian Babes vs. The Indigo Empress and Showgirls of Beast Island. She is a co-producer of the Alison-Bechdel-approved Bechdel Test Burlesque, which in 2017 was included in the Women and Gender Studies curriculum at the University of Oregon. She lives in Seattle with her wife where she gardens, knits, reads, and drinks warm beverages. Unsurprisingly, she also has cats.
Rhosyn Goodfellow is an author of queer romance and speculative fiction living with her spouse and two dogs in the Pacific Northwest, where she is sad to report that she has not yet mysteriously disappeared or encountered any cryptids. Her hobbies include spoiling the aforementioned dogs, drinking inadvisable amounts of coffee, and running unreasonably long distances very slowly. She’s secretly just a collection of loosely-related stories dressed up in a meat suit.
Catherine E. Green (pronouns: xe/xem/xyr or they/them/their) is an agender person, one who’s had an on-again, off-again love affair with writing. Xe began writing when xe was a wee thing, when xyr other major pastimes were playing xyr mother’s NES and roughhousing with the boys next door. It’s only in the past few years that they have begun writing consistently and publishing their writing, fanfiction and original writing alike, leading to their first published short story titled “Of Loops and Weaves.”
Outside of writing, xe is a collector of books and sleep debt and an avid admirer of the cosmos. Playing video games, reading a variety of fiction genres (primarily fantasy, queer romance, and manga and graphic novels of all kinds), and working on wrangling their own personal data archiving projects occupy most of their free time. Xe has also started meeting up with a local fiber arts group and is excited to be crocheting xyr first scarf.
Elior Haley
Elior has spent much of the past few years primarily writing for fanfic exchanges. Currently, he’s in the process of slowly working his way through university. When not writing or studying, he can be found binding books, drawing, ice skating, and—very occasionally—playing the violin. His story in Aether Beyond the Binary is his first published work.
Zel Howland
Zel (they/she) is a writer and artist currently living in Los Angeles with their partner. When not writing, they spend their time painting, embroidering, analyzing literature and tv shows, and playing Dungeons & Dragons. They are the author of many a fanfiction, as well as the novel The Shadow of Ophelia Walker.
Full-time fandom cryptid, Furby enthusiast, and the human embodiment of that one gif of Elmo on fire, ilgaksu was born and raised in an undisclosed location, living in several others, and now currently residing in [REDACTED]. Their interests include collecting haunted toys, using their artistic practice as an excuse to forget to do their laundry, and playing with fictional men like Bratz dolls. They have not unclenched their jaw yet today, but they do remember to drink lots of water.
Bettina Juszak
Originally from Germany, Bettina has (so far) spent time in the US, the UK, and Canada. She is particularly interested in exploring questions of music and language in imaginary worlds, aided by degrees in linguistics and literature. When not writing, she loses herself in hobbies such as archery, cross-stitch, attempting to learn yet another language, and complaining about the amount of space her book and notebook collection takes up. Her first published work appeared in the Upon a Twice Time anthology published by Air and Nothingness Press, and she is working on a second original novel – despite the first one not having seen the light of day yet.
Nicola Kapron
Nicola Kapron has previously been published by Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine, Rebel Mountain Press, Soteira Press, All Worlds Wayfarer, Mannison Press, and more. Nicola lives in British Columbia with a hoard of books—mostly fantasy and horror—and an extremely fluffy cat.
Kelas is a disabled, trans, bi author and artist currently (unfortunately) living in Texas. They graduated from the University of Central Florida with an English degree and love cats, tea, and all things speculative fiction. A lot of their writing features magic or disability or both, and they’re often found in Star Trek, Mass Effect, Babylon 5, and Untamed spaces. You can also find them in a lot of bead and resin spaces, because they love making sparkly jewelry of all sorts.
Previously published pieces include an article on disability in The Last Of Us, short stories in two publications by Shacklebound Books, a pair of poems about being trans, an essay on disabled life, and a whole bunch of pieces about San Diego Comic-con. They’re single, an Ernie looking for their Bert, but they have a found family that stretches around the globe and some of their birth family accepts them for who they are.
Lifelong maladaptive daydreamer, finally working up the courage to write those daydreams down. Spends time cosplaying as a Responsible Adult With A Job.
Mikki Madison
Mikki Madison has been writing stories since she was seven years old. While she is most prolific in fanfiction and has works scattered among more than a dozen fandoms, she has been making strides into original fiction. Her favorite genres to read are romance, fantasy, and cozy mysteries.
When she isn’t reading, writing, or falling headfirst into a new fandom, she can be found baking, doing puzzles, walking her foster dog, doting on her niblings, or playing Pokemon Go. She has also written under the name M.K. Mads.
Sebastian Marie (he/him) is an engineering student with a lot of opinions about dragons, pirates, and sword fighting. Track him down on Ao3 or Tumblr and he’ll share these opinions gladly, just be prepared for music and some excited shouting. His original works often combine fantasy and dystopia into what he calls “queer fantasy hopepunk,” something that will be explored in his future novels. He loves to write conflicting traditional and non-traditional family dynamics, especially where they intersect with queer relationships. And if he can throw werewolves and brujas into the mix? So much the better. When not writing, frantically studying, or reading, he can be found singing loudly, sewing impractical coats, and going on long rambling walks while plotting stories (and occasionally falling into rivers).
Also, he’s also the guitarist and one of the lyricists of folk punk band Here Be Dragons, who hope to have their debut EP out near the end of Fall, 2023.
This is his third time writing for Duck Prints Press, having previously contributed to Aim For the Heart and She Wears the Midnight Crown. This brings his grand total of published works up to three! He’s looking forward to more, as soon as he gets some sleep.
Alec lives in the Pacific Northwest, where they write romantic adult fantasy and self-indulgent fanfiction. They make candles inspired by their favorite characters.
I’m a linguist and translator who lives in France and I have been itching to write since I learned how to. I started writing (fan)fiction more regularly when I was procrastinating on my PhD dissertation, and I haven’t looked back since. I’m also an artist who loves drawing both fanart and original art, and I have a passion for patterns and systems, for the beauty at the edge of chaos and the complexity of being human. I tend to write about queer and disabled characters finding themselves and each other and learning to take up space in the world.
S. J. grew up in a distinctly weird, distinctly southern hometown, then hied out West for grad school before landing in Texas, where they currently work as a planetary scientist. They’ve been writing original works and fanfiction since they could hold a pencil semi-correctly, and continue to write both whenever possible (as well as still holding a pencil only semi-correctly). In their clearly copious spare time, S. J. enjoys hiking, tabletop RPGs, jigsaw puzzles, and enthusiastically crappy sci-fi.
Em Rowntree’s first foray into the world of writing was with a story called The Magic Land that featured a unicorn and a flying carpet the size of a country, and they’ve been chasing that high ever since. They’ve been sharing their writing online for almost seven years, and have had poems and short stories published in anthologies. They live in the UK.
Terra is a scientist by day who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family. She has been writing fiction as long as she can remember, and has always told her partner of 17 years that if she wasn’t a scientist, she would be an author. During grad school, she discovered fanfiction and immediately began writing her own. After many years and several fandoms (including Teen Wolf, Hawaii Five-0, and Stranger Things), she returned to writing original fiction. To date, she has self-published two novellas in a 90s-nostalgia polyamory comedy series and has drafted two YA/NA sci-fi novels. When not doing science or writing, you can find Terra indulging her yarn addiction and knitting.
Tea enjoyer, knitter, dead language enthusiast, self-warming cat bed and future eccentric lit professor Cecil Wilde has also written and published, in various forms and guises, nearly 3 million words to date. They do not plan to stop until Death intervenes, should it dare.
In honor of the 54th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots – June 28th, 1969 – Duck Prints Press is thrilled to share with you how we’re celebrating Pride Month: with queer stories, of course!
Introducing our Pride 2023 Bundles: two collections of short stories, one general imprint, one erotica, each priced at a discounted $19.69, with all purchases benefiting two wonderful queer charities selected by the authors of the stories in the bundles: The Ali Forney Center and the Transgender Law Center.
We’ll be donating roughly 35% of the proceeds from these bundles to charity – the Press is donating 10% off the top, and many of the authors chose to donate part of their royalties as well, bringing the totals to approximately 40% of the list price of the erotica collection and approximately 35% of the list price of the general imprint collection.
How This Works
you buy one or both bundles between now and July 28th, 2023.
we tally up all the proceeds earned and do some math-e-magic to figure out how much we’re donating!
we divide the charity share in half right down the middle and, within the first week of August, we donate raised money to the Ali Forney Center and the Transgender Law Center; then, we post the proof we’ve done so.
you get fantastic stories!
we all get that happy, glowy feeling of knowing that money has been well-spent on fantastic causes!
About the Press
Duck Prints Press is a queer-owned indie press, founded to publish original works by fancreators. We’ve been in operation for over 2 years, and in that time we’ve worked with well over 150 creators to publish four anthologies and almost 70 other stories, from shorts to novels, and we’ve got more on the works (our fifth anthology is Kickstarting RIGHT NOW, as a matter of fact!). The vast majority of our creators and their creations are queer/LGTBQIA+ (maybe even all, but we don’t out anyone and we don’t ask demography because, frankly, it’s none of our business).
20 of our authors have chosen to include their short stories in one or both of these short story bundles, and these 20 and others nominated charities, then voted to narrow it down to these two! Participation in these bundles was entirely voluntarily, as was choosing to donate shares of royalties, which about a third of the authors have opted to do.
About the Charities
Note: These charities are not affiliated with the Press, do not know we’re doing this fundraiser, have not endorsed this in anyway and are, as such, utterly uninvolved in this beyond being the beneficiaries of our efforts!Text is from the websites of each charity and is being used under fair use laws.
The Ali Forney Center was founded in 2002. Committed to saving the lives of LGBTQ+ young people, our mission is to protect them from the harms of homelessness and empower them with the tools needed to live independently. A 24-hour program, The Ali Forney Center never closes its doors. We provide more than just a bed and food for those in need — from initial intake at our drop-in center to transitional housing and job readiness training, we provide homeless LGBTQ+ youth a safe, warm, supportive environment to escape the streets [of New York City].
Transgender Law Center is the largest national trans-led organization advocating self-determination for all people. Since 2002 we’ve been organizing, assisting, informing and empowering thousands of individual community members towards a long-term, national, trans-led movement for liberation.
About the Bundles
We’re offering two bundles: one containing 14 stories from our general imprint, the other containing 11 stories from our erotica imprint. For all the deets, you’ll need to visit the page for each story, but here’s an overview…
Approximately 40% of the $19.69 list price of this bundle will go to the charities.
What are you waiting for? Come get some great stories, support a queer-owned business this Pride, and benefit two fantastic causes. Win-win-win situations don’t get much better than this!
In protest of Elon Musk’s support of transphobic causes and in response to the worsening quality of Twitter in general, we will be reducing our presence on Twitter to a bare minimum. We will NOT be deleting, and we will keep our Twitter account minimally active to ensure that we aren’t removed and to make sure no one takes the Press name to pretend to speak as us. We will still announce Press current events here.
Going forward, we expect to only tweet and retweet items directly related to Press activities, and will no longer cross-post all our materials there.
The US is celebrating Memorial Day this weekend, and all around the northern hemisphere, we’re enjoying the warming weather and the end of a lovely May!
And what better way to enjoy the end of the month than getting your book on?
For only the second time ever, people involved with Duck Prints Press – the independent press founded by fandom folks to publish the original work of fancreators, with an emphasis on works featuring LGBTQIA+ characters – will be attending cons and book events to (officially and unofficially) share more information about the Press!
Interested in learning more by meeting folks involved with the Press? Well, if you’re going to either of these events this weekend, you can!
Rachael L. Young, Press staff editor, will be attending The Hay Festival today, tomorrow, and Sunday! We have no official presence at the Festival, but you’ll know Rachael by her awesome Press swag, including several of our books, our pins, our bookmarks, and this amazing Dux tote bag she got custom printed! If you see her, stop by and say hi – and don’t forget to grab one of our business cards before you leave!
Photo credit: Rachael L. Young; used with permission.
Author Tris Lawrence is attending Balticon tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday, where she’ll be promoting her own work and her work with the Press, including participating in multiple panels and doing a reading from her novel Commit to the Kick. She’s also got several of our anthologies for you to take a look at, a pile of business cards, the last unsold print copies of the first print run of Commit to the Kick (we’ve got a reprint in the works, though…) and the debut of our first-ever entirely free Duck Prints Press zine, assembled by author and editor Alec J. Marsh!
Photo credit: Tris Lawrence; used with permissions.
Want to meet Tris? Here’s her panel schedule:
Sunday 11:30am – Spear Carriers and Background Characters
Sunday 2:30pm – Works I Wasn’t Ready to Write
Sunday 4:00pm – How to succeed as an ND (NeuroDiverse) creative
Sunday 5:30pm – Reading (with Elektra Hammond)
Monday 11:30am – Small press or self-publish?
If you’re going to either of these events, we really hope to meet you there!
Not able to attend either of these events? You’ll have other chances! We’re still fleshing out our 2023 convention schedule, but we know for sure we’ll have people – and tables! – at these events:
NordCon, Hamburg, Germany – June 2nd – 4th: Alessa Riel and possibly other German Press folks will be attending NordCon! We’ll have a table there, along with cards, stickers, and some other fun freebies.
FlameCon, New York City, New York, USA – August 12th – 13th: we might be attending FlameCon! We are on the waitlist for a small table, and if we’re able to get a table, we’ll be there with bells on (possibly literally). If not, we’ll skip this year, but we’re definitely going to try to make it next year!
FandomFest, Schenectady, New York, USA – August 26th – 27th: I (Nina Waters/unforth), Tris Lawrence, Catherine E. Green, Shea Sullivan, Willa Blythe, Nova Mason, and possibly other Press authors and contributors will be attending this convention, local to where the Press is based! We’ll have a vending table with merch and books for sale, and we’ll also be hosting a panel about transitioning from writing fanfiction to original fiction. We’ll post more about that, including scheduling, once the con organizers formally announce the schedule.
Albacon, Albany, New York, USA – September 8th – 10th: Tris Lawrence and I will be at Albacon in Albany, and we’ll be vending too! We don’t yet know about panels and readings, but we’re definitely looking to get involved. When the event is closer, we’ll absolutely be sharing more information.
We’re looking to expand our con attendance in the future, so be on the look out! And if you know a local con you think would suit us, do let us know!
What about y’all – attending any fun cons or book-related events this summer?
For those who may not have heard, Redbubble has recently changed their account tiers and payment scale in a way that’s very unfavorable to small-scale sellers with them. As a result, many people have decided to cancel their accounts, and we are among them.
In case anyone was wondering how I and the Duck Prints Press team feel about the changes to Redbubble, this is how.
I felt like it was very important that they understand that this was directly tied to their money grab.
When I asked the team, last meeting, if they thought I should delete the account (after I explained to them what happened), I got three different people instantly reply with the exact same words:
Yeet them into the void.
So. Redbubble has been yeeted.
The last two+ years, the only merchandise available on our Redbubble has been shirts, because they are expensive to stock when sizing and such are taken into account. We will be looking into other vendors for providing on-demand shirt production, and we are considering several already. We’ll post more information when we’ve made a choice! In the meantime, if you want a Duck Prints Press, feel free to get in touch and we can add you to a list of people to notify when they are available again.
With how events at Twitter are unfolding, and the attention that their decline has brought to new platforms, Duck Prints Press has created two new social media accounts, on the Mastodon server The Petting Zoo and cohost! We’re not very active yet on either, but starting within the next week or two we expect to at minimum begin cross-posting our weekly blog features to both platforms. We’re looking at other platforms such as Hive (still down after a server-breach) as well; we’re well aware that cohost and Hive in particular aren’t quite ready for the influx of new users they’ve gotten, and we’re monitoring them and taking extra care with our information there.
These accounts are, of course, in addition to our existing social media accounts! We cross-post posts about our publications and our weekly informational blog posts across all platforms; the main difference in content on each is what we reblog/retweet/share from outside sources. And of course, the form our posts takes depend on the platform – Instagram is image-heavy, Twitter is short posts and links, etc.
Lastly, if you want to make sure you always hear the latest from Duck Prints Press, sent straight to your e-mail, make sure you sign up for one or more of our mailing lists!
Today, as we release the last of our four “Eerie Fall” Kickstarter tie-in stories, we also enter the final 24 hours to back our crowdfunding campaign!
Love artwork by Aceriee (Instagram | Tumblr | Twitter)? Love enamel pins? Then don’t miss out on these gorgeous pins featuring Aceriee’s work! There’s currently only two designs unlocked – the Wolf and the Crow – but with a strong final 24 hours, we can unlock two more – the bear and the moose! Support a small business on this awesome Small Business Saturday, and help us reach the goal by checking out the campaign now!
Meanwhile, we have our fourth and final “Eerie Animal” tie in story, a perfect one for exploring the animals in the campaign, because in this story…all these animals are characters!
Character Features: animal, animal transformation (involuntary), bird, non-human character
Tags: animal point of view, body modification (involuntary), pov third person limited, sentient animal
Teaser:
There was a girl sleeping in Forest.
Fox didn’t know the girl. She was a human, that much was clear, though he hadn’t seen her kind in ages. They traveled this way and that like they owned the whole world—he had seen many before—but most stayed away from Forest. They were blind, deaf, dumb creatures, unable to perceive what was in front of them. Still, they sensed the magic of Forest, so they stayed away. If they did wander into the dense line of oak and pine, they spoke in hushed voices and didn’t linger.
Want to support the Press and get lots of our stories? Consider backing our Patreon or ko-fi monthly at a level that includes free stories, and read your fill!
Duck Prints Press returns to the second round of Storygraph giveaways with our second anthology And Seek (Not) to Alter Me: Queer Fanworks Inspired by William Shakepeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.“
What is Storygraph? The awesome independently owned-and-operated alternative to Amazon-owned Goodreads! Working with them as a publisher doing this giveaways has been phenomenal: they’re organized, receptive to feedback, interested in innovative, and responsive. We’re thrilled to continue working with them on giveaways. If you’ve wanted a Goodreads alternative for organizing your reading, posting your reviews, logging your book collections, and more, you should definitely check them out.
What is Duck Prints Press? We’re the indie publisher dedicated to helping creators transition from creating primarily fanworks to creating primarily original works! We especially focus on publishing works featuring LGBTQIA+ characters.
What is And Seek (Not) to Alter Me? In And Seek (Not) to Alter Me, 16 authors and 16 artists have come together to create an exquisite, full-color collection of artwork and stories inspired by William Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing. We encouraged contributors to stretch their imaginations, think outside the box, and put their own unique—and queer—twists on Benedick, Beatrice, Hero, Claudio, Don Pedro, and the whole gang! In true Shakespearean fashion, our creators utilize gender, sexuality, romanticism, and a host of costume changes to tell unique artworks and stories—some featuring original characters, some characters from the play—that show Shakespeare’s work in a whole new light.
Want your own copy of this awesome, innovative collection? Enter our giveaway on Storygraph NOW – or, if you don’t want to wait that long and leave it to chance, you can always buy your own copy immediately from our webstore!
![A screen capture of a page on the Redbubble webpage. It includes a list of product categories across the top, a search bar, and a shopping cart. On the left, there's a menu of "Artist Tools" with many settings; one that reads "Cancel Account" is highlighted.
The open page has a header that reads "We're sorry to see you go. If there's anything we can improve, we'd really appreciate your feedback."
Beneath this request is a text box. In the text box, the following text has been entered by the account owner (which, based on the rainbow duck print icon in the upper right corner, is Duck Prints Press):
"Your new tier system makes this site worthless to us. We already barely make any sales; the prices here are high and our supporters know we get very little of the money so they tend not to choose RB when they want to buy from us. Now when we [sic] do we'll get even less of a cut if by some miracle we make a sale. We chose RB because of the convenience of "stocking" things like shirts, which would otherwise require us to keep a lot of different sizes and styles available, but it's no longer worth it if it means supporting this blatant money grab from small-time creators on the part of Redbubble."
Below this text box, the page reads: "If you choose to chance your account: Your profile will be removed; all your works will be removed; any comments or forum posts will remain. Please be aware that this is a permanent action. We cannot restore cancelled accounts." The page concludes with a button, on which the text reads: "Yes I'm serious - cancel my account."
The image implies that account owner, Duck Prints Press, has subsequently clicked the "Yes I'm serious" button.](https://i0.wp.com/duckprintspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image.png?ssl=1)
