In Dreams Extreme Press
For decades, as the Manhattan-based publishing industry consolidated and grew ever more focused on blockbuster bestsellers, the midlist genre novelists suffered. Years ago, the book publishing ecosystem mirrored a healthy jungle. Bestsellers — plus genre novels for every taste. Harlequin put out romance novels. Ace, Ballantine, and others produced science fiction and fantasy. Other publishers came out with mysteries, spy, and crime novels.
Some authors could grow their audiences and eventually find themselves on the New York Times Bestseller list. Such as John D. MacDonald, who went from writing pulp stories and paperback originals in the late 1940s and 1950s, to fame and fortune in the late 1960s, thanks to his hard work — and Travis McGee.
The paperback original publishers thrived by producing books that met the needs of their audiences. Of course they welcomed bestsellers, but couldn’t depend on them.
Traditional publishing is going through a gigantic contraction. In the 1990s, the Barnes & Noble and Borders superstores pushed many independent bookstores out of business. Now, thanks to Amazon, the entire brick and mortar retail offline bookstore industry is suffering. Borders declared bankruptcy. Barnes & Noble is closing stores and reducing shelf space. Other retail outlets, from Target and Wal-Mart to drugstores and supermarkets to airport bookstores, want only the guaranteed bestsellers. They don’t cater to the smaller markets.
This reinforces the mentality of the publishers to put out only bestsellers. They don’t care about their midlist writers anymore. James Patterson, Stephen King, and Nora Roberts aren’t ever going to die, so who cares about their up-and-coming replacements? When they accept smaller novels for publication, they want writers to sign contracts with horrible conditions, that give the publisher their future careers — for a pittance.
Thanks to the recent merger of Penguin and Random House, there are only five major publishing companies left. That further reduces the options of all authors, and reduces the number of editors who could decide to buy their books.
Until recently, readers never realized how publishers and superbookstores conspired to limit their choice of books to buy. They didn’t realize many writers have war stories of novels rejected. Not because editors didn’t like their books — the editors loved their stuff — but the sales department delivered the thumbs down.
Thanks to Amazon, however, readers now have choices.
Traditional writers are self-publishing their long-neglected backlists.
Some are switching entirely to independent publishers.
So are many newer authors.
Therefore, we set up In Dreams Extreme Press to independently publish outstanding works, including such labels as: fantasy, science fiction, horror, dark fantasy, mysteries, thrillers, contemporary fantasy, paranormal, and urban fantasy.
Right now we publish Richard Stooker, Richard Stooker writing as Melody Ryan, and Ryan Davison.
We are NOT open to submission of manuscripts. If we receive any, they’ll go into the recycle bin.