Why a Publishing Imprint for a Self-Published Writer

I find it slightly weird to have to make this post, but a friend of mine said that he didn’t trust publishing companies that were primarily about one writer’s work.

For my part, I see writing and publishing as my business, and it is typical to name your business.

A great deal confuses me about the way that many – if not most – writers approach the business of writing. Mostly, that few see it as a business. I understand the desire to put off the publishing details on someone else. It’s a giant pain in my ass to have to handle editing, marketing, and publishing – and I’m not good at some of these jobs, to boot. But I feel that many writers, in their rush to find someone else to do the business of publishing, also forget it is a business.

The whole publishing industry is predicated on writers failing to truly grasp the business of writing. For instance, for most of my life (and it still happens), self-publication has been referred to as “vanity press.” In what other business does a self-starting entrepreneur get called a nasty name? Self-publication is not seen as a hard-working person having confidence in their product but as mere vanity.

So, I think when my friend said that he is suspicious of publishing companies that exist to serve one writer, he is falling prey to the propaganda of traditional publications: that writers are merely the servants of publishers, that writers somehow need traditional publication, and that they are not and should not be businesspeople in their own right. I believe that the publishing industry has created this bias against self-publication as a method to control writers and writing.

I reject that limitation in all its shapes and forms. It is normal for businesspeople to name their businesses! It is normal – even praiseworthy – for people who make products to strike out on their own to distribute and sell those products!

So, yeah, Sword & Lion Publishing is mostly about the publishing efforts of Kit Bradley. I’m proud of this.