Jason
J. Marchi made his first professional sale, a poem,
to Amazing Stories magazine in 1988.
Since then, Mr. Marchi has sold over 900 articles, stories, poems, and essays
to magazines and newspapers, and won over a dozen awards presented by the Association
of American Publishers (a REVERE Award), National Federation of Press Women,
Connecticut Press Club, and the Society of Professional Journalists.
In November 2010, Mr. Marchi’s first collection
of poems, Ode on a Martian Urn, was
published as a chapbook, and a year later his first picture book, The Legend of Hobbomock: The Sleeping Giant,
was published in hardcover. Hobbomock
is a perennial seller to elementary schools and summer reading lists. Hobbomock was also noted as a Barnes
& Noble regional bestseller in the first few years after its publication.
During the 16 years that Mr. Marchi worked for
McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, a higher education publisher, he founded and managed the
not-for-profit New Century Writer Awards (NCWA) contest that operated for six
years in close association with Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope: All-Story magazine. NCWA awarded over $65,000 in cash
prizes to several dozen writers. Mr. Marchi is also credited with discovering
the early literary talents of Joseph Hill (Heart-Shaped
Box, Horns) when the NCWA presented Mr. Hill with its first Ray Bradbury
Short Story Fellowship in 2002.
Mr. Marchi was closely mentored by Ray Bradbury
between 2000 and 2009 after the two became pen pals during the 1980s and 1990s.
Mr. Marchi and Mr. Bradbury maintained their extraordinary friendship until Mr.
Bradbury’s death in 2012 at the age of 91.
As an editor, Mr. Marchi launched Automobilia, the first book in the SpeKulative Stories Anthology Series, published in January 2024. He is also a
30-year Active Member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association,
Inc.
Mr. Marchi works from his boyhood home in
Guilford, Connecticut.
Question: What kind of books does OmicronWorld publish?
Answer: Under our Fahrenheit books imprint, which, upon
the suggestion of a writer friend I named in honor of my mentor and friend, Ray
Bradbury, I’ve published writers whose work I like but who have been unable to
break into traditional publishing and don’t want to assume all the work of self-publishing.
I’ve published both fiction and
non-fiction by individual authors, but I’m currently moving away from single-author
titles to focus on my love of short fiction and poetry in the form the theme
anthologies.
I started as a micro press—more
of a boutique publisher, really—meaning I published just one or two titles by
select authors each year. But I hope to grow into a small press publisher focused
on thematic short fiction anthologies (which include poetry) for the foreseeable
future.
Novels are more popular among
readers and tend to sell more copies than short story collections (stories by a
single author) and short story anthologies (stories by multiple authors). But I
loved the short story more than any other fictional form. And my first
professional sales as a writer were poems to science fiction magazines back in
the late 1980s and early 1990s. So, I’m focusing on those two literary forms
for the next several years—short stories and poems.
Question: Can you tell readers about what’s involved in
your work as editor/publisher?
Answer: Excitement and the mundane—those
are the two operative words in answer to this question.
It's exciting to think of a
new anthology theme idea—something I consider striking, like the Automobilia
anthology idea, where automobiles are featured in each story. And it's fun to
get word out that you're looking for submissions from writers. Then it's a real
joy to see how many people respond and start sending you their work, hoping to
sell their words and see their story printed in a book. It's also a joy to read
through all those stories and see what really stands out and needs to be published
that hasn’t been published anywhere yet. That’s a wonderful discovery process.
And I like to reprint stories I like, because so many times a writer has
written a good or great story, but it only gets printed in a magazine or
anthology once and is never read again. A good story should be reprinted and
find new readers through the years.
This is all part of the exciting
process. And it's especially fun to accept a work and pay the writer on
acceptance. I never liked the idea of publishers that pay on publication.
Writers should be paid immediately. That’s a pet peeve of mine. It's a real joy
to cut a check and pay a writer up front. I find that immensely satisfying even
when that money comes out of my own pocket, and I might never earn that money
back.
Then the mundane work begins.
Assembling the book takes some time and becomes rote, although working with a professional
cover designer is always fun. And then comes the arduous process of going
through the book looking for errors once it's typeset. Sometimes no matter how
many times you and others look at a manuscript, there's always some errors that
sneak through, but you try to minimize those as much as possible.
So far I've only been using
the Amazon KDP print and digital publishing platform which I think might limit
sales to bookstores and the like, but with online marketing and with online
book buying—and getting to the proper book influencers through TikTok and other
social platforms—a book can still sell pretty well without having to be in
physical (known as brick and motor) bookstores.
I've been thinking of also
issuing the books through the IngramSparks system, but I’ve found that
technically more difficult to do than through the Amazon KDP system. But brick
and mortar bookstores don’t like to buy and offer books from Amazon. Amazon is
a bookstore’s competitor. Bookstores like to work with a wholesaler, like Ingram
and their huge supply-chain system.
Selling books is difficult, no
matter what, unless you have a big staff which means big overhead and a bigger
level of stress. My ultimate goal is simply to break even on the expense of
every book I publish, to cover all the upfront costs of the permission fees for
the stories for the anthologies, and then there's also the cost of the cover designer,
and sometimes the cost of additional book cover artwork, and then there is a
cost to print advance reader copies for proofing, and the contributor’s free
copies to have for their own permanent bookshelf at home.
With all of that said, it's
always a joy to put a book together, and like anything else, the middle of the
process can get bogged down with a lot of boring housekeeping. But then you get
your energy back again when the interior and cover files for the book are
finally ready and you get them up to the publishing platform website and you
get the marketing for the title going and before you know it you have another
book out in the marketplace.
I find the single biggest
challenge is getting enough word out about each title to try and drive sales as
far as a book can sell. I learned a long time ago that only the big publishers
with deep pockets can pay for ads for huge named authors, but for most writers
you have to try and market your books by word-of-mouth. You try and market the
book and let people know about the book as much as possible without spending
any money (only time) because it's gonna be very hard to get that money back in
book sales down the road.
Acting as an editor and
publisher is mostly a labor of love at this point. If a book takes off and sells
well, that’s the icing on the cake. That financial success paves the way to
take a financial risk on future books.
So far, I’ve had only one
book sell well beyond its $12,000 production cost and earn a profit to compensate
for the losses on other books. That book was my own, the children’s book The
Legend of Hobbomock. Twelve years later it still sells a few hundred copies
a year. Not a wealth-maker, but a steady survivor in the book marketplace.
Question: What
are you working on now?
Answer: I’m presently launching a call-for-submissions
for the next two books in the SpeKulativeTM Stories Anthology Series.
Those two books are Train Tales and Aliens Among Us. The
submission guidelines appear on the OmicronWorld/Fahrenheit Books website: https://www.omicronworld.com/anthology-submissions
I'm also trying to work on my
own writing and getting some of my own books out there, I'm mainly a short
story writer, as I mentioned before, and I’m almost done writing the stories
for three different theme-linked story collections.
I’ve tried to write novels,
and I still might finish one or two yet, but I really love the short story. As I mentioned before, Ray Bradbury was my
mentor. I first wrote to him when I was 19 and he made the mistake of writing
back. So, over the next 20 years we became pen pals, And then we became close
personal friends during the last 13 years of his life. Bradbury was mainly a
short story writer. He wrote very few novels in his career. So that's why I
fell in love with the short story, and then I fell in love with the short
stories of Ernest Hemingway and Shirley Jackson, and many others whose stories
appear in those college fiction anthologies.
Thus, I've decided to spend
most of my own time writing short stories, while also finding short stories by others
to include in each forthcoming thematic anthology.
Like the Automobilia anthology,
I've already got a number of famous writers whose stories I have for the train
tales anthology. I love placing new writers side-by-side with classic/known
writers. I think that’s a cool thing to do for writers alive today who are trying
to get their work and their name out there.
Question: What
made you start working as an editor/publisher?
Answer: Several different or
disparate things coalesce into my interest in becoming an editor and publisher.
I started out selling poems
to Amazing Stories and Weird Tales magazines. And then I sold a
few more works and then short stories to some small magazines.
About that same time, I
started working for a division of a small higher educational publishing company
that became part of Times Mirror and then McGraw-Hill towards the end of my 16-year
career there. The company was small in the early years, and I was able to see
books developed from the very start—from acquisition of articles and
manuscripts all the way through the typesetting and printing/binding of the
books, and then the marketing and fulfillment. I paid close attention to what
was going on—and I had directed access to the president of the company at any
time—so I fell in love with the idea of producing books and developing books as
much as I loved holding books in my hands and reading books.
Later, when I learned how
difficult it is for many really good writers to break into mainstream publishing
because the competition is so fierce, I decided that maybe I could help some of
those writers end up with a book in their hands because their work was good,
and they deserved to have a published book.
You see, I was rejected more
times that I can count. My first two children’s books were rejected by every publishing
house. The manuscripts would win in contests, the judges loved the stories, but
editors and publishing houses said, sorry, not for us. I was also told by some editors
and publishers that a book like The Legend of Hobbomock (a Native
American myth legend story) would never sell.
I got so tired of hearing NO I
took the advice of other accomplished writers who loved my Hobbomock story, and
that was to “publish the book yourself,” they said, which I did, under my own
start-up press, Fahrenheit Books. I took all I had learned from the educational
publisher over 16 years and applied it to starting my own press. That book, by
the way, ended up becoming a regional best seller in Connecticut in the first
three years after its publication. It was an immediate hit. So much for the editor
who said it would not sell, huh? Sometimes you just HAVE to believe in yourself
and work against the naysayers.
Having experienced so many
blockades—which I still hit to this day with traditional book publishers and
all of these newer, on-line literary magazines—I was driven to try and help
other writers as much as I can.
I can only help a few, but it’s
very satisfying to give new writers a chance. It’s far too easy—and I think
lazy—to say NO to every creative idea that does not fit the current cultural
narrative. Visionaries ignore current culture and pop-culture, and invent the
future. Not that I’m a visionary, but those are the types of people I most admire
and would like to emulate, In my case, I hope to follow the beat of a different
drummer through micro-press publishing.
Lastly, by publishing Automobilia
I have had the great pleasure of meeting new, wondrous writers, such as yourself,
and a few of these new people have become close friends. This is an added benefit
of editing and publishing books. It’s not all about me trying to get my own
writing out into the world. I loved to help others just as much if not more.
Question: What
advice would you offer to those who are currently writing and want to be
published?
Answer: The unique thing about writing is that you
can do it in just about any place that you can get your words down on paper, or
onto a computer, or even recorded onto a voice recording app on a smartphone.
I often “write” to my phone
recording app when hiking trails on preserve lands near me. I transcribe the
stories when I get home, also through an app that turns my spoken words into
text, thus saving a lot of time not having to type. I mentioned this only
because no matter where you are and when you are you can write something down
that hits you and not lose it forever to the ether.
As for general publishing advice,
study every print and on-line magazine market you can find, and send out your work.
Robert Heinlein, the great
science fiction writer of the mid-20th century had five rules of
writing. The are: 1. Write regularly. 2. Finish what you start. 3. Market your
work promptly. 4. Rewrite to editorial demand. 5. Push your work until it is
sold.
I live by this, even today. The
last three are key.
I also suggest that fiction writers
try to expand their world view and write non-fiction in the form of articles. For
a long time, I found it very difficult to sell my fiction, even though that’s
what I loved to write the most. But when I started writing non-fiction for newspapers
and magazines, I started getting published each week, saw my name in the byline
for each article, and got paid for it! My
writing also got better due to all the regular wiring I was doing for the newspaper,
which later turned into assignments by editors at bigger, glossy regional magazines.
For 16 years I wrote for a weekly
newspaper group and made an okay living from it. I was able to pay modest bills.
Things have changed in the newspaper business as they have lost advertising
sales revenue over the past several years and slashed freelance and staff
writing budgets. But if a writer really needs to see their work in print, and
be paid money for that writing, news reporting and magazine article writing is
very satisfying, while you continue to work on your fiction.
And keep sending your work
out to editors an agents, like Heinlein said.
Thank you, Jacqueline, for inviting
me to answers these questions for your readers. Happy 2024 to you and all your
readers and writers!
Question: Where
and when will readers be able to obtain your latest published anthology
AUTOMOBILIA?
Answer: https://www.amazon.com/Automobilia-SpeKulative-Stories-Anthology-Book-ebook/dp/B0CSWWY3T2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3ST6PC02U5SAC&keywords=automobilia+jason+marchi&qid=1705983461&sprefix=%2Caps%2C135&sr=8-1
And, if your readers are
interested in some of the other books I have published through Fahrenhiet
Books, please visit the OmicronWorld website at: https://www.omicronworld.com/fahrenheit-books
Comments and
questions for Jason are welcome here.
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