The nice thing about the name “Chance Press” is that it’s easy to remember, and it is simple. The not-so-nice thing about it is that other people may end up using the same (or a similar) name. Bill at Bottle of Smoke Press probably doesn’t need to worry about this.
Recently, an anthology of comics by women (“Womanthology”) raked in an unprecedented $109,000 on Kickstarter. There is a minor controversy brewing right now because the publisher doesn’t plan to pay the contributors (who, it should be noted, all agreed to donate their work to the anthology in advance). Instead, she wants to use the money to start a comics imprint called “Chance Comics.” With 100K in startup funds, I have no doubt that this imprint will bury us in the search results under scores of Amazon.com listings for the books, as well as her own website, and the general chatter about the new imprint – which should be helped by the controversy currently being stirred up by Womanthology.
I’ll just go on record that no one who publishes with Chance Press will ever hear a pitch about donating work to us for the exposure. We generally pay in contributor’s copies (currently that means around 20% of the print run, depending on the specifics of the individual edition), because we can’t afford to pay in real money – we’ve sunk at least a few thousand dollars of our savings into the press, and while we break even or make a little profit on each book, that inevitably gets invested back into equipment and other material needs not specific to one project.
We’ll keep plugging along as “Chance Press,” since we’re in it for the long haul. If other people end up using the name too, there isn’t much we can do about it (besides sue them, I suppose), and hopefully the diversity and quality of our publications will keep intact the identity of “Chance Press” books that we’ve worked so hard to build. And speaking of Chance Press books, tomorrow I will finally drop the details of our three fall releases, all of which comprise the most exciting book launch in our short history.
Who wants a drink?