Here’s part two in the series of interviews with the people behind Intrigue Publishing.
Indie publishers are responding to many of the mistakes made by traditional publishers. Here, Intrigue president Denise Camacho discusses the aspects of her business that help to set it apart from the majors.
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TeleRead: Intrigue is just about a year old now. Why did you decide to start an indie publishing company?
For the last 11 years I’ve been working with my husband, Austin S. Camacho, to help him publish his novels. And in the process I learned a great deal about the industry as a whole, and about how easy it is to do some aspects of it.
I’ve learned about self-publishing, small publishers and print-on-demand publishing, and have learned that there really is a lot a smaller publisher can do for an author that a larger firm can’t. I wanted to be a publisher that could work with my authors for the success of the business, but also a good experience with the author.
TeleRead: What would you consider to have been your biggest challenge?
Publishing a book is relatively easy, but processing all of the paperwork to start a business is very frustrating. There are so many laws and requirements just to have a working business entity, and nobody really wants to be helpful for someone starting a business. I found that part to be the biggest challenge.
TeleRead: And your biggest success, so far?
By far our biggest success has been finding authors with a great deal of talent and a great story to tell. We’ve got some great books coming out later this year, and we’re excited to be working with such great authors in diverse genres. Please check out our site for what’s coming.
TeleRead: What should authors expect when working with an indie publisher?
I don’t know what they should expect from other publishers, but from Intrigue they can expect the full court press. We have professional editors, proofreaders and marketers that will do everything a major publishing company will do, but with one difference: Intrigue will work with the author on everything from cover design to editing their work to marketing it.
We want [you] to know that any author we work with won’t be discarded or disregarded for their opinions. That is not to say that we won’t edit it and do our own cover design; we will, but we’ll do it with the author. We will also help them in the marketing process so they will understand how they can best market their work and also understand how we will be marketing it. We will help with events and also help get our authors into bookstores.
We want to sell books so we want to have the best looking and best-written works out there. What better way to make money than to have the best? The better way is to have happy author,s as well as the best-written and -designed novels out there. Word of mouth is how books are sold, and how good authors become great.
TeleRead: Authors do read this blog, so what genres does Intrigue work with?
We decided to start out with the ones we all know best and would have the most fun with, so we are only accepting submissions right now for Crime Drama, Urban Drama, Sensual Romance and Young Adult. Our submission guidelines are also listed on our website.
TeleRead: What would you characterize as the biggest differences between working with an indie and self-publishing?
Self publishing is hard. You do it all yourself and at the end of the day, you are the only judge of whether all your work has been done in vain or not. At least with a good indie publisher, like Intrigue, you know that you will be working with professionals who have the experience and skills to help you put out your best novel, and will also help you get it out to as many fans/readers as possible.
TeleRead: Thanks, Denise
Next in the series: An interview with Sandra Bowman, marketing director at Intrigue, on … well … book marketing.
