The Broken River Books Collective Primer

Also: How to Sell Books in Meatspace / AWP Recap

AWP 2024 was a big success. It was great to meet so many new and cool people, in addition to connecting with folks I haven’t seen in quite awhile. If you’re receiving this newsletter for the first time, thank you for signing up at the table. I figured I’d introduce us, then write up a recap of our time selling books in Kansas City. Let’s get into it.

What is Broken River Books?

BRB started in 2013 as a small indie press. Our first five titles were The Least of My Scars by Stephen Graham Jones, Gravesend by William Boyle, Street Raised by Pearce Hansen, Peckerwood by Jedidiah Ayres, and XXX Shamus by Red Hammond (a pseudonym of Anthony Neil Smith).

Over time we published over fifty books, including Zero Saints by Gabino Iglesias and Graveyard Love by Scott Adlerberg. We also published work from Benjamin Whitmer, Nick Mamatas, Steve Rasnic Tem, and James Sallis.

However, eventually I realized that there wasn’t much I could do for these great books that I was publishing. We didn’t have much of a budget, but we had good looking covers, nice interior design, and I had good instincts as an editor. I thought it made more sense to give the authors more control over their own books, considering I couldn’t hold up the publishing end of the bargain (promotion being the major blind spot).

Think of it this way: if you’re going with a small press, but YOU as the author have to pay for promotion, publicity, etc., and YOU have to do all of the work…how is that different from self-publishing? The legitimacy of the brand is mostly what a press like Broken River was bringing to the table. So I pitched five of my closest friends (and great writers) with the idea: what if we became a collective instead?

Broken River has a powerful energy, so I told them that, if they wanted to, they could start self-publishing their stuff under the BRB banner. I’d be there for quality control, editing the books and making sure the covers looked right, but each of the six authors would have complete control over their finances, promotion, publicity, and careers. I don’t take any royalties from their work, but I also don’t put any of my own money into their novels. It’s theirs.

The rising tide raises all ships. So when David Simmons does a reading in Baltimore, we split the cost of the table, send him books, and he pushes Broken River. When Kelby goes to Ghoulish Fest in San Antonio, we split the cost of the table, send him books, and he pushes Broken River. When we go to AWP…you get the idea. This allows us to divide and conquer, doing live events all over the country, going on podcasts and writing guest blogs, all under the banner of Broken River. Each author is obviously interested in selling their own books, but we work for each other as well. It’s a good system.

This has created a system of loyalty and brotherhood that feels unbreakable at this point. We all have Broken River tattoos, and we all love each other and encourage each other and read each other’s shit and offer suggestions. It’s a collective. It’s the wave of the future of publishing.

What Kind of Books Do We Publish?

Every author on BRB is encouraged to pursue what makes them happy. For example, I started off in the Bizarro Fiction movement, then pivoted to crime fiction for a while. Then I started watching a lot of anime and playing a ton of Cyberpunk 2077, in addition to developing an occult spiritual practice, so now I write anime-inspired animist cyberpunk.

Kelby wrote hoodrat crime fiction, but now he’s writing cyberpunk and working on Gulf-Coast crime TV shows and movies. Eddy is a beast, the most writer of the group, and he writes everything from Ursula K. Le Guin-style folk horror to Star Trek-inspired episodic fiction to language-heavy polyphonic narrative fiction.

David Simmons writes hilarious crime-inspired weirdo books about Baltimore, a city that he loves more than people. Picture The Wire by way of Bloodborne and you’re beginning to get the idea. Drug dealers in mech suits fighting kaiju, huge stone golems, people in gimp suits drilling holes in their heads…but also sharp commentary on redlining and the sinister presence of Johns Hopkins.

Grant writes everything from Chicago-based crime fiction to cannibal horror to Jordan Peele-style analog horror to Desperado-style cyberpunk (we’re all going through a cyberpunk phase, if you haven’t noticed).

Rios writes border-based magical realism. Her books are written as spells. People receive beating hearts in the mail, demons emerge from rifts in small towns overrun by cults, families of water witches combat evil men in sacred border towns. She calls her newest collection her “post-partum” book, full of tales about motherhood and the body. That one moved like hotcakes at AWP.

We are a blender of all of our influences. Sometimes our books overlap in genre, but what binds BRB together is the love we have for each other, and how our hours of group chats and phone conversations cause our works to bleed together and take influence and inspiration from each other. It’s an organic, living creature, now. Broken River is Broken River.

AWP Recap/Diary

I sold out of all my books. So did Kelby and Rios. Eddy sold out of almost everything. Grant sold out of of almost everything. The energy was flowing and we were connecting. When we left Kansas City, everyone had a big smile on their face. We could all feel the good vibes.

I teach 11th grade English, and I had to work on Wednesday. I’m currently reading Jurassic Park with the juniors, so I read the Dennis Nedry chapter six times, went to a professional development meeting, then loaded up the truck and headed out to Kansas City. Kelby, Rios and I got in about one in the morning, but we couldn’t sleep. The Hotel Lotus’ A/C didn’t work, so the hotel room was cramped and hot. We were running on fumes on Thursday, but that didn’t stop us from having a great first sales day, moving about ninety books from 8 to 5.

Luckily Kelby had the foresight to bring Gatorades and snacks. We munched on convention center pizza and called people over to the table. The trick to selling books is to ask everyone. There is no telling who is going to vibe with your books, so you can’t pre-judge the people who pass by the table. Oh, they probably won’t like these books. How do you know? Ask them if they like weird books, talk to everybody, and see what happens. Your audience is not limited by age, gender, or race. Demographics are a trap. We vibe with people, not demographics.

This method proved to be very successful. Maybe 80% of people we asked stopped by the table, and a good number of them either bought a book, signed up for the newsletter (hello), or both.

We ate barbecue at Arthur Bryant’s. It was delicious. The restaurant was smoky, and we left smelling like a rack of ribs. Bellies full and a little punch-drunk from lack of sleep (and Bud Light), Kelby dropped Rios and I off at our own hotel, the American Inn. This somehow proved to be an even worse hotel. We walked in and got hit with a blast of ambient weed smoke that turned into cigarette smoke as we made our way down the absurdly long hallway to our room. Flickering lights, screams from behind the heavy doors, shady characters flitting from room to room…the American Inn gave off Jacob’s Ladder vibes. Once we got to the room and saw the stains on the pillowcases and the orange needle cap on the floor, we called Kelby back to rescue us and spent another night in The Hotel Lotus instead.

Another important lesson: factor a nice chain hotel into your convention budget.

@brbjdoI receive instant karma for dogging on my hotel. #awp #writertok #authorsoftiktok #badhotels

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The good news was that we got a better night’s sleep and hit AWP on Friday with more energy. We sold about the same amount of books, but at that point we were in a groove, the five of us slipping into a natural rhythm, picking up on the varied energies of the people who approached the table, working as a unit to move each other’s books based on what the customers told us they liked bookwise.

We ate at Rudy’s. I had their Aztec Enchiladas and a 22 oz Pacifico with lime. Full and happy, Kelby once again dropped us at a hotel, this time the Hilton Garden Inn. It was nice. Rios and I watched Deadpool 2 and slept for nine hours.

Then, on Saturday, we cleaned up. I sold out of the rest of my books. Rios sold out. Kelby sold out. Etc. etc. Great success. Now we’re back home, and I’m off school once again because it snowed. Nice little five-day weekend, even though it went by in a blur.

@brbjdoAWP Kansas City bookselling tour diary. We sold a ton of books! #writersoftiktok #authorsoftiktok #awp #author #bookselling #authorlife

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I would have liked to attend some readings, but none of us had the energy to do so. I brought my Black Magic 4k PCC with a 25mm lens, and Kelby and Eddy spent their time away from the convention shooting short films, making the most of the weird Hotel Lotus. Grant had dates to go on. Rios and I slept. Maybe next year in LA we’ll set up a reading. Kelby and I do live freestyle storytelling, kind of a MadLibs deal where we come up with an entire short story, novel, or script in thirty minutes based off of random prompts from the audience. So that might be the theme of our reading. We will see. I liked all the pics of the readings. Seemed like everyone killed it.

Shout Outs

We met a ton of cool people at the con. I will list those presses/publicists/authors now. If I left anybody out, I’m sorry about that. Like I said, it was all a blur! Go check these folks out:

Atmosphere Press
Split/Lip Press
Charlene Elsby (the chat has been buzzing about her work for the past month)
Mindbuck Media Book Publicity
Brian Evenson (my favorite author)
Anthony Neil Smith (one of the original BRB authors and great guy)
O F Cieri
Kevin Maloney
Tobias Carroll
Bernard Welt
Feminist Press
Bull Lit
Muse Literary (shout out Kadeem Locke)
Milspeak Books
Dynamo Verlag
Defunkt Press (shout out Matthew Tavares)
Kaya Press
Midnight Chem
Fugue Journal

What is this newsletter?

You’ll receive information about current releases, but mostly this newsletter is a document of all the things I learn as I attempt to up my writing game. Craft talk, essays on books that I’m reading, that kind of thing. I don’t post unless I can give you some kind of value. It’s not an ad space.

Thank you for signing up! I hope to see you all again in LA.