A.B.C. Editions

Artists Bistro Café (A.B.C. for short) got its start some 15 years ago. I had one author to publish: myself. Having come to accept that my humour and interests were likely too far removed from the well-trodden paths of commercial appeal to merit any established publisher’s time and investment, I decided to take things into my own hands. 

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I was right to do so. After all, editors aren’t keen on outliers; they’re keen on guaranteed bestsellers. Poor souls, it keeps them up at night, the woe that so few books become chart-topping sensations, media darlings and household names - prized, once-in-a-blue-moon godsends that are so vital to keeping major-player publishers in the black and (more importantly) in a position to underwrite year-end bonuses for (should they be so lucky) their editors. 
 

The hard truth is this: in the real world, few books reach the stratospheres; a good many struggle to break even; some bomb completely. 

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But that’s publishing. At best, the majority of books published today will be limited to small print-runs, find but a small readership, and remain in the drafty shadows of relative anonymity... unless by some off-the-cuff fluke their innate, quirky qualities get miraculously discovered and earn their authors a wider audience. 

 

(Whenever my perennial optimism starts to flag, I rekindle it with the story of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ;-)​

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Which brings us to today. For years, I daydreamed that I might one day enlarge the scope of A.B.C. to publish other obscure authors like myself. Wouldn’t that be fun, I’d muse, to work with likeminded souls eager to bring their unique vision to book-bound pages! 

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Today, hélas, I am older and wiser - both wary of headaches, legal wrangles and burdensome disputes (vexations I can do without), and unhappily forced to wonder whether or not what I am reading was surreptitiously authored by A.I.  Easy-going partnerships couched in plain-spoken trust and straightforward handshakes are a thing of the past; today, Byzantine, lawyer-drawn contracts rule the roost; meanwhile, our world’s creative waters are muddied; things have been changing...

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For those reasons, insofar as publishing goes, A.B.C. Editions is constrained to remain a one-author-show. I owe it to myself to preserve my peace of mind and content myself with writing. But I am always open to engaging with likeminded souls who are eager to bring their unique vision to book-bound pages. If you resonate with that, and you would like to talk about your work with someone who genuinely cares about books, please feel free to contact me. 

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