Brain Jar Press – Peter M. Ball

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

On Velocity Models and Leading With Your Backlist

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Scratchpad: Building Brain Jar Press

Back when I pulled together the Brain Jar Press writer guidelines, I specifically called out that we use a backlist driven model of publishing. It’s one of those phrases that generates a lot of questions from new authors, and there’s been a project where the author in question wasn’t interested in pursuing publication with us once I laid things out (Side note: this is a good thing: I lay things out because publishing with a small press whose practices are a small fit for your expectations is likely to be frustrating for everyone). What’s really interesting at the moment is the way backlist versus front list models are coming into focus because of the current problems with publishing supply chains, particularly in the US. It often means people have to articulate what a front-list model looks like, and why it runs into problems. My favourite description comes via Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s analysis of the current supply chain problems in publishing:

PeterMBall 01/10/2021

News & Upcoming Events

Brain Jar News: Little Labyrinth Pre-Orders

WE’RE BACK, BABY! Brain Jar Press has been quiet for a few months now, courtesy of some ill-timed computer issues back in May that turned into ill-timed internet issues in June (publishing is weird – the problems of May don’t manifest until August, at the earliest). But now? Guess what? We’re BACK with a new book from SEAN FRICKEN’ WILLIAMS that you can go PRE-ORDER! Here’s the pitch: Matter transporters, dead worlds, and ghostly encounters. Parallel worlds, time-travel, and dangers that lurk in the shadows. Little Labyrinths brings together 17 vignettes and microfictions from one of Australia’s premier authors of science fiction and fantasy. Collected together for the first time, these brief tales and startling asides cover territory that is playful, experimental, and infused with speculative wonder. Once dubbed Australia’s Lord of Genre Fiction, Williams’ work will remind you of the strange, exciting, and mysterious pleasures that come from losing yourself in the smallest stories. The really interesting thing about editing

PeterMBall 14/09/2021

Journal

Brain Jar 2.0: One Year On

A cold morning here in locked down Brisbane. The heater is definitely on and the cat has taken up residence in a conveninent patch of sunlight. The writing brain is protesting the return to work like a reluctant starter mower on the last dregs of fuel; it’s a “40% of optimal” day here, first thing in the AM. I’ll get things up and running, but it’s not going to be terribly smooth. … Many moons ago, at the 2016 Brisbane Natcon, I was on a panel with Cat Sparks and someone whose name eludes that turned to the character of Jack Reacher. Cat noted she didn’t think Jack Reacher would work as a woman — a thought that stuck in my head for a long while, and slowly evolved into a novella I’m working on for my thesis. I’ve got the big beats of the story more-or-less locked down at this point, so I’m into the interstitial scenes: negotiations; investigation;

PeterMBall 06/08/2021

Works in Progress

Process Journal: Immutable Laws of the Brain Jar

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Scratchpad: Building Brain Jar Press

Over the past few weeks I’ve been following the Observation Journal template laid out by Kathleen Jennings, pushing myself to pay attention to creative patterns and sites of attention. Structurally speaking, given my focus on Publishing rather than Writing at the moment, my right-hand pages tend to be a lot less on creative exercises and a lot more on wrapping my head around what I’m doing with Brain Jar Press. This week, I tried the Immutable Laws exercise from Mike Michalowics’z The Pumpkin Plan, which aims to break down the three core, non-negotiable beliefs at the heart of what you do as a business. Essentially, the codes you live by, and the strictures you don’t go against because it’s pulling you away from the reasons you do what you do (it is, in essence, a very you don’t want to be published kind of exercise, applied to businesses instead of writing). They’re also the three things that other people should

PeterMBall 05/10/2020

Journal

7 April 2020

Right, then. Tuesday. It is Tuesday, yes? The weirdness is setting in. I’m sitting in my flat pondering ways to break every rule I know about publishing, and marvelling at the fact I’m coaxing folks to come along for the ride. My inbox is filled with freshly signed contracts, my messenger services filled with chats about future projects. And for all my bluster about breaking rules, I’m going back to resources from 2005 when the publishing paradigms of RPG gaming splintered thanks to ebooks and thinking about the ways to transplant them into 2020. This has largely involved picking up an idea that’s been kicking around my computer since 2008. The nice part about everything going mental is that there’s really no reason going full tilt at ideas that seem interesting, rather than second-guessing whether they’ll pay off. Brain Jar Press is on the verge of getting its own online identity. The webpage is getting some attention. We’ve launched a

PeterMBall 07/04/2020

Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Judging Books By Covers

It’s been just over a year since my second short story collection came out, and it did pretty well for itself. It made the shortlist for Best Collection in the Aurealis Awards, and had some pretty strong sales for one of my ebooks in a year when my attention was mostly on other things. At the same time, it’s lagged behind my first collection in a lot of milestones. Most notably, getting a print edition together, and attempting to refine the messaging and branding. Last week I started to change that: taking a bunch of newly acquired skills from some dedicated research into making better book covers, plus a workflow that is better suited to going from ebook cover to print, I made the revamped cover you can see above (and, if you want, contrast against the old cover to the right). They’re small changes, but just repositioning things and strengthening font choices has a big impact in setting reader

PeterMBall 09/12/2019

News & Upcoming Events

Bonus Book for Subscribers (and some new covers)

I grew dissatisfied with the original covers for the Short Fiction Lab releases over the weekend. My original goal with the series wast putting together a consistent design scheme that also forced me to write a bunch of blurbs–practicing skills that I hadn’t needed as a writer. It worked, to an extent, but getting blurbs down involves a lot of tweaking and adjusting for keywords, and that meant the covers would end up lagging behind. On top of that, I just wanted something that looked a little better as I started lining up the releases side-by-side, so I went back to the drawing board and rebuilt the series design from the ground up. Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to do something about that with Brain Jar, so I’m debuting a fresh look for Winged, With Sharp Teeth and Eight Minutes of Usable Daylight. Wait, you say, there are three stories on that banner? I’m glad you noticed. Right now, I’m also gearing up to release

PeterMBall 04/12/2018

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

How to pick up a free story and support this humble author

As promised in the last post, you can pick up a copy of Winged, With Sharp Teeth for free this week. Just follow the links here to claim your copy: Amazon US | Amazon Australia | Amazon UK And here’s a little taste of what you’re getting if you follow the link. The rain draped over Brisbane like a wet sheet, bringing with it a chill and sharp gusts of wind. Not the kind of weather you hoped for when planning a first date, but Steve wasn’t complaining. They were huddled together in the Siam Palace on Sandgate Road, seated beneath the watchful eye of a giant golden Buddha. They ate Pad Thai, traded stories about their lives: the events of the week, where they worked, what they studied at university. Wait staff hustled between the tables, delivering drinks and plates of fragrant curry. The wind chased new patrons through the front door, setting the candle flames on every table

PeterMBall 22/11/2018

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Profit and Loss

I went and updated my profit-and-loss statements over the weekend, and noticed that I brought in as much from my RPG publishing books as I did the more recent Brain Jar Press releases. It’s tracking to do the same this financial year, although I’ll be doing my damnedest to keep that from being the case in the first half of 2019. All this means, in essence, the work I did over a decade ago is paying off more than than the more recent fiction work, simply because the sum total of effort I put in was checking the sales report. All the hard work was done in 2006, when those books came out, while the Brain Jar books required writing, layout, upload, etc. I’m making a note of this because I’m revisiting my business plan for Brain Jar over the next month, figuring out how I’d like to adjust things based upon the last twelve months. There’s a bunch of

PeterMBall 05/11/2018

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

What d20 Publishing Taught Me About My Next Fiction Project

Earlier today, I added about 3,500 words of new content to the Warhol Sleeping draft, finishing up the scenes that needed fleshing out and adding in the interstitial content and “deleted scenes” content that will get added to the final product. The novella draft is officially done. Now the real work begins, exporting it from Scrivener and starting the process of doing real editorial work instead of patching up the weaker scenes. Setting up the cover and the marketing copy, working out some pre-release promo, then working out whether the date I’ve earmarked for release is actually a feasible timeframe to get everything done. It should be. I dedicated the first year of Brain Jar to short story collections, largely so I could get an idea of how the various systems and tools I’d need were going to work. Now I’ve got them down, which means I can start playing a little more. And Warhol Sleeping is very much a

PeterMBall 31/10/2018

Tag: Brain Jar Press

On Velocity Models and Leading With Your Backlist

Brain Jar News: Little Labyrinth Pre-Orders

Brain Jar 2.0: One Year On

Process Journal: Immutable Laws of the Brain Jar

7 April 2020

Judging Books By Covers

Bonus Book for Subscribers (and some new covers)

How to pick up a free story and support this humble author

Profit and Loss

What d20 Publishing Taught Me About My Next Fiction Project

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