What We Can Do
- realityskimming
- Jul 13
- 7 min read
Updated: Jul 15
by Joe Mahoney
About the Story Thing (2025) - 04
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"About the Story Things" is a thematic series of articles, sponsored by Reality Skimming Press. Pieces will appear every other Monday Jun 2 through to the end of 2025. Query us about contributing at https://facebook.com/relskim or Lisa.RealitySkimming@proton.me
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I’ve spent most of my life wanting to write.
Early on, this was fine. At the age of eleven, I wrote stories for fun. Given a choice of assignments for homework, I always chose writing stories. My Grade Four teacher, Miss Bain, had a large, empty television set in the middle of her classroom. She would get her students to sit inside it as though we were actors on a television show and read our work to our fellow students. So much fun!
Eventually, though, “wanting to write” transmuted into “wanting to be a writer.”
Without realizing it, I transferred agency away from myself onto some mysterious “other”. As though I needed someone else’s benediction to write. As though I couldn’t be a writer unless someone else published me and told me I was. Worse, I didn’t just want to be a writer in the eyes of the world, I wanted to be a successful writer; rich and famous, although I’d settle for respected. I always imagined it was just a matter of time.
Alas, it never came to pass. And eventually I acquired a modicum of wisdom, enough to be able to distinguish between that which was within my control and that which was not. Which, if you think about it, applies to so many aspects of our lives.
I love stories. I love consuming them, and I love creating them. As a writer all I need is pen and paper, or a typewriter, or a computer. I can concoct stories and make them available to the wider public. I can study the craft and improve my ability to create tales that immerse and move my audiences. I can hustle and promote myself and those stories, I can conduct myself in a way that optimizes my chances for success. But I cannot guarantee that success. I cannot force people to like my work or pay money for it. I cannot force agents to place my books with major publishers to spend massive amounts marketing them, setting my product on prominent tables in the front of bookstores, or convince production companies to adapt my work into television shows and movies.
I can continue to refine my own writing and marketing skills to increase the chances of that happening, but the chances remain infinitesimally small, and ultimately beyond my control. There is zero point fretting about something that is beyond one’s control.
It would be terrific to live in a world that valued art and creativity to such an extent that more of us could make a living off our creative output. To live in a world that hasn’t consolidated publishing in a handful of enormous publishing companies that focus primarily on their top earners to the detriment of the rest of us. To live in a country in which funding agencies have a lot more money to dole out and lot fewer strictures on said doling. But that is not the world we inhabit. Even the most successful among us usually need “real” jobs to survive, to support ourselves and our families, relegating our creative passions to stolen moments when we’re often too drained from everything else we must do to really focus on our art the way we’d like to.
But I don’t waste much time worrying about all that. It’s outside my control. Instead, I have looked at what I can do, what is within my ability to manage, and there I have found my options surprisingly robust.
I have the ability to write and improve my craft. I can take my time with it and make my stories as compelling as my talent and skill allow.
And whatever else we might say about the sad state of the world today, it is a world in which self-publishing has flourished. In which technology has made it possible to produce and sell books indistinguishable in quality from those produced by the big publishing houses.
It is a world in which it was possible for me to create my own company, Donovan Street Press, to, initially, sell my own books and those of my father, Tom Mahoney. And, after I’d figured out how to do that, to follow the excellent examples set by similar outfits such as Five Rivers Press and Brain Lag Publishing, to use the skills I’d acquired to publish books by other authors such as Matt Watts, Mark A. Rayner, Tanah Haney, Michael Antman, with more to come.
Obviously, simply creating a company doesn’t necessarily translate into running one successfully.
Publishing is a weird business, arguably dysfunctional, constantly mutating. I have spent years at the periphery. Though I have friends and acquaintances in the industry, and a few indie published books myself, I’m still pretty much an outsider, with much to learn. But this doesn’t faze me, because again, it is something within my control. That’s the key: distinguishing between what I can control and what I cannot. I can control what I focus on, and I can control what I learn. I am learning every day.
I liken starting a small indie press to some of the work I did at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, from which I retired in July 2023. (Shameless self-promotion: The day after I retired I published my memoir, Adventures in the Radio Trade).
After working in production for 19 years, I was promoted to management. Over the next sixteen years I managed a series of departments, often quite a bit different from one another (moving from broadcast maintenance to broadcast real estate, for example), though always with surprising overlaps that helped me in some way (familiarity with the people, how the money worked, etc.). In my mind, starting an indie press is not much different than being asked to manage a new department at the CBC, albeit with a unique set of challenges, such as fewer resources. Though I am blessed with great authors, along with the support of my friend Jenn DeLagran, an author herself, and who is graciously helping me in the role of Business Manager, which helps a great deal!
The basics of managing a department at the CBC and managing an indie press are similar. Learn as much about the industry as possible. Acquire and learn the tools of the trade. Be disciplined. Get and stay organized. Communicate. Follow through. Be nice to people. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Persevere.
It took me a long time to achieve something resembling success at the CBC, in production and in management. I am convinced that the same is possible in indie publishing, as a writer and as a publisher. It is just a question of time. Though, at the age of sixty, I am acutely aware of the runway growing shorter.
I am not looking to turn Donovan Street Press into the next Penguin Random House. But I do aspire to make it more than a print-on-demand publisher. I’m interested in publishing a wide variety of books with a special interest in speculative fiction. In a way, it’s a boutique press, focussing on a small number of authors at a time, and providing them with the best experience a company like this can offer, with the money flowing to the author, not the other way around.
Little by little I’m learning the biz, the weird little tricks of the trade. Curious things that can catch you up, such as Draft2Digital (D2D) requiring a unique ISBN for print. Not using expanded distribution for Amazon; saving that for D2D. Knowing which indie bookstores won’t sell your books because you still deal with Amazon. How hard it is not to deal with Amazon because, like it or not, they still sell a good portion of your books, and their terms are favourable to authors and indie publishers. Knowing to email Chapters/Indigo directly to give them a list of our ISBNs to make our books available online (there are special, secret email addresses). Finding stores we can depend on to sell our books on consignment, especially ones that believe in us and our books, and who will sell them by hand. (I’m looking at you, Write Cup Bookstore Café in Saint John, NB.) Knowing who will review your books and actually generate sales. What not to waste your money on, such as being selective about which organizations we belong to. All the while exploring new, potentially useful partners such as Bookmanager, and hoping that indie bookstores will be able to find us through them, and partner with us.
Donovan Street Press doesn’t possess the deep pockets of the big publishing companies. It barely possesses any pockets at all, and the pockets it does have seem to have holes in them. We can’t compete with the big houses’ marketing budgets, their staffing, their technological resources and the know-how they’ve derived from decades in the industry. We don’t possess the resources to publish more than two or three books a year. The writers we publish might never become rich or famous. But they might! You never know. By no means does my perspective rule out “that” kind of success. I simply acknowledge that it’s outside my control.
My perspective shifts the criteria for success to elements within our control: Finding talented authors who are a pleasure to work with. Crafting engaging stories with quality prose, employing solid editing with top-notch book packaging, along with a possibly futile but worthwhile quest for zero typos, and so forth. These are the fundamentals upon which further success is built, I believe.
For me, it’s not about external validation. I will take what I can get, the occasional good review from Kirkus or Publishers Weekly or a mention in the Toronto Star—and when that happens I’m not above bragging about it—but it’s not about that. It’s about crafting product that we can be proud of. About writing for the love of it and making Donovan Street Press books as good as they can possibly be so that others can have the opportunity to appreciate and enjoy them.
That is within our control.
That we can do.
Joe Mahoney
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Prior to launching Donovan Street Press Inc., Joe Mahoney spent 35 years as, primarily, a producer of programming at the CBC, retiring in 2023 from a management position. He launched Donovan Street Press in the same year, as publisher. He is the author of Adventures in the Radio Trade: a Memoir, and SF title A Time and A Place.
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References
Donovan Street Press. (n.d.). https://www.donovanstreetpress.com/
Hudson, A. (2024, Jun 2). The Story Behind the Story with author Joe Mahoney of Riverview, NB, Canada.
South Branch Scribbler. https://allanhudson.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-story-behind-story-with-author-joe.html
Mahoney, J. (2023, Jun 10). Adventures in the Radio Trade: a Memoir. Donovan Street Press. https://www.amazon.ca/Adventures-Radio-Trade-Joe-Mahoney/dp/1999431162