Whisper House Press

Notes from the desk of the editor are offered in the interests of personal posterity and transparency for writers and other potential editors who wish to learn from my experience.

the editor

Two updates today: Logo + Next Steps

First: Logo News

I’ve held, in the back of my mind, knowledge that to brand (the verb) effectively, I need a logo for Whisper House Press. It has to be simple, easy to identify with the thing we’re doing (horror fiction, but of a certain breed), and clear in its literalness / meaning. The text has to be easy to read, and the image overall should be memorable.

I put together a design portfolio with details about our brand (in so far as it’s developed to date), details about competitors, and conceptual keywords. I delivered that report to a designer via upwork, and I went through a round of logo concepts to get a family of logo ideas that I liked. I sent around the logo notions to family and friends, and getting their feedback was very helpful. (One of them noted, for instance, that the logo group toward which I was leaning looked an awful lot like a house with a mustache, and I realized I couldn’t go with that—the image, once so described, could not be unseen.)

After a night sleeping on the decision, I settled on one of the four main ideas and got some revisions based on my feedback… And this is where we landed:

I really like all of this work (there are a few others, too). I know that some of these will look better on a t shirt or poster, while others work better as a logo for social media (say, the new youtube landing page) or for business cards (being more visually compressed). I consulted with a few folks who work in design (thanks to Kyle in Pittsburgh, who also sold me the rights to use a photograph he took as the starting image for our brand back in April).

I realize that a certain kind of person (one with a higher hit rate in life, I think) would have agonized over this choice for weeks or even months, but I felt like, as with many of life’s choices, the costs of waiting to choose far outweigh the benefits of getting a slightly better result. So I chose. And we’ve got a logo package. I like it! Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Next Steps

I wrote to our contributing authors yesterday informing them that we’d finished collecting stories, and I’ve since received two more contracts. We’re so nearly there! I’ve closed submissions, and I’m thinking about what’s next.

So what’s next?

Editing. Editing. Editing. Promotions preparation (and active promotions). Project planning for the coming 16 months. Target publication date is September 1st 2025 (click here for a more detailed timeline).

I’ve started a YouTube channel for the press. Did I mention that already? Yes, there’s a Whisper House Press YouTube channel. Please follow. I’m going to put up an introductory video there soon, and then I plan to use it to post contributing author interviews in a planned way between now and publication… it seems ideal to do this on a regular basis, so I’ll be scheduling all that out.

That about does it for now. I’m really excited about this whole process. It’s been enjoyable, and when I tell people “I read 275 submissions to get our 35,” they look at me like I’m crazy… but I’m not. I am not bothered by this work. I like it. A lot. I’ve read a lot of amazing tales in the last two months, many of which didn’t fit our theme… but a lot of excellent stories. I know I’m getting better as a reader and writer through this exposure, and I’m always game for growth activities.

– steve

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