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

I’ve offered editorial comments (ranging from 30 on the low end to 500 on the high end) to all thirty-five contributing authors and have received many of them back. I am awaiting author returns on nine stories. The other twenty-six have been dumped as plain text into Vellum, and I’ve gone through some formatting options to set things up the way I prefer.

I knew that I wanted to use a Sans Serif (no pointy ends on letters, easier to read generally) font, and I went between the Parcel and Metro fontsets before settling on Metro. (Who knows? I may switch again later.) I then configured the options inside that fontset so that the headings, section breaks, etc. look the way I want them to look.

Designing the interior raises for me this copyright question: If I want to quote Sartre, do I need permission from the estate holding the rights to recent published versions of his works? Help a brother out and let me know, would you?

It definitely feels good to make some progress on the interior layout of this anthology!

I’m on track to get the digital proofs to authors by early fall.

I’ve also been in touch not only with my preferred photographer but also a favorite cover designer of mine, Don Noble of Rooster Republic Press. If I go with a photo from Kyle Zielinsky (who sold me rights to use the photo you’ll see on the press’s home page), I’d then design the cover myself. If I go with Rooster Republic, I’ll pay a few hundred for a custom design or use one of the premades featured on their website. I like them all, but none immediately grabs my eye as a perfect fit for Costs of Living. Noble did the cover for Timber Ghost Press for a book I’ll have a piece appearing in this fall, and he did the cover for another TGP book whose style I really love (The Scientist, The Spaceman, and the Stars Between Them). Budget is, of course, a factor here—but I really want this thing to look as good as can possibly be the case. I intend for us to win all the awards, and we can’t do that if I don’t get it just right.

That’s all the news, for now.

Click here to return to the “Behind the Scenes with Whisper House Press” Headquarters.