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INDIE PUBLISHING WRITING TIPS INDIE ONLINE BOOKSTORE
Bear Hill Publishing is a family run indie business. We are committed to publishing the best independent fiction and providing a platform for indie writers to learn, find purpose, meaning, and grow.
We publish books and write them because we are passionate about it.
We believe in fiction as not only entertainment, but as art, as important discourse, as a way to share knowledge about the world, as a means to help us understand our emotions, ourselves, and others, and as a form of escapism. Stories have historical and evolutionary significance beyond any other form of information dissemination & BHP is committed to giving the ‘story’ the reverence it is due.
We are dedicated to 4 main things:
1) The quality of content we produce in all the aspects of story mentioned above,
2) Freeing thought and creativity from the confines of the fiscal quarter, and
3) Industry innovation and flexibility of publishing processes and outdated norms.
4) Teaching writers how to improve their craft through self-discovery and confidence.
We publish adult/general audience books that are meticulously edited and refined for the purposes of creating the new ‘classics’—great and long lasting story-telling. Here at BHP, we believe that good books cut across genre and harshly defined subject categories. While still working within these industry and retail norms, we aim to push the constraints of them.
We approach each manuscript from an initially traditional publishing perspective, but we also understand the industry is changing and strive to stay on top of the new modes of selling books to consumers.
*Important Update*
At BHP, we believe that the traditional acquisitions process is outdated and doesn't take into account the growing desire in authors to retain ownership of their own work. However, self-publishing is risky in that the author does not always know what it is that they need and can end up releasing unprofessional products. Vanity publishers are another predatory beast altogether.
That is why we have chosen to partially do away with the traditional model—but only just a little bit—we provide all the editing and design and marketing of traditional publishing houses but DO NOT require (or ask) for exclusive rights to the book. All agreements are now licensing agreements made with the author to package and sell their book under our branding. The author is free to sell another non-BHP branded version of their book on Amazon or to other licensees.
Because of this, we will no longer be providing developmental editing, and will only be picking up books that we feel are exceptional and fit our brand.
*End of Update*
Every book that goes through production receives the highest level of editing attention and review, design, and manufacturing. Because of this, our house differs from most Indie Publishers in that we keep long lead times before publication to ensure the best quality, and therefore competitive, books make it to market. Current fiction novels have an average lifespan of only one year, and we do our best to extend that life indefinitely. Revitalizing our backlist often and using Print-On-Demand to keep books in print without the need for large, costly, and risky print-runs are some of the ways we do this, but quality is always paramount to our goals.
(At this time, I would like to add that we are using strictly digital (POD) printers to produce books. This will remain for the foreseeable future, as we recover from setbacks in the economy.)
Learn more about submission on our submissions guidelines page.