Publisher's Report--IF SF Publishing

As he made his way to California St. for coffee this morning, dodging Ultimate Driving Machines on their way downtown, the publisher composed his report to Shareholders for the fiscal year, 2011:

2011 was characterized by dynamic, if shifty, market conditions in which the established publishing paradigm is undergoing subtle and radical mutations at this very writing, as we speak. Fundamental assumptions made about writers and readers will continue to be challenged as the quest for self-expression runs rampant and both traditional and emerging wholesale and retail outlets contract and expand. Niche categories flourished, as did mainstream romance and cuisine. Off-brands--old fashioned experimental novels, anti-poetry poems, biographies of both pre-pubescent, post-adolescent and mid-career literary memoirist's--all enjoyed surprising success and are genre's IF SF will explore.

Submissions: 151 submissions were received in calendar year 2011. Fiction led the genre parade (62), followed by memoir (49), poetry (27), photography (6) self-help (5) and screenplay (2). Unsolicited manuscripts trumped those solicited, 75-1; most submissions emanated from the continental US, with a foreign handful from the UK, France, Italy, and Sweden, indicating that the IF SF brand is making a small but consistent footprint in the high-end market of discerning writers and readers.

Sales: Sales neither met nor exceeded expectations.

Forecast 2012: the IF SF 'model', in which the artist and the press collaborate (design, production, marketing, financial) is gaining traction. A select group of IF SF devotees, 'friends' of the press, have been identified who have indicated a willingness to commit to buying IF SF books upon publication. National distribution continues through Small Press Distribution (SPD), Berkeley, California. And finally, the Spring/Summer 2012 list has been announced with books forthcoming by poet's Dawn McGuire and Sally King, and a novel by Thomas Fuller.