Here’s the new EAP website. When we got hacked last month, and our server shut our website down till we could fix matters, we realized the whole thing was was overdue for a rethink and an overhaul. This was the happy result.
There are other changes. Starting with the September MERMAIDS issue, the online magazine will move to being quarterly…so that will be our FALL 2012 issue, with the next one, WINTER 2012, up on December 1.
All the changes reflect the organic morphing of EAP’s original idea–an online magazine that publishes work of all levels as long as they are courteous and question a dominant cultural story–into the full steam ahead independent publishing house we’ve become. The new home page features EAP books and news about them, with links to other parts of the project, most notably what we now call EAP: The Magazine.
When we started the online magazine, back in 2005, my sneaky purpose was to create a space that would attract like minds–people who believed in human values over technological, imperial ones. People who believed in everyday life, and the necessity of building a culture on a foundation of kindness, courtesy, equity. I wanted to keep very quiet about my plan to grow an independent press that would celebrate those same values, since I didn’t want anything to interfere with people’s ability to just communicate directly.
By and large, that plan worked. We’ve been developing our books through relationships we’ve formed on the site. Our first book, Mike Madrid’s THE SUPERGIRLS, still our most popular on the list, was published in bits and pieces here, as Mike and we made a relationship, which ended (or began) in his taking over the design of the entirety of EAP, as well as developing his tremendous illustrations for the Arcadia books (watch for them in LILY THE SILENT, coming out in October of this year). We found Brian Griffith and have used the site to try out various ideas, resulting in his books CORRECTING JESUS, and A GALAXY OF IMMORTAL WOMEN. (He’s working on a new one about how animal stories interact with culture, and I personally can’t wait for that one.)
3 DEAD PRINCES developed here, and E. E. King found us and sent us many bits and pieces before we published her DIRK QUIGBY’S GUIDE TO THE AFTERLIFE.
And of course, at the start one morning, I opened the computer and found the first three chapters of Richard James Bentley’s Pirates vs. Aliens saga, GREENBEARD. As I read, the hair stood up on the back of my arms. He’d been surfing the web at 3 am his time in England, found us, and sent off what he thought of as a failed story meant to amuse his niece at Christmas time. I immediately emailed back and said keep going, we’ll publish it all on the website. That was 2009, and now, with much anticipation and fanfare, we’ll publish the book in spring 2013. We really think Dick is a major new literary talent, and lest that sound too intimidating, let me say the book is a corker. You can’t put it down, and you can’t stop chortling as you read. Trust me on this one.
So all these changes reflect the good and exciting new places we’ve come to as a press. We’ve grown as an independent publisher, helped out by the wonderful work of the great team at Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, our magnificent sales reps, as well as the independent booksellers of like mind all across the country…and our treasured, intelligent, questioning readers.
Watch out for more changes in the future. But for now–whew!–changing this website is enough, as we charge into the fall season with David Budbill’s poem/play PARK SONGS, and the second book in the Arcadia series, LILY THE SILENT.
Welcome back.