This blog used to be called ‘Phillip’s writing tips’ so if you’re wondering why you’re subscribed to this, that might be why.
Phillip’s writing tips are now over at realphillipcarter.substack.com. If you’re a fan and want even more detail into how he puts his stories together, check out the paid subscription on his newsletter, where he dives deep into the inspiration and design philosophy behind each story.
Why does this exist?
The goal of this newsletter, and indeed this company, is to put books together and to share resources. If we see something interesting or useful, we will share it. We will also share open submissions for our own anthologies.
What is Halfplanet Press?
Halfplanet Press is an independent small press publisher established in 2016 by Phillip Carter. The goal was to publish authors of weird fiction, to find people who are genuinely under-represented: The weirdos. We don’t care if you’re viral on tiktok or popular at your local pub, we want good stories.
Here’s what cheif weirdo Phillip has to say about that.
“Halfplanet started out when I was studying Creative Writing at uni. Our first book was a short-lived anthology of student and tutor work, which was a lot of fun to put together. But as Halfplanet learnt the ins and outs of publishing, it seemed only sensible that I should use my work to experiment with in the future. That way, if I made any major errors, I didn’t have to apologise to another author.
I just had to stare at myself in the mirror and cry.”
The first lesson.
Halfplanet’s first error was putting Who Built The Humans? on Lulu before moving to Amazon.
We want to be clear that Lulu is brilliant, the error was not choosing them, but moving away without preparation. The error was also not the choosing of Amazon.
It was simply the act of moving the book.
Why move a book between distributors?
The short answer is visibility. Lulu has printing options which Phillip preferred (the paperbacks have a nicer cream colour to the paper, are lighter, and easier to open and read). But it cannot compete with Amazon for sheer numbers of people going through the system. We were running ads for WBTH but got a lesser royalty on sales because they were selling on Amazon, through Lulu.
It all comes down to maths.
Sell two eBooks per day with a profit of £1 and you have £2
Sell five eBooks per day with a profit of 40pence and you have £2
But in the second scenario, you’re selling more books in total.
You’ve got a higher chance of being a bestseller.
And you’ve got a higher chance of reviews.
Reviews encourage sales.
So we moved to Amazon.
“It created a lot of confusion with the metadata, meaning that at its first popularity spike, I had people messaging me about WBTH and wondering why they couldn’t buy it.”
This got worse. In October 2022, the eBook for WBTH that Amazon had stocked through Lulu, which was defunct and unavailable, was showing up on search results above the new version. This meant that the original cover was used, and Amazon’s rarity algorithm had decided that this unavailable book should be worth 375 Euros. Phillip only discovered this when his good friend Sejul Nerve told him after clicking on an ad. Naturally, Phillip was not pleased about this.
“I just about lost my mind.”
So, that’s what this company is going to be about.
Learning things together.
Telling you the pitfalls as and when we find them, so you don’t have to.
— Phillip