What do you do if you’ve got 30 notebooks full of your writing and no one to publish them? If you’re University of Hell Press founder Greg Gerding, you do it yourself and create a self-publishing empire. The author of seven published books of prose and poetry, Greg’s initial spark for the press came from a weekly reading series he’d hosted at a bar in Washington, D.C., aptly called Hell. After moving to San Diego, he was inspired by the city’s local music scene’s DIY ethos and began calling on his friends to design covers, among other things. Finding himself in Portland a few years later and virtually swimming in literary goings-on, Greg expanded the press and at this point, publishes a combination of solicited and unsolicited material, and spends most of his time trying to convince other folks to start their own self-publishing empires. His birthday buddies include Stephen Baldwin (boo) and Tony Hawk (yay)!

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I opened straight up to the my dick section

and straight to the page that said, My dick is the cops.

And that's when I knew I needed to buy it. That's a bumper

sticker.

They can't pull you over if you got that leper sticker exactly

you

welcome to the hybrid tough Scout podcast with me. Emily

einlander and me. Corrine kolasky, hello. We're happy to

be back talking with you lovely people. It's been too long.

Yeah, too long, yep, although probably not for you, because

this is coming out two weeks after on a regular schedule. Oh

yeah, yeah, that's okay, but that's fine. We still love you

no matter what, and we're sorry that there's been a weak gap in

which we missed you a lot. Yep. So we're excited today to be

speaking with a Portland publisher named Greg girding,

that's right, and he is the publisher of University of hell

press, right? Yes, welcome.

Forget to greet our guests. I'm looking at you like, hey,

remember the thing that I don't remember right now I know.

All right. So Greg's bio is as follows. Greg Gerding is a noted

underground writer and publisher. He runs UNIVERSITY OF

HELL press, an indie book publishing imprint, and is the

editor in chief of leading opinions and editorials website

The Big Smoke America. Greg graduated from the University of

Maryland with a BA in English language and literature and then

hit the streets to continue his education as a scholar and

Scrivener of the real world. He has had seven books published,

five books of prose, poetry, poetry in hell, the burning

album of lame loser makes good piss artist and the idiot

parade, a collection of short stories, venue, voyeurisms. And

his most recent book, I'll show you mine, an oral history on the

subject of intimacy, was published by the sage Sager

Sager Sager group in 2013

Greg founded the University of hell press in 2005 as a self

publishing brand, and then expanded it to publishing

others, beginning in 2012 launching a platform for

unconventional artistry. He started the Big Smoke America in

late 2015, and has published over 1700 articles and essays

since he has collaborated on projects with musicians and

visual artists and is well known for organizing readings on both

coasts. Greg was born in Kentucky, has lived and or

worked in nearly every city in America, and currently resides

in Portland, Oregon. Welcome Greg. Thank you. Better better a

piss artist than no artist at all. I agree. That's what I

always say every morning when I wake up,

dear morning affirmation, yeah, myself in the mirror and say

that

it's fun hearing all the titles listed right in a row. Do you

feel accomplished when you hear them all this? Yeah, you should

load a book. Do you feel like a deviant when you hear I'm all

listed

more like

Greg and I met at at Portland,

Portland Book Festival, I sorry, literary arts, no book festival,

I stand by it. Yeah, you know you have you, I don't know it's

a little different for

you. Yeah, we met while, uh, while I was tabling University

of Hell's booth. So, yeah, we got to chatting. It's always fun

interacting with people. That's a really good festival.

Actually. It gets decent foot traffic. We were in a weird

location because the whole thing got thrown out of whack when the

ceiling fell in one of the ballrooms, yeah, yeah, the

Portland Art Museum, the ceiling fell down. That did manage to

find us like you? Yeah? I was making the rounds, yeah, I

always have some really fun conversations with a lot of

interesting people. And yeah, so I'm super happy to be here.

Thank you for having me. You are welcome. Thank you for being so

enthusiastic and bringing books to show in hell yes for you

guys, yeah. Future, future guests, if you would like to

bring us presents, oil free, we had somebody send us a bunch of

zines in the mail. That was awesome. Yeah, hint, hint, yeah,

but I picked up this great book when I was visiting you, and

it's called All this can be yours by Isabel O'Hare, yeah.

Can you tell me a little about them? And.

About their book, yes, it's a really powerful collection.

Isabel was

compiling as

as apology statements were being released to the public

surrounding that that inspired the ME TOO movement, but like as

as celebrities were being called out for their sexual harassment,

yeah, assault,

all of it. And with that came these polished, sort of weird,

non apology statements that either were written by them or

written by their team or whatever. But as they were being

published, Isabel was taking the apology statements and doing

erasure poetry. So for those that may not know what erasure

poetry is, it's just taking an original text and taking

essentially a sharpie to

to words and removing words off the page to isolate words that

you can read and creating new works from them. So through this

exercise, Isabel was essentially just trying to

create deeper truths that were expressed through these horribly

written

apology statements, and it ended up resulting in just these

amazing poems. So as Isabel was creating them, they were posting

them on their social media. It went viral. There was a lot of

attention surrounding them and their work, and we had a

conversation with Isabel and said, we would love to put a

collection of this together. And Then There ended up being us a

little bit of

a bidding, not a bidding war, but we the the viral aspect of

the work that they were producing caught the attention

of a major, some major publishers, yeah. So next thing

we know, we found ourselves like, oh, we just sort of were

like, well, it was really great, you know, chatting with you just

know that we're huge fans of you and your work, and like, we're

super stoked that you're gonna get picked up by a major and

a few days later, Isabel just circled back with us, and was

just like, none of that felt right. I don't want to be that.

I want this work out in the world, but I want it out in the

world on my own terms. And I love everything that you guys

are doing and everything that you guys are about, and I'd

rather have my book published under a press, yeah, called

UNIVERSITY OF HELL press. Yeah, you know. So

I think

that was an interesting experience for us, because we

hadn't found ourselves in that position before from our

standpoint, and really, when we are working with writers,

we know where we are in the I don't know the pecking order,

that's a dumb thing to say, but

where we stand in the world of publishing, right? So we're

definitely about trying to grow our own writers and authors and

grow and give them the attention we know that they deserve, and

hopefully grow them into something larger than us, right?

So that was just an interesting we I wasn't prepared. None of us

were prepared for

that to have happen. Super thrilled that that happened for

Isabel. But anyway, it's a really powerful book, and later

this year, on July 4, we'll be publishing the book. Inspired so

many people that Isabel put out a call, and has collected an

anthology that we will also be publishing, and it's tentatively

titled, erasing the patriarchy. And it doesn't just focus

specifically on male celebrities accused, or, you know, alleged

to have sexual misconduct. It literally like it's it's also an

amazing book, like people have contributed from around the

world and taken texts from their respective countries, wow, and

applied the same in their own way. But it's, it's another

collection of erasure poetry, and it focuses on gleaning

truths from just this, these ugly people, ugly, you know,

yeah, huh? I'll be buying that. Yeah. I remember coming up to

the table when I met you, and seeing this book, and remembered

seeing the poetry on social media, and was like, that's you.

Yeah, that's here, I know. Well, I do want to, if I can. There

was because most people, if you spend any time,

you know these apology statements were coming out on a

daily basis. All these people work, but you know, everyone, of

course, knows, especially now that they're in.

Use again with the court case as Harvey Weinstein, but to give

you an example of what Isabel had done to

his apology statement, just to give you an idea as to what the

piece that Isabel came up with is entitled A culture of demons,

and from his statement, they arrived at this and it reads, I

came of age in a culture of demons i respect more than

women. Yeah,

I opened straight up to the my dick section

and straight to the page that said, My dick is the cops.

And that's when I knew I needed to buy it. That's a bumper

sticker.

They can't pull you over if you got that bumper sticker Exactly.

The first dozen or so erasure poems from the collection were

inspired, particularly from Louis CK,

horrible apologies. The title comes from, right? Actually, the

title comes from

was, I don't want to say the wrong celebrity, but it was

something that was said that a woman had accused a celebrity of

having said at a party, okay, all this can be yours.

Reminds me of man. DJ, yeah.

No, go ahead. Can you remind me what was Louis? CK, apology? Was

it basically like, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. Wasn't it

something like that? Like, yeah, I'm sorry you were hurt by Yeah,

right, exactly, yeah. That's what I thought I was gonna

remember, yeah. The cool thing with the collection is, is we,

we didn't

include the original apology statements, nor did we even give

credit to who the apology statement came from, yeah, and

really, I mean, the price of the book alone is worth it for

Isabel's introduction, because it's just such a powerful

introduction, but so much thought went into what the final

product looked like. I think that probably also led to her

decision to go with us versus another, yeah, was the fact that

we were going to provide them with so much flexibility with

what the final product was going to look like and like. There was

a lot of thought. And you know,

I'm really proud of that. I'm proud of all of our books, but

that's a particularly from a punk rock yeah standpoint. I

mean, there's a lot of books in our collection that make a kind

of punk rock statement, yeah. And that one for sure,

definitely

encompasses that punk rock Yeah, esthetic, yeah, yeah, kind of

Yeah, all right. Well, let's talk about University of hell a

little bit, right? Well, or a lot. That's literally why you're

here. All right,

let's start at the beginning. Tell us about your original

interest in writing. How did you make the jump from writing and

submitting to other presses to publishing your own work and

then the work of others? Yeah, so I started writing right out

of college, to give you brief background, like I was always an

avid reader growing up, and then once I got into college, I was

overwhelmed with the curriculums that they

made us read, and I just never connected with any language or

writing that I felt I could produce myself. And it wasn't

until after I got out of college and got exposed to what might

have been considered some more underground writers, Hubert

Selby Jr, Henry Rollins,

my birthday buddy.

Oh, you share a birthday. Yeah, cool. Jerry Springer and Jerry

Springer, yeah, I get Freddie Mercury and weasel Zappa. Nice.

Yeah, I don't know any of mine. Off the top really, when's your

birthday, May 12, we'll tell you I don't know off the top my

head. Well, while you continue to talk about the thing we asked

you about and interrupted, I'm going to Yeah, I will say there,

I did a pretty good job choosing coursework while I was in

college that exposed me to some other works, the English track

just put me on this weird path, and I couldn't connect with any

of those writers, but I was inspired by a lot of I ended up

earning a minor in sociology by accident, because I was taking

all these classes that I was fed by that focused on the movements

of the 60s, the social movements of the 60s, the women's

movement, so I was taking Women's Studies classes and

being exposed to women writers that I didn't know about before.

Jeanette Winterson was a huge influence. My God, I love her so

much. I still return to her book, art art objects, or art

objects. It's a play on.

Either, and they're in their essays written by Jeanette

Winterson, oh, I don't think I've read that. I've taken I

practically have highlighted that entire but I returned to

it, just for the the insights in that book, but, and not to

mention the novels. Yeah, she's written as well,

but like Toni Morrison, just writers like like them, but

and then after getting out of college, I exposed myself to

what might be considered more underground writers, but still

having success, like Charles Bukowski, stuff like that, who I

didn't know about. So I was making my way and finding my way

to their work, and then suddenly I was like, Oh, well, this feels

like something I can connect with. There was a simplicity to

the writing that and

larger meaning and density I felt underlying the words

themselves

that spoke to me more than anything else I had read before

the with the classics, and either that kind of a thing. So

that inspired started. I just started buying blank books, you

know, and then I was filling blank books all in every chance

I could. And it mostly was, it kind of was journaling, but it

was coming out in this poetry form, kind of prose poetry,

and then I had in my head that I was going to read out, like I

knew that that was something and and in living in DC at the time,

there were a lot of venues for open mics and reading

opportunities. So

in a nutshell, I

within that first year of writing and reading out, I got

approached by a small press in the DC area, Red Dragon press,

run by Laura Ka and she had published a number of

collections before she had

approached me and said that she was interested in putting

together a collection of my work, and that, the result of

that ended up being my first book, which is poetry in hell. I

was running a weekly open mic Art series out of a bar called

Hell, oh and

and the the event was, was a weekly event, and it was called

poetry in hell. And so it just became, it just made sense to

make that first book, yeah, poetry and how. So from that

experience,

I was kind of spoiled, sure I didn't know

what I had, just

what you had around, yeah, what just happened like, what all

that meant I'd had,

I'd had a larger vision for what I thought my first book would

look like. And so this book, while I'm very proud of it, was

the product of somebody else's curating my work, pairing it

with an illustrator, who's an astounding illustrator, but I

wasn't involved in the process of that final product at all.

And

again, so thankful. Like all I'm like, This is how it's going to

happen. I'm just going to continue writing. I'm just going

to continue reading out. I'm going to continue sending stuff

out and getting it stuff, yeah, and people are gonna find me.

Yeah. People are gonna approach me. Hell yeah.

I remember thinking

long, long ago in the before time,

so

poetry and how was my first book, and it was, I didn't

realize how good I had it at the time. I was young and

so thrilled about the experience, but thought that

that things were going to come that easily as long as I was

focused on the work, which I constantly was, that somehow

miraculously, the work was going to be published on its own.

That's familiar. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people think that, yeah,

no, it's true. So fast forward to all the heartache of, like,

finding places to submit to, and at the time, it's pre internet,

so like, I'm getting tomes of books from the local bookstore,

the guide to whatever,

right Writers Market? Yeah,

so writers Mocha, they had a market. They had a poets market.

Oh, okay, which was just as hefty and just big. And so he's

going through there, and you're like reading about every press,

every and they're not just presses, they're zines,

primarily. So now you're trying to find the zines that align

with what you think your work fits. And then you're sending

them money so they can send you samples of their zine. Yeah,

yeah, and you're right, oh yeah. This is the zine I want to send

to. And then you send them work, and then, like, the whole

process was so painful, the self addressed stamped on below,

yeah.

Yeah, and like, over the course of that period of time,

maybe a couple of poems got published. And I was just like,

This is terrible. It's exhausting, yeah, so

moved to San Diego, doesn't have much of a literary scene. Trying

to create a literary scene on my own, like by aligning myself

with a few writers that I could find around town, trying to

organize events, like I did while I was in DC, while not

trying to. I mean, the weekly can

doing a weekly series. I commend anybody that somehow manages to

have a keep a weekly event going a lot, yeah, yeah, because I did

that, and I'm like, There's no down too much. Yeah, yeah, it's

a lot.

But anyway, at this the whole time I'm writing, writing,

writing, amassing all this work, so from blank book one to blank

book 30. Now I've got just piles of blank books that nothing's

happening with. And then I started thinking, well, and I

and as I'm going through it, I'm like, visualizing what the final

product could look like, you know, from all this work. And I

sort of settled on this thing. Once I got to a certain point, I

was like, I feel like I've got at least two books, maybe three.

And

and at some point, I was just like, this, none of this is

going to publish itself. I'm not. I have not been successful

connecting with the publishers I admire and love, speaking of

Rollins, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was huge to 1361, yeah,

birthday.

What I'm saying? I heard you say that on the other one, and I was

like, Oh yeah, I remember now, by the way, when you're done, I

have a list for you. Okay, cool.

And you know, at the time, like with Bukowski and how he sort of

like, created black Sparrow. I mean, black Sparrow wouldn't

have been anywhere. Well, I mean, they published some really

great writers, but to grow to the extent that they did, I

think was largely from Bukowski. And I don't love all of his

work, but he definitely was somebody that, like I clicked

with the first time when I read one of his collections, and I

was like, Oh, wow, I've never seen anything like this before.

I used to love Faulkner. It's okay.

So is this amalgam of things that I was being exposed to, and

at the same time, while living in San Diego and coming from DC,

where Discord is happening, and in San Diego has such a great

music scene, and I found myself because there weren't many

writers that I could connect with in San Diego. I found

myself running with the music crowd,

and through that, seeing them build trying to build

themselves, trying to make it in the industry, right, trying to

like, record their demo, and everything's just sort of done

out of love, and you're trying to, like, break it, make it kind

of a thing, DIY, and they're just hitting the road and

they're doing it, and I'm just like, how can you not be

inspired by that energy? So I was applying that to the writing

and just being like, how am I, how am I gonna make this happen?

Like it's not gonna happen, clearly, it hasn't happened on

its own, like that first initial magic. So I challenged myself to

spend some time thinking about what it would take to

Self Publish. Yeah, so I made the decision to self publish at

that time and put my friends to work. I think that's good. If

you're, like, considering self publishing while it's self

audits. You like, I didn't do that alone. I had at least

enough. Like I got on the phone with 213 61 Oh, wow. And I'm

like, who prints your books? Yeah, yeah. I love the way the

final product of your books looks so it really started with,

what am I admiring that exists on my own bookshelf? Right?

We're all avid readers. Hopefully, if you're a writer,

you're constantly reading as well, and you're being exposed

to all these products, and you're probably drawn to a

certain kind of esthetic. So then start deconstructing that

esthetic and figure out what it is that you'd like to see in the

final product of your work, and how you can make that happen.

That's that started to excite me a little bit. So I call 213, 61

and I'm like, hey, who prints your books? You know, turns out

McNaughton and Gunn up in Saline, Michigan, or whatever,

prints their books. So exist. Yeah,

so I started that conversation with a printer I got spoiled out

of the gate with because I had that experience with a

traditional printer, right? And it's really fun when you can

play around with the materials and try to because.

Instruct a final product that you're super happy with,

but it's also

it can be a little so I had arrived at a place where I was

in a career in meeting planning,

and stars just sort of aligned at a certain point where I was

doing well enough that I started to have a little bit of surplus

of money in my account for a change, instead of being

constantly in debt. And I was like, Well, why don't I try to

figure out, you know, what the costs are associated with

producing my own book. And I decided to start out small. So

when I endeavored, I knew at that point, I knew I had us. I

knew what what I wanted that first book to look like my first

book, but I knew that I didn't want to just dive into that

without first practicing. So the burning album of lame, which was

my next book was, was truly my first self published book.

But that was me pulling selections from this larger body

of work into one small collection, and I had some fun

with that. And that's where i i took inventory of my friends

around me and their abilities, and identified a friend who's a

graphic designer, you know. And I'm like, You don't know this

yet, but you're gonna,

you're gonna lay out my book, and you're gonna do a cool book

cover, and I'm not gonna pay you.

Yeah,

you're gonna do it for free. And he did. And I had artists that I

was friends with, that I whose esthetic I enjoyed. And I

thought, Oh, hey, can you work on some artwork for my cover and

maybe do some illustrative work for the inside that kind of a

thing? So start out with a small collection. Worked with the

printer, and got used to that experience. And then that became

the first one. And then a year later, I think I did venue

voyeurisms, which was a collection of columns that I was

writing for the local San Diego alternative weekly paper, and

that had, that has its own funny story. But basically what ended

up resulting was I was going to different bars every week, and

just writing about whatever inspired me while occupying that

space, and they published whatever I sent them, it was

remarkable. That's awesome. Oh my god, yeah, so the whole time,

like, I don't know how to explain it, but I just tried to

be open to what was happening around me and look for

opportunities that I could try to involve myself in doing

anyway. So

the first two books felt like examples and tests that sort of

paved the way for the next one. I finally did that, that loser

makes good. Really felt like that was the book that I was

ready to run with. Like you hit your stride, yeah. So, you know,

I had that work. That book was written in 1994 and then it

finally got, you know, I finally published it saw the light of

day in 2005

Wow. Yeah. You know, never give up. Yeah.

The other thing too, was I all those blank books were filled

with handwriting, so type as you're going, yeah,

yeah, oh my god. So your birthday buddies, okay, go for

it. You got Emilio Estevez, that's pretty good. George

Carlin, Oh, that's great. Yeah, no. Steven Baldwin, sorry,

that's your Jerry Springer,

Katherine, Hepburn and Florence Nightingale and Tony Hawk, nice,

very nice.

I wish I would have known that I ran into him at the airport and

had nothing to say. Oh no, but it was awkward. Like, yeah, I

was at the San Diego airport. I was about to

I was going in the restroom while he was coming out. Yeah,

it's not really a time to, like, socialize. You're like, you

catch eyes, right? Like, oh, I recognize like, Oh, I better

not. Maybe I won't say anything this time. Yeah, he made some

tweet where he was like, Did you see the one where he was like,

in the airline security, yeah, and yeah, he for whoever hasn't

seen it.

He was talking about the person who was looking at his passport

said, Oh, Tony Hawk, like the skater. Wonder how he's doing.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's pretty funny on Twitter. Tony Hawk, yeah, not a

bad birthday. But no, no, you have Rami Melek and you have

Freddie Mercury, yeah, so that's your guys's connection.

He was pretty mercury in the movie. Oh, really, yeah, I

don't.

Good to know, yep, yep. I haven't seen it

here. There's a lot of queer erasure in it.

So I think in your question you asked, How did it go from self

publishing to then publishing others? Yes, yeah,

moving from San Diego to Portland, finding myself in a

very vibrant community, a really rich literary scene, having pals

books here, just you know, immersing myself in the local

scene, trying to find like I've while I've never competed in

slam poetry. I've been drawn to supporting slam poetry, so I've,

I've often been in the audience, you know, at slam poetry events,

and just trying to connect with the community. That's what,

that's what I found from the very beginning. So, like, if

you're a writer out there who thinks that they're in this

alone, that's, that's a choice. Yeah, you're making a choice,

and I think that you're probably doing yourself a disservice if

you are only trying to make a go of it by yourself. Yeah, maybe

falling into a stereotype a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

So I have always known whenever I get too deep into the work and

I start to feel either lost or depressed, I'm like, I need to

connect with some people, you know, people that are engaged in

the same activities that we are. I think that's super important.

I found myself last year, I was just like, in a rut, yeah, and

I'm just like, I gotta figure a way out of this. And I started

connecting with people who I knew were operating in our

sphere that I hadn't spent time with yet, inviting them to

coffee and just connecting, not really knowing what that was

going to result in, but realizing that I am fed by that

aspect of this world. Also, that's literally what we're

trying to do here, too. Yeah. We're like, this is like, get

out of your little bubble and talk to some other publishing

people, maybe somebody doing something that you would never

even think to do, like with slam poetry, where you're like, I'm

not gonna do this, but I'm gonna support it. Yeah, I'm going to

enjoy it. I'm going to like, be there with people in person,

exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was through that process. Now my

books are in pals, yeah. And now people are finding their way to

my books. And now they're asking me, they're realizing, Oh,

you're this guy. And then they're like, Oh, tell me more

about University of hell press. And after a while, was a

conversation that I had with a writer that I admired who asked

me that question, where I was like, you know, it's just me

and I am UNIVERSITY OF HELL press.

You're the professor. Yeah.

So class is in session.

He said the comment was before I had revealed that I was that I

was University of hell press. The comment was from him, was I

would kill to be published by a press with that name, yeah? And

I thought, well, it's just me, but I admired his work, and I

challenged him to put together a collection. And I thought I

found that kind of interesting, because his whole experience,

primarily, up until that time, was slam poetry, yeah. So he's a

slam poet, and so this was, you know, challenge to him that he

took on to put together, not only a collection of work that

probably represented his slam poetry, but probably exercised

some new muscles for him as well, because then he had to

start to think about what those how those words operated on the

page. But he turned around a collection to me, and I was

stoked, and I was like, absolutely and so that ended up,

I ended up publishing that under the University of hell press

brand, and that just sort of it sort of snowballed from there.

Did people come to you, or did you seek out people after that?

So

a mixture.

People were approaching me primarily out of the gate, when

we finally kind of got organized.

And I say we, a lot ends up oftentimes being just me, but

other people. Sometimes it is other Yeah, but we finally got

organized, and, you know, had like, a website that included a

Submissions page and that kind of a thing. So out of the gate

like we launched with ongoing open submissions for book length

works across any genre. Yeah, wow. And that didn't last very

long, because we were just overwhelmed.

But

to your question, we ended up our catalog is pretty even.

Only divided between solicited and unsolicited through that

submission process so

painfully, we're trying to catch up on our production schedule

right now, and we're probably a couple years away from reopening

our submissions again, but I look forward to that, because

the work that has resulted from that is so amazing. And

I know I think one of the things that we want to discuss was,

like a mission, yeah, and

it kind of one of the things that I think about when I

as a writer first before I ended up publishing

people tend to forget that. They know I'm the publisher, but then

they don't realize, like, I'm also a writer. Yeah? I mean, I

feel like people should sort of assume that at least half of the

people at a publishing company, like, have those either they've

done it before, yeah, yeah. You would, yeah. You would hope so.

I don't, I don't feel that though. I think people at this

point where I've arrived, they've made this pretty clear

distinction that I am a publisher now, well, if you've

been burned before, too, I can see how that would be like,

yeah, yeah, yeah, boundaries, right? I've been, I've been been

hurt before, yeah, put up this wall. Put up the wall.

But I like to think that the work that I was doing

should see the light of day, right? That's how I operated

under that for a dozen years. Put on your own mask first.

Yeah.

And so one of the things that I enjoy is that there are people

who are doing amazing things, very quietly in corners of their

world, and so it's our job to try to ferret that work out. And

I feel like that's part of our mission. But I we're constantly

evolving. So like this overall vision that I have for what the

press is and what the press should be is kind of changing

quite a bit good, but

yeah,

I mean, I think that answers the question. Well, yeah, I would

say so too. Yeah.

All right. So what do you consider the difference between

publishing your own work versus being your own small publisher,

ie self publishing a book versus being a publisher and publishing

your own book through that same route. Yeah. How do you switch

from one headspace to another, maybe two? Yeah. What that was

interesting like when I thought about that question, I came at

it sort of from different angles, but,

and this came up in the one of your earlier podcasts that I

listened to, and I didn't, I didn't, I challenged myself to

come up with a brand for self publishing without without any

vision of what that was going to become. And

And there, there was, there's been, there. I was, I just came

up with a good name.

Yeah, that's a good start. Yeah. It's like, is this, is this work

really from the University of hell? Would they make an

application to the University of hell and be accepted, right?

That sounds really what I just said,

Me too.

What came up in the earlier podcast that I that caught my

ear was that, as you're doing this work, if you're considering

self publishing, that you should consider, you should consider

very carefully how you might brand that work.

And I thought that that was key. I found myself doing that

without really realizing it was like, couldn't just put this out

into the world with my byline. It needed to have a press name,

I thought, to lend it some sort of legitimacy. I don't know I

had in my head, like it would be more legitimate if it had a

press name on it. Blah, blah, blah.

So mulling that I spent a lot of time before I'd arrived at

University of hell, as it was easy, because hell sort of

followed me from doing the readings. And right do you see

in a bar called hell? Is that bar still open? By the way,

still there? Oh, good. I'm always happy to hear that. I

know. Good. Yeah, all I can think of right now is the David

Byrne talking head song about heaven.

There's a bar called heaven where nothing ever happened. JT

and I promised each other that whoever dies first, the other

person is going to sing that at their funeral.

So hell just sort of stuck with me and and I evolved into

University of hell as a as a brand for publishing. It

actually stemmed from a column I was writing, but that's a dumb

story. I won't go into that,

but when it came down to a decision.

About what's, what's the press name going to be? I was like,

oh, University of hell. And it's been, it's been a fun ride,

because people really like, gravitate to the name for

different reasons. We've had some that are like, whoa. Like,

they think we're, like, a satanic Sure. That's kind of

awesome, though. I mean, that probably works in your paper,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of conversations around, Oh, do

you just delve into the black, black magic, yeah,

horror, that kind of thing, yeah? And I'm like, Well, we're

open to it. What do you got?

But early on, we made a decision to be a genreless press so that

we could be surprised by what what came to us

and and anyway, so our I feel like our catalog is quite

eclectic, but I feel like I got away from the original question,

which was like, you self publishing yourself, versus

Yeah, for me, my path didn't didn't occur to me. I had no

idea, while I was self publishing that this was going

to then end up being a publishing thing.

It just sort of happened.

Yeah. I don't know what else to say about that, but like that

question,

being a publisher and publishing your own book through that

route,

like deciding, like, making a decision that you're going to be

a publisher, and then amongst being a publisher, publishing

your own work, yeah, yeah. I think so yeah, yeah, yeah. I

think that could be a way of approaching it, too.

I don't know I feel. I still feel, when I have conversations

with people that they they're like, they're trying so hard to

get connected with a publisher. Yeah, right, yeah. And I have so

many conversations, and I'm trying to, like, inspire others

to start their own Yeah, but they fight me.

I mean, it's like they can't wrap their head around that

idea, or for some reason that their accomplishment is

diminished in some way, oh yeah, because they think that people

there's like they need to be validated by somebody else,

right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that sounds. I try to

make it. I try to share like I'm happy to share any of the

details of the inner workings, of what it takes to run a

publishing press, and what that looks like. Yeah, and, and I'm

constantly questioning how we're currently doing things. Yeah,

the vision I have for what we're doing currently, I mean, when,

where we could be could be completely different a year or

two from now, and it might be well that that actually like

lends itself really well to the next question I want to ask,

which is, what, what are your values? And how do you like

choose projects based on the values that you have? Yeah,

for us, over the history of our press, it's been largely

responding to the work that we've been given. And there's so

much great work that comes our way, like if we could publish

all of it. But you know,

it boils down to money, really, and the ability and the time and

the resources that it takes to put a book into the world,

but we're only held back by our minimal resources, right? So

when we green light a book like we're definitely committed to

that work. And I think that more than anything, we're drawn to an

esthetic that we just know it and when we see it. So it's kind

of hard to describe Sure. Are there things that you see and

you're like, No, no, that's not us. Like, is there a kind of a

heuristic for how you decide that? Yeah, I honestly think it

has just when we've gone through the submission process, there's

been a couple of us, because we got to a point where we were

getting so many submissions that we needed to, like, share the

how many people are involved here, also, it can be

incorporated into what I just Yeah,

well, there's me primarily, but I have pool of editors that I

have been involved throughout. So there's and you're paying

them now,

we will be paying them now,

and not in pizza. It

took us a while. It took us a while to get here, and that was

one of the pain points. That's where I slipped into the

depression last year. What was just like we had managed to

figure out how we could pay all of these vendors, the printer,

printer, the graphic designers, the artists, if we had to

commission artwork specifically,

you know, those kind of things. But we hadn't figured out paying

ourselves. Oh yeah.

Mm, hmm, so that's where, that was the that's, that's what made

me depressed last

like, figured out this, there's money, and we figured out paying

people are there are people being paid, you know, there, and

we operate on independent contract, right? Yeah, clearly,

most don't have people at one point, I did have a vision where

it was like, we grow it to an extent, where we have staff.

Well, I'm kind of not thinking that's the direction we're going

to go in anytime soon anyway, but I am being an independent

contractor by trade. There's so much value in that, and it's

cool too, because people can pick and choose when they're

involved that kind of a thing. So I have an incredible group of

graphic designers that I can go to on any given project. So

likewise, my approach is changing as it relates to

editing and proofreading the books that we are producing so

that and now putting at least some dollar amounts associated

with that work so everybody's getting something. Yeah,

so I am so thankful for the crew of editors to date have

contributed for free their abilities to help get these

books out into the world, and

Amy and San Diego, Eve and John Barrios, Tyler Atwood, who's in

Denver, but Eve Connell, I mean, she, up until recently, was the

managing editor, and just assumed that role, and wasn't

being paid for that role. And they've all just been with you

from the beginning on this pretty much, wow, wow. Some have

just joined as as we've progressed and just into the

work that we're producing and the mission and that kind of a

thing, the strength of the brand, those sorts of things,

you're just enjoying being aligned with something cool

that's happening, but none of it feels good when I can't pay them

for their work, right? So we're finally on the other side of

that, but at the same time, like I've had, I've made a decision

to slow things down until we can get ahead of that. Yeah, and to

date, I have literally not taken a penny personally from In fact,

it's been a major debt over the years. I could quantify. It

makes me cringe. I won't make we

don't want you to slip into another depression.

We don't have any pizza to pay you for your emotional labor.

We don't pay anyone to be on the podcast for the record.

But, so since 2012 we've published 34 books

since 2012 since 2012 Damn, that's a lot. And we've got

three books on the calendar for this year, and looking like

three books on the calendar for next year, and then after that,

I'm hoping that we're in a place where we are able to entertain

new works? Yeah, all right, so I'm committed to the work that

we've got currently, and also committed to sorting out the

financial aspect of all of this. Yeah, I can feel better about

the whole business of publishing. I feel like we've

answered a lot of these questions. I was gonna say, Oh,

wait, here's one. What are your thoughts on the current state of

the publishing industry as a whole? What would you like to

see change? How many bad things can you say about Amazon? My

question, let's talk about all of the shit storms that happened

this week. Yeah, there's a lot

going on. Wow. We I don't

know what to say about the current state of publishing.

Really, I have some of the people that I have made a point

to connect with over the past year are folks that I feel are

peers,

because there I don't have too many people that I can talk to

about the business of publishing itself as an independent

publisher.

So I've been very lucky, and I'm always trying to align myself

with presses that I who impress me, who whose work, who I feel

are doing really great work and are managing some degree of

success. So trying to gain insights into the work that

they're doing, and then also considering their approach to

their publishing calendar, how they're handling submissions,

all of it. And

I don't think about the majors too much, but I do think about,

I do think about how it would be awesome if known authors who

constantly are pushing millions of copies no matter what title

they're publishing, if they could put on some sort of

philanthropic hat and be like, I'm going to choose in my

career, I'm going to choose one of my books is going to go to an

indie press. I'm.

That would be cool. You know, yeah, they have the ability. And

when I was harkening back to like a Charles Bukowski who

built a house, right, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, there are

known named authors who have that ability. And maybe, maybe

it's nothing like, oh, it's their next novel. Maybe it's

like, just their name attached to something they dabbled in. It

could be poetry or something off genre or whatever. Like

filmmakers who, like, present foreign films, right? And, like,

put their Yeah, production house behind it and all that stuff,

yeah, yeah. All I can think of right now is James Patterson,

who was like, I'm self publishing now, yeah, yeah. But

he's also super philanthropic too. Like, he gives, like, what,

millions of dollars to, like, libraries and independent

bookstore. He has that, like, bookseller award of the year

every Yeah, so, but we don't have many James Patterson, in my

opinion, and it's not the same thing that you're talking about

either. Yeah, yeah. I just, I just try to imagine, like, what

could be a creative approach that would

mix things up a little bit, sure, and I do know there's a

distribution issues with that too, though, right? I'm sure

they're tied in with all these contracts, yeah, that have all

this language that prohibits them. But then I think back to

independent artists, musicians that I admire who have, who have

driven the terms of their own contracts that free them up. I

think of

there's a musician in San Diego, John Reese, who's had his hand

in a number of different bands, but he started out in pitchfork

and then went on to drive like Jehu, and then rocket from the

crypt, and then hot snakes and all these different things. But

during the time that he was doing, when rocket from the

crypt attracted all this major label interest, he said, Well,

we'll engage in you know, who's going to allow us flexibility

with our contract so that we can either press our own singles or

minor releases or whatever, you know, I start thinking about, I

start to think about stuff like that, and how that might apply

to the publishing world. But as far as Amazon, yeah, that

was really just me goading you into talking shit about Amazon.

I do that to like every guest, yeah, I got an ax to grind. We,

in order to

produce more works, we do use the print on demand, okay, sure,

yeah. And we did, just recently, partner with a major

distributor, SCB distributors, they're in California,

and that's just a year old relationship so far, but we went

from being totally beholden to the models that Ingram and

Amazon to like being able to entertain some other options and

models and stuff like that. So we're still using print on

demand as our printer at this point. But I'm super excited, so

yes, about publishing. I'm super excited about some of the things

that are happening to compete with Amazon, to compete with. So

I'm hopeful within the next year or two that somebody

figures out a hybrid model for that bridges print on demand

with traditional printing. And I think some of them are starting

to do that, because the traditional printers have got to

be feeling the pinch, I'm sure, from all this print on demand,

yeah, you know, like Ingram and Amazon, they're like, huge. I

don't know how these traditional printers are managing to succeed

at this point, if they were solely focused on book printing,

but I do feel like the biggest pain point is

the fact that we can't commit to the inventory that the

traditional printers require to get those price breaks for

better per unit, that's a whole nother thing, but

so yeah,

but I'd love to see a traditional printer emerge that

competes With that, that's like, we're going to do limited runs

as often as you need them, and we'll keep your files on on in

our database, and we'll make it easier for you and keep the

costs so that they're at least competitive with the print on

demand, right? I think we're close. Yeah, I've had some fun,

fruitful conversations with some printers that are trying to,

like, mix it up, and I would love to consider partnering with

a printer that has us producing

just, you know, outside of the limitations of the print on

demand, right model, we need some we need some branding

esthetics.

Printers, yeah, get the energy behind them all that. Yeah,

really, yeah.

I can't talk crap about Amazon too much sure. I just wish that

the print on demand companies that are behind Amazon would

come up with a more creative solution for satisfying both

online sales and brick and mortar right supplying

bookstores, and that's where we were at. So we were trying to

fill we were trying to create our own relationships directly

with brick and mortar stores, so that we could satisfy the terms,

make our books attractive to them to put on their shelves and

that kind of a thing. And it mostly boils down to money,

costs, that kind of a thing. And it feels like the Amazons have

conducted themselves in a way that are just interested in

squashing like every brick and mortar store everywhere, which

is horrible, they sure have, yep, but we're not about that.

So we've moved away. While they're still getting money from

us through this print on demand, they've solely are operating as

our printers. They're no longer our distributor. The solutions

in my mind are easy, but nobody's listening to me

because, because why would they only represent so much? We

clearly don't represent.

Well, when it comes to smaller print runs, it like costs almost

more to do a smaller print run. But on the other hand, like

you're not gonna, if you're not gonna sell a whole bunch of

books, then you're still losing money, right? So, right, this

kind of catch 22 sort of thing we've done well enough to get an

email eventually, but they won't pick up the phone.

Oh, yeah, no, no, yeah. They never do I call. They're not

picking up. No, they'll

get to my email at some point. Yeah, of course, yeah. So do you

get like, a real answer is, like a robot answering you? Well, we

we've graduate rep. We've graduated from the auto. Oh,

okay, to like a real person, to an actual person emailing you.

That is impressive. Emailing, but not straight. Yeah, I got an

email once when I was trying to fit we, we

were doing video stuff, and I was like, we don't know why they

took this video down, and I was bothering them, bothering about

bothering them, because I'm good at that. And finally, I got an

email from a normal person who was just like, Stop, there was

nothing. They literally were like, there is nothing you can

do to make us put this video back up. So stop trying. Like,

that's what they say. Like, almost that. Mean almost using

those, like, using many of those exact words,

there is nothing you can do. Is, like, was definitely used to

that email. I was like, I'm

not responding,

but at least I know what's going on,

and that's what power does.

God, you're lucky. I'm answering you please.

All right, well, let's move on to brighter subjects. Yeah, we

haven't actually asked this question in a while, but like,

you were talking about how important it is for book people

and publishing people to read what you read in or what do

you wish you were reading? Yeah, or, like, what did you read a

chapter of like a month ago that you still consider yourself

reading that's never happened to me. Now

I'm trying to,

in an effort to try to solve some of these financial things,

I'm reading more books about the business of writing and

publishing. Okay, so

may man, and I'm revisiting the one fun thing that I am enjoying

currently is revisiting Stephen King's on writing, yeah,

writing, and that's just kind of like fun reading for me. But

I've been reading company of one is that kind of a business book

that's focused on the strength of you know, all, instead of

this mentality of, like, trying to grow your company to you

know, this, this continued occupation with growth, growth,

growth, like focusing more on quality and niche. And so that's

kind of the material that I've been trying to expose myself to

and feed and just being and I haven't done a ton of reading

about the business of writing and publishing, and there's some

out there now, one that was published and sucks that I can't

think of the name of it, but I'm in the middle of reading is

about, I think it's just called the business of writing, or the

business of being A writer. And I think it was published by

Chicago University Press, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm not very far

into it, but I'm like, You know what? I took a step back because

I've all of the reading I had done pretty much to date has

just been creative writing, sure, right, yeah, kind of

stuff, as opposed to a concerted effort to you.

Learn more about the work

and the business at hand.

So that's kind of where I'm at. I've just got all these piles of

books, and I have this

dream of shifting, personally, writing into doing screenplay

writing. Oh, fun. So now I'm like, I've got like, five books

that I'm in the middle of reading concurrently, about

screenplay writing specifically.

Well, where can people find your books and you online? So

University of hell, press.com,

easy, that's easy. That's our website. We're on all the social

media. So Facebook, we're commonly posting the most

updated information through our university of hell Facebook

page. We're active on Twitter and Instagram. People love the

Instagram. They do. I love Instagram,

yeah, but you can find me personally too through through

Facebook is a good way to connect with me.

Yeah, Friend me or message me or whatever. All right,

Karine,

you got anything else to add? Nope, that's it, nothing. What

about you? I might have one more thing now, yes, that your writer

audience might not be thinking about, okay, is diversifying

your work? Oh, yeah, possibly, yeah, how well, it's just

something I've been thinking about lately. But I

um, as in this approach to the business of publishing. There's

also, I think, a hat you should wear when you're writing and

approaching the business of writing. And I think that too, I

will some of us maybe get locked into a particular genre. You

might free yourself up and consider other avenues of just

actively writing and doing more work. It just made me think so.

Another path that my careers, my writing career, has taken me to.

I'm the as the editor in chief of the Big Smoke America right

is, is an online opinions and editorials website, and I'm

constantly looking for work for it, but I've learned through

that, that there are I've challenged, particularly in lieu

of the current events of the day, right? Yeah,

it's Brexit day, yeah. And all this, this like cycle we find

ourselves stuck in. I have challenged. I feel like the

solutions don't are not going to be solved within the meatheads

that are trying to run things currently right. They need an

injection of creative, yeah, energy and spark. So within that

where I've challenged some of my own authors from University of

hell press to contribute to the big smoke, they never would have

even thought of that because we're publishing a lot of

culture and politics and activism and stuff like that.

But we all have opinions and thoughts about that. I feel like

the work that I've managed to edit and publish through the Big

Smoke has been super inspiring, because it's taking creative

minds and applying them to current events. I feel like

there's a lot of things being solved in that space that just

aren't happening, you know, in this old world with the people

who are supposed to be doing it. Yeah, yeah. But I've found from

that that there are writers who are contributing to that, who

are

exercising muscles they might not have considered exercising,

and it's a way of they're so and they're so focused on the

creative work and publishing book length works, but in the

meantime, they can be expanding their audience, remaining

active, and having their byline out there more continuously, and

have a mechanism for promoting as they're completing larger

works,

just something I thought I'd throw out there that writers

might not be thinking about as they're so focused on the work

that they're producing for maybe towards a book length work, that

there are other opportunities, and there's a lot of great

literary magazines and stuff like that that are doing great

things, the kind of tools and online stuff that I would have

been so thrilled to have access to when I first started writing

and was having to pour through stupid books and try to, like,

find people around the country. Now, with the internet, you can

find all these really great

things that are happening that you can contribute to and get

your name out there and that kind of a thing.

Okay, where can, where can listeners find the big big

smoke, the big smoke. So it's just the big smoke.com There you

go. Cool, yeah, the big smoke.com and there is a

Submissions page on there, so there's a section that says,

Write for us, and it includes all the things, and that's

another way to find me. Also, great, yeah, and that's a

political cultural includes politics, culture. I've got some

writers that contribute, book reviews, film reviews, that kind

of thing. But some of the larger topics that are being addressed,

especially in the ME TOO era, and with the politics, like I

already said, Yes, like we all want to try to be balanced and

stuff like that. This is an avenue, you know, where if you

have something meaningful to say. It feels like an extension

of the work that we're producing with the books, but addressing

it on a daily basis. Yeah, so I'm, you know, it's sort of by

extension is it has this edgy, maybe irreverent style, but it's

also thought provoking and

all right, Greg, thank you guys so much. Thank you Yes, and

thank you again for bringing us. Oh my gosh. What did you bring

us? Yeah, well, I brought you Isabel's book. All this can be

yours.

So I basically brought we put out four books last year. So I

brought you the four books we produce last year. It includes

Liz Scott's. This never happened. I memoir. I introduced

Liz Scott at Portland Book Festival. Did you get a pop up?

Yeah? I really like it was devastating. Yeah,

this mom was amazing. Yeah, we submitted. It's not the first

book we've submitted to the Oregon Book Awards, but we did

submit it, and it didn't end

up making as a finalist, which, like, bums me out, yeah, because

it's a stellar, stellar book. So this, this never happened, by

Liz Scott as a memoir, and then a couple collections of poetry,

the great right here, by Ellen touchett, okay, and most of my

heroes don't appear on no stamps, by Rand Walker, cool.

Yeah. All right, well, we'll look at we'll fight over this.

Yeah, we sure will.

All right, Greg, thank you so much for coming in today again.

And yeah, we really enjoyed talking with you. And like, keep

up the good work. Yeah,

and you can find us on hybrid pub Scout, Comm, Facebook,

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