I met this guy called Warri who wants to start up an arts and culture magazine. So I said, ‘Hey, I know a thing or two about magazines, let’s hang out and geek out on production talk.’ We’re yet to meet up, but we will.

Recently Andre, who I posted about a while back, emailed me for advice on a book proposal he’s putting together in the capacity of Right Now editor. I sent some feedback along with a book-information-summary sheet I’m developing for Paine Management – this should give him an idea of the sort of info publishers are chasing in book proposals. I hope he’ll keep me in the loop, because this is exactly the sort of thing I’d like to move into.

Last night we launched How to Make Trouble, the book I’m helping Breakdown Press to distribute to Australian bookshops¹. It was a raging success, and much fun was had by all. I feel confident that we’ll move the whole (substantial) print run, and it’s been empowering to apply the distro knowledge I hadn’t even noticed I picked up along the way.

Plus I’m always reading someone’s work and sending back feedback. Mechanics joke and moan about this, and people sometimes ask me if my writer friends are always hitting me up for some free editing. I say yeah, and invariably they say, ‘You know, I write a bit of poetry … ‘

This is agency as I know it – I don’t know much …

… but I know that what I am essentially doing in a relationship like this is acting as a consultant. It’s agency of a temperate variety, but it’s just the beginning. I’d like to take Andre’s book proposal to a publisher and say, ‘Hey, you should publish this and these are three good reasons.’

I conceived the idea to establish a publishing-services business with agency in there as a service to offer, with the long-term plan to allow things like typesetting, editing and indexing to slowly atrophy as legitimate agency opportunities arise.

In the meantime, if I can offer consultancy services on a case-by-case, somewhat ad hoc basis and figure out a way to monetise this, that would be great. If you’re interested in using services like this, let me know – in lieu of actual money, we could arrange a mutually beneficial sort of pro bono arrangement.

To this end, I recently registered with a website called The Sharehood - one of a few online communties I know about that are trading in alternative currencies: samaras. there, I’m offering print-publishing services in exchange for web design and development services. Maybe I should add ‘publishing misc’ in the things I can offer.

1. this one I”m even getting paid for!