The Librarian

What is The Librarian about?

For the past twenty-five years, I’ve been publishing translations of French poetry as well as working on science fiction and fantasy anthologies and short story collections. The last book I’m printing in this, my 25th anniversary year, is called “The Librarian”, for which authors from around the world have submitted stories to me. Also, because of its special nature, I wanted to pull out all the stops, so I created four separate covers which you, My Book Printer, is printing in the press run.

The Librarian is a character that was invented by me late last year. They are an entity that travels through time and space, the multiverse. They always appear wherever they’re needed in the form of the quintessential clichéd librarian of that particular place or time.

All the stories have positive endings, and the focus is on the main character helping people. I didn’t know when starting this series, that libraries and real librarians would be under assault at this time in this country. It’s an issue that the selected authors are trying to mix into their story’s topics.

I had over 300 entries submitted, and I whittled that down eventually to 24 authors who will be in this book. Since I had to cut down so many stories, I am publishing another volume that will feature 17 additional stories around next year.

What inspired you to publish a collection of short stories about a Librarian?

Different topics of interest to me – science, literature, societies – as well as the history around books and libraries. The book’s stories talk about book burning, racism, and illiteracy. The stories also explore the Librarian appearing in a variety of genders reflecting different authors’ own experiences. They tackle all kinds of chronic issues Librarians face, but despite that, the stories all have hopeful endings.

The librarian also has a leather satchel they carry around that contains whatever special book might be needed in any given instance. The Satchel has a sarcastic sense of humor though and doesn’t always give the exact book the Librarian wants but the one, perhaps, the Librarian needs. This satchel becomes their own character in the stories. It’s a foil for the Librarian to react to and interact with.

I gave the authors a list of ten guidelines when writing their stories and each author used that as a starting point, which resulted in some truly amazing stories. Authors don’t usually talk to another one when writing, but you can see some consistencies across the board. I worked with the authors afterward to adjust a few things here and there, just so all the stories match in certain key details. It’s interesting to see though that everybody was generally using the same terminology and touching on the same concepts.

How did you choose which authors and stories to feature?

The submission process I hold is called an “open call” or “OC” which means that I give guidelines: no more than 3,000 words, hopeful stories, and some facts about the librarian, etc. Authors can view submission information and guidelines on my web site. Through Twitter and Facebook, I post an update when the open calls are beginning. Those social media posts then get shared with different author groups and websites with additional information. This time my open call invitation got passed along, among other places, to two different writing groups in England. Word of mouth definitely helps with the range of submissions that I get for these anthologies.

Stories are submitted over a two-month period. They can be any genre. In the past anthologies I have published have featured urban fantasy, science fiction, historic essays, mysteries, and culinary memoirs. I go through and read all the stories to narrow down the finalists and then select down further to the final set. It’s a rather lengthy process to get 300 stories, read them all within a couple of weeks, and then reply to all the authors. The process from initial OC to published book takes a full year to complete. There were a lot of good stories this time, which is why I have the second volume that will come out next year. I only had so much budget and so many pages for the first volume.

Out of the final 24 that I pick, they’re working as parts of a symphony. Each story is chosen for a particular reason, even how they’re ordered within the book matters. The first story in the book introduces the character (their basic traits and quirks), while the last story in the book has a kind of M. Night Shyamalan twist that is revealed. That’s why those stories were picked first and last. It’s all about the rhythm and flow for the reader.

Equality matters to me, I do all my anthologies with an equal number of men and women, and now with people who are identifying as other genders as well, this is added into that balance; people who identify as They and Them, or Ze and Zir for instance. There are authors from eight different countries in the collection.

Why are there 4 different cover designs?

Because it’s the 25th anniversary, I wanted it to be something special. The Librarian travels the multiverse and can pop up in different worlds and in different timelines. I thought it’d be fun to do a standard cover plus three alternate covers. Referencing different book periods for book lovers and people who go to libraries.

Besides the standard cover, there is a Penguin Books cover, which has the correct color and fonts for 1920-30s Penguin Books editions. Penguin had a very specific sort of branding in England in the 20s and 30s.

The second alternate is a reference to a press called Arkham House, which published all the original H.P. Lovecraft stories and books. I found an image that hadn’t been used before by Virgil Finlay, an illustrator who created the cover art for many of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. I used this image and styled the cover how Arkham House would have.

The third book I wanted to reference was The Lord of the Rings, the edition with the red cover published by Ballantine in the 1970s, which is when I was a child.

For all three of the covers, I used all the original fonts, colors, correct layout elements, graphics, and visual aesthetics. It is a sort of graphic design archaeology. All that is taken to account for these three covers are meant to be simulations of the standard edition in alternate universes.

I fund most of my books on Kickstarter, and part of the incentive to use Kickstarter was to get readers excited about the different versions of the book. These alternate covers are only available through Kickstarter as special backer options.