11/20/25: doing it

The rerelease of my horror novella Dog Men is almost complete. I've got two proof copies (1 glossy cover, 1 matte) coming from amazon next week. I was really hoping that I'd be able to do duplex covers on my books but you can't do that through kdp. Duplex covers are when there's another full-cover image on each of the inside covers, front and back. That's one of the things that felt really special about the first edition that Swann+Bedlam put out. They put a lot of care into it, and when I sold copies to people at the anarchist bookfair or when friends and acquaintances saw it, that was the first thing they'd remark on. You open it up and it's bright yellow with the synopsis in red text on the inside front and this cool tarot baphomet witch thing on the inside rear cover. My initial hope, after Swann+Bedlam ceased operations and I decided to self-publish a second edition, was to do something similar but in my own way: I was going to do original collages and have those on the inside covers, one for the front and one for the back, so the book would have twice as much artwork and when people ordered it online, there would be this hidden surprise on the inside.

This was fine when I was going to do my design and distribution through IngramSpark because they have duplex covers. But because I'm in Canada, if I only did IngramSpark, I wouldn't have any control over how Ingram would price the book on amazon.ca and the book could end up being $14.99USD and like $24.99CAD and I'd have no way to change it. Then, because Ingram only has printers in the US, I would have to order author copies from the states and pay a bunch of shipping, duties, etc. I was doing a smaller edition (pocketbook size instead of the trade size S+B had done) so I wanted it to be like $10.

So some research told me that generally what Canadian self-pub authors do is set up their book through kdp for amazon publishing and then do ingram for distribution to ther markets (so it's orderable by bookstores, etc). That way, I have control over how much my book costs on Amazon, particularly in Canada, which I wanted, and I can get it printed in Ontario and shipped to me domestically. But that meant no duplex cover because amazon doesn't do that.

What I've decided on now is that I'll do the amazon and ingram copies with no duplex cover and that will be what people order. Then I can just have a "special edition" made locally. Right now I'm in the process of talking to some local printers to see if they can do duplex, what the cost would be, etc. The manuscript and cover are already all formatted and ready to go so it will hopefully be pretty straightforward. The amazon/ingram edition will be the wide release one, and the special edition will only be available directly from me, and will feature original interior collages. I'm happy with that because I made no money from royalties off of the first ed. of Dog Men but made a decent little bit by selling copies to people who follow me on instagram, as well as at the Anarchist Book Fair, to friends and neighbours, etc.

This seems fun to me because I'm willing to go the route of doing amazon in order to get the book out there, but I am very happy to be able to provide a locally printed, nicer version to people who don't want to do the big corporate thing. And my longer term hope would be that maybe I can move enough copies to not bother with amazon at all and just do my own little webstore type thing and only print books locally and ship them myself. I never wanted to run a small business because that's gross and boring, I just want to make art and have a day job, but I am mindful of a video I saw of Michael Gira where he was tediously packing records in boxes to ship and was like "anyone who wants to be a serious artist should be forced to watch this footage unedited for 3 hours."