An All-New Peregrine Coast Press
Hello folks!
It's been a while since the last email... I've been busy! We've been busy.
The first issue of Filmmakers Without Cameras was just a way to fill my time while I was furloughed from my day job. I didn't really expect that it would ignite two more issues, a game, a book, a passion for making pretty books, and now: a co-op. This has mostly been a one-man show up until now - "mostly" because my partner's emotional labour and input was priceless - but there's now six of us. Six wonderful, incredibly talented folks all chipping in to bring you exciting work.
Peregrine Coast Press now being a co-op is super exciting: it means we can bring projects out more consistently (has it really been a year since Filmmakers 2??), it means we’re signing ourselves up to transparency and to help out the communities around us. It means that all six of us have an even stake in the business and we all benefit from the fruits of the co-op’s labour. We have no boss, we are all the boss :)
Our manifesto is now on our website (linked below), though if you read only one thing make it this: we set aside £1 from every sale on our online shop for first-time creators. That pot of money will go towards paying for printing of their work so that we can sell it and help them get their work out into the world.
Eryk Sawicki
And, I hate to do it, but we do need money to keep the lights on. If you’ve been a fan of everything we’ve done so far, you can become a paid subscriber of Peregrine Coast Press. It’s only £4 a month and works a lot like Patreon (but it’s better, because we self-host and don’t have to pay rent to Patreon) - by subscribing, your name gets popped into everything we publish in print, you get early access to our blog posts, and you also get access to digital copies of everything we publish. It’s a pretty good deal! Just 50 subscribers would cover our costs (because two Adobe Creative Cloud memberships cost us £150 a month!!! 🤪)
Filmmakers Without Cameras: Issue 3
Filmmakers 3 is coming! This is our first big project as a co-op and I can already feel everyone's influence on it. We've got some fantastic writers and artists on board already, with Issue 3 coming in at a total headcount of 30, slightly above #2's 27.
The previous issues of Filmmakers were built on the premise that everyone gets paid an even share of the profits. We got lucky and were able to pay everyone above minimum rates for their work, but any delays got passed on to our contributors, meaning I wasn't able to pay folks in a reasonable time frame. We're changing things up this time around: we're setting a minimum rate for contributors and factoring them directly into our fundraising goal. Because of that, we're aiming high: £11,000. We're gonna need some help from you folks to hit that total. Make sure to click below and sign up to our mailing list so we can notify you when Issue 3 goes live on Kickstarter this August 11th.
For now, here's a little teaser of our work-in-progress cover. We're just getting started :)
Shop
We’ve opened up a shop! We already had a shop, but this is an announcement to say that we’ve migrated to a service a lot faster and have also opened it up to other creators. We’ve filled out our stock room with a bunch of really wonderful, independently published work and it’d be fab if you had a look. There's a 10% discount on the whole store to celebrate us going live, though do keep in mind that Hugh is away until the end of July and so you'll get your stuff at the start of August.
Like I mentioned before, anything you buy from here goes towards supporting first-time creators so do check it out and order. Helps us pay the bills, too!
Distribution
Everything we've released so far has been shipped out to you by Hugh from [swag/ship/hack]#. Some fab news: Hugh is now part of the co-op! We're joining forces meaning that the Press will now be able to write, design, illustrate, market, and distribute projects fully in-house. It also means we can share the infrastructure we've built up with other folks looking to self-publish. If you've got a Kickstarter project coming up or anything which needs shipping out at volume: we can help! We can collect shipping fees and addresses from your customers making everything, hopefully, as smooth as it can be. And if there's any remaining stock, we can put it up on our shop and sell it off for you 🎉
Transmission For Them and Unexplained Scotland
Transmission For Them has come up against a lot of delays - printing a booklet that is literally mostly black was a challenge for our print shop (and, to be fair, most printers). We've had to try several different papers and export settings, all of which took up time, and then my print shop had a bigger order come in which understandably took precedence over this nightmare job which has now probably cost them more than it has earned. We're still waiting on the final batch to come in. It's been a frustrating time because the finished .pdf has been out in the wild for so long. I've got a box of proofs in my office, none of which are good enough to send out. Please bear with us, folks, it's the first major bump we've hit and it has been a lesson for sure.
Unexplained Scotland is now in the process of editing. Sydney and I have been hard at work making our way through the manuscript and are almost finished. We've scheduled in the print run for the end of July, so y'all should start receiving copies of Unexplained Scotland towards the start of August. I will keep you posted if that changes at all.
That’s all from us! The next newsletter probably won’t be from me (Eryk), but from someone else on the team. Watch this space, though, because after Filmmakers 3 is out we’re gonna be on the lookout for projects to publish. And if you’ve got anything you’d like to sell: get in touch! Let’s chat.
Lot of love from the team at Peregrine Coast Press x
