Despite a growing market for Christian speculative fiction, traditional Christian book publishers have been slow to meet readers' demands for new, great novels in the speculative genres.

Jeff Gerke, an author and accomplished editor, believes he can meet that demand with the launching of his own publishing company. Marcher Lord Press will release its first titles on October 1, 2008.

"I've been telling stories since I was a kid," Jeff said. "Whether it was the surprise attack on my G.I. Joe headquarters or the role-playing game scenario I wrote when I was in junior high, I've been spinning adventurous yarns for myself all along. It's no surprise, then, that I ended up publishing six novels of my own and have made a career out of helping people better tell the stories they're trying to tell.

"I have a bachelor's degree in film production and a master's degree in theology. Together they create a perfect blend of Christianity and visual storytelling, two hallmarks of my writing.

"The launch of my own indie publishing company, Marcher Lord Press, is a logical continuation of that impulse. Not only do I get to have an active hand in publishing the kinds of Christian speculative stories I love to read, I'm also creating the perfect publishing company for my own fiction.

"The idea to create my own publishing company has grown slowly for years. The idea first began to percolate, I suppose, when my first three novels came out. They didn't sell as well as I'd hoped. I was surprised that more people didn't find them, especially since those who did find them said they liked them. That was the beginning of my education about the fiction demographics in the Christian Book Association (CBA).

"I worked for Multnomah Publishers as an editor, doing some acquisitions work, looking at proposals for new books. I would often find projects I thought were wonderful but which either wouldn't get approved for publication, or would get published but then not do well. More and more I began to realize that the CBA readership at large does not like Christian speculative fiction.

"A few years later I was at Strang Communications. While there, I had the opportunity to spearhead the launch of Realms, the first-ever speculative fiction imprint at a Christian publishing company. I think that is where the idea of having my own publishing company moved to the front burner. I loved acquiring the books, working with covers, talking about marketing campaigns, and in all ways shepherding these beloved novels toward publication.

"After that, I moved to NavPress, where I was over their fiction line. Here again I was excited to be in a position where I could have some voice in the novels that got published, but frustrated when the ones I really liked didn't always get published or didn't do well if they were. We did see some good success with the speculative novels we published during that time, but it was always at a level below what I’d hoped to see.

"By this time I'd been in the industry for over twelve years. For most of that time I had been frustrated that the audience the Christian book industry reached was not the audience that loved Christian speculative fiction. When I left NavPress I was pretty tired of beating my head against the wall.

"When I'd been at Strang I'd had the opportunity to interact with the great folks at Creation House Press, the subsidy publishing imprint there. I remember being struck by how one of their books would be considered a wild success if it sold 500 copies, whereas over at the "regular" imprints a book could sell 10,000 copies and still be considered a colossal failure. I remember thinking there was something wrong with that picture. I wanted to be on the side where 500 was considered a bestseller.

"All those things went into my thinking about Marcher Lord Press. My questions were these: 1) how can I get Christian speculative fiction to the people who crave it and 2) how can I succeed on many fewer units sold than the regular publishing companies have to sell?

"I left NavPress in late 2006 and spent the rest of that year, and most of 2007, deciding if I was really going to do this thing and, if so, how I might go about it. Then in October 2007 I launched the Marcher Lord Press Web site, announcing that the first books would release one year later.

"Marcher Lord Press will be unique in a number of ways. For one thing, MLP will be unique because it will publish nothing except Christian speculative fiction. No one else can claim that.

"Also, I'm not trying to get Marcher Lord Press novels into bookstores. In my opinion the CBA industry—that's the bookstores and the publishers who create books for them—is pretty much a dead-end for this kind of novel. I'm always very pleased when Christian speculative novelists do well within that industry, but I don't see the core CBA fiction demographic suddenly deciding they want speculative fiction. So long as the industry is geared to that audience, I think the whole kit and caboodle is not the place to offer Marcher Lord Press novels.

"So I'm going directly to the consumer via the Internet. I have no bookstores, no warehouse, no massive print runs, no shipping pallets full of books, no sales force . . . and no returns.

"Third, Marcher Lord Press is different in that it doesn't use traditional printing presses. Regular publishing companies go to these traditional offset printers and shoot off 5,000 to 15,000 units of a book at a time. They all get shipped to warehouses and distribution centers and bookstores. If a book sells many fewer copies than the publisher has printed, those extra copies sit there at the warehouse like day-old bread.

"Marcher Lord Press uses a printing technology that makes a lot more sense for the direct-to-consumer approach. When I receive orders for a book, I print that exact number of copies of the book and ship them directly to the customer. No warehousing. No books sitting there collecting dust.

"Fourth, Marcher Lord Press is different in that I pay my authors a much larger share of the profits than traditional publishing companies do. Because my overhead is so low I can give 50% of my profits (after expenses are recouped) to the author. The royalty rate at a traditional Christian publishing company is around 18%.

"Finally, Marcher Lord Press is different because I can succeed on a very small number of units sold. Traditional Christian publishers have to sell upwards of 10,000 units or more (sometimes many more) before they break even. I break even on just 250 units sold. I keep my costs low and am therefore able to begin sharing profits with my authors after a number of units sold that a traditional publishing company would consider less than a drop in the bucket.

"My top goal is to provide the arena for our most creative novelists to find their audience. Speculative fiction writers are, by definition, people who think way outside the box. And Christian speculative fiction novelists do so with the added advantage of having our incredibly creative God informing their imaginations. These are my kind of people (the authors) writing my kind of story for the delight of more of my kind of people (the readers). Right now there are simply not enough outlets for these wonderfully bizarre stories, and I'm doing my bit to rectify that.

"I want to connect the authors who dream in speculative worlds with the readers who dream the same way. Since the 1990s I've believed that both groups are out there. I've had the honor to befriend many of our best Christian speculative novelists, so I know for sure that group is there. And as for that other group—thousands of readers who love Christian speculative fiction—I believe they are there. I see them online all the time. I need them to turn out in force when Marcher Lord Press goes live on Launch Day: October 1.

"An ulterior motive is that I'd like to create the ideal publishing company for my own fiction. I love Christian speculative fiction, obviously, and I want to write in that genre for many years. If Marcher Lord Press proves viable, don't be surprised if you see an epic fantasy from Jefferson Scott in a future list.

"My final goal is more mundane: I just want it to work financially! I'm taking a big risk here. I'm investing a lot of my own money on the hopes that I'm right that there are hundreds and thousands of folks out there who really would buy this kind of novel if someone were to produce it. I would like nothing more than for this venture to not only be successful but to be wildly so. I love doing this and I'd like to do it for the rest of my working life. I'm going to build it; then I'll have to see if the readers will come."

You can learn more about Jeff Gerke and Marcher Lord Press at his website: www.MarcherLordPress.com

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