The Legends of the Monster Hunter series began when Miles Boothe pitched the idea of a monster hunting themed anthology to Pill Hill Press in 2010. A call for subs went out and Leather, Denim & Silver was published in 2011. There was an incredible appetite for more monster hunter stories and Vol. 2., The Trigger Reflex, was released that very same year.
As it happened, two volumes were not enough to quench the thirst for these tales and Vol. 3., Use Enough Gun, went into production. Sadly, Pill Hill Press gave up the ghost that year and closed before the book was finished, leaving monster hunters in a tough spot.
However, monster hunters are made of grit, determination and are generally possessed by a "hold my beer" spirit, and Miles opened Emby Press to finish and release Use Enough Gun in 2012.
Blood Trails (Vol. 4) and Occult Detective Monster Hunter (Vol.1) were both released soon after and Emby was on the path to grow with multiple new volumes in production. That's when the biggest monster of them all took a bite out of our plans.
Miles was well aware that ebooks and online availability were the only reason that an indie press could exist. And, although there were a handful of retailers, it was always Amazon that dominated the market and this was a good thing for all parties involved... Authors suddenly had a new way to release their stories, publishers had a new venue to sell through that didn't require massive capital investment and Amazon made money on every purchase.
Emby embraced the situation and created a business model based on sales of ebooks and to a lesser extent, trade paperbacks and hardcovers. But it was ebooks that ruled the roost.
When Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited, Emby's business model went down faster than a Werewolf mauling a hunter without any silver bullets. Gone were the days when readers would by an entire ebook and we were suddenly looking at sales reports of "number of pages read". Sure, a few people still purchased the books, but the majority of readers went on the KU plan with a quickness and never looked back. Who could blame them? For less than the cost of a couple of ebooks a month, readers now had access to an unlimited number of books and stories... They could drink from the firehose. It was a no-brainer.
But it made it near impossible to plan anything business-wise and instead of fighting the tide, Emby went on hiatus. It was a sad day as multiple novels were pulled off the shelf and anthologies in production went on indefinite hold. The rights to all of those novels and stories were returned to the authors with Emby's well wishes and encouragement that the authors find new homes for their works or even self publish.
And then we waited.
It was 2021 when Miles and Brian Easton came up with the idea to do the first Legends of the Werewolf Hunter anthology based on Brian's Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter book series. We didn't have any set plans for a follow-up at that point, but the book did well and a couple of years later we started to kick around the idea for Vol. 2.
It was during this time that the hunger to get more stories out there began to gnaw at us and Emby started to explore different business models that weren't viable all those years ago. The idea of a Kickstarter presented itself and although this platform had been around for many years, it had evolved into a way that a publisher could recoup production costs early in the book release cycle and so we decided to give it a go.
We'll let you know how it turns out!
As it happened, two volumes were not enough to quench the thirst for these tales and Vol. 3., Use Enough Gun, went into production. Sadly, Pill Hill Press gave up the ghost that year and closed before the book was finished, leaving monster hunters in a tough spot.
However, monster hunters are made of grit, determination and are generally possessed by a "hold my beer" spirit, and Miles opened Emby Press to finish and release Use Enough Gun in 2012.
Blood Trails (Vol. 4) and Occult Detective Monster Hunter (Vol.1) were both released soon after and Emby was on the path to grow with multiple new volumes in production. That's when the biggest monster of them all took a bite out of our plans.
Miles was well aware that ebooks and online availability were the only reason that an indie press could exist. And, although there were a handful of retailers, it was always Amazon that dominated the market and this was a good thing for all parties involved... Authors suddenly had a new way to release their stories, publishers had a new venue to sell through that didn't require massive capital investment and Amazon made money on every purchase.
Emby embraced the situation and created a business model based on sales of ebooks and to a lesser extent, trade paperbacks and hardcovers. But it was ebooks that ruled the roost.
When Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited, Emby's business model went down faster than a Werewolf mauling a hunter without any silver bullets. Gone were the days when readers would by an entire ebook and we were suddenly looking at sales reports of "number of pages read". Sure, a few people still purchased the books, but the majority of readers went on the KU plan with a quickness and never looked back. Who could blame them? For less than the cost of a couple of ebooks a month, readers now had access to an unlimited number of books and stories... They could drink from the firehose. It was a no-brainer.
But it made it near impossible to plan anything business-wise and instead of fighting the tide, Emby went on hiatus. It was a sad day as multiple novels were pulled off the shelf and anthologies in production went on indefinite hold. The rights to all of those novels and stories were returned to the authors with Emby's well wishes and encouragement that the authors find new homes for their works or even self publish.
And then we waited.
It was 2021 when Miles and Brian Easton came up with the idea to do the first Legends of the Werewolf Hunter anthology based on Brian's Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter book series. We didn't have any set plans for a follow-up at that point, but the book did well and a couple of years later we started to kick around the idea for Vol. 2.
It was during this time that the hunger to get more stories out there began to gnaw at us and Emby started to explore different business models that weren't viable all those years ago. The idea of a Kickstarter presented itself and although this platform had been around for many years, it had evolved into a way that a publisher could recoup production costs early in the book release cycle and so we decided to give it a go.
We'll let you know how it turns out!