I’ve been doing lots of conventions and one person that keeps coming up as someone I should know is Brett Peterson. He’s established his own small publishing company and is working hard to get it right. When he asked to pitch the stuff he’s doing and all the free content he’s unleashing on the world, how could I refuse?

So, without further ado, I’ll turn the floor over to Brett to let you know what he’s up to.

Short Version: Hey, free stuff! Our short story magazine is pretty cool, and it’s free. Check here for the online version, click here for the signup page, and we never spam. Also, if you want exclusive cool things in order to help us give away more free stuff, Kickstarter! We’re giving out playing cards, calendars, books, ebooks, editing workshops, our souls (strike that… their souls. Those guys, over there) to double our magazine issues next year!

Medium Version: I grew up reading science fiction – listening to Ender’s Game on road trips, reading my dad’s “Science Fiction Hall of Fame” books over and over again, and ferreting out every book in the library marked with a sticker showing a 1950’s-style starship.

But, I also grew up going to church; still go, in fact. When I was little, my science fiction reading never conflicted with my religion – not because the ideas weren’t different (credit to my parents for awesome conversations in that regard!) – but because my dad only owned books that didn’t have graphic sex or violence, and my librarian (who knew me by name; I was a precocious child) wouldn’t check any books like that out to me.

Unfortunately, that filter doesn’t exist anymore… but I still go to church. As a result, I end up not finishing half the books I read. It’s frustrating – I’ll just be getting into the story when an author decides that, instead of writing a great idea, they’ll use sex or gore to cover up a flaw in plot or character.

So, in January of this year, I gathered a team together to start a publishing house that could provide great stories that didn’t need graphic sex or violence to keep me enthralled. Along the way, my team and I discovered that we didn’t like how publishing has traditionally been run – so, we changed the model pretty significantly. (50% cut of sales profits to authors, real editing and cover design, we pay all upfront costs). Our first books are coming out next year – you can check out Kickstarter for previews and some pretty sweet ways to get ahold of them.

We also discovered that there was room for more short stories – those were what hooked me as a kid, and we all wanted more of them. So, we also publish a short story magazine – free to the public – which you can find here. (And, you can signup here) And, remember that Kickstarter? (As if I’d let you forget it, right?) The point of it is to double the number of magazines we publish next year: KICKSTART.

So, if YOU like cool stories, and don’t mind that they’re PG-13, give us a try!

P.S. – Again – it’s FREE. Just wanted to make that clear. 🙂 Err, except for Kickstarter. Yeah. … Swank-mo-tron?

Thanks again for checking out another column from the Indie Books department! Hopefully over the last year we’ve provided some info on some great books for you…

And back their Kickstarter. I did.