How to Start Your Own Publishing Company (Part II)

When Honorable Dorothy Colom couldn't find romance books that spoke to her soul, she and husband-attorney, Wilbur Colom and step-daughter, Niani Colom, started Genesis Press Inc. in 1993. Two years later they began publishing African-American romances in trade paperback under Indigo Romance imprint. One of the first authors under their Indigo imprint was then emerging author, Donna Hill, who went on to publish multiple best-sellers under Genesis-Press, Inc., St. Martin's Press, BET and Kensington/Dafina.

For fiften years, Genesis Press has published culturally rich and diverse stories about African-American romance. Genesis Press carved out a niche for black romance novels when major publishing houses did not dare to venture down this avenue. Realizing an untapped market of black romance fiction, Genesis Press pressed forward and created one of the first imprints dedicated to black romance, soon following with Indigo After Dark, a series of erotica anthologies, and Love Spectrum, which portrays interracial relationships.

In the second installment of our three-part series, "How to Start Your Own Publishing Company", Niani Colom, associate publisher, shares the early struggles of Genesis Press, Inc. and reveals what's on the horizon for the avant-garde publishers. Read the full interview below.

Oneswan Productions: Tell us about Genesis Press.

Niani Colom: Genesis Press was established in 1993. At the time there were no African-American romances being released on a consistent basis. My stepmother, who was a romance reader, and my dad, who is the consummate businessman, got together. I was working at an literary agency, and we all sorta pooled our resources and created Genesis Press. We started acquiring titles and published our first book in 1995. It took two years before we published our first book, we were trying to find authors.

I produced some ridiculously hideous looking covers (laughs). Like I was on the streets of New York pulling people and saying, "Hey! You look good. Do you want to be on the cover of a romance book. We can't pay you, but you'll be on a cover of a book. You'll be immortalized." I had no concept.

OP: From the beginning, did you approach your concept as essentially African-American?

NC: In the early stages, what we did was we found black writers that were already writing romances. And you know, there were some black writers out there who were writing white romances. Once we put the word out that we were looking for African-American lead characters in romances, people just started coming out the wood work. They started saying "I got this book. I got this book! This book was published and I got the rights back from it-- can you do this book." That's pretty much how we started with Rochelle Alers, Gwynne Forster, and Donna Hill. Early, early, they were the first writers we had.

OP: With virtually any start-up company there is issue with capital. How did you secure funding to start and grow Genesis-Press, Inc.?

NC: I worked out of my New York apartment, a studio that cost $1,600 a month(laughs). We just kept costs as low as possible. I mean, we were really costs stressed. Now granted, you know my father owns many businesses and he plans out as far as looking at what would it cost to capitalize this business. And so we had budgets and things we had to consider. We really kept our costs really low, literally getting models on the street, telling people that we would put their name on the back of the book if they take the cover or do the design. It was a lot of bartering.

Then as we grew, it was like we can pay for this and we can pay for that. The authors got really pitiful (laughs), but it was always with the idea that if you started with us we were gonna be a family and this was gonna grow. And that's what everyone believed. We concretely went into Genesis thinking it was going to succeed.

OP: Building on that last point, I assume that you built a loyal following with your readership.

NC: Yeah. We have readers that have been with us for 10 years now. They've just been there. Even up to now it's hard to get your book [in the bookstore]—distribution has always been an issue.

OP: I understand that you all just secured your book distribution with Kensington.

NC: Yes. We've been through little bitty distributors, we've been through distributors that have gone under, we've been through distributors that have distributed music and books, and we've been through multi-tasking distributors (laughs). The road to Kensington has not been paved all the way; we've had to forge our way. One of the big challenges we've always had was access to our books. How do you get your books in the bookstore? With Kensington, this makes it a lot easier for bookstores to stock our books.

OP: Indigo Romance was the first imprint for Genesis Press. Tell us a little bit about your other imprints.

NC: What happened to Indigo was just as we were taking on this black romance we started realizing there were a lot of white women that was also reading our romance. Actually, in the early days it was probably more white women than black women. As the word got out, we started moving out and we sorta had more black women migrating. But as we started looking at the demographics of who's reading our books, we said now we found one hole and we need to start addressing other holes that are not being addressed. Romance comes in all shapes and colors. That's when we started looking at interracial, and that's what people started asking for. Interracial meant he could be black, he could white, she could be white, she could black, Asian or Hispanic, this or that. We looked at different types of romance that targeted these different niches [an Asian imprint and Hispanic imprint]. But that didn't work. We ended up rolling out all of these imprints and rolling them all back under Indigo Love Spectrum.

OP: Looking at the trend in literature, do you feel that the climate on Madison Avenue is changing toward writers of color? I realize there are multiple genres and a niche for everything, but if I read another urban fiction/ghetto-fabulous book I will scream.

NC: Here's the thing. When we started out, you gotta remember what we were combating. The Iceberg Slims, the Donald Goines. That was real popular. And coming back from the seventies that was becoming popular. We find that it's just coming back again, it's a twenty year cycle. They [urban fiction] became popular in the 70s and made a comeback in the 90s and now in the 2000's. It's a cycle. What we've been trying to do is stay to our core, you know, speak to our core group because we know there may be people out there who are not just going to read romance, they'll want to read other things. Some people out there are going to read all this urban [fiction] and want a little soft romance, a little warm and fuzzy.

What we've tried to do is diversify a little bit. That's one of the reasons we've looked at another line called Indigo Vibe. It's a little bit hipper and a little bit younger. We usually kept true to the executive type or artistic type in our character. Now she can be a little bit racier. We like more of the traditional upper middle-income characters. Now we're looking at a wider variety of characters. At first we thought that [executive type] would be an aspiration for people. It wasn't that we thought everyone was in that particular group, but we thought it was an aspiration. And so, if you were there you imagined it would be like this, and if you were not there you always imagined that's where you would be.

We did try Indigo After Dark, which was the erotica. We didn't do the Zane erotica which is more literary. We tried to make it poetry but realized that people wanted more hard-core. At some level we've always been combating some different type of styles. We've tried to evolve with the need, and we know with the traditional romances there's always going to be a core group who are going to like them. They're going to be loyal and they're going to buy their five to six books a month, and they're going to read them on a weekend or on the train. But that is not going to necessarily sustain you.

OP: Genesis-Press, Inc. is ever evolving. What new projects are you working on?

NC: We've started looking at Black Coral which is our fiction line that allows us to not lose our traditional romance reader but be a little bit more open to a different type of story, be it a love story or other.

We publish 30 titles a year, but ideally we would like to get to the point where we are publishing three books per month. When we started out we only published six a year, then 12 a year, then 18 a year, then 24. Now we're at 30. But it's all been a process.

We're looking at writers who are going to bring their own love spectrum. We're looking at a new landscape, romances that transcend continents. We're looking for unique stories, nothing depressing; we want something impassioned, more literary fiction and romance fiction.

OP: What advice can you give to up-and-coming writers?

NC: Publishers are looking for writers that know their stuff. Think beyond what's happening today. Know your type of voice and know your craft.

OP: What are your submission requirements?

NC: Our submission requirements can be reviewed online at Genesis Press.

OP: What is the ONE message that you'd like to leave with our readers?

NC: We encourage readers to get in contact with us. Please give us feedback. Tell us what you're looking for and feel free to send us a message at customerservice@genesis-press.com.

The email listed is for feedback only. Please do not send queries to this email address.