Some time ago I posted about Flying Pen Press, a new publisher based in Denver. Well, last night they held their Grand Premier, and I went to it.

First off, they held it at the Tattered Cover, the indy bookstore when it comes to Denver. When authors like Neil Gaiman or Stephanie Pearl-McPhee come to read from their works, meet their fans, and sign frontispieces, their publishers send them to the Tattered Cover. As I understand it, FPP were given use of the event room for the night totally rent-free–and they filled it. Maybe it wasn’t shoulder-to-shoulder packed like when the aforementioned authors came, but you’d have been hard-pressed to find a chair by the time publisher David Rozansky was fifteen minutes into his speech.

And seeing the makeup of the crowd I felt I’d stepped into a science fiction or gaming convention. I’d know about one of FPP’s imprints, Game Day–I’d even know that FPP started life as an exclusively gaming-oriented publisher (although the anecdote about Mr. Rozansky walking around MileHiCon with “I’m a publisher looking for authors” on his hat was a new one on me)–but it didn’t sink in until my husband and I ran into someone we had met previously at Genghis Con ‘07. Then we looked up and realized we were surrounded by gamers. It was a pleasant surprise, but disconcerting.

Of course, the event’s main thrust was to launch the first titles of the Fiction and Science Fiction imprints: Gaddy Bergmann’s Migration of the Kamishi and James R. Strickland’s Looking Glass. I’d reserved a copy of the latter for purchase (and it should be pointed out that my husband snagged it from me and promptly devoured Chapters 1 through 4 right there.) Both books have stunning covers (which translate well to edible paper for decorating cakes with) and good quality interior layout. Only thing I could possibly quibble with was the running head being a smidge cozy with the text in Looking Glass, and that I didn’t quite realize until someone else pointed it out. All in all, despite being produced via publish-on-demand technology, they look like real books! We even had to purchase them at Tattered Cover’s first-floor checkout counter, just like real books and everything!

And Flying Pen Press is shaping up to look like an honest-to-gosh real publisher. While skepticism about their chances at success is not entirely out of place, I do think that FPP are a valid test case for the potential of a publisher using a print-on-demand production model to get inventory onto bookstore shelves. They’ve identified the usual obstacles and they have solid strategies in place for overcoming them. Whether they succeed or fail won’t just tell us about FPP; it’ll actually tell us something valuable about whether any POD publisher can succeed or fail here.

Predictions aside, Flying Pen Press’s “opening day,” June 1, the day when the first titles officially hit the shelves, will also see Mr. Rozansky in New York. Doing what, now? Why, attending Book Expo America, of course. Just like a real publisher and everything.