Good Night Sweet Gorilla
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Posted on 1-1-2017
It is with a heavy heart that we are forced to announce the suspension of active business for Gorillas With Scissors Press. The last two years have been hard on the indie publishing community and we at the Monkey House have been hit as hard as any other. Over the last fifteen months, we’ve consistently lost money at an increasing rate, and the costs have become untenable. As of January 13th, 2017 GWSP will be closed as a publisher, we wish our wonderful authors the best in their future endeavors and thank them for their understanding in these difficult times.
1-13-2017
My friends, we gather here not to mourn the death of the Monkey House but to celebrate its life. Back when I opened Gorillas With Scissors Press (GWSP) I wasn’t trying to become a publisher of other writers work, all I wanted to do was have a masthead under which to publish my own work. I was just looking for a name that would catch the reader's eye.
I never considered that other authors would be interested in having their works also published under the GWSP banner. But once the decision was made to publish the works of other authors I wrote the following company description and posted it on the website and in the new Facebook Group.
“In 2007 when my youngest son was seven years old a dog mauled him. While we were at the hospital waiting for the plastic surgeon to work his magic, my wife told him not to be afraid. He told her, in his morphine-induced calmness, that he wasn’t afraid of anything except gorillas and scissors. I asked him, ‘What about gorillas with scissors?’ and he replied deadpan, ‘Them too.’ I swore at that moment if I ever founded my own publishing company that would be the name. So that’s how we got our name, from a stoned, seven-year-old boy who’d been savaged by a dog.
Only in America… and maybe Canada.
Five years later, and after a long and frustrating process of trying to go the traditional publishing route, I decided to found my own publishing company. For two and a half years I worked a regular job and took the baby steps needed to grow the Monkey House. Along the way, I encountered Mrs. Jennifer Tovar, who changed the game forever. She started out as my editor and eventually became my equal partner. At the end of 2014, we merged our separate operations into one and made GWSP our only occupation.
So what are we?
At Gorillas With Scissors Press, we believe the creators should guide their own visions and thus, should reap the rewards. We are an indie publishing house with our products spanning the gamut. No genre is off limits in the Monkey House—from Horror, Romance, Erotica, Thrillers, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and everything in between, GWSP has it!
We are the home for the indie writer looking for a safe place to create and not have to worry about having their creations stolen out from under them or being exploited by unscrupulous publishers. We are a cooperative group dedicated to nurturing writers and preparing them for long and productive careers. We believe in the New Model of publishing where the traditional gatekeepers are set aside, and creators have the freedom to create.”
We tried to live up to those ideals, and despite the shuttering of most of our operations, I like to believe for a short time we were successful. I’m proud of the products we put out as a company and will always feel a tremendous amount of gratitude toward the men and women who took a chance and entrusted their babies to us.
Those authors are in no particular order.
Al Halsey
Aubrey Duvall
CT Phillips
D’Lacy Stone
Dawn Authier
Denise A. Agnew
Jess Blake
Kenneth Brown
Kiri Thompson
Lisa Bush
Michelle Magee
Michelle Murray
Nicole Clark
You are all amazing, and I will miss working with you.
On a personal note, I want to thank my business partner and good right arm Jennifer Tovar. None of this could have happened without you, and in the end, I may have conceived GWSP, but it was as much your baby as mine. I love ya, Jenn, you’re the best.
What’s next for me?
I’m still a full-time writer with a to-write list a mile high. I’m not going anywhere and in a way neither is GWSP. Although we won’t be publishing other authors, we still will be publishing my work under the Monkey banner. Jennifer will still be editing for me and make my better covers, and the facebook group/mailing list will remain open. It remains to be seen if any more Halloween anthologies will be produced, but we have decided to keep the four books available year round.
That’s it for now but on a last pause thank you. Thank you for all the support and kind words you’ve sent our way in the last four and half years. The Monkey House was more than a publishing company it was a family.
- Josh