So...Julian Daventry and I Did a Thing (The Order of the Pen Press Announcement!)

Back in August, Julian Daventry and I did something really exciting (and I'm not talking about self-publishing Ships, Secrets, and Survivors (though that does have a little to do with the announcement today)).

We did something we had tossed around for a while, but never really did anything about until then. 

Many of you might remember that she and I co-founded a writing group called The Order of the Pen back in 2014. It consisted of several of our friends who also had an interest in writing, specifically in writing books that would honor God in their content. 

After many good years of friendship and support, we came to the decision to disband for a while (though we still stay in contact with many of them!). Several of the members were pursuing college and/or other creative endeavors and were very busy because of that, so we felt like it was time to go our separate ways and do all that we were called to do.

Anywho, fast-forward two and a half years, when Jules and I were working on publishing SSaS. We struggled to figure out how to handle the finances, seeing as there was two of us publishing instead of one. I won't get into the nitty-gritty details of taxes and splitting earnings, as that would likely bore you and that's not the point of this post.

We talked with an expert and he suggested that we form a LLC Partnership so we could better handle the money coming in and out. This made sense to us, considering that our co-authoring likely wouldn't end with the Pirate Hunters, and that Jules had planned on self-publishing her books anyway.

After mulling over what we would call the company, we decided to ask our group's permission to use our name as the company name, telling them that should they choose to self-publish in the future, they could publish under the name as well. They gave us permission, with a few stipulations: that we would keep them in the loop about all book releases and such. Of course, we had no problem with these restrictions.

So that is our announcement today!

We are thrilled to announce that we are the co-owners of a publishing company!

Ahhh! We finally get to tell you!!

So what does this mean for the future? 

For one thing, the Pirate Hunter Chronicles social media will merge into The Order of the Pen Publishing. This will include the website, Facebook, Instagram, and the newsletter.

We also are in the process of creating a street team for people interested in helping us spread the word about our latest releases and sales and such. If you want to join, you can send us a request to join the street team Facebook Group. We're working on an option for people who want to join, but don't have FB, but we don't have an option yet.

On top of the remaining books in the Pirate Hunter Chronicles, we have several other books that we plan to publish under this house, including Helena's The Red War Annals and another series we hope to co-author. Also, any books I might want to self-publish. Needless to say, we are going to stay busy for the foreseeable future!

Beyond the books we're hoping to publish, we don't have concrete plans for acquiring books from other authors with the possible exception of any of the Order of the Pen members who want to pursue self-publishing. That is a consideration we've had, but we've not really talked about it much. Eventually, we might be in the position to bring on other authors, but we're definitely not there yet. 

Anyway, that is our announcement today! We're very excited to bring y'all along and we can't wait to see what lies ahead as we pursue this path.