Round Robin Time, Raconteur Press Pulp House Edition!
Staff members answer a question.
What does Raconteur Press being a pulp house mean to you?
Rita: To me, being a pulp house means that pure entertainment value is at a premium here. Sure, we want our stories well-crafted and delightful, but we have zero pretense of producing Dostoyevsky and such. That's not to say our stories don't touch the reader in profound ways—I think deeper context often sneaks up on the reader in these stories, compounding the delight one finds in reading them. It's good clean fun and a call to adventure that may be enjoyed from the safe confines of a cozy chair.
Cedar: We are more focused on providing affordable entertainment to the masses than creating literature.
Pulps were cheap, disposable, escapism. With electrons, we can emulate that pulp paper.
Jonna: It means it's about YAY HUMANS! And FUN. A group of people who loved early SF and the inspiration of humans facing unusual problems, and using what is best about us to find solutions. Great stories, twice a month.
Nick: We are going to turn and burn good fiction with a compelling story and identifiable characters and not get super wrapped around the axle about whether it’s great literature or checks a bunch of current representation boxes.
We will fail sometimes, but our agility and throughput are such that we can fail faster and cheaper, allowing us to iterate quickly to find successful routes.
Chris: RP's focus is on easily accessible adventure fiction, in affordable electronic and physical formats. Adventure fiction first, whether it's fantasy flavored, futuristic, historical, western, weird, or children's adventure fiction.
In the spirit of the original era of the pulp magazines, releases are rapid and flexible with respect to modern "genre boundaries."
Amanda: Raconteur Press is a return to the days when great stories were available for cheap in magazines, newspapers, and dime store novels. At the time, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes through The Strand Magazine, and now, Holmes is one of the most recognized figures—in literature and the real world alike. In that spirit, Raconteur features unique and relatable characters that people will remember. I'm not saying we'll publish the next Sherlock Holmes, but creating a platform for new authors, with new characters, and strange worlds that is not burdened with meeting the expectations of big publishers is a good place to start.
Lisa: …What I like about RP being a pulp house is the opportunity new/unknown writers have, which in turn keeps genres fresh and allows totally original stories to be told. Having applied to nonfiction publications, I can attest to the entry-level barriers that are so prevalent in the writing world. At RP, anyone with a good idea, a good ear, and enough discipline may be published, and suddenly there is something new on the market that market-driven, formulaic, cookie-cutter publishing houses just cannot offer.
Sarah: My introduction to pulp happened here at Raconteur Press. In fact, I was delving into and falling in love with pulp before I even knew what pulp was. So this press seeing itself as a pulp house just means my explorations of everything pulp continue with every new anthology release, every con AAR, every RacChat, and every Substack post. What's not to love about that?