I first stumbled on Shortwave Publishing when Ai Jiang’s novelette, I Am Ai, was published. I kept seeing the press pop up in various places and had to investigate—then fell in love with the press’s offerings. Great stuff. And best of all, owner Alan Lastufka works tirelessly to support the press’s books and authors. How cool is that?
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Myna: Tell us about your press. What do you publish? What are you looking for when choosing projects? Are there any specific styles or subject matter you especially like?
Alan: Shortwave publishes genre and speculative fiction—mostly horror, dark sci-fi, and mysteries. The press is still small enough that I am the only employee, so when choosing projects, I select stories that move me deeply. I’m going to spend months working on every aspect of that project, from early developmental edits through interior and cover design, to promotion and marketing and release. That’s a lot of energy to spend on something you don’t love with all your head and heart.
Personally, I love supernatural and magical realism horror. I also love dark sci-fi in space or far future settings.
Myna: How do you acquire your projects? What’s the process like?
Alan: Half of our titles are from open calls. The other half are from agented or direct submissions. With agents, it’s a mixed bag, some are much better at matching up appropriate titles to specific editors than others. I find we have a much higher success rate when authors—especially authors who read our books—send us something they think we’ll like.
Myna: How do you support your projects after publication?
Alan: Every book title we release receives a marketing allowance. That’s fairly unique among indie book contracts. We work with the author to decide how to spend that allowance. Some want to pay for pro reviews, others want to invest in additional print ARCs, some want to run a few months of online ads. Each project is unique, and so we approach the marketing for each project differently.
Myna: Tell us about awards, nominations, & other accomplishments for your press or the books you’ve published.
Alan: Our very first title (and my debut novel), Face the Night, won the Hoffer Award for Best Commercial Fiction, as well as placing as a finalist in numerous other award ceremonies. Face the Night was also listed as one of the 100 Best Indie Books of the Year by Kirkus Reviews.
Ai Jiang’s I AM AI was recently nominated for both the Nebula and the Hugo Award. A Hugo! That’s huge for a book published by a brand-new indie press. Those ceremonies won’t be held for a few more months, so we’ll continue to cross our fingers for a win there, but even being nominated is a big deal for us.
Myna: What do you wish more people knew about your press?
Alan: That we exist.
That we’re a one-man band publishing twelve books this year.
That every direct purchase from our shop pays three times more royalties than buying that same book at Amazon.
That indie books can be just as good as NYT Bestsellers. Better, even, for niche genres.
That no one in indie publishing is making a living wage, or any wage at all, please throw your scraps at us.
Myna: If your press had a theme song, what would it be?
Alan: Okay, so, there’s this DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince deep cut from 1989 called, “Then She Bit Me”, and it is the weirdest, darkest, most random hip-hop song of all-time. And it has this great horror bend to the whole production, including referencing The Twilight Zone, Poltergeist, and name-dropping Chucky from Childs Play. That song probably comes the closest.
Myna: Tell us about your role. What do you do? What takes the most time? What is your favorite part of this job?
Alan: Officially, I am the Owner and Acquisitions Editor. But as mentioned above, as the only employee, I do almost everything. I have two editors I work with for line edits and proof edits. I have a couple illustrators and designers I occasionally hire for specific projects. But I do everything else, from signing new authors to packing and shipping the orders from our online shop.
Emails take the most time. If I could cut out all emails, I’d have time to finish my next book.
My favorite part is cover design. When you get it right, it’s magic. Most of our authors and customers have cited cover design as the element that initially attracted them to Shortwave.
Myna: Tell us about your career trajectory. How did you get here?
Alan: This is a micro Q&A so I’ll try to condense…
I dropped out of college and started working in the digital audio field building my own virtual instruments. During this time, I also experimented with indie publishing in the form of zines and an online magazine. That magazine led to a YouTube channel, and that YouTube channel led to my first book deal (a nonfiction book with O’Reilly Media about how to succeed on YouTube, as I was one of the Top 100 Most Subscribed channels at that time). My YouTube success also led to me co-founding a merch company for YouTubers with brothers Hank Green and John Green (The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down).
I ran that merch company for six years, building it up from literally two boxes of shirts and CDs at the foot of my bed, to a company with a 3,000 sq. ft. warehouse, a dozen employees, and annual revenue in the millions.
At that point, I sold off my ownership stake and, a couple years later, sat down to write my debut novel, Face the Night.
Myna: Tell us about your own writing. Where can we read your work?
Alan: I’ve published one novel, Face the Night. It’s a supernatural/horror book about a sketch artist who can’t stop obsessing about (and drawing) the same face, over and over. It was inspired by Stephen King’s Bag of Bones and Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. I’m currently working on a second book featuring a few minor characters from Face the Night, now in leading roles. That book is called DEAD FM and should be published in 2025.
And I’ve published three short stories so far, including “The Fort”, which was adapted into a short film by Umbrella Pictures, starring Callie Haverda (Netflix’s That ‘90s Show) and Armani Jackson (Paramount’s Wolf Pack).
All of my work is available in our direct shop (https://shop.shortwavepublishing.com) and from all major bookstores, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Myna: Do you have a pet or other hobby/activity? Show us a picture!
Alan: In addition to reading, and owning the largest music collection of anyone I know… I also collect coins that have music motifs. Portraits of composers, depictions of instruments, sheet music or music notation, famous performance spaces, etc.
I’ve been building this collection for some time and about a decade ago I won an award from Numismatic Guaranty Company for the presentation and display of my collection. The collection consists of around 60 gold and silver coins, each one meticulously photographed and described for public display and presentations.
Myna: What’s next for you?
Alan: I’d like to work on splitting my time between the press and my own writing career better. I also need to learn marketing better, for both the press and my own titles. We have some fantastic books coming later this year and in 2025, but it doesn’t matter how good they are if no one hears about them. I hope to wrap up my second book, DEAD FM, soon. And I just finished one of my first sci-fi stories, which currently sits at 6,500 words, but is begging to be expanded into a 100k word novel, so, that might turn into book three!
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Alan Lastufka is an award-winning author and the owner of Shortwave Publishing, an independent small press. He writes horror, sci-fi, and magical realism stories.
His debut novel, Face the Night, received a starred Kirkus review, was a finalist for Best New Horror Novel at the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and won the 2022 Hoffer Award for Best Commercial Fiction. Face the Night was also listed as one of the 100 Best Indie Books of the Year by Kirkus.
Shortwave Links:
https://shortwavepublishing.com
@ShortwaveBooks on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and elsewhere.
Alan’s personal links:
@AlanDistro on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and elsewhere.
Myna Chang 