An Interview with Juli Klass of Mighty Erudite

Fledgling publishers Mighty Erudite state on their website:

“our mission is to find those courageous and often unpublished writers who will not bow to commercial pressure; those who write what they write regardless of ‘marketability’; those who will not fold under the weight of ‘more of the same.’ We aim to publish beautiful and collectable literature at lower costs so that the writer gets the bulk of the money from the sale of their work.

Original thought deserves a forum both for those who create and for those who consume - step right up.”

As an independent publishing company who are actively seeking short stories, poems, and novellas for single author collections, Mighty Erudite are certainly working against the normal trends. So I contacted Juli Klass, owner and Managing Director, to ask her a few questions.

Hi Juli, thank you for taking the time out to answer a few questions today.

You’re welcome. I’m happy to do it, short stories deserve a forum for development. Too many great writers are abandoning the medium.

Some might argue that with fewer and fewer outlets for their work available, there is little choice but to turn to alternative forms of writing.

Absolutely—hopefully here at Mighty Erudite, we can provide a channel for writing which is so magnificent at its best and so difficult to achieve well.

Tell me, what made you decide to publish short stories when it seems to be such an unpopular choice in the current climate?

Firstly because I have a real belief in the short story; it seems to have declined in popularity over the years for the bigger publishing houses, but I still hold a strong belief that there is a solid reading audience for the short story. Many writers have been led to believe that the short story is how they “warm up” before writing a novel, but we believe that it is a complete art form in its own right and deserves the space for recognition and readership. A great short story is difficult to write; unlike a novel, every word counts and none can be wasted. At their best, short stories are a lesson in less is more; elegant and finely formed.

Have you received a high volume of quality short story submissions since opening your doors?

I wouldn’t say high volumes of quality, but there are certainly writers of great talent who have submitted their work to us. There is a difference between being able to write one or two good short stories and having enough to fill an entire volume. We’re working with several short fiction writers to help them develop a full collection that showcases how good short fiction can really be.

With so few good modern published examples of short fiction available to readers, short fiction writers now have a limited reference of the art form at its very best.

So, what do you look for in a short story? What gets you really excited?

That’s a tough question—it comes down to sheer alchemy. I know in the first three lines of a new submission whether the piece has power and whether we can do something with the author. Short fiction has very little room to move, and a great short story is subtle, elegant, beautiful, and addictive; it needs to excite something powerful in the reader, and the beauty of the genre is that each piece can deliver that in an entirely different way. Short fiction should provoke a reaction but not through brutal “storytelling”; it can use devices so gentle that the reader doesn’t know that he or she has been bound by them until they realise that they can’t tear themselves from the prose.

And what earns it a swift trip to the reject pile?

Coloured fonts, curly writing, manuscripts hidden inside zip files—those are some of the silly cosmetic things that irritate a publisher when there are 800 submissions in the inbox. Beyond that, it is writing that lacks finesse, that doesn’t captivate from the first line, that which seems to be stuck in the banal.

I know that many publishers don’t read every submission they’re sent, but we do, and I personally try to respond to each author with something useful as to why we’re rejecting a piece. Sometimes it’s hard to say “pink curly writing and the fluffy cats embedded in your manuscript.”

Writing is a professional endeavour as well as an artistic one, and presentation is key.

If the talent is out there to be found, why do you think it is that there are such a relatively small number of collections being published?

It would seem that larger publishing houses tend to favour novels as they do tend to be higher selling than many short fiction anthologies. The current philosophy seems to be that unless an author has already published several successful novels, their chances of publishing a short fiction collection at all are limited. While the short story still holds an interested readership, far more needs to be done to educate new readers on the medium and how great writing needn’t be limited to novel length works.

There also seems to be a predominance of literary prizes that focus on the novel, and since the media is such a strong force in consumer buying habits today, the short story could gain greater ground by being a better publicised medium.

You say the reader needs to be educated; I presume this is in part through effective marketing. How does this fit into your long-term strategy?

We aim to do significant audience development work to promote the short story and other marginalised written forms through readings and events aimed at new reading audiences. One of the opportunities available now that didn’t exist twenty years ago is the prolific online and e-commerce forums; these can all be very effectively utilised to stimulate new readers.

Going back to what you said earlier about working with a number of authors to help them develop a showcase, how exactly are you doing this?

It varies from person to person; in one instance we read through a portfolio of the author’s work and identified a thread that we would like to see more of. We work in collaboration with the author toward an end goal of a full collection of stories and offer as much time and expertise as we can. It’s very much a labour of love.

It sounds like you’re really passionate about this. So what motivated you to set Mighty Erudite up in the first place?

I’m a prolific reader and after several visits to large bookstores, I simply couldn’t find what I was looking for as a reader; I also know some very gifted authors who really struggle to get their work into print and felt that there must be a way to get great writing to people who like to read original and well written work, whether it be short fiction, novellas, poetry, or fiction that doesn’t quite fit with the commercial reality of two for one offers.

If you had to point to one thing that makes Mighty Erudite stand out from the crowd, what would it be?

Our willingness to make each thing we print completely different from the last; we’re keen to keep ourselves and our readers on their toes, to provide them with exciting and groundbreaking reads, to read each new thing with fresh eyes and a knowledge that no publisher needs to be the sole arbiter of taste. We believe that our readers are intelligent and discerning; they will tell us what they like.

Tell us a bit about your own background.

I’ve enjoyed success in the corporate world for a number of years while always yearning to put my skills to use in the one thing that I’m passionate about more than any other: books. So now I’m translating the experience that I have into something that makes my heart sing. I’m learning by doing and with the support and help of a very generous community of readers, writers, publishers, and commercial gurus.

Hopefully by lacking formal training in the sector, I can bring something new and fresh to what we do, to the authors we support, and to an industry that could do with more diversity in what it offers the reading public.

So what’s in the immediate future for Mighty Erudite?

We have a novella and two poetry volumes to get to the reading public in the next month, and we’ll start to take in new submissions when we’re clear of those milestones. We’re interested in looking at some more short fiction and also some flash fiction collections for the new year.

What is your submission policy?

Our website, www.mighty-erudite.co.uk, is always kept up-to-date with the latest details, but as a rule, we only accept submissions via email (trying to do our bit to save paper). We like an author biography, a proposal for a full collection, and a sample of two or three stories or poems.