A. We are interested in pieces that appeal to our alternative audience. We want those works that others refuse to publish due to content. We want pieces that are non mainstream, that tell things from a different point of view. To be more specific, we're looking for New Age, Sci-Fi, Anti-Establishment, Occult, Hippy, Drug, Travel, and general Humor, Fiction, and Non-Fiction titles. 

A. First you should send us some e-mail detailing what kind of a piece you have for publication. If we’re interested, we’ll e-mail you back with instructions. We prefer your work to be in digital format, but this isn’t a necessity. Usually you can just e-mail us the work or part of the work for us to review. If we’re interested we’ll let you know in a matter of days! You’ll enjoy the quick response we offer, compared to traditional publishers. If your work has already been professionally edited, it can be posted and ready for sale in days! 

A. No, we are firmly against proprietary systems as the history of computers and the Internet have shown that proprietary systems fail over time. Many other publishers only publish in proprietary formats for handheld devices like Palm Pilots. This is mainly because until now these devices have required such formats. All the major device companies are now making their products compatible with open formats. This is because they were limiting what people could do with their devices and due to competition. This is exactly our point! Putting your work out in open, compatible formats, is the very BEST thing you can do. You won’t be excluding anyone from purchasing and reading your work regardless of what kind of machine they choose to read it on. 

Now as far as protecting your work from being copied, we offer more protection than someone who buys a book from a bookstore. First the reader must pay with a credit card (using a secure server of course). Then he/she will receive e-mail with a password, which will allow them to view online or download a copy of your work. We all have to assume that that person will be paying to read it and won’t be making copies of it. Just like with a regular book, anyone CAN make copies. If someone wanted they could convert the book (one of our services) into a digital format and make as many copies as they wanted. Has this happened? Do you see on the Internet copies of all the best sellers? Why not? Because copying is ILLEGAL. You are protected by the law, whether your work is electronic or not. If it can be determined that someone has illegally made copies of your work, you always have a legal option to recover any losses. But this is the key point! You must prove that you have lost something. If the person gave a free copy to a friend how is that different from you giving a good book that you liked to a friend to read? Is that illegal? No, it isn’t, but if they copy your book to sell, that’s another story. 

A. We have many popular sites that we call Vertical Portals. This means that they are geared to certain markets. We already have pre-qualified readers ready to read work by new authors that will appeal to their sensibilities. Our Hippyland site has been very successful for the last three years (it’s the biggest hippy site on the Internet – by far). We have several new sites that we are now promoting including Hip Planet, our flagship, so to speak. This site is aimed at a wider audience of older more affluent people (grown up hippies, yuppies, the intelligencia). All of our sites will link directly to the Hip Publishing site and the cross promotion potential is unlimited. Another Associate Site is Marlin’s Books. With over 6,000 titles Marlin is a big wholesaler, specializing in alternative titles. Our association will let us publish the most promising titles with guaranteed catalog listing and distribution.

But wait, there’s more! We are web savvy and can easily put up a website for you! You could sell your own books with our E-Commerce package. Or perhaps you’d just like a page that will link to our site when people are ready to buy. There are many options available here. 

And we are just starting the process of making our newer sites including Hip Publishing known to the world. Our presence at the LA Book Expo is just the start. We’ll be burning up the wires online getting the message out to writers groups, search engines, publishers and more. We’re going after popular authors as well as new authors. Everyone will eventually have their works for sale in digital format. We intend to be a force in the publishing world. 

A. Absolutely! We encourage authors to include graphics, photos or illustrations as much as possible since this enhances the online experience for the reader. Of course if these haven’t been digitized, there will be some cost involved to scan and convert the images. Unfortunately certain text formats can’t contain graphics, so if someone wishes a work with images in a text format they will lose out, but we charge less for that format under those circumstances.