From the Editor's Desk: June 2017

I meant to do one of these in March—the one year anniversary of when I officially took over as Editor-in-Chief—but there was too much going on, and it kept getting pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. That list is never-ending and always-changing, but that's one of the things I love about this job. No two days are ever the same.

The name "World Weaver Press" comes from this phrase in our mission statement: "We believe that publishing speculative fiction isn’t just printing words on the page — it’s the act of weaving brand new worlds." Whether reshaping our contemporary world, imagining the future of the world, or conjuring a new world entirely, speculative fiction writers are always weaving new worlds in their stories. But one thing I didn't anticipate when I took over World Weaver Press was how far across our world these stories could reach. Cheryl Low, author of the forthcoming novel Vanity in Dust, lives in Sweden. K. Bird Lincoln celebrated the release of her book Dream Eater while in Japan. Next year we'll be publishing an anthology of Brazilian solarpunk stories, translated into English for the first time. Several of our authors have had the opportunity to interact with enthusiastic readers in South Africa through the Books & Everything Facebook group.

I've also been surprised by the number of international sales we get on a regular basis. Someone in Saudi Arabia decided to pick up a copy of Fae. Someone in France is reading Covalent Bonds. Several people in India have copies of Krampusnacht on their Kindles, and Heir to the Lamp was briefly an Amazon bestseller in Australia. I'm thrilled our stories have somehow found their way into so many corners of the world. Amazon just shows me a graph and a spreadsheet, but when people buy books on Kobo, my dashboard shows me a map of which country the book was bought in. I love these maps, so I thought I'd show you a couple of them.

---

(Note on #s: holiday promos are awesome.)

One thing I'd like to start doing more of is actually venturing out into the world, meaning traveling to more conventions and conferences. We keep a list of our authors' events and outings (you can see it here), but you're unlikely to ever see me unless you come to the Southwest. I hope to shift that over the next couple of years. I'll have a World Weaver Press table at Albuquerque's Bubonicon in August, and Trysh Thompson, Sara Dobie Bauer, and I will all be wreaking havoc (and peddling books) at Louisville's Imaginarium in October. WWP won't have any official presence at this year's WorldCon, but I hope to make it to the 2018 one. I'd love to meet more of the far-flung authors and editors I work with in person, and share our books with distant readers who don't even know what they've been missing.

I like to believe that stories don't just weave their own worlds — they can also weave our world closer together.

Sarena Ulibarri
Editor-in-Chief