Midnight-To-Three Publishing is a personal imprint established in 2013 under which I self-publish. Why? Why not! Every writer who’s going to self-publish should have a place to call home. It’s like a band having their own label. You call the shots, and you control the work; distribution and promotion are a bitch; and in the end, the forty copies or so that you sell just feel good.

Now, there are people who still wave a scolding finger at self-publishers and suggest they have no value compared the traditional publishers, who buy manuscripts from agents and then massage them into ‘publishable’ work (or so the story goes.)  And it’s true: with a self-publishing author, the professionalism of the work, its presentation, and its promotion are all on the writer to ensure. But the flip side is you’re not paying a percentage to an agent; you’re not giving over a chunk to a publisher; and you’re not having someone else dictating how your book will be presented or, depending on the contract, whether you get to take your book with you to another publisher if you change houses. Is it a responsibility? Absolutely. is it worth it? I suppose it depends on what you want to get out of it.

It helps to bear in mind that may authors have had their own independent imprints or started without a publishing house: Andy Weir’s THE MARTIAN was self-published; so was Mark Danielewski’s HOUSE OF LEAVES. Twain and Poe both self-published, as did Virginia Woolf. Even Stephen King has had his own house (two of them, if you count the one he set up as a kid): Philtrum Press, which King has used for a handful of projects, but notably to get an author he enjoyed — Don Robertson — in front of a new readership.  Which is another good reason to self-publish: you may even develop it into a cohort to publish other writers you might want to give a leg up. 

Me? I wanted an imprint to lend a look and feel to what I published, but I never wanted to be coy about it being my own self-publishing deal. 

The name comes from my work habits for many years, where it felt like I was at my most productive between midnight and about three, after which I’d drop into bed and get four hours of sleep before work. The logo was created by my BFAM Bernie from an idea I had. Somewhere, there’s a sketch i eked out, but he far exceeded my meager parameters. 

Midnight-to-Three is the publisher of record for seven titles to date (details for most of which are in the bibliography here on the website) with more in the works. 

For a while, Midnight-To-Three had its own website, mostly for the release of SHADY ACRES. It was “to return” in 2020 and never did. It has since been absorbed into this site. I mean, if I’m going to do fulfillment from here, why have more gyrations and cost than necessary? I mean, we’re a small shop. Every nickel counts.