1. Why did you start Contemporary Press?

I can't speak for everyone - there are 7 partners, including me - but I did it to meet chicks. Of course, what I didn't anticipate is that there are few women who really dig indie publishers. And fewer still who my wife likes.

No. Not really. We started this because we think we have something vital to say and an underserved medium in which to say it. We just haven't quite figured out what it is yet.

2. What is a typical day like in the CP office? What are the challenges of running a small press?

The challenges are so immense that we don't really have an office. We meet every week at a bar in the East Village to drink in the bitterness that has been spawned by the series of emails we volley back and forth the rest of the week. After a few pops we're all friends again, we table business (which we never get to) and start talking about how drunk we are or were.

As far as the business goes, I freak out about money and getting press. It's pretty basic. We work our media contacts like streetwalkers to try and get our stuff reviewed or our CP story told, but it's really frustrating and difficult. But I have to say what's even MORE frustrating is throwing a party. I really can't believe this one, as I've thrown parties for friends that would have made Hunter Thompson blush, but once you deal with bars on a business end, it's really incredible. Once, we through a book release party at a strip joint, we heard that they double booked us (after promising us run of the place - including loading up stripper playlists) with a death metal band from Connecticut. The owner, a bleary toady who acted like he memorized the Russian Mob's Guide to Etiquette (Rule no. 1: Lie), pulled out his Blackberry to show us the schedule - and the band was right there. When I pointed this out to him, he, with a straight face, went to another page that was totally blank as 'proof' he didn't have anyone else on the calendar. Needless to say, we had to wait out the metal act (who, predictably, sucked) and the strippers hated our music. Still, that party wasn't quite as bad as the time we got bumped for a Mexican bachelorette party.

3. Who the hell reads books from CP, are they political, new-age, sci-fi, erotic, animated, academic, twisted or what?

Basically, the disassociated and the desperate. Sure, sometimes, we'll get a prisoner here and there, and other times, a celebrity will drop us a line of gratitude for our existence (like, say, Mark Bowden, the author of Black Hawk Down and Hershel Gordon Lewis, the gore maestro who brought the world 2,000 Maniacs), but mostly it's hipsters who love our books as fashion accessories, the unemployable, who appear to like the colors and the misanthropic, terribly loyal, niche of pulp freaks who love the crime, twists, femme fatales and bizarre grab bag of overripe, luscious, funny and bleak narrative-driven genre novels which don't take themselves too seriously. We reach for the people who would be most like us and go straight for the Cult section of the video store and buy books because of the (sexy) cover.

4. Do people really read anymore? Why should they?

It's surprising, but yes. And they will continue to do so because it's something that you can do alone - yet anywhere - with a light, easily portable, interactive, wireless device: A book. Moreover, CP figures that there are a huge number of people out there who like well-told tales of two-fisted fury all told in two hundred pages or so. They have sex, adult situations, violence, perversity, adult humor and language; so, we're trying to figure out who really digs that kind of reading.

5. What do you think are some essential titles/authors/publishers that people should be familiar with? Why?

One of the best things about independent publishing are the other publishers. So many people are doing so many cool and weird things. Like our friend Jen Josephs at ManicD Press out of San Francisco. Jen is a New York refugee who swears a blue-streak and ekes out a living putting out books like the brilliant "In me Own Words: the Autobiography of Bigfoot" by Graham Roumieu and the works of cartoonist Keith Knight and writer Jennifer Blowdryer. Then there are our friends at UglyTown in LA, who do the dames, booze and bullets thing with gusto and talent. I'm also a fan of Bob Self's Baby Tattoo publishing company, which puts out some wildly inventive kid and adult illustrated work.

Plus, I got to send out props to Todd Robinson, one of our writers, for his thuglit.com e-zine.

6. What are the craziest, most bizarre and/or useless book ideas you've ever received?

When one of your taglines is "Fuck Literature", you're pretty much asking for it. We sent out a submission request for our first short story collection Danger City and we received some of the most twisted, odd, tone-deaf submissions you could ever imagine. And then there were the ones we didn't put in the collection. By unanimous consent, the one that we felt was the Ulysses of really bad ideas (not necessarily prose, style or otherwise) was titled simply A Surprise from Behind. Now, I have to admit, when I heard the title, I thought "Shit, this sounds like a gay porn title", because, well, I automatically think in terms of porn titles, but what made this so wrong is that the title pretty much spelled out the ending in exactly the way I had initially imagined it. The story wasn't particularly violent or, really, sexual in any way, it played more like the punchline of a practical joke (Ha-ha!). So, just to clue in any of your readers, if you are thinking about writing a nearly sexless, plotless story where a guy gets cornholed by surprise, don't. It's already been done.

7. How do aspiring writers, artists, editors, go about getting involved with a small press like CP?
What are differences/advantages/disadvantages of a small publisher and major publisher?

We have submission guidelines on our website (www.contemporarypress.com) that I urge anyone who is interested in writing for us to read before doing anything else - as do most other small presses. It's imperative that aspiring authors understand the basics, lest they fail the first test: reading comprehension.

The advantages to working with a press like us: We have national distribution, a national (albeit small) following and, as my mom says, a great potential to break through, all while you get the personal treatment throughout the company. Our interns will peel grapes for you while our editors massage your text line by line, word by word, until it feels fresh and well attended to and finally, we throw a party in your honor for all of your hard work and stunning vision.

The disadvantages: Most likely, you'll never see dime one. Now, that could change. Maybe yours is the book that hits big, if that happens, you'd rather be with CP than Random House. They pay their editors. We don't. We give the author a big chunk of actual profits, they skim off the top to pay executives for running their stock into the ground.

It's simple. We give voice to the voiceless. We cut the long odds of publishing success from preposterous to merely astronomical. And we have tons more fun (did I mention our interns?).

8. Is your mom proud of what you do? Is running CP rewarding, how?

Just to give you a sense of the kind of woman my mother is, she sent out copies of my book G.O.P D.O.A. to most of her friends for Christmas. My mother-in-law, however, won't open the cover.

But then, none of us at CP do it for the parents. We do it for the kids. To see the smile on one delinquent's face after they read one of Mike Segretto's books is almost reward enough. But even more rewarding is when they don't steal the book, but actually by it and then tell all their friends to buy one too.

9. What are the future plans for CP?

Media domination, basically. We're talking with financial people right now on how we can best manage a hostile takeover of News Corp. At first they laughed, but when we told them our strategy of running down the halls at Fox News and threatening Bill O'Reilly with the "Surprise from Behind", they stopped laughing entirely. I think we're probably on some FBI watch list now.

Short of that, we're hoping to break even and get some well-deserved good reviews for our upcoming releases I, an Actress, The Bride of Trash and Digging the Vein, by Jeffrey Dinsmore, Mike Segretto and Tony O'Neill respectively. It's a good sampler of the deviancy, imagination and lust for life we pack into every release (was that over-the-top enough?).

10. What would happen if the Broken Dollz crew went out drinking with the CP crew, and don't skimp on the sexy details?

First, we sacrifice a virgin, or if we're short one, we do a round of tequila shots (it's funny, we've yet to meet a virgin). Then, once properly motivated, we hit the town. We had one fellow publisher, who shall remain nameless, naked on a platform bitching that he didn't win the hot body contest by the end of one of our pub crawls.

Second, you have to realize that we even have hot women as business partners, so we get envious looks no matter where we go. So think dancing, sultry, smoking hot, black fishnet wearing femme fatales trying to edge closer and closer to the heat CP packs, interns at the ready with whips, whipped cream and monstrous thirsts and…

Well, really who knows? We're in NYC, we know people. Sky's the limit.

interview by: Mike Hammer