In House: How a Podcast and a Kickstarter Helped Build Shadowpaw Press

When I started Shadowpaw Press back in early 2018, I had no thought of it becoming a traditional publishing house, publishing everything from literary fiction to poetry to children’s books to science fiction and fantasy. And yet, that’s what it’s become, thanks in large part to the Shapers of Worlds science fiction and fantasy anthologies, which began in 2019 and concluded earlier this year with Volume V in the series.

I had no thought of publishing anthologies, either, when I started Shadowpaw Press. My first two books were a collection of my own short fiction, Paths to the Stars, and the First World War memoirs of my grandfather-in-law, Sampson J. Goodfellow, entitled One Lucky Devil. The were published in ebook and POD editions, the publishing model I thought Shadowpaw Press would be locked into indefinitely.

But late in 2018, I started a podcast, something I’d thought about for a long time, since I’d been a radio and TV host or recurring guest for several years by that point and also had experience interviewing people through my early years as a newspaper reporter in Weyburn, Saskatchewan.

I called the podcast The Worldshapers, because it was focused on talking to science fiction and fantasy authors about their creative process—and also because its launch coincided with the first book in a new series I was writing for my primary publisher, DAW Books in New York, called Worldshaper and launching a series called Worldshapers.

Fast forward to early 2019. I was still putting out ebook and POD editions only, mostly of my own books whose rights had reverted to me. However, I’d joined SaskBooks, the association of Saskatchewan publishers, and that year, at the annual meeting in Saskatoon, one of the presenters was a Winnipeg publisher who had had success Kickstarting an anthology of science fiction and fantasy short stories.

I thought, Hey, I know all these authors I’ve been interviewing for The Worldshapers. That presentation lit a spark that culminated, later that year and after a rather steep ascent up the learning curve of Kickstarting, in a successful crowdfunding campaign for the first Shapers of Worlds anthology, featuring eighteens stories by my first-year guests, internationally bestselling and award-winning authors among them.

I published it, of course, through Shadowpaw Press, and suddenly, my little publishing company was putting out something featuring major authors and garnering attention as a result.

Having succeeded at one Kickstarter, I decided to do it again the next year. Shapers of Worlds Volume II had even more stories by a similarly stellar cast of authors—and it coincided pretty closely with my publishing of The Emir’s Falcon by Matt Hughes and Thickwood by Gayle M. Smith. The former had been offered to me by Matt partly because we knew each other through Canadian writing circles and partly because of my publishing of the first Shapers of Worlds anthology, so already, the anthologies were having an impact on my publishing house. Gayle’s book came to my attention when I was writer-in-residence at the Saskatoon Public Library in 2019-2020, and I was thrilled to publish it.

With those two books and the two anthologies to that point, plus some reprints I took on, I was suddenly publishing more books by other authors than I was publishing my own books—and Shadowpaw Press was on its way to becoming the rather over-active little publisher it is now, a member of Literary Press Group and the Association of Canadian Publishers.

But through it all, the Shapers of Worlds anthologies have continued, each featuring authors from an additional year of the interviews on the podcast, culminating earlier this year in the release of Shapers of Worlds Volume V.

That will be the last in the series because the podcast has changed focus: I now talk to authors in more genres than science fiction and fantasy, and we talk more about new releases than the creative process, although we certainly still talk about that, too.

Appropriately, perhaps, given how important this anthology series has been to the development of Shadowpaw Press, one reason the podcast has changed focus is that I wanted to be able to interview my own authors, no matter what kind of books they write.

I’ve learned a lot as a publisher and editor through putting out these anthologies each year. I’ve had to craft and negotiate contracts with, at this point, around 100 authors, many of whom work with major publishers. In some cases, I’ve been negotiating with their agents—a new experience and a valuable one.

Editing so many different authors of so many different kinds of stories—because these are “big-tent” anthologies whose tales run the gamut from YA to horror to sword and sorcery to near-future science fiction to space opera—has also been a fascinating experience. All the authors have been a joy to work with, although a few of them were a bit startled to see their spellings changed to Canadian versions.

These last two books have also featured illustrations by Calgary artist Wendi Nordell, and that has also been fascinating. I love the way illustrations provide authors and other readers an insight into the images conjured in one particular reader’s mind by the author’s words.

The Shapers of Worlds anthologies have spanned the entire history of Shadowpaw Press to date and were integral to its growing into what it has become, introducing many new readers to the press and to a wide variety of authors—including many Canadian writers of science fiction and fantasy.

I’m sorry to see them end, but as I wrote in my introduction to this final volume, the concept of a five-year mission really resonates with science fiction writers. The Shapers of Worlds anthologies have certainly explored strange new worlds and civilizations in their five-year mission, and along the way, have helped build and strengthen Shadowpaw Press.

I’m thrilled and honoured to have published them, and I hope new readers continue to discover them and enjoy them for many years to come.

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Thanks to Edward Willett for sharing the unexpected evolution of Shadowpaw Press. Check out The Worldshapers podcast here.