2014 represents a significant milestone for IFWG Publishing, including IFWG Australia, for a number of reasons.

To begin with, I would like to say something about Randy Knowlton – R.A. Knowlton to some. Randy was one of four of us that got excited about helping burgeoning writers in the speculative fiction field, and decided to do something about creating a small press – IFWG Publishing. He was the most vocal and active to start with, and if it wasn’t for his amazing energy, we would never have got off the ground. Randy has a lot on his plate at the moment, and he has decided to resign from his Managing Director position, and it is with a high level of sadness we must accept his decision, and pay homage to his role in creating and directing our company. Vale, Randy, and we very much look forward to work with you in the future!

2013 was a bad year for us – our headquarters was subject to Mother Nature’s poor moods, and since our company was incorporated in the United States, the recession, and some seriously poor State Laws had an adverse affect on us. However, with some hard decision-making and cutting of some losses, we made a sober decision – to move much of our financial and legal core to Australia, and create an Australian imprint of IFWG Australia at the same time. With Randy’s resignation, this was a fortuitous decision, as we have now moved all of IFWG Publishing (International) and IFWG Publishing Australia, to Australia, which has addressed all of our immediate issues.

For those of you who have been closely following IFWG’s activities over the last several months, you would have noticed a significant step-up of activity in publishing. This is not a coincidence – we are catching up on our backlog.

IFWG Publishing and IFWG Publishing Australia are now vibrant, active publishing houses and for the foreseeable future, will remain in the current corporate configuration – IFWG Australia will publishing Australian, New Zealand and United Kingdom titles, and all remaining will be published under the banner of IFWG Publishing. This makes sense, and we have printers and distributors who will support this demarcation.

We have already moved some titles that were originally published under the International imprint to our Australian operations (the Brumbies series), and we will move others this year – A Magpie Called Will and Against the Elements. These are titles produced by Australian and UK authors, originally for Australian and UK readers. Most of our other titles are US, although there is a smattering of Nigerian, Canadian and South African work. These are more sensibly grouped together under our international imprint. It works, and we are comfortable with this separation. Since the corporate base has shifted from Missouri to Australia, we want to make it absolutely clear that we will continue to support North American and African products one hundred percent.

2014 will continue the positive trend. We will be publishing fewer work than previous years (only just), but it will be controlled and sensible. We still have commitments for Australian and US work, and these will be priorities for us. Additionally, we will soon open to submissions, but it will be a short lived pipeline and very particular in targeted genres/sub-genres. While we will be restricted in introducing new talent into the marketplace in 2014, we will also be a more viable operation. Have patience with us.

For IFWG Publishing International, we will be publishing titles that continue series among some of our authors, including Elizabeth Lang (the third instalment of The Empire series) and Larry Ivkovich (a sequel to The Sixth Precept – this may flow into a later year). We will be publishing a new, stand-alone title by MF Burbaugh (Olgreender’s Search For History), a fantasy piece by Warren Goodwin (Buxacan Spicerunner), The Pouakai by David Sperry, and a much-anticipated children’s title by Jack Eason and Frances Hutt (The Adventures of Ursus the Bear). There is room for one or two more works.

IFWG Australia, is, by its scale, a smaller operation, and yet we will be publishing a reasonable number of new work. Continuing 2013’s children’s literature momentum, we will be publishing 2 (possibly 3) titles by Rolf Svenson (The Adventures of Teddy and Karl; and one or two multimedia titles on the alphabet and numeracy). We will also publish the last two instalments of the Brumbies series by Paula Boer and Rowena Evans, as well as a stand alone work by Rowena called Sealskin Coast. In the adult fiction field, we will be publishing Star Quake 2 (the best fiction from SQ Mag 2013), and will be looking to producing a specialised anthology of speculative fiction, probably in the dark fantasy/horror space.

No doubt there might be more work for 2014.

All in all, we are very happy with our record for 2013 and our plans for 2014. We hope that all of you, our readers, will also have a sense of achievement for last year, and a productive New Year.

Gerry Huntman
Managing Director, IFWG Publishing
Managing Director, IFWG Publishing Australia
Publisher, SQ Mag