the biggest difference between self publishing publishing besides just the
income stuff the money part of it is that you have to do everything if you
saw publish it so you have to be the one to promote it you have to be the one to
send those emails to conductors when you find out who's conducting at various all
state groups or who gets invited to Midwest you have to be the one to
contact them and say I have a new piece and it takes a lot of time you have to
be the one to go to those conventions and meet the directors and shake their
hand and you know say you know go to their concerts and talk to them after
and I feel like it doesn't really ever stop being necessary I self publish
everything and that was it turns out a really good business decision but I
that's not why I did it I did it because nobody wanted my music honestly so I had
music and nobody seemed interested in it I had breadline Tango for band and a
major publisher of concert music of like orchestra music that I loved they
published band music too and they wanted the band version of red line tango it
was already getting quite a bit of play and I was able to keep up with it on my
own and I thought about why would I go with this big publisher it would be a
huge like you know 15 year old me would think that would be so cool to be
published by the same company that published all these superstar composers
of the 20th century but I realized that when I saw what the percentages were I
thought that doesn't really make any sense I if I ever hope to make a living
just from writing and not teaching or anything else I need to retain the
copyrights and get a hundred percent of that and as long as I came up with the
paperwork I think I can do that and I was able to keep up with the paperwork
for a long time but then I was writing less and less music because it did
become a lot of work to ship all the assets out the first piece that I wrote
there was a sales piece that had a lot of volume to it was a piece called
undertow that was commissioned by Cheryl Floyd's band hill country middle school
in Austin and they'd commissioned several already at that point very
successful pieces Cajun folk songs from - Kelly Shenandoah they commissioned
from - Kelly and basically everything that that group
was commissioning was doing really great and sheriff white asked me to write a
piece for them I said yes and I wrote under tow and I didn't know what to do
with it because my other pieces prior to that were all these collegiate level
very difficult rental only pieces and now I had something that was you
you know you'd need to be able to buy physical copies because middle school
and high school bands for the most part neat want to purchase it not rent it
like I do with my upper level stuff I remember not knowing what to do and I
talked to Cheryl Floyd's husband Richard Floyd and I said do you have any
thoughts on this because he was very connected in the state of Texas where I
lived and knew everybody I said what do I do and he said let me make a phone
call for you and he called pepper and I don't know
whom he spoke to but within a day or two I got this at the time for me huge order
from pepper they said we're gonna make you guys said we're gonna make this an
editor's choice pic and we're gonna put on our promotional CDs that you guys
were sending out at the time and so we need I think it was like 10 cents
Wow I can't even imagine selling 10 copies of something in a day and so I
went to the UPS Store and I had them make copies of the parts and I had a
printer that could print 12 by 18 paper and so I printed the score and I hand
folded every page and Longreach staple bound it and I stuck it all in a manila
envelope and sent you guys ten copies that I was like sweet that is that is
amazing I'm gonna be able to eat today and I was so excited and not like two
days later you guys ordered 20 more sets look okay great and so I did it again
and I spent a whole day making 20 more sets for pepper within a week or two you
ordered fifty or a hundred sets more and I was like I can't do that I don't know
what to do it's not easy to find printers that know how to print music
because it's very particular I used to have scores copied at Kinkos and they
would make an 11 by 17 score but bind it along the top so it was like a calendar
like that's not how you read a score I was happy to find someone who could do
the printing and I ordered the sets and it was only affordable if I got 500 sets
and I thought well Oh ventually it'll take twenty years but I will sell 500
sets on this thing and it was cheaper and cheap enough
compared to 250 sets they was worth doing so I'm new home one day in Austin
Texas where I lived at the time and I get this phone call my cell phone it's
super noisy like there's an engine or something in the background and this
guy's like where's your loading dock I'm like what are you talking about
I'm just a guy in the suburbs basically he's like well then you got a problem
because I need a loading dock look I think you have a wrong number I'm pretty
sure I don't need a loading dock he said did you were like music or something
like oh no I did he's like yeah I've got 1500 pounds of music on my semi for you
and I said okay I'll bite then I gave him the address he pulled up this
18-wheeler on my street and I go out there and he's like here's your pallet
of music and I'm like what am I supposed to do with a pallet music is big
it weighed 1500 pounds and so like what do I do with that he's like well you
know they didn't pay for a lift gate access I'm like what's lift gate access
I don't know any these things mean he's like that means that you've got to get
this off the truck but I weigh 110 pounds like I can't lift 1,500 pounds
we're gonna be here for a week if I try to do that he's like well I'll know what
to tell ya I said do you have like a pallet mover on the truck or something
he's like yeah I said well I have $40 he's like well then I have a pallet
mover for you and so he's got his pallet mover and moved this huge pallet into my
dry or under my garage and I was like what in the world am i doing and that
was one piece now I had one piece and it took up half of my garage and now I have
what 30 pieces or something so eventually became in birding some to
have that kind of inventory managed and so I had to find you know ways to print
it that I could print small smaller quantities at a time without having to
pay a lot more money and it's been a real process over the years so I was
looking for somebody to print my music and was told that pepper would be
willing to do that for me you guys have this massive warehouse so once it's
printed you guys can hold it and as long as I need it held you also can
just print for me five copies at a time that I can get as soon as I need them
basically they can go spend incredibly fast on that that allows us to not have
to manage inventory in a way that requires much knowledge about how well a
piece is going to sell like if I have a new piece I might hope it's gonna sell a
ton of copies right away and in the old model I would have had to have printed
enough copies to be ready if that happened but if it didn't happen then I
potentially hundreds of copies of a piece that just get tossed eventually or
who knows what you guys can print smaller quantities for me as needed like
on demand essentially and that allows me to have more pieces have a manageable
inventory you guys have been willing to dropship a lot for us when we have a
larger order that you know it's a lot for us to put together and box you guys
can do it faster than we can now even if it means printing copies fresh like that
day or with soon within a week or whatever and shipping amount sometimes
it's still even faster than we can do on our own so it's allowed me to remain
self-published not have to turn over control to anybody else I can still
retain all the copyrights and it's been just an ideal model for me I don't think
I could function honestly as a self-published composer anymore with a
catalogue that sighs if pepper wasn't managing for me