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Kyanite Publishing Selects Urban College of Boston as “Giving Tuesday” Partner

Denver, Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts – October 20, 2020 – Kyanite Publishing LLC will be partnering with Urban College of Boston for Giving Tuesday to support the college’s mission and students. Urban College of Boston is a private, non-profit college located in Boston, Massachusetts. Offering associate degrees and certificates, Urban College of Boston opens new pathways to opportunity through individualized, supportive, and multilingual education that prepares a diverse community of learners to pursue career advancement and transform their lives.

Serving a student population primarily comprised of immigrant women in their late 30s working in the early childhood education field, Urban College of Boston has seen the impact of the pandemic and associated economic crisis on its students. “The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the reality that – due to centuries of racial inequity – our students are disproportionately likely to be negatively affected by this profound health, economic, and social crisis,” said Michael Taylor, Urban College of Boston’s President. “Our remarkable, resilient students are persisting to attend college courses remotely, advance their careers, and parent their children through remote or hybrid schooling, while caring for ill relatives in crowded housing and facing job loss or exposure to the coronavirus as essential workers.”

Funds raised through this Giving Tuesday partnership will go directly to support student success through course scholarships and free tutoring. Daniel Dickinson, Marketing Coordinator, along with Managing Editor, Crystal L. Kirkham, met with staff from Urban College of Boston earlier in the month to discuss plans to help them raise money for their cause. “Helping the community has always been a core value with Kyanite Publishing, we believe that helping others grow, strengthens us all,” said Sam Hendricks during a recent interview.

Kyanite Publishing will donate all proceeds of eBooks sold through the Kyanite Publishing website (kyanitepublishing.com) to Urban College of Boston during Giving Tuesday, which takes place on December 1, 2020. Portions of sales made during the following week will also go towards the initiative. As new partners, Kyanite Publishing and Urban College of Boston look forward to joining thousands of other companies and non-profits across the United States and around the world uniting to raise funds for important causes.

About Kyanite Publishing
Kyanite Publishing was established in 2018 by three entrepreneurs who at their core have valued giving back to their communities. The authors and staff who work with Kyanite Publishing also share these sentiments. The indie publishing company has grown to over one hundred authors and contributors over the years, with an impressive library of books ranging in genre from romance to Sci-Fi and other speculative and blended fiction.

About Urban College of Boston
Urban College of Boston is a private, non-profit college granting Associate of Arts degrees in Early Childhood Education, General Studies, and Human Services Administration, and offering over ten certificate programs. Determined and resilient, UCB students usually attend college half-time, while working full-time and raising a family. UCB has long served an ethnically- and racially-diverse student body; of the over 1,400 students enrolled during the 2019-2020 academic year, 60% identified as Latinx, 18% as Black or African American, 14% as Asian, 5% as White, and 4% as another race or ethnicity. During the 2019-2020 academic year, 89% of students were women and the average age was 36. UCB offers classes in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Haitian Creole. For more information, please visit: https://www.urbancollege.edu/.

Launching Today: Pre-Order Packages for Night Life and The Assimilation Agent

Hello again, readers!

We’re writing again today to tell you about our first ever pre-order packages, launching today!

Night Life, Book Two in the Night Trilogy by B.K. Bass, features three packages: Kyanite, Tanzanite, and Quartzite. All three packages include something exclusive that you can’t get anywhere else. Check them out!
The Assimilation Agent, Book One by Sam Hendricks, features the same tiers: Kyanite, Tanzanite, and Quartzite. All three packages include something exclusive and different based on this book/series. The Kyanite package includes TWO custom signed books, the eBook, a subscription to exclusive content here on the website, a sticker, and a bookmark for only $79! You really can’t get this anywhere else!

As you may have read here, we are launching our books with these exclusive pre-order campaigns because we want to connect with readers in more meaningful and entertaining ways. We also want to help authors earn royalties faster during these trying times, so we’ve accelerated our royalty payment schedule. These awesome packages are a rallying point for us and our authors to spread the word about our books prior to publication and offer our readers the chance to score great deals. We hope you’ll agree that they extend the power of our stories and inspire joy!

As always, we look forward to hearing your thoughts and serving you delicious morsels for free through our Kyanite Press online portal, and now through the Healing Worlds Project as well.

You may also be interested in our new Content Hub, which will feature exclusive essays, articles, genre studies, and short stories-all for a low monthly price.

Happy reading,
Sam & Brian

Back to Our Roots

Hello readers!

Though we are in trying times, opportunities continue to abound for some of us creators and business owners. Many of the ideas outlined below have been percolating since the inception of our company, while others are brand-spankin’ new. We are grateful to all of you for your patronage as we pivot and grow.

Here is a quick summary of the changes we’ll be making:

  1. Exclusive, one-time pre-order campaigns will now launch from our website a few months before release. Each release will feature three pre-order packages, ranging from premium (multiple custom signed books + merch + a content subscription on our website + eBooks) to downright affordable (signed book + ebook). We see this as a way to help our authors without asking for charity. Authors will receive their 50/50 split within 14 calendar days of each month-end–much faster than our traditional royalty accounting through our distributor.
  2. Books will still be listed with our distributors and will appear with retailers as usual. Amazon will likely also feature pre-orders. Barnes and Noble, Walmart, and Target may as well. Royalties from those sales will be paid as usual. This pre-order campaign will be exclusive on our website and through us, and will be in addition to everything we normally do.
  3. We are going to release some books sooner than we had previously scheduled. There are more readers requesting new content than we anticipated, and we want to meet the demand. Many of you have expressed excitement at the prospect of our books being released sooner. Thank you for sharing that with us! We are pleased to answer!
  4. We are introducing a new membership to a new sub-area of the website, which we’re (for now) calling the Content Hub. It’ll be filled with original fiction and non-fiction content. Exclusive access will be granted to people who purchase a 1, 3, or 6-month membership, or those who are given 12 months of access as part of a pre-order package.
  5. The free books on our website will be removed on April 30th. We will continue to offer free deals through Amazon.
  6. We will be adding content to Youtube and social media in order to further promote our authors and their books. We hope you’ll engage with us and get to know our catalog and our community. Both are spectacular.
  7. We’ll be using our email newsletter to deliver book recommendations, exclusive content, original short fiction and non-fiction, and book news. Please sign up if you haven’t yet!
  8. When things stabilize, we will adapt our approach to physical book events and expos. At this time, we have no events scheduled.

We appreciate you taking the time to read about our company and our authors and we are excited to share new work with you soon. Stay tuned for the first pre-order launches later today!

Where the Sun Always Shines

The idea of this anthology is to provide people with escapism stories with feel good, happy endings.

We are proud to share that our very own Crystal L. Kirkham has taken the reins of a new anthology project aimed at collecting uplifting, feel-good, happy ending stories to shine some light in these dark times in which we are living.

We will be partnering with Crystal to help bring this project to the world. In addition to providing the cover shown, we will be organizing the licensing, copyrighting, ISBN, and other publishing details. We will also be hosting the finished product on our website for free. This is a volunteer-based project, and as such there will never be a charge for the book.

To find out more about submitting to this anthology, please visit Crystal L. Kirkham’s website, HERE.

To ensure timely processing, please do not submit queries or stories to our email. We are only handling the back-end production and distribution, while Crystal is leading the way from the front on this. Any questions should be directed to the email address listed on the page linked above.

Healing Words Project

We’re looking for short stories to offer on our website for free to give people some diversion during the global crisis.

Here at Kyanite Publishing, we have always been advocates for the power of storytelling to uplift the spirit, spread new ideas, and encourage new ways of looking at the world. We also believe in the value of escapism for the pure joy of leaving the real world behind, if even for only a little while.

We currently find ourselves in troubling times; in the midst of an unprecedented global crisis. Several of our authors have asked what they can do to help. We feel that through storytelling, we can do our part in providing a little distraction, and maybe a little hope, to people who are going through some tough times right now.

In the interest of this, we’re launching a new column of the Kyanite Press Online, the web-based counterpart to our literary journal. The Healing Words Project will be a home for stories donated by authors and freely available to the public.

What we’re looking for:

Short stories between 1,000 and 5,000 words.
Genres: Any science fiction or fantasy.
Terms: Licensing agreement, no transfer of rights, no exclusivity.
Compensation: Volunteer only, as this is a public service project and the content will be provided to the public for free.
Deadline: Open-ended. An announcement will be made at least 10 business days prior to the project being cut off.

Note: We’d like to avoid any apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, or heavy dystopian fiction for this project. We’re going to favor the lighter side of things this time around.
 

How to submit: Send an email to [email protected] with “Healing Words” in the subject line, along with your story in .doc or .docx format and a short pitch letting us know what it’s about.

What to expect: Honestly, we’re launching this on the fly and playing it by ear. We will confirm any submissions within 3 business days, and hope to make decisions on acceptance and send contracts within 10 business days of receipt. After that, it might take a week or two for editing, and you’ll have a chance to review any edits before the story is posted. Keep in mind these are all estimates.

The Fine Print: All submissions will be considered private and confidential until a licensing agreement is signed. Kyanite Publishing, LLC, and its representatives, reserve the right to accept or decline any submissions for any reason, objective or subjective. A licensing agreement will be offered and must be digitally signed before any content is posted. Copyright of all works submitted for the Healing Words Project and/or The Kyanite Press Online remains the property of the work’s author. For more information, contact B.K. Bass at [email protected].

Release Schedule Changes

In light of the current global emergency, we at Kyanite Publishing have decided to suspend all upcoming releases until the situation becomes more stable. This has been a difficult decision, but for several reasons we feel this is the most responsible thing for us to do.

Our first concern is the satisfaction of our readers. Amazon has announced that they will be prioritizing delivery of essential products—such as food, medicine, and household supplies—over all other products. Also, our distributor is taking steps to protect their staff and will be scaling back their operations, which is cutting off the opportunity to list new titles and fulfill print orders. We anticipate other arms of the global delivery infrastructure will be impacted by the situation, as well. As a result, delivery of new titles may not be possible.

Also, because of distribution delays for print orders, please be aware that purchases of print copies of our existing catalog will likely be delayed for the duration of the crisis.

We are also concerned about the social impact of our upcoming titles, many of which deal with themes of dystopian and apocalyptic futures. Right now, we feel these themes will hit too close to home. Out of respect for those who are dealing with these issues in a very real way right now, we feel this is not the right time to share these stories with the world.

Finally, as the global economy is affected by the pandemic and individuals find themselves unable to go to work, we do not feel that spending on entertainment products such as books and magazines should be a priority. We would much rather wait until better times to encourage entertainment spending, and instead encourage our global neighbors to focus on sustaining themselves and assisting each other with essentials such as food, medicine, and other necessities.

If there was an upcoming release you were planning to purchase from us in the upcoming months, we encourage you to instead consider donating that amount to a local charity, hospital, or relief agency—such as the Red Cross or Red Crescent.

That all being said, we want to assure you all that we are still operating as usual behind the scenes. Our currently available titles will remain available, and we will continue to work on preparing new titles for release in the future. We do not anticipate the cancellation of any titles. We see this as a temporary measure, and will be reevaluating our stance regularly as the situation changes.

In an effort to do our part to help in what ways we can during this crisis, we’ve also decided to offer some of our back-catalog of eBook titles for free. We understand that many people are spending long hours at home and the psychological health of our populations is as important as our physical health. Hopefully, a little reading material will help with this. We’re offering the entire first volume of the Kyanite Press journal of speculative fiction for free for the duration of the crisis, and will be rotating through books volunteered by our authors to be given away. We hope you enjoy these titles, and that a little escapism might make it just a little easier to cope with these troubling times. You can find all these titles here.

We’d also like to take this moment to wish everyone the best of health and safety.

Warmest regards and best wishes,

B.K. Bass
Editor-in-Chief, Kyanite Publishing, LLC

Sam Hendricks
Publisher, Kyanite Publishing, LLC

New Catalog Page!

We’re happy to announce that kyanitepublishing.com has an all new catalog page. Organized by author, title, and series; it’s now easier than ever to browse our titles and find your favorite author.

Each title in our catalog also has a completely redesigned landing page, complete with the book’s blurb, genre information, category and length, release dates, pricing, retail links, author bio, and reviews.

We’ve worked hard to make sure everything you need to know about each book is all in one place!

We’re very excited about this new design, and hope that everyone finds it easier to navigate than our old system. Unfortunately, this has come about due to the closing of our online store. Due to new U.S. tax laws that went into effect this year, we don’t currently have the infrastructure to process sales through our website. But, all our titles are readily available from a variety of quality booksellers!

We hope everybody will still consider kyanitepublishing.com their home for information on all the great new projects we’re working on, in addition to our beautiful and entertaining back catalog. Thank you all for being with us on this voyage!

Visions of Darkness, Volume One

We are now accepting dark fantasy submissions for Visions of Darkness, Volume One; the first of an annual dark fantasy anthology series.

What we are looking for

Genre: Dark Fantasy
Word Count: 7,500 – 20,000 words
Deadline: April 30, 2020

Please visit our Submissions page for submission guidelines and more information.

Kyanite Press Submissions Window

The submission window for Volume 2, Issue 3 has closed. Thank you to everybody who submitted for our Shattered Worlds issue. You should hear back from us within a couple weeks!

The submissions window is now open for Volume 2, issue 4: Autumn 2020!

Volume 2, Issue 4: Autumn 2020
Coming in August 2020

Theme: Visions of War

Preferred Genres*: military science fiction

Word Count: We are looking for short stories and novelettes ranging from 2,500 to 15,000 words, and poetry of up to 20 pages in length**.

Submission Deadline: April 30, 2020

Now Available: 50 Shades of Neigh by Stephen Coghlan

Written by prolific Canadian author Stephen Coghlan, 50 Shades of Neigh is a fantasy parody sure to please.

Now available in eBook and Paperback formats, we invite all voracious fantasy readers to purchase or rent their copy today!

A fun, twisted fairy tale for grown-ups with a unique, unpredictable story. If you grew up playing with My Little Pony while also pulling the heads off of Barbie Dolls (like I did), then you’ll get a kick out of this book. I also learned some stuff about anatomy that I didn’t know before…although it’s not really knowledge I’ll be able to put into practice.

Mel, from Kornicky & Mel in the Morning, Rebel 101.7 FM; Ottowa, ON, Canada

BOOK DETAILS

Title: 50 Shades of Neigh
Author: Stephen Coghlan
Formats: eBook, Paperback
Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal Fantasy, Fantasy Romance
Retailers: Kyanite Publishing, Chapters Indigo, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
ISBNs: eBook (978-1-949645-95-8); Paperback (978-1-949645-96-5)
Length: Novella, approximately 175 pages

BOOK BLURB

With the threat of World War 1 and its technological horrors looming, the heir apparent to the deadliest warrior kingdom, and home to honest-to-god Centaurs, must find a new path for her peoples before they are massacred in the trenches.

Journeying to America, she searches for a future free of death, but will her absence leave the kingdom vulnerable to her conniving siblings?

Note: this title contains graphic sexual imagery and content.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Hailing from the capital of the Great White North [Canada], Stephen Coghlan spends his days erecting buildings and his nights reveling in the dreamscape. Since 2017, he has produced a myriad of flash fictions, short stories, novellas, and novels, including, but not limited to, Urban Gothic, the GENMOS Saga, the Nobilis series, and has had his works read on podcasts and featured in anthologies.