This publishing company was started roughly two years ago and so much has changed between last year and now.
Here is a list of the updates as to what has happened:
A bad start to 2026 translates into better choices
With the shipping nightmares that were perpetrated by Donald Trump and then used as a way to make increasingly more profits by companies like UPS, the start of 2026 was total chaos for us. We had to stop shipping to the United States for a period as we were dealing with paying for deliveries twice and three times over, on top of drip fees because of the incredibly poor service by UPS. The year started in the red for several months even though books were being sold. We were paying to give away every book shipped, not pennies but in the neighbourhood of $20 per book.
Since then we worked out a solution that not only is actually cheaper for the buyer but more reliable and hassle free.
This shipping problem also showed other weak links in the chain. We had to part ways with 2 authors. From that we learned that apart from having a good manuscript, the foremost need is that the author has to understand and have experience with small presses and micro presses. So from that point, any interview with a new author has focused largely on that.
New Formats
Another change and this one is rather huge for a little publishing company like this: tons of new formats. You may have seen Morphic Trespass, which is John Biscello’s spoken word album that we released on vinyl and CD. This will be a continued format into the future if there are any circumstances that warrant this type of release.
There are also the zines! Like books, zines go out of print and struggle with the same issues as small publishing companies like us. Lack of distribution and/or no ability to sell to pay for the printing… zines are mostly a passionate endeavour and exist in the format they do for that reason. I thought maybe I could help in some way. So older zines and comics that are out of print and/or were never distributed that widely or at all, I am offering to distribute for free to the creator. I will print and mail them out and the cost on the site here is only to pay for that. Neither the creator or I make money from it. I just don’t want to see them die. I do this also as a way to archive their work in the public.
This leads me to another avenue that may seem a little odd but fits with my ethos: archiving videos and films. Since I have dabbled in short film for years, I am transferring and uploading all of the short films and home movies that I have come upon over the years. So on the Lost Telegram Press YouTube channel, there is basically two playlists; one is for these pieces of found footage and the other is for the podcast interviews that I do with authors. And because of those found footage uploads, the channel added a 1,000 views within about a week.
Equipment
We were able to get two industrial copiers second hand. One of them was rescued in a way as it was in such poor shape that it was destined for the dump. I wanted to try and see if I could save it. Well after a lot of cleaning and toner dust strewn all over the house, I was able to get the prints to be spotless. It is quite an old copier and black and white but I still think it has a lot of life left in it. The main copier we got is full colour and is in pristine shape. This saves a lot of time because although we were getting an amazing deal on the copying before, I didn’t want to keep relying on favours and kindness.
As far as cutting the books. An industrial guillotine cutter was being used for the books but the sheer power of it at times was too much for the books. I have switched to a hand-crank manual guillotine cutter at home and soon will try upgrading to an electric one.
The bookbinding changed too. Hand-gluing was too slow and costly. So in December of last year I purchased a bookbinding machine. It is still completely a hand-bound process but it has sped-up the process amazingly and has enough adjustment that I can correct any issues with it as time goes along.
Bookstores
Since we are such a small, handmade-book press, we don’t have the direct network that other publishers use to get their books into distribution. This is because most publishers use vanity presses to print their books and those vanity presses are already in direct contact with distribution networks. It is unlikely that Lost Telegram Press will ever be with a distribution network mostly because the accountability to the reader and the lack of direct contact with the reader is not really a relationship that I desire to any degree. On the bright side, some of the authors as well as myself have made some headway into personally developing relationships with bookstores. Stone’s Office Supply, here in Sault Ste. Marie has a bookshelf dedicated to local authors but was happy to allow all of the current Lost Telegram Press authors to have their books placed there.
Submissions
As far as submissions go, the numbers are mostly the same from last year with a few exceptions. The origin of the submissions came more from the United States and overseas than the previous year. One submission came from as far as Thailand. But from Canada, the submissions are down, even though we have published one work by a Canadian so far this year and two more to come soon from other Canadian authors. There are now more Canadian authors on the roster than last year.
The kinds of submissions have changed a little. Novella submissions almost doubled and novel submissions rose a little. But poetry was down by almost a third. Short story submissions fell a little but art and ‘other’ submissions stayed about the same.
Other Projects
Lost Telegram Press also started two other projects to promote the arts. We were able to get a grant from the City of Sault Ste. Marie to install a plaque on the boardwalk that commemorates Ernest Hemingway’s relationship with the city as a reporter for one of the Toronto newspapers back in the 20s (check Instagram). This plaque is part of a series of plaques that (hopefully) will be something we can be granted to create every year. Each plaque will display the relationship of a well-known writer to the city.
We also were asked to do the layout for a local arts and entertainment listing that is printed and distributed throughout the downtown area. It has the Lost Telegram Press logo and QR Code for the website. It has run for 10 issues by-weekly at this point.
So there has been massive steps forward from last year and any problems have been ironed out to keep things running steadily into the future. Thanks everyone for reading and helping this little company along!
