Despite repeated rejection, Maulucci continued to seek publication for his literary novels with commercial publishers and received encouragement from several editors, including Robert Giroux at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, but no sales. He also tried several small presses, but soon discovered that they had their own specialized areas and the work he was doing did not seem to fit with any of them. Only recently has he come to the realization that being an Italian American author means not belonging to a convenient ethnic category acceptable under the paradigm of multiculturalism. It was after several years of knocking on their doors that Maulucci became disillusioned with both privately-run small presses and corporate-owned commercial publishers and made the important decision to form his own press to publish his own works. After reading about the early self-publishing experiences of now-established writers such as Walt Whitman, Anais Nin and Virginia Woolf, Maulucci was inspired to form his own book publishing venture and Lorenzo Press was born in 1994.
Why be an Independent Publisher?
Owning the means of production to publishing one's own work is tremendously empowering. All authors want complete artistic control of their work. The only way to have this freedom is to print and distribute one's own books. As a publisher/author, one is free to create literary work without compromising its integrity.
If you believe in your book and have worked hard to create an honest, artistic work that comes out of your heart and soul in your own original voice, then why not make it available to readers in book form? Publishing a book yourself allows readers to gain access to your writing and make their own decisions about its literary merit. There should be no stigma attached to this process. If a book has artistic merit, it matters nothing at all in the long run whether it was published by Knopf or your own company. Playwrights stage their own plays, painters exhibit their work in their own studios, filmmakers produce and distribute their own films, and musicians start their own labels. Why shouldn't authors own and run their own publishing companies?
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