If you are a reader of From Ashe, you noticed that Sebastian Graham was an editor at Meteora Press. Funnily enough, Meteora Press is a name that has not been claimed in the United States so… I filed a trademark with the intent to “Do Business As” Meteora Press.
This morning, I received a notification from the United States government that my trademark was approved! This means, I legally own the name and have legal permission to do business as this registered trademark.
So, what is Meteora Press going to be?
Simply, it’s going to be my private publishing label. Final Hope will be relaunching under the Meteora Press name and My Girlfriend Was Delivered by 2-Day Shipping will be the first commercially-available book/ebook to be under this brand name as well.
A.R. Dragonfly and From Ashe will not be under this label; however. Only new works going forward.
So, why go with a trademark instead of an LLC?
Because I’m not an actual business.
To be considered an actual business, I would need to go through a printing company to have my books printed (way more expensive than print-on-demand). I would need to keep a physical stock in my house (not enough room), and I would have to sell the books to you directly and accept money from you directly.
I don’t do any of that. I let companies like Amazon handle all of the work. I accept royalties from each sale and pay taxes at the start of every year. Therefore, I am in a partnership with another company… not an actual company itself, so an LLC didn’t make sense; however, a trademark did.
With a trademark, I still own the name and it covers the ability to do business as that name without actually being a business. In fact, it explicitly even gave an example on the USPTO website that you can label books you self-publish under the trademarked name which was exactly what I was looking to do.
With that being said, Meteora Press has been born, and, again, all future releases will now be under this brand with the exception of the two series I mentioned.
I feel this adds a layer of professionalism to my work and if there is one thing people need to know about business… It’s that optics matter!