I do not believe the future of publishing is choosing between books and technology. I believe it is knowing what each is for.
Why I Built B&F
B&F Publishing began with a practical problem: I wanted a publishing home capable of treating a novel as a complete literary work while still understanding everything that might come after it.
A book may become an audiobook. A character may become the center of a visual campaign. A fictional world may grow into a media property. A scene may eventually need to be translated into screenplay form. None of those possibilities should require the original story to surrender its identity.
So the company was built around the book first, with the rest of the infrastructure developing around it.
Character Before Camera
The phrase cinematic fiction can be misunderstood. To me, cinematic writing is not prose that tries to behave like a screenplay. A novel can do things a camera cannot: enter a memory, hold a thought, compress years into a sentence, linger inside uncertainty, and let a reader hear the private language of a character.
What cinematic discipline adds is clarity. Where are we? What can the character see? What changes in the scene? What is being withheld? What does the body do when the mouth says something else? What would remain if a camera had to witness the moment?
That kind of thinking makes novels stronger even if they never become films.
Teaching Before Recruiting
I also believe publishers can meet writers earlier. B&F’s long-term author-development strategy includes public teaching around writing craft: how to build a scene, how to control point of view, how to write dialogue with purpose, how to move from internal thought to external action, and how to understand the difference between a novel and its eventual screenplay.
The objective is not to teach writers a formula or recruit them into a publishing funnel. It is to help writers become better authors. If, years later, one of those authors completes a manuscript and thinks first of the publisher that helped them understand the craft, that relationship has been earned rather than manufactured. That work is described on Developing Authors.
A Selective House
B&F will remain selective by design. Attention is a publishing resource. Editing is a publishing resource. Marketing is a publishing resource. Rights stewardship is a publishing resource. A small house should not imitate the volume of a large one if doing so destroys the reason for being small.
I would rather publish fewer books and understand them deeply. Submissions are closed while that standard is being built.
What I Hope B&F Becomes
I want B&F Publishing to be known for authors whose books are complete reading experiences and whose stories are developed with the intelligence to cross formats when the opportunity is real.
Books. Audiobooks. Screenplays. Connected media. New technology. Those are tools and formats. The enduring asset is still the story—and the people inside it.
— Rod K, Publisher & Editor