New Year's Day saw a big shake up at Marcher Lord Press with the sale of the company to Agent Steve Laube:

(Phoenix, AZ) Steve Laube, president of The Steve Laube Agency, has agreed to
purchase Marcher Lord Press, the premier publisher of Science Fiction and Fantasy for the Christian market. The sale was finalized on January 1, 2014.


Laube has long been a champion of the genre, going back to his days as an acquisition editor at Bethany House Publishers. Jeff Gerke, the founder of Marcher Lord Press, said “I could not have found a better person to buy the company I started in 2008.”


The new Marcher Lord Press will be run as a separate company from Steve Laube’s
literary agency. The agency, founded in 2004, has four agents and over 150 active
authors (www.stevelaube.com) with contracts for nearly 1,000 new books. Gerke will
focus his efforts on his freelance editorial and publishing service business and his own writing.


“The plan is to continue with what Jeff started and release between 4-8 new titles in 2014,” Laube said. “I have long believed that this genre has been underserved in our industry despite its inherent ability to tell ‘Fantastic’ stories of philosophical and
theological depth.”

In addition to this, Laube decided to jettison Marcher Lord Press' Hinterlands imprint as well as Amish Vampires in Space which was not part of Hinterlands.

I guess I have several thoughts regarding this move.

First, regarding Jeff Gerke. I really think fans of Christian speculative fiction owe him a debt of thanks for the years he's put into promoting the genre and for getting the idea of Marcher Lord Press off the ground. He has been and I'm sure he will continue to be a great resource for Christian writers and in particular, writers of speculative fiction.

At Marcher Lord, he's helped launch the careers of great authors such as Jill Williamsonand John Otte and that's a credit to what MLP has done.

I've wondered occasionally as I've listened to Jeff's instruction as to when he'd get a chance to tell the stories he had to tell and it looks like that he'll get that chance in the near future. Though I suspect some of this will be non-fiction. He mentioned a pretty interesting topic at last year's Realm Makers conference which will be quite a read. Again, I can only pray God blesses him and just wish him all the best as he transitions.

I also respect the decision to sell to Mr. Laube. As important as the company was to Chrstian fiction, it was no doubt just as important to Jeff to find someone who would take it in the right direction.

Clearly, no one knows how this will go which is what makes criticizing the decision silly. Who knows? Mr. Laube could be the one who can build on the foundation of MLP and take the company to the next level.

And as author Morgan Busse pointed out this decision was bathed in prayer, which is probably a better measure of the quality of the decision than an immediate gut reaction of, "Oh no you didn't!"

Mr. Laube believes in the genre and has advocated for it at Bethany House. He has a passion for it and that's good.

As to the cancellation of the Hinterlands imprint including Vox Day's book as well as Amish Vampires in Space, I really don't like the idea of cancelling published books prematurely, but neither author is all that upset about it and both books will remain available.

Hinterlands with its use of mature content was always a bit problematic. I think it worked for Vox Day but really wasn't part of the wider future of the company.

As to Amish Vampires in Space, I feel that Laube may have made a mistake.

On one hand, I'm not a big fan of vampire fiction. On the other, the crowd at Realm Makers cheered wildly when Gerke announced the title. It sounded very quirky and fun and it wasn't part of Hinterlands. It'd gotten some national attention with a mention by Dave Barry. Removing it from the MLP catalog may be part of what's bothering people about the sale because of what they're interpreting it to mean: That the new MLP is going be very bland and overly cautious with the titles it publishes.

Really, I think the only thing for Laube to do is really get to know and establish great contacts within that community of Christian Speculative writers. His ability to do that will determine whether Marcher Lord Press will continue to inspire the support of fans of Christian Speculative Fiction.