Matthew: Tell me some of the circumstances you have had to deal with as a small publisher of a single composer located in New York City.

With limited resources comes a need for great resourcefulness. A lot of what I've had to do is think very hard about what the essential tasks of a publisher are and to execute them in the most efficient ways possible. 

Providing perusal scores and recordings is best done over the web. Hiring a development team to create David's website would have been a great luxury. However, I am possessed of basic coding skills and an abiding interest in creating user experiences. I was able to use Wordpress, several commercial plugins, and quite a lot of thinking and testing to produce a perfectly serviceable product. We stream our music through Soundcloud, and serve perusal scores through print-restricted PDFs.  

 A core service that publishers provide is the production and delivery of printed music. Traditionally, this meant large orders of music to take advantage of economies of scale afforded by offset printing and custom binding solutions.This process makes sense when dealing with quantities on the order of 10,000 copies.  However, I'm dealing with quite complex music for large ensembles. Since ordering 10,000 copies of each one of these works, warehousing them, and managing the receiving, shipping, and inventorying processes would require a substantial capital investment with ongoing costs that would never be supported by our market, I required another solution.

Digital print on demand was that solution. It offers the flexibility of single-order print jobs, no inventory warehousing or management needs, and only minimal reduction in quality from offset printing. Doing this myself, though, was another matter. Purchasing printing and binding equipment, getting the necessary space for that equipment, and developing efficient operational processes would take a significant amount of money, thought, and time.

I was fortunate to find Matt Franko at Black Ribbon Printing. He is a musician and printer specializing in print-on-demand services for publishers of all sizes. After meeting with him and seeing the high quality and attention to detail that he delivers, I was more than happy to engage him as our sole provider of printed material. He has more than made good on his promise and we have enjoyed a happy working relationship for several years now.

 I understand that you are also actively working on trying to reclaim the copyrights on some of your father's works.  Tell me a bit about what brought this about, and if you've had any success in that yet?

Simply put: we think we can do a better job at promoting and distributing works than larger publishers. We are focused tightly on David Maslanka and have a vested interest in taking his music to the next level. We want to be able to offer performers, educators, and enthusiasts a streamlined and straightforward way to engage with his music, whether by purchasing sheet music for performance or study, listening to recordings, or attending concerts.The best way to do this is to have complete control over David's entire catalog. 

We have had a fair amount of success in retrieving copyrights from other publishing companies. David is well-liked and respected in the community and often a simple request is enough to start the process. With the larger publishers, a request based on their remaining time before statutory copyright reversion and their projected income from the work can provide a basis to start negotiations.

Unlike many other composers who self-publish, you and your company have been willing to work with retail music stores.  This is a slightly unusual step, especially considering the difficulty level of many of your father's works and the limited number of sets you can ultimately sell as a result. What brought your implementation of this business model vs. purely direct sales?

My sense of things was that an all-of-the-above approach was appropriate. My first priority is getting David's music into the hands of those who will perform it. Dealers are usually the first point-of-call for educational sales. The vendor is set up, paperwork is smooth, and everyone is familiar with the purchasing processes. Furthermore, if a high school director has a longtime relationship with M-R Music and trusts you to let him know about great new music, it makes sense for me to make sure that you have copies of the new works to show him.

On the other hand, I need to make sure that private individuals are covered. If a student is looking for alto saxophone music, and stumbles on David's site, I'd like to be able to provide an easy way for them to get the music directly from us.

I don't see a real need for direct sales to compete with dealer sales. One gets the same price if they order from us as they would ordering from M-R or any other retailer. There are certainly differences: we have a deep and intimate knowledge of David's works and can help performers and directors to choose which of his music may be right for them. A retailer should have at least cursory understanding of any given composer's works, but their strength would be not just in helping inform a whole concert program, but also having those works in stock.

When you provide a wide range of options for customers, everybody wins. Performers get great music to play, I get more of David's music into the world, and dealers get to deepen relationships with their customers.

Finally, back to David again: !hat piece of advice would you give to other young wind band composers out there? And what piece of advice would you give to band directors who are rehearsing and performing your music?

For young composers of any kind, the advice is always the same: work hard to find your true voice. This always starts with gaining general technical mastery. This means mastery of historical styles, and in particular a mastery of counterpoint and traditional harmony. New language grows out of the old; there is no getting away from this. The reason for composing is to express something for the benefit of the human community. For young composers there is no leaping to general recognition or success; the very best thing to do is to find the next community you can work with - band, orchestra, percussion ensemble, brass or wind group, chorus, solo or chamber performers - and produce music that will be done in concert. Having your music in front of a living community of players and audiences is what this is all about. If you just do this to the best of your ability, all the rest - publications, recordings, "success" - will take care of themselves.

Thanks, David and Matthew, and good luck with your new publishing venture!

Now, take a look and a listen to some of his David's recent works below. All of these are available for sale (not rent!) through M-R Music, so give me a call if you're interested in any of these, or if you just want to peruse the score. You can visit Maslanka's website at davidmaslanka.com to see the the material he has available for all mediums, not just wind band. 

Next time: The Midwest previews begin.

Click the images to listen to each selection.