Birth of a Book

We’d be in good company.

Edgar Allen Poe did it. So did Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and John Grisham.

The “pro” list was much larger than the “cons”
•The book could be available within six months instead of two years.
•We’d be responsible for all of the marketing and PR ourselves, but I’d had two other books published by Big Houses (St. Martin’s Press and Putnam) and those things were my responsibility then, too.
•Starting a Small Press would require learning an entirely new skill set, but could open doors for other writers struggling to have their voices heard.

We decided to do it. Create a Small Press, give it a name and an identity, and publish our first book. Details, details, details. Checklists and scribbled notes everywhere.

The book will be out by the end of this month!

It’s been a long road, filled with potholes and gorgeous roadside vistas in equal measure. But opening the package containing the proof copy this week made it all worthwhile. We created a book! It’s not perfect yet, so here come the first round of revisions, but it’s darn close. And did I mention it was beautiful?

For the next few posts, we’d like to share some of the steps we took to make this dream a reality, so others don’t have to “re-invent the wheel” like I felt we did most of the time.

The Birth of a Book (Part 1)

Become a Publisher. Sounds daunting? It’s not. First you’ll need a name. We chose Wander Press because we’re both huge fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and his adage “Not all those who wander are lost.” And with all of the wandering we’ve been doing around the world, it seemed to fit.
Next, we registered the domain name, company, and set up a free blog at Word Press to get started. We were ready to introduce Wander Press to the world!

Choose a printer. As a previously published author with boxes of books stacked in the garage, it was important this time for us to use POD (print-on-demand) technology. We move around a lot, so book storage would be impossible. Also, we needed to find a printer with a great distribution system. Lightning Source was our choice. Their affiliation with Ingram, the global distributor for Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and Baker and Taylor would make getting the books to friends and family around the world easy.

Next post will focus on finding ISBN numbers, Library of Congress Control numbers, and Book Cover software. If you have specific questions about the process, please let us know and we’ll do our best to get you an answer!