Lithic Books in Colorado
Here's another link to a piece I did at Real Pants, this time about a fledgling bookstore. I thought their story would be interesting to writers who are also devoted to getting their work out into the world. I interviewed Kyle Harvey about what kind of books they...
A Good Printer at Work
Interested in seeing how printers make books? At Real Pants, there's an interview with Jess Bornstein of Spencer Printing, where I ask her about all the various steps in the bookmaking process. Here's an excerpt: What’s a typical day like for you in the office? This...
How Books Are Made
This is probably not how your book will be made, but it's a beautiful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuFV5196dYQ But to check out the step-by-step process of digital printing, check out this interview I did with Spencer Printing, a great company based in...
A Few Free Image Resources
Stock photos aren't right for everyone or every project ... but if you're not a photographer and don't have the budget to hire one, sometimes they can be just the solution you need. For lots of good reasons—like the ubiquity of certain images, or copyright...
Printing “The Motion”
Filmmakers have productions stills that give a behind-the-scenes look at a movie being produced. Well, here's a glance at the production of The Motion, a short collection of genre-bending stories by Lucy K Shaw. I did the book design (including an image that the...
Do You Need a Publishing Consultant?
You might have seen three quotes on the front page of this website that seem counterintuitive to my job as a publishing consultant. The first one, from the NPR show, On the Media, basically says that most books sell abysmally. The second, from a great article in the NY Times, is kind of assuring, saying that the work that I do is something people can do themselves. The third quote, from The Atlantic, suggests that writers need to be handy with social media—ugh—but that ultimately the book itself is the thing that has to be good.
Why I Publish Books
It took me a long time to understand that my interest in publishing doesn’t come from a love of great sentences, or ideas, or even the sense that, like many of my colleagues, I could put out an award winning book. Instead, my relationship to the work can best be conveyed in the image of me as a child, bored and cramped on long car rides, passionately taking in the words on every billboard and street sign that we drove past. Which is to say that I absorb messages when I perceive that there is Something More stirring.