How I Came to Have Intrigue in My House
Sometimes, things happen just because there’s no reason for them not to.
A decade ago, when I decided I could handle my own books better than the Print On Demand publisher I was working with, I did a lot of research. I learned that bookstores did not want to deal with self-published authors any more than they wanted to deal with POD publishers. The solution seemed to be to get my books published by a small press… or at least make it look that way. So I dreamed up what seemed like a good name for a press putting out mysteries: Intrigue Publishing. It was a serious publisher’s name and covered mysteries and thrillers, which is what I write.
Over the last ten years I’ve sold a lot of books and found ways to get my books into bookstores when even the small press I placed one book with could not. My lovely wife Denise has become quite an expert on small press publishing in the process of overcoming one obstacle at a time. And during those years there have been several times when she and I had dreamed about, talked about and even plotted about publishing other authors. Also, based on my success several authors have approached Denise to get published. My camouflage was so good they assumed I was with a successful small press.
Then along came our very special friend Sandra Bowman, who writes urban fiction as B. Swangin Webster. She is so canny a marketing guru that her novels seemed guaranteed to be successful for a small press. Too bad we didn’t have one. That’s when Sandra asked the obvious question.
Why not?
Well, the truth was there was no good reason. We had the skills. We had the experience. We just didn’t seem to have the drive to move forward. However, Sandra brought tons of drive to the party, so three partners seemed to be the right formula. We decided to officially launch the ten-year-old Intrigue Publishing as a brand new small press.
To start a small business in the state of Maryland all that is really required is to apply for a license. We did so and established our partnership officially. The next question for us was, what shall we publish? Our name implied a certain identity so we were not going to publish just any kind of books.
The decision making process was long but not really complex. I’ll tell you about that part of our journey next week.
A decade ago, when I decided I could handle my own books better than the Print On Demand publisher I was working with, I did a lot of research. I learned that bookstores did not want to deal with self-published authors any more than they wanted to deal with POD publishers. The solution seemed to be to get my books published by a small press… or at least make it look that way. So I dreamed up what seemed like a good name for a press putting out mysteries: Intrigue Publishing. It was a serious publisher’s name and covered mysteries and thrillers, which is what I write.
Over the last ten years I’ve sold a lot of books and found ways to get my books into bookstores when even the small press I placed one book with could not. My lovely wife Denise has become quite an expert on small press publishing in the process of overcoming one obstacle at a time. And during those years there have been several times when she and I had dreamed about, talked about and even plotted about publishing other authors. Also, based on my success several authors have approached Denise to get published. My camouflage was so good they assumed I was with a successful small press.
Then along came our very special friend Sandra Bowman, who writes urban fiction as B. Swangin Webster. She is so canny a marketing guru that her novels seemed guaranteed to be successful for a small press. Too bad we didn’t have one. That’s when Sandra asked the obvious question.
Why not?
Well, the truth was there was no good reason. We had the skills. We had the experience. We just didn’t seem to have the drive to move forward. However, Sandra brought tons of drive to the party, so three partners seemed to be the right formula. We decided to officially launch the ten-year-old Intrigue Publishing as a brand new small press.
To start a small business in the state of Maryland all that is really required is to apply for a license. We did so and established our partnership officially. The next question for us was, what shall we publish? Our name implied a certain identity so we were not going to publish just any kind of books.
The decision making process was long but not really complex. I’ll tell you about that part of our journey next week.
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