Most revolutionaries dress like this
I’m not really a revolutionary. I’ve never held a weapon. I’ve never protested anything, except the firing of the cantor from my synagogue. As you can imagine, that was neither violent nor radical.
For decades the book publishing industry was controlled by a select few. Today, this world is changing. A great book, some marketing chutzpah, and luck can get an unknown author discovered.
I’m the CEO of Hillcrest Media Group, a book publishing company in Minneapolis, MN. We started providing self-publishing services. As the company grew, we started publishing our own titles and in many ways have become a traditional publisher on some levels. We have our own distributors, sales reps, in-house publicists, and marketing team.
What we never had was the luxury of getting into the club the easy way. We didn’t know anyone in the industry when we started and we didn’t wait around to be invited.
The one thing that we knew from the beginning was that the publishing world was changing. We’ve applied for a patent on our ebook conversion software. In January 2010, we purchased a semi well-known book review site, Armchair Interviews. In July 2010, we purchased one of the most coveted domain names in the industry, Fiction.com. It will launch in 2012. This May, we are launching a book marketing joint venture with a 100+ store coffee franchise which we then plan to roll out nationally. Until we bought Fiction.com, no one in traditional publishing had heard of us. Funny, what a word and “.com” after it can do.
We aren’t revolutionaries. We just have some cool ideas about book publishing that seem to be working. I’m not an expert on all facets of book publishing. Not even close. I am writing this blog mostly to stay out of my employees’ way so that we can successfully launch all of the sites we are working on. I have a habit of coming up with new ideas and piling them all into production at the same time. So, if I can entertain you and sometimes inform you with this blog, that would be nice. If I can use this blog to babysit my creative streak for a while, that would be great.
This is a GREAT blog Mark. Amongst its many good points is that the content comes across personally and not “automatic computer generation”. It’s genuine! Go Mark go!!
To quote another great book, I think “you’ve come to the kingdom for just such an hour.” Where on earth would we go to get the information in “The Fine Print of Self-Publishing”, and from your blog? Not many who benefit from your research and writing will ever be able to give you our thanks in person, but with every sale of our own books, we’ll be saying “thanks, Mark.”