Publishing Gone Local: Part 1 Ithaca is a town where ‘going’ local has been all the rage for decades. In fact,  Ithaca has gone local, and it’s easy to feel a sense of self-reliance in this community. Whether you find it at The Piggery, or the Finger Lakes Wine Center, or the “Local Authors” series at Buffalo Street Books, appreciation abounds for all things Ithaca made. There’s even a cool store on State Street called IthacaMade. One of the most exciting components of Ithaca’s lively local scene is the number of small and independent book publishers that call Ithaca home. Cornell University Press, Owl Gorge, Ithaca Press, Clandestine Press, Larson Publishing, McBooks, and Snow Lion. These publishers specialize in areas that draw from all aspects of Ithaca: the famous natural beauty, the environmental awareness, the prolific artistic and scientific output, and the vibrant spiritual community. Cornell University Press is awe-inspiring, and the “about us” on their website does little to dispel the mythical image of this press. It was established in 1869 – the first university press to be established in the United States – and it currently resides in Sage House on Cornell’s campus, “where the staff keeps company with the house’s carved bats and stained-glass birds.” A scholarly publisher in many disciplines, Cornell University Press publishes 120 new nonfiction titles per year. In addition, the press also has two imprints: Comstock Publishing, which specializes in life sciences and natural history, and ILR Press, with books in labor and employment relations, the health…

I finally went to BookPeople—Austin’s fav indie bookstore—because Tom Angelberger was signing his boy-friendly graphic novels, The Strange Case of Origami Yoda and Darth Paper Strikes Back. As George Plunkitt so aptly stated, “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em,” by grabbing my 10-year-old, Jacob, saying, “Let’s go to the bookstore.” Angelberger’s presentation was lots of fun—juggling, inter-acting with the audience, re-telling a chapter from the book. Darth Paper is his new release, which, of course, we had to buy. We brought our own copy of Origami Yoda, so now Jacob has two signed Angelberger books, and I have some snapshots of my kid with the author. Local, small chain pizzeria, Austin’s Pizza, passed out free pizza at the signing. In the indie biz, it’s one hand washing the other. You promote me, I promote you. Win/win/win. The third win was me getting my kid out to a bookstore where he happened to bump into a couple of friends from public school who happen to be the rabbi’s kids. And if my kid has eyes for the rabbi’s daughter, that’s just fine with me. BookPeople has been around since 1970. It has been voted best bookstore in Austin for over 15 years, and was voted Bookstore of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly in 2005. The store is drop-dead gorgeous. As elegant as any high-end Barnes & Noble without all the B.S. cookbooks and coffee table books that people collect, but never read. By the way, BookPeople is next door…

Use branding to sell books and sustain your passion Many writers do not want to engage in social media because they fear their engagement online will detract from (either time spent on or quality of) their writing. It’s a valid concern. It’s also an unnecessary one – if modeling the right approach. You see, using social media is about writing. If you are a writer, in whatever form or shape it may take, your work is content. Your job is content production. Say you are writing a historical fiction book set during the American Revolution. Online, using social media, you need to produce content that is related to historical fiction and the American Revolution. These are the subjects that interest you, hence why you write about them. There you are, brain dumping onto any 8×11 page within your reach and talking to friends, family, pets, and anyone who will listen to you soliloquize about your WIP and its topic, and yet you refuse to go online and share a tidbit or two? Writers need to remove their creative caps and put on their sales caps. That’s the trick to social media. It requires a change of approach… and the trouble with social media is that it is constantly changing!  Writers need to view the process of writing and book production as two separate events. The former is a personal process while the latter is public. To write a book is to create and produce one. Books are objects, commodities; they become…