My first professional publishers’ conference

On Saturday, March 31st, I went out to a meet of the Independent Publishers of New England, a regional networking group for small publishers. This group was founded by Shel Horowitz and has had its ups and downs, as is usually the case with small organizations. I had punched through my membership application to IPNE only a week earlier, and my PayPal payment went right through and then the application form crashed. I e-mailed and got a nice reply from the membership officer, Mary Ellen Lepionka, telling me to just print out the application on the website and bring it with me to the meet. (That problem has now been fixed. 🙂 ) I went through the members’ directory and websites on the IPNE site beforehand, hoping that when I met some of these individuals in person, I’d recognize their names, and/or their company names. The meet was not limited to members, however. The morning session was a presentation by various staff of Storey Publishing on the book development process, and that was open to any interested person (members got a discounted rate). The afternoon session was an IPNE Board meeting open to “members in good standing.”

I probably didn’t get as much out of the presentations as I would have under better circumstances, because I was extremely tired. I normally work into the night and get up at 10:30am. (One practical reason for this is that I have several neighbors who are also self-employed, but their home-based businesses involve working outside with power equipment. It’s just a lot easier to concentrate after sunset!) But the IPNE meet was scheduled to begin at 9:30am and it was in North Adams, a two-and-half-hour drive away. So, I had to get up literally at dawn and be on the road by 7:00am. As usually happens when I have to get up that early–I didn’t sleep at all. I tossed and turned for four hours, jumped out of bed when the alarm rang, and headed on out. I wasn’t at my best for the rest of the day. 🙁

When I got to North Adams, I got a little bit lost, since the directions I got from MapQuest fizzled about 1/10 of a mile from Storey Publishing. This is because Storey Publishing has absolutely the coolest offices I have ever seen, in a renovated old mill complex that also holds the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, or Mass MoCA (which I did not see because of the Board meeting). The “address” of the publishing company is “Mass MoCA Way,” but in fact, there is no “Mass MoCA Way.” That’s just a name for the driveway/parking lot/courtyard between the mill buildings. And the company itself has no sign! Fortunately there were some posters for the IPNE meet scattered around outside or I don’t know if I ever would have found it.

But I did get there, and was relieved that Mary Ellen remembered me right away. I had neglected to bring documentation of my PayPal payment with me, but I was all set.

The Storey Publishing presentation included talks by the managing editor, acquisitions editor, design director, and…one other person, at least, and tended to ramble a bit. Storey is a very interesting company that started out when its founders bought out the Garden Way company’s backlist, and it publishes books about crafts, rural life, small farming, gardening–all that earthy-crunchy stuff. I want to buy every book in their catalog. However, they do a lot of heavily illustrated, color-interior, hands-on how-to books, which is not the kind of thing I’ll be publishing, so much of their emphasis was on issues that didn’t directly concern me. Still, it was very interesting. We all got a fat packet of materials, and a lot of fascinating and useful information on illustration, graphic design, and resources related to that. I’ll definitely apply all that to doing cover design. We also went over the basic “path” that a book takes, from contracting with the author, through editing, and how the editorial process works, then design and layout. But we didn’t get as much into “working with printers” as I’d have liked. Storey sends a lot of its print jobs overseas because that’s much more cost-effective for color printing (which I already knew).

I talked to the design director briefly, and she answered a question I had about some resources I’ve been looking for, but scolded me sternly for not buying Photoshop. 🙁

We got a full tour of the offices, which occupy two floors of the building and are the most spacious and friendly offices I have ever seen. Lots of the original structure of the mill buildings is visible–brick walls, and huge yawning walk-in safes or vaults now serving as book closets, high ceilings, massive ventilation pipes running overhead…I loved every inch of it. I never got to work in that cool a place! You should have seen how much room individual staff have in their work areas. It was especially interesting because a mill complex figures in Mortal Touch, and while I based much of my description on similar buildings I have spent time in, I really enjoyed seeing an[other] authentic, if renovated, old mill up close.

I brought my own bag lunch (people could pre-order box lunches, but my diet is so restricted now, and anyway they were $8). I spent lunch chatting with different people–one woman was putting together a reference book for elementary school reading teachers and had questions about how to index it, and I had some suggestions about that. Shel Horowitz had brought some of his books to sell (everyone was invited to bring their books to display and sell, of course) and I bought his Principled Profit because I’ve been meaning to buy it, anyway. He signed it. 🙂

The IPNE Board meeting had just a few people attending. As is typical of such meetings, the agenda gave a time frame for each item and of course, we went off on tangents and ran way over. However, I contributed actively to all the discussions, and I ended up volunteering to serve on “the website committee,” and to take on the job of evaluating by-laws for a model for IPNE, and research what’s required for us to fully incorporate as a non-profit. Mary Ellen had gotten some examples from other regional groups, but it was evident that she was feeling a bit unsupported, so I raised my hand and said, “hey, I know a lot about this,” and I’d be willing to take it on. Know a lot? Good gods, I’ve done nothing but work with non-profit and aspiring non-profit groups for 25 years! I wrote my Masters thesis for Harvard on starting up a minority church, which essentially is a non-profit organization. So, Mary Ellen instantly handed me her file folder of paperwork! So I’ll be working on that, but sheesh, I could probably draft a set of by-laws in my sleep. Which is a good thing, because I essentially was asleep when I volunteered. *sigh*

The comment was made that IPNE was probably going to be very glad that I joined!!! (I hope so!) I also got called “a character” when I talked about my publishing company and its theme. 🙂 That’s okay. I am a character–and in my genre, that’s a marketing asset. As long as I can be a character who sells lots of books!

I’ve also been specially invited to participate in the Board’s next meeting, which usually is by telephone conference call. IPNE has different kinds of meetings about once a month. We were talking about having a summer one in Gloucester–with a barbeque. 🙂

There’s some great stuff coming up that my membership gets me into–in fact, I’ll probably pitch in and help with some of the organizing end. In September there’s the New England Bookseller’s Association fair and in October, the New England Library Association fair, in Sturbridge. By that time, I’ll have Mortal Touch out and if I get my butt in gear, I’ll have the covers ready for display cards and sell-sheets for the next two books. IPNE also gives a “scholarship” to the annual conference of the national organization, PMA. As an IPNE member, I get discounts to memberships in PMA and the national organization, SPAN. And both of those organizations have even more member benefits, including discounts to sign with distributors.

So this is all very exciting, and I feel like I’ve really taken an important professional step. It’s one thing to just hang out your own shingle: it’s quite another to hook up with professional peers and be doing effective networking and mutual support. I hope I can contribute as much to IPNE as it has to offer me!

So that’s how I spent my Saturday! But I feel lucky to be home in one piece, and not just because of sleep deprivation. A word of warning: if you ever have reason to drive on Rte. 2 in Western Massachusetts on a Saturday…keep your wits about you. They’re insane out there. Even for Massachusetts. 8-(