Seapoint Books & Media
You have written two books with maritime and travel themes, and many of the books Seapoint has published feature nautical subject matter. What is the history of your connection to the sea?
Since I started in book publishing in the 1970s, I’ve published a lot of nautical books—a love of mine–but I’ve published many more business titles including the world’s bestselling book on business planning. I’ve also been a Subsidiary Rights Manager, corporate publishing company president and a book exporter. I’ve written quite a few magazine articles on nautical and culinary subjects and I was the co-owner and publisher of a regional food and wine magazine. The best part of being a magazine co-owner was that I got to be the “spirits” writer. As I say in my best Raymond Chandler voice, “That’s booze, sweetheart, not Ouija boards.”
Seapoint Books has been in Maine for more than a decade. Maine is a good place to be a publisher. There is a long tradition of valuing books and writing and we have an excellent network of publishing professionals like designers, editors, indexers, most of whom have been working with us for years.
Along with publishing for the book trade we also do custom publishing for clubs, organizations and corporations, and publishing consulting for books and magazines.
Helping authors become involved in the marketing of their books must be uncharted territory for most. What do authors learn from this process?
Our authors are very closely involved in the entire publishing process, from conception to editing, design, to sales and marketing. Our books tend to be complicated projects: a recent title logged more than 200 emails (plus phone calls) to guide the book and author from concept to publication. As we say, “Every publishing project is different.”
Book marketing is a unique discipline and often seems slow, ponderous and obscure to authors. But the customers: the book stores, libraries, wholesalers, and the internet sellers, set the timing and the pace. In the next few years, I think we will see a lot of acceleration in the book publishing and marketing schedules, but in a fragmented industry like book publishing, it’s the big customers that will continue to set the schedule—to the frustration of the publishers and authors.
What is the most exciting part of publishing a new title, for you?
Oh, that’s easy! When you get a book proposal that’s got legs, written by an author with a unique perspective, on an intriguing subject with sales potential, that’s most the exciting part of publishing. From then until the book is in the author’s hands, it’s work! But there is satisfaction in the work, for both the author and publisher.
Seapoint Books and Media
seapointbooksoffice@gmail.com
PO Box 21, Brooklin, ME 04616
www.seapointbooks.com