On the Road to Independently Publish

Why would I permit editors and a total re-design by outsiders? Typical of university presses today, the process is old school, proprietary, ponderous, and less than lucrative for the author. Of course, in terms of scholarly, research works where verification, vetting, and visuals must be carefully prepared by a team of editors, this is an appropriate though time-consumptive approach to pulling a manuscript together. But I’m hands-on-do-everything-myself-give-up-no-control kind of artist.

But another two years! Not likely! My book is a memoir in both images and text, offering no truth or opinion, other than my own experience. No facts to check. In this age of serious independent publishing, university services for me were easy and effective to bypass, along with the significant costs to the artist.

And then I turned around and actually worked another two years! It’s true that Covid did take up a good three quarters of a year. So what happened? I found new images, listened to a first class proofreader, ignored beta readers who “just loved” everything, learned esoteric methods of converting duotone images to printable CMYK, multiple iterations of image color for continuity, vetted printers myself—and the step-by-step sequence of submitting files, wet and dry proofing of pages, cover design, packaging, delivery, warehousing, distribution…

Well, you get the idea. A self-imposed quest for a book as perfect as I can reasonably make it. So I’m now a publisher helping others, particularly artists and photographers, through the process of hybrid manuscript production.

I hope you may profit thereby. Look up one of my classes at Professional Photographers of America or Osher Lifelong Learning at the University of Denver.