Everyone has a story to tell. Granted, some are better than others - Sir Edmund Hillary's 1953 ascent of Mt. Everest probably rates higher than your aunt Thelma's bridge-club memoirs - but they still have them, and more often than not, they want to share them with others.
For those brave souls willing to write their stories and submit them to public scrutiny, the actual writing is the simple part. It's the sharing that stymies most writers. Unfortunately, for all those would-be authors out there, the high-stakes game of book publishing, more often than not, crushes the vast majority of dreams on their way to the top of the bestseller list.
And make no mistake, it is high stakes. Stephen King, one of America's most widely read storytellers, regularly receives tens of millions of dollars for his computer noodlings.
So in a field compared to professional sports or popular music for its sheer competitiveness, where does the average Joe - or Jane - go to be heard, or rather, read? One option is Classic Day Publishing LLC, a local publishing company that caters to people who have the desire to write, if not necessarily the same talent for yarn-spinning as their heavy-hitting counterparts on the New York Times bestseller list.
Housed in an office overlooking Lake Union, just south of Fremont, Classic Day is still in its infancy stages, having been in operation only since May 2003. Although the company is young, its two owners, Nancy Helmer and Elliot Wolf, offer their clients a combined 50 years' worth of experience in the business of book publishing.
Helmer, a longtime Magnolia resident, was previously the vice president of Book Publishing Company, specializing in the publishing of county and city municipal codes. The company was bought out by a larger corporation, and Helmer, along with 70-plus other Seattle employees, was let go. Part of her agreement involved signing a one-year noncompete contract. In the 12 months following her termination in September 2001, Helmer decided that her next move would be from running a publishing company to owning one herself.
After several months of planning, she met Wolf, who, at the time, was busy with his own company, Peanut Butter Publishing here in Seattle. The two talked and realized that, although their areas of expertise were in different genres - his with local authors looking for alternatives, hers in publishing legal codes - they had similar visions of how a business should be run: customer service first, company profits second.
"We realized that this was a great way to put the two together and create a great custom publishing company," Helmer said. "We both believe that it's easier to keep a customer happy than going out and finding one to replace him."
Eventually, the new business partners formed Classic Day Publishing LLC and began publishing books under three imprints: Classic Day, Peanut Butter and Quality Code publishing.
Wolf, who jumpstarted his career 32 years ago authoring cookbooks and restaurant guides for cities around the United States, is passionate about his business and is quick to defend any assertion that Classic Day is just another vanity press or a home for terrible writers with enormous egos. There are companies out there that will bind and print anything for a fee, but Wolf claims he's far more discerning. In fact, according to Wolf, Classic Day generally shies away from literary hopefuls who walk in with what they claim to be the next big bestseller.
"We've heard every conceivable, crazy, unique, interesting idea possible," Wolf said. "But if we can't do something with it, if it doesn't make sense, we have to take a pass on it."
Classic Day is, after all, a business, and presumably earns a profit only by saying yes to prospective customers, so it might seem counter-productive for Wolf to turn away a person with a pocketful of cash and a book to sell. But Wolf explains that his success as a publisher is dependent on his reputation for publishing quality material, not a quantity of material. Given those criteria, it makes plenty of sense to him to pass on any number of John Grisham impersonators. Ultimately, Wolf and his partners pick their clientele based on whether their customer's goals are realistic.
The business is essentially a service provider for authors who want to be published but haven't found a receptive audience in the standard publishing realm. Typically, an author finds a literary agent who shops the manuscript around to various publishers, who in turn buy the manuscript and produce the book. Understandably, the competition for publication is fierce, and only a scant fraction of writers ever see their works in bookstores. Classic Day helps authors bypass the spaghetti-like network of literary channels, doing all the grunt work for them. Many of the authors at Classic Day are writing to a specific audience. According to Wolf, specific audiences are, more often than not, small audiences and, as such, can't be counted on to buy enough copies to merit attention from a national publisher.
Kristen Morris, assistant publisher at Classic Day, explained that small audiences are the single limiting factor in whether or not an author finds any friends in bigger publishing companies.
"In a commercial publisher's mind, they would never take that book, because there's simply not enough of that particular demographic to ensure that they make their money back printing 100,000 books," Morris said. "So, depending on the project, depending on the author, depending on the goals, this type of publishing is very successful and makes the most sense."
According to Helmer, customers can spend anywhere from $7,000 to $100,000 or more for various services. She and her company offer editing, cover design, ghost writers, marketing and distribution, among other things. Classic Day will even work to get the would-be author airtime on radio programs to promote the book.
The rates aren't pocket change, and often it's money that the writer won't ever see again. But, as Wolf explained, most of his customers aren't doing what they do for huge royalty checks, but for the opportunity to share their story with an invested audience, whether it's their family or a thousand strangers.
Helmer and her crew have published more than 1,400 books to date. Their catalogue of titles includes a number-one bestseller in Canada and one of their authors even went on to receive a multi-book publishing deal with a national publisher. Those kinds of success stories are part of Classic Day's repertoire, but for the time being, Helmer doesn't focus her attention on repeating them. Her company is small, intimately so, and thrives mainly on close working relationships with its customers.
"We're small enough that we can work with people to create the book the way they want to do it," she said. "If they're happy with the end product then that's what we're trying to do. We don't make any kind of predictions as to if it's going to be a bestseller or not."
In Helmer's opinion, the com-pany's greatest strength lies in its customer service, allowing the authors the chance to maintain their vision of how they want the book to turn out. Every book is different is some way, and Helmer loves the fact that she gets to help them through from the first rough draft to getting the hardcover copy into stores. She calls it an "interesting kind of business."
Whether it's a book about a woman's life in the 20th century, or the memoirs of a soldier and his efforts in the Second World War, Helmer sees her business as a way of helping those with a story to tell.
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