Publisher Update

And now there are two...

While we had four publishers voice strong interest in us, two have gone by the wayside.  The mystery publisher was Microsoft, and they stepped out because they did not feel they had the strength to get us into the business section, rather than the computer section. Juliana Aldous Atkinson, product planner in the Microsoft Learning Group was our contact and she was as nice and helpful as anyone we've spoken with so far. Allen Noren, from O'Reilly Publishing, who had been Dan Gillmor's editor was the first to have contacted us. There was a reorganization and some guy from Peachpit who just joined O'Reilly was supposed to have called us.  It never happened and we assume they have walked out of the game.

It's okay, because our two finalists--Wiley and Thomas Nelson Publishing  are our top choices. They are both top tier in the business section, have the ability to get our books promoted, into the front of the store and can handle international distribution.

We expect to have offers from one or both of them in the next few weeks.  What we see will decide who we think is right for us.  Money is of course a big issue, but it's not the only issue. If neither meets our expectations, we will open the game up to other publishers by contacting them directly or through an agent.

Comments

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Sounds good. You definitely want to get book into the business section and not the computer section that's for sure.

I sometimes even look in sociology/current events or media sections for books on blogging.

In Barnes & Noble computer books section, I see a Blogging for Teens type book, and Biz Stone's Who Let the Blogs Out?

In same section, I also saw a book on something like Best of Blog Writing or whatever. I'm not interested in blog fiction or "great" blog writing, "edgy" prose. Ugh. Just my personal tastes, I suppose.

I never go to a blog for literary purposes, though I do operate a half-hibernating science fiction micro stories blog, for when it's 4 AM and I'm so frazzled I feel like writing something unbusiness-like and weirded out.