This is the kind of story about people in the business with multiple roles that we like especially at Shelf Awareness:
in this case, it's about a rep who is president of the main rep
association who is also a publisher who is also repping his newest title.
More simply put, the rep/publisher is Eric Miller, partner and co-owner of Miller Trade
Book Marketing, the Midwest rep group. (Miller is also president of the
National Association of Independent Publishers Representatives.) In 2002, he set
up Wicker Park Press, which has published three titles with Academy Chicago. In December, on his own, he publishes Water Tanks of Chicago: A Vanishing Urban Legacy
by Larry W. Green ($19.95, 9780978967604/0978967607), a paperback that
chronicles a sometimes unnoticed aspect of the Windy City's skylines:
water tanks, some of which date back to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871,
that have "a lot of cultural significance" and have been nominated for
landmark status. "This is book is part of a push to preserve these
towers," Miller told Shelf Awareness. (Partners Book Distributors is acting as wholesaler for the book.)
The slim book has photographs and paintings of many of the tanks by
Green as well as a foreword by Anthony Jones, president of the School
of the Art Institute of Chicago, who praises Green for portraying the
water tanks as "dynamic incidents in what is clearly a Chicago
landscape."
For Miller, Water Tanks of Chicago is a labor of love,
for several reasons. "I'm doing this because I think it's a great
book," Miller said. He has known Green for many years, and the timing
of the landmark preservation drive was right. In addition, Miller
wanted to grow his own publishing business and help "put the company on
the map," something he thought he could do better by doing the selling,
shipping and publicity himself.
So far, Miller's efforts appear to be paying off. "People react on an
emotional level," Miller said. "There is no other book about the water
tanks--and they're distinctive compared to water towers in other
cities," which usually have scaffolds on them.
Already the book has received publicity in ForeWord; the Midwest Book Review
(its review called the book "a superb presentation"); and Pioneer Press,
which publishes newspapers in the Chicago suburbs.
Next month Green is doing a signing at the Beverly branch of the
Chicago Public Library (the event is sponsored by Reading on Walden
Bookstore, an online store), and in February he is making an appearance
at the Centuries & Sleuths bookstore in Forest Park, Ill.
As of mid-November, Miller, who is repping Water Tanks of Chicago
while doing his job at Miller Trade Book Marketing, had shipped 550
copies out of 3,200 printed. Among the best customers so far: the Book
Table in Oak Park, Ill.; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City,
Mo., where the title is being marketed as a gift item; the Harry W.
Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee, Wis.; the Kansas Union bookstore in
Lawrence, Kan.; Left Bank Books, St. Louis, Mo.; and Sandmeyer's
Bookstore in Printer's Row in Chicago. "Some are my loyal accounts,"
Miller said.
Amusingly the book "breaks a few of my own rules," Miller said with a
little bit of awe. For one, it's a $19.95 paperback. Besides breaking pricing and format rules, Miller has learned at
least one rule, which has to do with successful publicity--and perhaps applies elsewhere in life:
"the harder I push, the more good things happen," as he put it, adding,
"There's a lull, but then something else happens."
Such as stories like these.--John Mutter