Northern California Publishers & Authors

April 17, 2004
8:00 am	to	2:30 pm

Program

Primary speaker

Alice B. Acheson

Bonus speaker

Ruth Gottstein

When: 8 a.m. to noon, Saturday, April 17 (conference)

Where

Embassy Suites Hotel, 100 Capitol Mall, Sacramento

Plus

No-host cocktail reception for area media, booksellers, and authors at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 16

Fees

Include an invitation to the no-host cocktail reception, a light breakfast, and the awards luncheon

In conjunction with the Tenth Annual Awards Program, Sacramento Publishers & Authors will sponsor a morning conference, “Mighty Marketing Mantra,” featuring book publicity and marketing expert Alice B. Acheson.

A publicity director at McGraw Hill, Simon and Schuster, and Crown Publishers before opening her own business, Acheson has led campaigns that resulted in four simultaneous New York Times bestsellers.

This seminar, targeted for writers, publishers, and speakers, will answer a key question: why do so many small publishers and individual authors get “taken” by unscrupulous publicists who don’t perform after taking the money?

Acheson will discuss the difference between publicity and marketing — is there one? — why publicity is necessary, and what it typically costs. She will also disclose the most important piece of paper a publisher can provide to the author, explore various marketing mediums such as book release vs. press release. vs. postcard vs. letter, and the all important bottom line — major publisher vs. independent publisher. In addition, she will share tips on the marketing direction of the book industry. At the conclusion of the conference, there will be a drawing for a half-hour consultation with Alice B. Acheson.

At a bonus session, Ruth Gottstein, trail-blazing publisher of more than 30 books, will share her insights about the history of independent publishing — including e-books and books on demand — and how it changed what used to be conventional publishing. Her topic will be “Publishers Are Passionate: Why Are We All Doing This?” and will include an informal description of how independent publishing began in California in the 1970s, reflecting her own experiences as well as those of others she knew, and how much has happened since then.

Immediately following the conference, SPA will present awards to member authors and publishers for excellence in literary works during the year 2003 at a gala luncheon program.

Bill Endicott, former deputy managing editor, Sacramento Bee, will emcee the Sacramento Publishers & Authors book awards luncheon.

Conference sponsored in part by Thomson-Shore, Inc.

Alice B. Acheson, Marketing/Publicity Specialist

Alice B. Acheson established her independent marketing and publicity organization in New York City in July 1981. She relocated to San Francisco in 1988, and the Pacific Northwest in April 1996. She draws from her 30-plus years of publishing experience, including six as editor at a major publisher, to teach and consult on publishing questions.

Her company provides a full range of bilingual (English and Spanish) services for publishers, authors, illustrators, and photographers of fiction and nonfiction on a national, regional, or local basis. These services include marketing (from book contract through publication date), publicity (including author tours), special sales, and subsidiary rights (especially magazines and book clubs).

One of her clients, Pfeifer-Hamilton, the publisher of Old Turtle, received the 1993 American Booksellers Book of the Year Award — a terrific feat for a first book by a company that had never published a children’s book nor marketed any book nationally. For that success and more, Acheson won the 1993 Literary Market Place Award for Outside Services in Advertising/Promotion/Publicity.

As Associate Publicity Director at Simon & Schuster, Acheson handled the publicity for four books that appeared simultaneously on The New York Times bestseller list:

• Donahue by Phil Donahue & Co.
• Heartsounds by Martha Weinman Lear
• Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party by Graham Greene
• Sins of the Fathers by Susan Howatch

Another book for which she handled publicity — Green Monday, a first novel by Michael M. Thomas — fell off the list as the others entered. These titles included all four aspects of adult book publishing: commercial and literary fiction, nonfiction, and a first novel.

The following year at Crown Publishers, Inc., she added The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel and Simon Bond’s 101 Uses for a Dead Cat to her list of accomplishments.

Before working in publicity, Acheson was Associate Editor of Trade Books at McGraw-Hill Book Company. She is listed in Who’s Who in the Media and Communications.

Ruth Gottstein, Volcano Press

In the mid 1970s, Ruth Gottstein became publications director at the Glide Foundation in San Francisco. During the decade she spent on staff, she published several “firsts” — Battered Wives, Conspiracy of Silence: The Trauma of Incest, Lesbian/Woman, Menopause Naturally, Learning to Live Without Violence: A Handbook for Men, Senior Power: Growing Old Rebelliously, and many other books reflecting the emerging issues of the time.

While on the Glide staff, she networked with other emerging presses in the San Francisco Bay Area. The result was several book fairs (sometimes called Friends of Books and Comics International Book Fairs), and exhibiting on behalf of these presses at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Children’s Book Fair at Bologna, Italy, and early publishing fair exhibits in Japan and China.

In the 1980s, she acquired the rights to the Glide titles, created a California corporation called Volcano Press, and moved to Volcano in the Sierra foothills.

She collaborated with issues-oriented librarians on updating Library of Congress “definitions” — for instance, removing “homosexuality” from the “deviance” category, and ending the practice of deciding whether an American Indian struggle should be defined as “battle” versus “massacre” depending on which side won.

Volcano Press became a pioneer member of CIP, in part because of this collaboration.

Continuing to publish on women’s and children’s issues, her Spring 2004 list includes Family and Friends’ Guide to Domestic Violence: How to Listen, Talk, and Take Action When Someone You Care About Is Being Abused; Surviving Domestic Violence: Voices of Women Who Broke Free; and The Women We Become: Myths, Folktales, and Stories About Growing Older.

In 2003, she published Child Abuse and Neglect: Guidelines for Identification, Assessment, and Case Management with co-editors from the Child & Adolescent Abuse Resource Evaluation Center at UC Davis. This unusual compendium was compiled with contributions from 95 professionals in the field.

Today, her son Adam is associate publisher of the press, bringing marketing and technological expertise to the team.

Because Volcano Press is proud of its base in California’s historic Gold Rush country, it publishes books on the subject under the category of Mother Lode Books. Forthcoming title Ghost Towns of Amador County is an unusual history of the town of Volcano itself, which will include many interviews with residents whose life spans reached far back.

She is the mother of three, with four grandchildren. She credits her deceased husband, Howard, for his enormous support of her work, and speaks of him as a “far better feminist than I ever was.”

Today, she serves on the Amador County Commission on Aging, and is working with others to make 2004 “The Year of the Library” by raising community awareness of the library system’s financial needs, and through fund raising.