In the six years since I created Elephant’s Bookshelf Press, I’ve seen my personal writing time winnow down to a dribble.
I’m not making excuses. I chose to focus my creative time on publishing.
This year, however, that has changed. I’ve been working on two different writing projects and one major edit/revamp effort, too. In a sense, I have spawned a similar problem. Once again, I have taken large bites and tried to chew too quickly.
So, with the second quarter of the year a little past midway, I’m slowing things down a little. On the bright side, you’ll probably see more of me on the blog this way.
I want to talk about our genesis. Think of it as a “why we exist” post.
In the beginning was the word... and the word was “elephant.”
When I was a small child, I fell in love with elephants. When I learned to talk, and people asked my name, I would say, “Elephant.” I didn’t have a big nose. I was possibly small for my age, but the name wasn’t intentionally ironic.
I simply loved elephants.
As the son of a scientist who worked at perhaps the premier research laboratory of its day, I grew up among books and learning and smart-ass older brothers. Eventually a smart-ass sister would enter the mix, too. I enjoyed educational experiences that I only learned to fully appreciate years later.
And there were lots of elephants. Stuffed. On the pages of books. (I had a wonderful collection of Babar books, and many of the volumes are in my attic.)
My grandfather bought me a Dumbo that I played with so much his felt wore off, and he eventually wore a baseball-playing elephant shirt that I’d outgrown. My mother even created an elephant pillow that my daughter now sleeps on or cuddles depending on where her dreams take her in the night.
I grew up among loving parents and loving extended family members. We played together (lots of Wiffleball), prayed together, and stayed together. When sad or bad things happened, we got closer. Still do.
As genesis stories go, it’s not much. Just another happy kid from a privileged upbringing with lots of books in an unfair world.
My biggest challenges growing up, I realize now, were related to ambitions. All I wanted to do was write or play baseball.
As hard as I tried, I simply didn’t have the skills to reach the major leagues as a ballplayer. The writing came more naturally.
I’m fortunate that in my adulthood, my ambitions of making a living as a writer never left me, and I should feel proud that I’ve been living my dream of being paid to write. I do. But…
But like most dreams, they’re not quite what you expect. The nightmares are rarely as harrowing as they seem at the time. And the “normal” dreams carry more portent and potential than we might recognize.
Back to Elephant’s Bookshelf Press...
Assuming some of the readers here are friends I’ve made at AgentQuery Connect, you’ve probably heard this before, but I’ll share it anyway.
EBP arose out of e-conversations between several of my fellow moderators at AQC. We decided in 2011 that we wanted to find out what the whole e-publishing revolution was about. And while some of us had gained agents, many of us were finding the reception to our queries not so encouraging.
I couldn’t tell you when I last sent a query to an agent. Struggling with perfectionism, I was still plugging in the electrodes on my moribund manuscript waiting for lightning to strike so I could cry out, “It’s alive! Alive!”
So, I was happy to volunteer to lead the effort that became Spring Fevers, the first anthology from Elephant’s Bookshelf Press.
Initially, it was to be an e-book only, but we decided a few weeks after initially publishing that it would be fun to have a paperback.
I can’t remember which came first, the decision to publish a paperback or the decision to publish a second title, The Fall. Either way, I’d bought myself several ISBNs because I had already decided that mine would not be a one-book adventure.
Unbeknownst to me, I was developing new ambitions.
You see, Elephant’s Bookshelf Press was borne from a desire to help other writers. We wanted a way to share our stories, literally and figuratively. I built a platform, and initially I wasn’t fully aware of what that would mean.
Starting in 2015, but especially last year, I’ve spent a lot more time developing systems for EBP and determining what new products we can create. I’ve looked to develop new services for writers, not just to help them as writers, but also because it’s abundantly clear to me that being a writer in the twenty-first century is not simply about writing.
It’s about creating.
Creating books, sure. Creating websites. Creating blogs. Creating courses, perhaps. Creating partnerships. Creating relationships with readers.
Creating an audience.
Sharing and amplifying a voice.
It has been slow going. Mostly because I haven’t always understood what EBP is really about.
I know what we do: we publish books.
But why?
At Elephant’s Bookshelf Press, we love stories. We love telling them. We love hearing them. We love sharing them.
Stories are as old as humanity.
In the beginning, God snapped a finger and blessed a walking ape with an extra sense of self and a new level of curiosity. That ape started thinking in stories.
Language evolved.
Soon, that imaginative ape attracted a similarly gifted mate, and so sparked humanity.
We’re attracted to authors who tell interesting stories and tell them in an engaging manner.
Like elephants, we tend to travel in herds; at EBP, we call them anthologies. We haven’t published an anthology in a couple years now, but we will in time.
Because Elephant’s Bookshelf Press isn’t just about selling books; it’s about helping authors meet and mingle with their audiences.
Not the end.
