The first publishing project we did was my first novel My Cleveland Story. I had signed 90-day contracts with both Random House and Double Day. I even got a fancy New York literary agent. I got dinged by both publishers at the same time; both publishers went through mergers and take overs; the editors who loved my book got fired or lost in the shuffle, and that $100,000 advance I was dreaming about disappeared. Anyway, I was then offered publishing contracts with smaller houses (none of which I had ever heard of). I showed them to my lawyer friends and they all told me they weren’t good deals. That is when people started to tell me we should publish it ourselves. I hired some teaching colleagues and several students to do the proofreading; Dave Hostetler did the interior design; and Chris Kowalczyk did the book cover. We made a little money and had a hell of an education on publishing.

Dave and I started to think that maybe we could publish something besides books written by Greg Cielec. The best job I ever had was working at the Brown jug in Delaware, Ohio, during my college years. We were paid two bucks an hour plus all the beer we could drink in a place just filled with all sorts of characters. Years later the Jug would morph into one of the best independent restaurants in Ohio, before closing after 62 years in business in 2007. The last two owners of the jug Ed wolf and Bill Stroud had remained friends, and doing a cookbook about the Jug seemed like a good idea. It was a labor of love going through the boxes of photos, old menus, and other items that both Ed and Bill had and The Langston family had, the previous owners of the Jug before Ed and Bill. I also spent a day going though the archives of Ohio Wesleyan, what a cool experience that was! Dave again did the interior giving it a great scrapbook like feel; Kristi did the cover again; and I wrote the text to go along with Ed and Bill’s recipes. We printed a thousand copies and sold it out.

I never thought we would do another Delaware, Ohio book after the Brown Jug Cook Book. If you have spent time in this college/horse town north of Columbus, you have crossed paths with Al Roop. Man about town, drummer extraordinaire, music club owner, party thrower, Al approached us about helping him write his memoirs, and what a great experience it became. We had Al talk into a microphone for fourteen hours. Then our friend legal secretary Lauri Irace typed those fourteen hours into a 240-page manuscript. We then broke it down in to chapters and paragraphs and added dozens of photos.

My old fraternity brother Bruce Graham had written his first novel but was unsuccessful when he sent it around to the big publishing companies. He decided to publish it himself, but he knew it needed some work. He sent it to us and we line edited it, and proofed it several times. We also did the complete design of the final product, including the interior and the cover, and also formatted it for e-readers. You can purchase a copy of Life of Illusion by William Bruce Graham on amazon.com.