BlueWater Books – reborn

If you have been reading this blog for a while you may already know that I set up a press about 10 years ago and produced a couple of booklets by hand with a small print run of 100 copies (see here for a bit more on this). I have always intended to return to this and produce new books. The project is now gathering enough momentum that I wanted to write about it and let you know what is coming.

Thanks to many of the techniques I have been learning over the last couple of years, I have found ways to generate creative ideas at a great pace. As a result I have many book ideas on the go at once (umm, 15 at the last count).

The plan in BlueWater Books is to produce a combination of paperback books, hand printed books and online books plus a CD and associated MP3 downloads. The medium will be dictated by the content. Thus, poetry is probably best shared as high quality books, possibly with illustrations or photos where appropriate. Whereas non-fiction prose books can be either paperback or online.

I have been experimenting with logos – not there yet, but here is an early example:

And the publication schedule is coming together. There will be poetry books of course, as I am first and foremost a poet. I intend to publish the 20 collections of poetry I have written over the years in the coming months. Online versions of some of these PDFs have had downloads of over 1000 copies which I find staggering given the limited interest these days in poetry. (Although so many people seem to forget that poetry is in their lives every day in the form of song lyrics).

There will then also be a series of books developed from the ideas I share on this blog. I will make announcements as and when they are ready. Experience tells me that if I tell you now what books are coming that will create resistance to completing and the work will founder. But as a hint – there will be books building on some of the series of posts I have been writing lately.

I wrote a few months back about Chris Guillebeau’s ideas on developing a Pursuit or big challenge. I have set myself the challenge of producing at least 30 books in 6 years. Given the amount of material I have sitting on the shelf at home waiting to be shared that shouldn’t be difficult.

It’s an old cliché to say “watch this space” so I will resist doing that (whoops, just did it!) There will be updates in the weeks to come as I move on with this work. A form of Working out Loud if you like…

Another challenge associated with this at the moment is figuring out how to make this website work for me as a place to launch the publishing venture. The site is mainly a blog at the moment. I am really not sure how to make the site do more than one thing. If you are able to help me to figure that one out I would really appreciate any advice you can offer by getting in touch.