Port City Publishing

Well, hello world. We’re Port City Publishing, this is our blog, and we’re excited about what we’re trying to do. Which is: give writers with a dream the help they need to bring it into reality; and explore the exciting and crazy world that is publishing right now.

Seems fitting that, this being our first official blog post and all, we say who we are and why we’re here. People say to blog like you’re hosting guests in your living room, so just imagine that we’re standing in the middle and you’re all sitting in the comfiest recliners or on the comfiest sofas ever. Oh, and that there’s a big table full of your favorite appetizers and hors d’ouevres (did we spell that right?) over there, with a big bowl of punch in the middle. Oh, and a bar over there, with all sorts of tasty beverages. Oh, and of course, valet parking.

Anyway, first, a bit about this blog, and then a bit about us.

Yes, this is a blog under our publishing company brand, but it’s not here just to talk us up. In other words, this isn’t just some PR/marketing blog looking to shill just for Port City Publishing.

Our goal is to cultivate a community for writers looking to learn more about the publishing world and the writing craft. The beauty of it is that, while we’ve developed a certain level of expertise in our field, we are still learning, too. We hope to explore with you, together.

We’re here for you, the writer or the publishing industry executive or the English professor or whoever is interested in all the latest publishing news and innovation. It’s here because we’re exploring all of this right along with you, and we want to grow a community of like-minded, passionate people here.

At times, yes, we will highlight the things we offer, because we are doing publishing in a way nobody’s ever done it before. In some blog posts, we’ll unpack the problems with certain publishing companies out there, and the solution we offer is going to be us, because we’re doing things differently—and, truthfully, better—than anybody else right now.

Now, a bit about who we are.

The publishing world is in a dramatic state of flux right now. Passing through the next stage in evolution, as it were. The nuts and bolts of it is summed up nicely by superstar self-publishing author J.A. Konrath when he says that publishing’s Big 6—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, Random House, Simon & Schuster—will fall, “not because people have stopped reading, but because authors have taken the power.”

In other words, there’s no better time to be a writer. Between blogs, Twitter, Facebook, various other social media, e-readers, and self-publishing companies, any writer anywhere can launch out on his or her own.

We’re here to streamline the process for you.

We’re an independent publisher based in Wilmington, NC. As you’ll see in the Welcome section on this blog’s home page, on the About page of the blog, and probably somewhere on the PortCityPublishing.com website, we provide insight, guidance, and resources to the passionate writer.

Basically, this means that if you’re a writer or have a writing project you’d like to create, we have what you need every step of the way from your project’s first idea to getting the thing in print and available on e-readers.

It’s not an all-or-nothing package. You can just hire our editor, or our copywriter, or our graphic designer, or hire us out for our printing services. And, of course, you can hire us for all of that and then some. Enough about that for now—you can learn more here.

We exist because we want to help writers. It’s a complex, foggy, and at times even dangerous world out there for you folks. We know, because one of us is also one of you.

We got started to help one writer. His book was praised by national magazines and bestselling authors, and launched his writing career to where he is now writing for some of the biggest magazines in North America.

We realized more there were many others out there like him, writers who needed help navigating the murky publishing waters. So now, we’re now extending our services to everybody.

In short, we help writers harness their power.

We just charge for it because we need things like food, clothing, and a reasonable amount of shelter.

Anyway, enough about us. In the interest of time, we’ll wrap this up for now, but check back soon, because we’ll be posting new articles regularly.

More to come later. In the meantime, feel free to send us ideas for future blog posts, questions about publishing and/or writing, and anything else you might have in mind, to portcitypub@gmail.com.

Make sure to check out our latest book, The Edge of Legend: An Incredible Story of Faith and Basketball From the Life of Harlem Globetrotter Anthony “Ant” Atkinson. Available here.