Hitting Our Stride At Cascade Publishing House

Hitting Our Stride At Cascade Publishing House

June 8, 2017 Off By Michael

Atlanta, Georgia is home to Cascade Publishing House the perfect house for the author who seeks a small publishing house experience.

It is hard to imagine it. The calendar says that Cascade Publishing House has been six years in the world of publishing. We are finally hitting our stride. The idea for Cascade Publishing House came about after I had a bad experience in the traditional world of book publishers.

In late 2009, I signed a publishing contract with a Baltimore Publishing House. It had the indicia of a real publishing house. After receiving a small advance, my manuscript, Paper Puzzle was on its way to becoming a published work of fiction.

I was excited when the galleries came in the mail. My lifelong dream to see a murder mystery that I had begun in the late 1970s was about to become reality.

What I did not realize is that no one at the the big time publishing house was willing to work as hard as I to produce a quality book that would not be a public embarrassment.

This publisher did not care about my ideas for marketing this work. They had their own scheme to get the money they had forked out for this book and were not willing to consider any input that I had on the subject. I had a vested interest in the book, as I stood to profit in proportion to how well it did.

Throughout much of 2010, I attempted to work with this publisher, but seemed to be hitting my head repeatedly upside a brick wall. In the spring of 2011, I decided to attend Book Expo America in New York and meet with my publisher. I came demanding answers.

When the representatives showed little interest in my concerns, I left them with a little piece of my mind. I walked out of the  Jacob Javits Center determined to establish a publishing house that would service writers like myself who could benefit from a small publishing house experience.

After researching the industry, I rolled up my sleeves, negotiated myself out of the agreement I had with the first publisher, set up the Cascade Publishing House and republished Paper Puzzle under its masthead.

Paper Puzzle did well. So well, that I put off writing another book for several years, then in 2015 we published Justice in the Round:Essays on the American Jury System. This book continues to bring a modest profit into Cascade Publishing House.

In 2016 we were ready to offer our publishing services to other writers and agreed to publish a book by Dr. Charles Steele, Jr., President and CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference titled, Easier to Obtain than to Maintain: The Globalization of the Civil Rights Movement.

In 2017, we followed the publication of Dr. Steele’s book with a book on relationships by Rodney Battle titled, Old Habits-News Habits: Love and Relationships.

Also, this summer Cascade Publishing House will release two books. The first one is written by Ruby J. Simon about a little known black community in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It will bear the title, Big Bend: Where the Tide Rolls Around Tuscaloosa.

The other offering is a spiritual inspirational book by Valinda Johnson titled, Thus Far the Lord Has Been With Us.

All four of them Steele, Battle, Simon and Johnson are new authors. Their works are important contributions to the history and culture of our nation and would have found their way into publication without the assistance of Cascade Publishing House, but I dare say, the journey would not have been as sweet and as stress free as the roadmap we laid out for them.

We are currently negotiating to write and publish Dr. Steele’s memories which are expected to be published in 2018.

Additionally, we have been approached to write a screenplay on a historic moment in the history of the National Football League, which because of the nature of the event, will never be matched.

After six years in the trenches we are hitting our stride  We are here to help you get that story out of your head, into your computer, into print and ultimately into the hands of your readers.

 

Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist, the author of Paper puzzle and Justice in the Round, edited Easier to obtain Than to Maintain: The Globalization of Civil Rights by Charles Steele, Jr.; and the host of Beyond the Law with Harold Michael Harvey. He can be contacted at haroldmichaelharvey.com.