The Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design: How to Keep Your Knits About You by Shannon Okey will be published this spring by Cooperative Press.

Retail price: $22.95 USD
Size: 7.44 x 9.69 inches (19 x 25 cm)
Pages: 254 (print edition; digital may vary by format)

978-0-9792017-1-4 print edition ISBN

The Knitgrrl Guide To Professional Knitwear Design is the first-ever book targeted to designers of all experience levels who want to create, communicate and sell their work professionally to magazines, publishers, consumers and other markets. Written by an industry insider, the Guide takes a comprehensive, unflinching look behind the scenes that no knit or crochet designer can afford to be without. Includes interviews with top designers, editors and professionals who tell it like it is so you can hit the ground running, a guide to responsible social media use, information on distribution, printing, online publishing, book and magazine proposals and much, much more.

Pre-order now for free domestic¹ shipping on all print edition packages. All prices are USD. Ohio residents will be charged sales tax.

Updated 15 June 2010: the book is now available for order. Please see here. Thank you again for all your support during the pre-order period!

anezka media, founded 2006, was acquired by Stitchgrrl LLC in 2009. Our new name, Cooperative Press, reflects what we do more succinctly. We are partners in publishing the highest-quality content with our talented authors.

Watch this space — new titles and more are on the way!

For more about the company history, see the About page.

Allow me to introduce you to IndieBound… (click here to join)

IndieBound is an amazing website that will let you do all the things Amazon does — wish list, affiliate linking, you name it… except it directs the person clicking to a nearby independent bookstore instead. To give you an idea, try clicking this. When you get to a page full of anezka media founder Shannon Okey’s books, click on any of the covers — it will prompt you for zipcode and forward you on appropriately.

IndieBound is part of the American Booksellers Association.

Our last few posts have been about the effect digital media has had on publishing. Here is an interesting resource: book publishing industry people who are using Twitter.

anezka media is currently working on bringing our title Purls Forever to the Kindle platform, and our next release will initially come out in multiple digital formats, no print. (At least not at first, we reserve the right to change that if we decide otherwise…)

Why? Because in watching the fast-moving and ever-evolving world of publishing from both sides, as both readers and producers of content, we think it’s the right thing to do. It’s ecologically friendly, for one — cuts the carbon footprint down to nearly nothing, makes it easier for us to price it fairly, doesn’t require shipping boxes and boxes of physical media. (I think the worst possible thing that happened during the production of one book was sending physical CDs of the photos for the book cross-country for layout and design!)

But what about the booksellers, you say? No problem. We have a new digital affiliate program that will allow any legitimate bookseller or book-related website to sell copies of the books with a mere cut-and-paste piece of code. This should be of particular interest to smaller, independent bookstores If you’re interested, leave a comment on this post or email info [at] anezkamedia [dot] com for more information.

One more thing to think about: an interesting article by John Siracusa called The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age

It’s time for independent publishers and booksellers to forge ahead, using the creativity and flexibility at our disposal to renew the current system of getting our books out to the public in a more personal, efficient and consumer-friendly way. Won’t you join us?

It’s official. The Kindle is, in fact, amazing.

Judging from the comments here at Knitgrrl, there are more crafty Kindlers out there than previously thought. anezka media is announcing its commitment to supporting the Kindle and other electronic platforms wherever possible and plans to release Kindle editions of our upcoming titles. Interested in being a member of our test group? Leave a comment.

Inevitable, given modern publishing trends — the big houses are slowly moving away from the older sizeable-advance-then-hope-for-royalties model. Food author Michael Ruhlman, a fellow Clevelander, examines how this works as applied to cookbooks, and mentions the new Harper Collins unit discussed in the linked New York Times article.

From the NYT:

Author advances and bookseller returns have long troubled the publishing industry. Best-selling authors can command advances so high that publishers often come away with slim profits, even for books that are significant successes. Publishers also sometimes offer high advances to untested authors in the hopes of creating new hits, but often those gambles do not pan out.

Ms. Friedman said the new group, which will initially publish just 25 titles a year, would offer “low or no advances.” Mr. Miller, who was most recently president of Hyperion, said he hoped to offer authors a 50-50 split of profits. Typically, authors earn royalties of 15 percent of the hardcover price for each book sold after they have paid off their advances. Many authors never earn royalties.

In essence, they’re trying to do more or less what we do here at anezka media! Michael Ruhlman understands the model, and points out some problems with the old one.

Nick Kokonas, the restaurateur who, with Grant Achatz has created the restaurant Alinea in Chicago, was unhappy with the conventional deals publishers were offering Grant for his cookbook. Kokonas figured, given that they have an in-house designer and photographer, they could do it themselves. … they are creating an intriguing website with demos and recipes and techinques to go with it.

(Technology and bonus features are always a plus. Stay tuned — some upcoming anezka media releases will have both!)

As mentioned in the last post, Gina Wilde of Alchemy decided to go with self-publishing after finding the offers from traditional publishers unsatisfactory. The resulting book, Destination Alchemy, is fantastic. And, without knowing all the numbers involved, I suspect she’ll earn a lot more on the book in the long run than she would have under the old model.

This isn’t about vanity publishing — that’s an entirely different ball of wax. Amazon’s recent announcement that they will no longer allow print on demand books printed by vendors other than Amazon to be sold directly by Amazon is another. (There’s a lot of balls of wax in the publishing industry these days). This is about bringing quality niche content to its audience in the most efficient and highest-quality way possible while giving authors a fair deal. There’s no reason, given modern technology, to stick to the old ways. We can do better!

anezka media and its related ventures are looking for 2008 spring and summer interns. Please see the 2007 intern announcement for the basics and submit your resume accordingly. Our upcoming booklist is still primarily craft and needlearts-focused, so experience with or interest in crafting is a plus. You will be working with our CEO on a number of interesting projects, and we will work with your school’s program to provide academic credits.

The photo at left is our author Jonelle Raffino’s book poster at the National Needlearts Association show in Long Beach, California this past week. Purls Forever is still selling very well, and Jonelle’s yarn company, South West Trading Company, remains an inspiration to small businesses everywhere. Readers really love the personal touch her stories give to the patterns!

The TNNA show was enlightening in many ways – Alchemy Yarns has just self-published an amazing book which shows the power of vision in the publishing process, and of staying true to your design sense.

What I loved most about Gina’s book (the amazing Gina Wilde, the force of nature behind Alchemy Yarns) was the models – all shapes, sizes and ages! I once heard a statistic about the percentage of knitters who are over size 14, and it was well over 50%. So why use 20-lb 15-year-old models to advertise knitting-related products? Well done, Gina!

The Napa Valley Register has written a lovely review of Purls Forever. It’s also been featured recently in Yarn Market News and several other knitting magazines — very exciting!

Linda Cortright of Wild Fibers magazine wrote a thoughtful, wonderful review of Purls Forever in their spring 2007 issue. A brief excerpt:

Purls Forever at one level is a gentle read through Raffino’s well-knit family tree. You don’t have to be an accomplished knitter to appreciate the significance of seeing your own child wrapped in a well-worn afghan that once clung to your young shoulders, or your father proudly wearing a sweater you’ve thoughtfully knit (no matter how much it may itch him). These are the stories Raffino tells just as if you were cozied up beside her on the couch looking at at pictures of corresponding patterns, either from the original garment or modified for today’s yarns and styles.

Ask your local yarn store to stock Purls Forever today! Thank you for supporting independent publishers.

anezka media is looking for 2007 summer interns. Prospective candidates will be college students based in Northeast Ohio (Cleveland area), having experience in one or more of the following fields:

• Publishing and media relations (college newspaper, writing for magazines, etc)
• Broadcasting / media development, including radio and television production
• Craft publishing, particularly knitting and fiber arts
• Digital photography
• Marketing and sales

A working knowledge of Microsoft Office, WordPress, Mac OS X and Adobe Creative Suite (particularly PhotoShop and InDesign) is essential. Experience with other Mac media programs such as Garage Band and iTunes are a plus. Please submit initial inquiries to info@anezkamedia.com.