Chronicling Los Angeles.REALLY GREAT BOOKS WAS CREATED BY TWO FRIENDS TO PUBLISH FICTION AND NON-FICTION ABOUT A TOPIC THEY BELIEVE IS STILL RELATIVELY UNEXPLORED: LIFE IN L.A. THERE are some 20,000 independent book publishers in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. and all of them are trying to find an edge in this era of do-it-yourself Web publishers and bookstore mega-chains. But none of that kept Amy Inouye and Man Florence from launching Really Great Books just last year. The two friends dreamed up their business after realizing there is a dearth of fiction and non-fiction about the Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. they know and love. Both saw a market for material reflecting a wide range of life in L.A. -- from old-fashioned diners to the vaunted vaunt v. vaunt·ed, vaunt·ing, vaunts v.tr. To speak boastfully of; brag about. v.intr. To speak boastfully; brag. See Synonyms at boast1. n. 1. architecture of Richard Neutra Richard Joseph Neutra (April 8, 1892 – April 16, 1970) is considered one of modernism's most important architects. Neutra was born in Vienna, Austria in 1892. He studied under Adolf Loos, was influenced by Otto Wagner, and worked for a time in Germany in the studio of . "We're both architecture junkies and we both have a skewed skewed curve of a usually unimodal distribution with one tail drawn out more than the other and the median will lie above or below the mean. skewed Epidemiology adjective Referring to an asymmetrical distribution of a population or of data perspective," Florence said. "We found ourselves looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. books, and we couldn't find them, so we decided to create them. Originally, we wanted to find authors and package books and sell them to publishers. We didn't set out to publish them." In its first 12 months, the company has published three books. And set for release on Nov. 20 is "Hungry?," a sort of local Zagat' s guide for the hipster set. The restaurants listed range from the venerable Musso & Frank to the best places to find cheese bread in the San Gabriel Valley The San Gabriel Valley is one of the principal valleys of southern California. It lies to the east of the city of Los Angeles, to the north of the Puente Hills, to the south of the San Gabriel Mountains, and to the west of the Inland Empire. . A number of places didn't make the cut because of bad attitudes. "Some of them were eliminated because they just weren't friendly," Florence says. Inouye is a graphic designer from San Mateo San Mateo (săn mətā`ō), city (1990 pop. 85,486), San Mateo co., W Calif., on San Francisco Bay; inc. 1894. It is a commercial and retail center with some high-technology manufacturing. San Mateo, Spanish for St. . Florence was born and bred Born and Bred is a light-hearted British drama series that aired for four series on BBC One from 2002 to 2005. It was created by Chris Chibnall and Nigel McCrery. The cast was led by James Bolam and Michael French, who played a father and son who run a cottage hospital in in Los Angeles and worked as a book editor for 10 years. They met in 1997, while Florence was interviewing entrepreneurs for a project at Warner Books titled "The Enterprising Woman." The two women immediately hit it off. They soon began pitching projects to publishers, but quickly found there weren't many willing to take the kind of risks involved with their books on L.A. So they decided to start their own publishing house. "We said, how hard can it be?" Florence recalls. "All of our contacts in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of thought we were crazy, because the industry is so entrenched en·trench also in·trench v. en·trenched, en·trench·ing, en·trench·es v.tr. 1. To provide with a trench, especially for the purpose of fortifying or defending. 2. there. But the people in Los Angeles in the publishing world were all very excited about the idea. L.A. is a much more entrepreneurial environment. We spend a lot of time finding printers and vendors who are based in Los Angeles." Florence calls Inouye the driving force behind launching the company. But both share duties, logging 60 to 70 hours each week as they continue their individual projects while trying to make a go of their publishing venture. "Making the book is easy. The hard part is getting the book out into the marketplace and making sure that Barnes & Noble, which at this point can make or break your business, decides to buy five to 10 copies as opposed to one." Indeed, the big-box chains have threatened the survival of small publishers, which have a hard time getting shelf space. Meanwhile, desktop publishing desktop publishing, system for producing printed materials that consists of a personal computer or computer workstation, a high-resolution printer (usually a laser printer), and a computer program that allows the user to select from a variety of type fonts and sizes, has allowed anyone with a computer and the right software to print a book, which further hurts smaller publishers. Getting attention sometimes means going to unusual lengths, such as when the publisher's promotion party for "The Jook," a thriller by Gary Phillips Gary Phillips may refer to:
"My agent had taken it out to St. Martins, which passed on it," Phillips says. "It was too edgy, and they didn't know how to market it. (Inouye and Florence) are doing eclectic kinds of books, and they really get behind them. They really want to develop an L.A. line." Their second book, "Plots and Characters," by screenwriting legend Millard Kaufman, was on the L.A. Times best-seller list the last week of June. The book has also led to a book club deal with Doubleday Books. The workspace for Really Great Books is a hodgepodge of computers, play toys and velvet paintings. Among the prized possessions is the 8-foot-tall head of "Chicken Boy." Inouye said she rescued the L.A. icon in 1984 when the eponymous downtown restaurant was closing. "There's a humor and a fun about what they do. It's really fun to work with them," said Kerry Slattery, general manager of Skylight books in Los Feliz, who has worked with Really Great Books since its first release last year of "Take My Picture Gary Leonard," which ended up on the store's top 10 bestseller list for 1998. The operating philosophy might just be the motto the partners like to attribute to Chicken Boy: "It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice." Really Great Books Year Founded: 1998 Core Business: Publishing books on various aspects of life in Los Angeles Employees in 1998: 1 Employees in 1999: 2 Revenues in I 1999: $67,000 (projected) Goal: To publish books on the city they know best -- Los Angeles Driving Force: Growing need for small presses to tackle topics ignored by publishing conglomerates |
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