In 1976, when I quit my job as an associate editor for the Wm. C. Brown Publishing Company, I figured I knew enough to start my own publishing house. Hey, I was young. For the next three years, Avery Publishing Group operated out of the basement of my house and my partner’s garage. We began producing college textbooks and quickly morphed into a niche house specializing in non-traditional markets—from pregnancy to childbirth to military history. To the great relief of my very understanding wife, we eventually moved out of the basement into the front offices of a local printer. While Avery continued to expand its titles into other niche marketplaces, some of our books started to find their way into trade bookstores—a marketplace I had avoided like the plague. Luckily, we found the very laid-back Charlie Winton and his company, Publishers Group West. They were happy to take over our trade sales, and we were happy to let them. By 1990, Avery was in its own building and finally turning a profit. Not a big profit, but enough to satisfy the bank and allow us to borrow more money when we needed it. By that year, I had figured out that I really did not know as much about publishing as I had originally thought. We were certainly good, but not good enough to be considered great.

About that time, I met a gentleman named Nathan Keats, the publisher of Keats Publishing. Nathan had been in publishing since the early ‘40s. He had put together one of the best alternative health publishing companies in the country. He was a crusty maverick, said what was on his mind, was highly innovative, and loved life. I was a wise guy with a sense of humor and I had been following his publishing house as I developed Avery’s own alternative health list. We hit it off the first time we met at the old ABA (now called the BEA). He told me something that has always stuck with me. He said that if you can stay in publishing long enough, you will eventually come out with a bestseller. When he told me that, I asked him to define “long enough.” He answered, “You’ll know how long when it happens. You just have to keep at it.”

In 1991, Avery published Juicing for Life. The juicing craze was just beginning and it became our first major hit. We sold over 700,000 copies in its first six months of publication. From that point until we sold the company in 1999, we couldn’t do anything wrong. It was an amazing ride; one bestseller begat another. Nathan couldn’t have been more pleased by our success—and I couldn’t have had a better mentor. Nathan was someone I could call to ask questions, bounce ideas off of, and learn the secrets of being a publisher. Unfortunately, he passed away a few years before I sold Avery. I did, however, get the opportunity to tell him how much his friendship had meant to me.

Two months after selling Avery, I started Square One Publishers. Having owned my own publishing firm for over twenty-three years, I found myself back at square one—just in case anyone was wondering where the company name came from. It’s now been eight years since we started, and while we have developed a solid backlist and have a number of very strong titles, we are still looking for our first major bestseller. While I no longer like to make predictions about my titles, I think this year we will have our first two bestsellers: Does Your Baby Have Autism?, thanks to the unique breakthrough offered by its author-researchers, and Taking Woodstock, owing to it having become Ang Lee’s next movie project. I am also hoping that eight years is, in fact, “long enough”—yet I also hear Nathan telling me to “never count your chickens before they sell.” We will do our best to make this year, Square One’s year; and if it isn’t, all I have to do is try and stay in business for one more year. Somewhere in that thought—planted in my brain by Nathan—is the hope and passion that continues to drive me and most other publishers forward.

Thank you, Nathan.