Small press finds help in cloud

PAPER TRAIL: New Street Communications co-owner Edward Renehan with his son, Bill. Renehan says that for every paper copy bought from the company, it’s selling 10 e-books. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON
PAPER TRAIL: New Street Communications co-owner Edward Renehan with his son, Bill. Renehan says that for every paper copy bought from the company, it’s selling 10 e-books. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON

Small presses have always struggled to compete, but New Street Communications LLC is finding its way by tapping serendipitously into literary, computing and other niche markets in the cloud.
Increasingly, the Internet helps specific segments of the publishing industry exploit gaps in content. Three years ago, nonfiction publisher Ed Renehan saw his entry point, and engaged.
“There was a very low investment required for entry into the marketplace,” Renehan said, explaining how he got started. “The digital-book technology and paper-printing technology had evolved so that one didn’t need anywhere [close to] the startup money needed before. I still see a very large opportunity for smaller presses.”
After years at the powerhouse MacMillan and then New Bridge publishing companies, New Street Communications Managing Director Renehan decided to name his small press for the street in Linbrook, N.Y., where he and his wife had once lived. The tagline on his website describes the intent: “original publishing with an attitude.”
He and his wife, Christa, jointly own the business, run out of his home in the North Kingstown village of Wickford.
In his first venture, Renehan’s friendship with Hemingway scholar H.R. Stoneback led to publishing Stoneback’s long essay, “Hemingway’s Paris: Our Paris?” It also led to New Street Communications’ first big break, thousands of sales of the essay, not only as e-books but in print.
New Street Communications sold more than 5,000 copies of the essay, now in production as an audio book.
Since that first venture, Renehan has published 17 other books, aiming for 10 a year, and added his son, William, as publisher of a subsidiary, Dark Hall Press, which publishes horror and science fiction. This fall, Renehan is embarking on a new partnership in audio books with Marine Money International, publishing “Dynasties of the Sea,” an exploration of the world of shipping magnates written by CNBC’s Lori Ann LaRocco.
Renehan hires contractors in the cloud to help copy edit and design his products, while Amazon CreateSpace is the printer. Print and e-books are then sold online via Amazon and other Web sellers, as well as through wholesaler Ingram Publisher Services for brick-and-mortar sales. E-books range from $2.99 to $9.95; print books cost between $9.95 and $27.95. Audio-book prices, which haven’t yet been finalized, will reflect the industry standard, he said. Using the computer program Adobe InDesign, Renehan can do short runs of books “and get the same quality layout … as any big publisher,” he said. “And for every paper copy we sell, we’re selling 10 e-books.”
A former director of computer publishing programs for MacMillan and then New Bridge, Renehan also identified “holes” in the professional marketplace for technical computing nonfiction, particularly in explaining computer-business issues to professionals who needed to understand them but weren’t charged with directly implementing them. He then set out to meet the demand.
Thus was born “The Little Book of Cloud Computing, 2011 Edition,” followed by editions in 2012 and 2013. The current edition is the publisher’s best seller to date.
New Street Communications has an editorial board, but it is not a board of directors with any significant authority. Rather, the panel of colleagues and associates advises Ed Renehan when asked and is paid in copies of books for the consult. More in-depth “reader reports” earn small honorariums.
“I wanted to run this as I see fit, without any meddling,” he said.
One board member, Arthur Goldwag, author of “The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right,” published last year by Pantheon, describes the arrangement as informal. It’s a way to help the publisher determine if selections are viable and have an audience, he said. He reviews literary works, serving chiefly as a “sounding board,” a role he considers “a privilege.”
Renehan sees his small press deploying print, e-books and audio for some time to come, and developing vertical markets like his son’s imprint over the next two decades.
The biggest challenge in launching New Street Communications from his home has been “shutting it off,” the entrepreneur said, so he took a break in June by traveling to a wooden-boat show in Mystic, Conn.
“The temptation,” he said, “is to never stop working.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
New Street Communications LLC
Owner: Edward and Christa Renehan
Type of Business: Publishing
Location: 58 Virginia Ave., North Kingstown
Employees: 2
Year Established: 2010
Annual Sales: $200,000

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