An Independent Publishing Company in Niantic

If you're familiar with the world of publishing, then you know that Catch-22 isn't just the title of Joseph Heller's classic novel. It also describes the dilemma writers face when they try to get a book published.

No publisher will touch you unless you have an agent, and no agent will represent you if you're an unpublished author.

Even writers who are talented and lucky enough to have an agent often find that even if they land a publishing deal, they're still on their own when it comes to marketing and publicity. Large publishing houses tend to focus on pushing best-selling authors. Unknown authors are often left to their own devices when it comes to getting the word out.   

Small wonder then, that many first time authors ultimately opt to self-publish. That was the route Niantic author Susan Huener, who publishes under the name S. Jane Scheyder, initially took with her first novel The Other Side of the Pulpit, in 2006.

After talking to her friend and fellow author Jan Schenk Grosskopf about the many obstacles writers face on the road to publication, however, the two women decided that they would take it a step further. They decided to launch their own publishing company, Andres & Blanton, right here in Niantic.  

"Both of us had been through the rigors of trying to find agents and publishers and found it to be a rather daunting task to get read at all," said Huener. "Any writer will attest to that—you have to be in the system to get in the system. When you’re essentially responsible for doing all your marketing and marketing research before you even get an agent, you start to think, well can we do this."

Grosskopf, a historian, already has a number of publishing credits to her name. However, until this point, she had published scholarly works. Finding a publisher for her first novel intended for a general rather than purely academic audience was a very different proposition. 

"I was working with a pretty good agent in New York but there were so many hoops to jump through," she said. The more she talked to friends and colleagues who had gone through established publishers, the more disenchanted she became.

"My adviser has published many books," Grosskopf said. "You get an agent and then get the contract and then they drop you. Or they don’t promote it very well and then you’re lucky to get $1 a book, and so we said, why don’t we just do this ourselves?"

Starting Small With Plans to Grow

The two established Andres & Blanton, which they named for their grandmothers, in 2010. The first book they published under their own imprint was Huener's romantic comedy, Cafenova, in 2012. This love story starts out as light and airy as the foam on a cappuccino and goes down as easily and as addictively as that first morning cup of coffee.  

Andres & Blanton's second book, For Mischief Done, is a much darker historical novel by Grosskopf based on the true story of a gruesome crime that became a landmark capital case in post-Revolutionary New London. It's scheduled for release on February 1, 2013, although it's available now for preorders.

"We have different backgrounds and a passion for what we hope is good quality writing," said Huener. "There are many, many books out there. We'd like to offer something a little different."

Huener laughingly says they want to be a "nonvampire publisher." In other words, they're not interested in trying to cash in on the latest trends. They want to turn out well-written, carefully-edited books that they really take the time to promote.

Although Grosskopf is an experienced editor, they're both new to publishing and Huener says they're learning as they go along. The publishing world is changing rapidly, too, as the industry moves more and more toward e-books but they're on top of that particular trend. Cafenova is now available in electronic format for Kindle and Grosskopf's novel will be too. 

Once they've successfully launched For Mischief Done, the two say they'll be ready to turn their full attention to manuscripts they've been receiving from other authors. 

"We are open to other people's work and we’ve looked at some. There was one manuscript that looks very good but the author has to think about whether he wants to do some rewriting. The key for us is being very strenuous about editing," said Grosskopf. "I worked as an editor for a number of years. You have to be willing to take a lot of criticism—after a while it all looks really good to you or really bad—we have been keeping very stringent standards."