Tightrope Ruminations on Six Years of Publishing

Today marks six years since the official launch of Glass Spider Publishing, and I can’t believe I’m saying that because most days I’m too busy trying to keep up with the workload before me to even know what day it is, let alone stop and look back at the progress we’ve made.

But you don’t reach milestones like these every day, so I’m putting aside the work long enough to look down from the tightrope and ruminate. Besides, my wife said she’d kick my rhymes-with-what if I didn’t take a day off, so I have no real say in the matter.

Where to begin? The math, probably. Six years is a long time. One more than five, and four more than two. When you look at it that way, it’s quite impressive. But it gets better. In the course of those six years, we published a total of eighty-four books. That’s fourteen books per year, or roughly 1.2 books per month!

I know that for certain because I just did the math in my head—and although the tip of my tongue was sticking out the side of my mouth the whole time, I did the smart thing and double-checked the numbers on my laptop calculator. The math checks out.

Going by the standards of the traditional publishing industry, and stated in the parlance of those familiar with all that’s required to take a manuscript through editing, formatting, design, and publication, that’s what’s known as “no mean feat.” I’ve never liked that saying until today, but now I think I’ll start using it more often.

While I know that nothing would have been possible without a good idea and a whole lot of audacity on my part, I give most of the credit to those authors who saw fit to put their trust in the hands of a guy and his Glass Spider. You can find all of their books here, and I hope you’ll read them. It takes an insane amount of hard work to finish a book but even more courage to get it out there for strangers to read. Bravo to them all.

Here’s to another six years—and I certainly hope it won’t be that long before I’m able to take another few moments to ponder and to celebrate how high and far we’ve climbed. Now, if no one’s looking, I think I’ll sneak back to my work desk for just five more minutes...