A Hard Day at the Beach, St. John USVI

A St. John USVI Book Business
As many of you already know, Habiba and I own, operate and manage our own St. John publishing business called Sombrero Publishing Company.

I’m sure that having a publishing business on St. John is quite a bit different than doing the same thing anywhere else, and I’d venture to guess that the St. John experience is quite a bit more enjoyable although quite a bit less profitable. I imagine the same could be said for most other St. John, Virgin Islands, or Caribbean island endeavors.

Categories
I’ve broken down the business into the following categories: (1) research, (2)writing, editing and design, (3) printing and shipping and (4) distribution and sales.

Research
Today, I’d like to talk about the first category, which is research for the book. Each book we write demands a different strategy. For now I’ll use the example of our best seller, “St. John Off The Beaten Track.” Guide books need to be updated from time and this book is no exception.

The first edition of “St. John Off The Beaten Track” hit the St. John scene in 1996. Since then there have been two subsequent editions and four printings. I imagine that in 2010 we’ll be ready to present edition four, the preparations for which will begin shortly.

Here’s how we do it. Let’s say we’re doing beaches. First step is to go to the beach, not bad for a day a at work, wouldn’t you say. We’ll try to bring everything we’ll need, which will probably be little different than what any tourist on St. John brings to the beach, picnic stuff, beach blanket or beach chairs, snorkel gear, picnic stuff, sun block and for recording the experience, a land and an underwater camera, a tape recorder and a pad and pencil.

Next we spend some time on the beach and lying there on the sand think of everything about that beach. To help us think, we stroll along the sand, take a swim, go snorkeling, sit back and contemplate our surrounding – things like that. I know you’re thinking: “wow, that sounds tough, I had no idea that book writing on St. John would entail such arduous work.”

We’ll very likely return another day to try to make sure we didn’t miss anything and we’ll also make other trips by boat or kayak for more photos and another angle on the beach experience.

At home we’ll arrange our notes listing what we experienced, and what we thought about. We’ll do the same for all the beaches that we want to write about, as well as the hiking trails, and cool places to visit on St. John and eventually will sit down to put it all together for the book. That’s it. And believe me it’s the best part.

Next: writing, editing and design

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 27th, 2008 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Life on St. John USVI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.