NYCGreenFestivalExpo

Our Itinerant Book Show will be going live soon, which means we’re leaving town. For several weeks (from 7/11-9/25), we’ll be away. We’ll be in our Prius filled with all our gear and hitting many KOAs across the country (as far west as the western entrance to Yellowstone National Park). We will visit as many indie bookstores and public libraries as possible during this summer road trip. We want to learn what goes on there and share with them our books and plans for the future.

Here’s A Sneak Peek

SSP, as I fondly call my company, has lots of big plans going forward.

Currently, SSP publishes novels, the Scags Series, and vegan books, the Vegan City Guides. In the works now are two different but ambitious projects based on these two series. What will be worked through over the next months, both while we are on the road and when we return, is a renewed commitment to make SSP an e-book only company.

What Does E-Book Only Mean?

We’ll stop all Print on Demand. Based on the talks I gave at the NYC Green Festival in June, I worked very hard to lay out the reasons for “Why Publishing’s Future is Green Publishing.” I’ll be sharing those ideas in a series of blog posts soon. The short message is that The publishing industry needs to cut down its carbon footprint and learn to love the e-book.

Going Forward

The Scags Series will be completed in 2018. Scags at 45 is the final volume. But Scags herself is a new writer for SSP and her first book, also coming out in 2018, Born Loser, Born Lucky will be about the exploits of her character, Sophie, and her work to kill the cancer in our global heart’s soul. We’ll be launching Scags’ books as e-books only. And we’re working on a way to put the entire Scags Series into an app. So, lots to do but all of it will offer much more interconnection with other writers and their books.

The Vegan City Guides series is also plodding forward. We are talking to and looking for more partners. We want to go 50-state wide. We want to show the entire nation’s vegan footprint well beyond a focus on food but to encompass every aspect of what it means to be vegan. Thus for the animals, for our environment, for our health and for the spiritual well being of those who seek to live compassionately.

Our goals are ambitious but should even a part of this new work bear fruit, there will be much more of interest to offer readers and writers for years to come.

#GoVegan #ReadBooks

I could have titled this, “Why not Vegan Yesteday?” but vegans get criticized for their tone, their lack of sensitivity and their self-righteousness.

I haven’t been a vegan for that long (5 years) and I often kick myself about that relatively short time of aligning my conscience with the fate of this planet. Having been an environmentalist for much longer, it amazes me now how long it took me to connect the dots from caring about this planet and caring about the animals.

Everyone’s story is different. Mine began with working on a vegan book (I am a publisher) and realizing how my author’s journey to becoming vegan opened my eyes.

When I talk about being vegan and about being a publisher, you can hear me here on Saturday and Sunday (6/10, 6/11), I am serious. The Sullivan Street Press website is a carbon-free site. We sell our books as both e-books and bound books that are Print on Demand. This means we are creating as small a carbon footprint as possible to be in this world of books.

But I digress.

My question at the top requires an answer. The planet needs your help. The planet is more than this geological rock we are all attached to. It consists of all that is in and on it. All that grows from it. All that has been here. It is a history machine full of billions of stories composed by all the life forms that have called this planet home. Most of that life no longer exists.

Our actions, human actions, have destroyed these species through both abuse and neglect. Our trajectory is heading towards the ultimate destruction of all life we need to survive.

One of the worst contributors to the death throes of our planet is industrialized agriculture. In particular, humans have taken to the brutal raising, genetic altering and slaughter of beef, pork, lamb, goat and turkeys, chicken, duck, goose as well as all life in the seas (fresh and saltwater). We are trying to to feed too many humans. Our planet will soon be exhausted. We have given it an unbearable burden and then destroyed those elements all life needs–clean air and water.

Give up consuming all animal products. Find better ways to create books than destroying forests.

You can do this. You can save the planet.

deborahemin

Sullivan St Press on the Road and at Work

Why Vegan Now?