The Book is an Award Winner!

By admin | 11th Jun 2008 | Filed under Growing Art, The Press

When I decided to start Growing Art Press, I knew the first book had to be The She Project: how she inspired a community. It was destined to be a winner in so many ways.

This last week that destiny started showing up. The book won two awards for independent publications: a 100% hit-rate for the contests we entered: The Nautilus and the IPPY.

Both of these awards are associated with The Jenkins Group, a business that helps independent publishers and authors break in to the more corporate realms of book publishing. And, yes, they are a business. Each year, independent publishers submit titles to the competitions in categories associated with their new title subject matter. A magic judging happens, and the winners are announced just prior to the Book Expo America. This is set up so that the award-winning authors have time to arrange trips to the Expo - for the public awards ceremonies. Really good publicity!

So, we won the Gold in the IPPY (Independent Publishers Book Award) category of Women’s Issues. And we won the Silver in the Nautilus category of Art/Specialty/Gift.

All in all, The She Project: how she inspired a community has proven itself to be EXACTLY the type of book I wanted to have for a first publication. It’s a book that sets a very high standard for Growing Art Press. And it is additional proof to me that the ‘giggle factor’ works.

Links to the award sites are in the link list.

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The Blog has Begun

By admin | 11th Jun 2008 | Filed under Growing Art, The Press

Hello All. Welcome to the newly-formed Growing Art Press Blog.

I’m Asher Simmons, and I’m the President of Growing Art Press, for those of you are not already aware of that. I’ve started this blog as a way to share the happenings at Growing Art Press (and it’s step-child, the Growing Art Organization) with people who are interested in what we’re doing. We’re currently at the stage in the life of a new business where we are struggling to become known - not just the “Oh, I’ve heard of them” type-of-known, but the “They publish really cool books!” type. ‘Cause we do publish cool books - unique stories, very high quality, inspirational, and all with a connection to Art.

I’m just now learning the blog technology, although it seems to make it pretty easy for me to interact with you, each at our own pace. I hope you’ll find this blog useful and entertaining enough that you want to tell your friends about it.

While we still only have the one book for sale, we are continuing to develop other titles. I plan to use this forum for updates regarding our projects, and let the web site itself hold most of the static descriptions of our authors, projects, and core values. Oh - and sales, of course.

So, on to the blogging adventure!

Asher

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